Growth Mindset : Empower Young Professionals

“When you have setbacks and failures, you can’t overreact to them. You need to step back, analyze them, and learn from them. But you also need to stay optimistic!”
Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

It is important for professionals and mentors to understand and know the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Let’s start out with some simple definitions.

A FIXED mindset is when people believe their qualities are fixed traits and therefore cannot change. These people document their intelligence and talents rather than working to develop and improve them. They also believe that talent alone leads to success, and effort is not required. (source)

A GROWTH mindset is when people have an underlying belief that their learning and intelligence can grow with time and experience. When people believe they can become smarter, they realize that their effort has an effect on their success, so they put in extra time, leading to higher achievement. (source)

Nobody is 100% a fixed or growth mindset. Each person is on a spectrum between the two. Some areas you may have more of a growth mindset whereas another area you have a stronger fixed mindset. As a mentor and always working in team situations, it is beneficial for you to have a growth mindset as it helps to encourage growth, inspiration, and learning.

Image from Ameet Ranadive‘s article “Fixed v. Growth Mindset”

Talent vs Effort

When you were growing up, were comments and/or praise focused on your talent or your effort? Words and how you form them into sentences for feedback drastically change the tone and effect of the statement. It is important to learn and train yourself to give feedback with a growth mindset. The way the recipient perceives a sentence can have a fixed or growth mindset tone, which affects the reaction. Below are some examples of fixed mindset statements with a revised statement in a growth mindset tone from Angela Duckworth’s book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance:

“You’re a natural! I love that!” – fixed mindset.

“You’re a learner! I love that!” – growth mindset.

“Well, at least you tried…” -fixed mindset

“That didn’t work. Let’s talk about how you approached it and what might work better.” -growth mindset.

“Great job! You’re so talented!” – fixed mindset.

“Great job! What’s one thing that could have been even better?” -growth mindset.

Often a fixed mindset feedback statement focuses on talent and addresses it as something that cannot be changed. It may be positive or negative. It also falls short on learning from the experience. The statement “Well at least you tried…” does not explain why something was not good enough, how something could be done better next time, and leaves the recipient with zero feedback to grow from the experience. A growth mindset feedback statement focuses on your effort. Regardless if it was an impressive effort and ended in an excellent result, notice how the example statement still focuses on how the recipient can IMPROVE upon it.

Office Culture

Studies have been done in the corporate world to see if a company’s work culture has a fixed or growth mindset. Based on findings of Angela Duckworth, Carol Dweck, and others there were some overarching themes as described in “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance”.

In a company with a fixed mindset culture, most employees surveyed agreed with the statement, “when it comes to being successful, this company believes that people have a certain amount of talent and they can’t really do much to change it.” They explained that there are typically only a few highly-valued star performers, and the company is not truly invested in other employee’s development. Many respondents also admitted to: keeping secrets from coworkers, cutting corners, and cheating to get ahead. The company may talk about innovation but act otherwise. This is typically a big signal when something is a fixed mindset – the words do not match the actions. Most employees in this culture typically always have one foot out the door.

In a company with a growth mindset culture, the company values the development of all their employees. 47% of respondents were more likely to say their colleagues are trustworthy. 49% were more likely to say that their company fosters innovation. 65% were more likely to say that their company supports risk taking. This cultural type leads to opportunities for everyone, empowers the employees and lends itself to having more committed employees. Based on their findings it showed that employees also felt that their company has their back when risk taking. These employees were also more committed to the company’s, coworker’s, and their own growth.

A company may say that they believe in a growth mindset, but the hardest part is making sure their words match your actions. Everyone has both an inner fixed (pessimist) and a growth (optimist) mindset that operates on a spectrum. Often people default to a fixed mindset. It is difficult to stay calm and ACT with a growth mindset when someone falls short or disappoints you. The ACTIONS relate to your body language, facial expressions, and behavior all delivering the same message as your words. When there is a mismatch between your words and actions it is not a true growth mindset response. Being able to catch yourself during the mismatch will help you grow. Ignoring it will only feed more into a fixed mindset approach.

Can you tell what mindset your office culture is?

Can you recall times when your own words did not match your actions?

The Power of “YET”

Rather than focusing your energy on providing feedback on one’s current talent, concentrate on building one’s potential. This is especially powerful when mentoring those right out of college. There is a steep learning curve in architecture and many can be quick to say something like, “I’m not good at understanding exterior detailing” and get frustrated when trying to learn all the unique ways and materials an exterior wall may have. As a mentor, if you can focus on changing their statement to “I’m not good at understanding exterior detailing, yet” that completely changes a very fixed statement into a development statement. This in turn changes how the person approaches the challenge and their mindset about it. It encourages acceptance of not understanding something inspires curiosity to learn and motivates the individual’s confidence. It also shows that it is okay to fail at something rather than building fear of failure.

If you are one to always take the “safe” task or role, you have a fixed mindset of your own skill set. You have gotten superb at certain tasks from a previous project and want to repeat those same tasks because you understand the task, you are more comfortable, and you know you can succeed. This can easily happen when an enormous project has multiple phases and a similar floor plate. Those that have completed Phase 1 and learned from construction administration want to complete similar tasks for the next phase of drawings rather than delegating to someone else to learn. Delegation can be difficult to learn early in your architectural career, but if you approach delegation as an opportunity to grow your skills as a teacher, delegation becomes a welcoming skill set

If you need help to practice a growth mindset in relation to your own skills here is something you can try doing. If you have the option to choose a safe task (something you have done before), or a challenging one (something new or complex), take on the challenge! This is a simple step you can take to practice getting out of a fixed mindset about your own skills and continue to challenge yourself to learn new things. No road is without bumps eventually you will hit one. The growth mindset may be bumpy but without bumps there is no growth.

As mentors for young professionals, we need to teach people how to land before they jump. We cannot expect people to be brave and risk failure if they are not prepared for hard landings. Teaching how to fail, learning from it, and growing as a professional is a growth mindset approach that fosters the development of future architects. Mentors should take a step back, approach failures as motivation builders, learn how to rise, and see how much higher the young professional flies.

Written by

Katelyn Rossier, AIA, LSSBB