Growth Mindset And The CEO Disease

Carol Dweck is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University

Your research on how young children deal with challenges is amongst the most cited in contemporary Psychology. What have you learned about how adults face adversity?
Much of what I know about Psychology can be traced back to research I conducted early in my career. In these studies, we presented children with a series of problems, including some that were intentionally designed to be too difficult to solve. Not surprisingly, some of them treated the difficult challenges as the end of the world, as a verdict on their competence and their worth. Others, however, welcomed the most complex of problems, and even embraced their complexity, saying things like, “I love a challenge.” My jaw dropped. I had gone into the research assuming that some people cope with setbacks and failure and others do not, but I never thought that anyone relished failure and used it as a platform for learning. These kids had a secret, and not only did I want to learn about it, I wanted to bottle it so I could share it with others.

As children, Charles Darwin and Leo Tolstoy were considered, at best, ordinary. What do their examples tell us about creative potential?
It is often believed that if you are a genius as an adult, you must have been a genius as a child -- which is not always the case. Much work in Psychology shows that people who are geniuses became that way by developing their talents rather than by being born with them. The examples of Darwin and Tolstoy demonstrate how some people can surmount their apparent normalcy and develop their natural gifts to become admired, even historically-significant figures. The talent trajectory can go either way: some people who are viewed as prodigies as children do not develop into accomplished adults.

Human potential also encompasses a large range of interpersonal abilities. My recent work has shown that people who have what I call a ‘growth mindset’ -- who believe that skills and talents are malleable -- are more productive in conflict and negotiation than people with a ‘fixed mindset’. Those with a fixed mindset see their traits (and those of others) as resistant to change or cultivation. We can see examples of the growth mindset and the fixed mindset – and of the clash between them – in many realms of interaction, including romantic relationships, business negotiations, and diplomatic discussions such as the conflict in the Middle East.

You have been called upon to provide guidance to everyone from CEOs to school teachers to major-league sports teams. Tell us about your experiences.
My findings have been easily applied to the subject of resilience in sports, and soon after the publication of my book Mindset, coaches, sports teams and recruiters began contacting me for advice. They were seeing many athletes who could not cope with setbacks; some could not even stand being coached and receiving feedback without experiencing a huge blow to their self esteem. The clients I consulted to included a soccer team in the U.K.’s Premier League and a major baseball team in the U.S. Coaches wanted to know how to implement a growth mindset with their teams, and recruiters wanted to know how to discover potential players who had this mindset. These are the players who are looking to grow and improve, rather than believing they can coast on their natural talent.

I have also been asked to share my findings with the corporate world. One large multinational contacted me after launching an ambitious initiative to implement a growth mindset across its various divisions. The company wanted to generate a new culture that rewarded risk taking and teamwork, instead of individual genius. In tandem with this effort, they transformed their branding to emphasize growth and change as core values. The push for change was ultimately coming from the top, from the company’s new CEO, but people with the growth mindset were put in charge of key units to make sure the new mandate permeated the organization. These managers believed in growth for themselves and wanted to foster innovation and appropriate risk taking in their teams. It was an exciting process to witness. The company hosted a conference for their new managers entitled ‘The Growth Mindset’, and it was clear that the managers felt liberated by the new corporate culture. For once they were not expected to be perfect or have all the answers. They were instead on a journey with their teams to see how they could change, and how that change could transform the company in a positive way.

Why do some people achieve their potential while equally-talented others do not?
When people have a growth mindset, their first priority is learning and stretching. They believe in the value of effort and struggle, and when they encounter setbacks, they attack and surmount them. People with a fixed mindset may start out as equally talented, but they think their abilities are carved in stone. Since they are more interested in displaying their abilities than increasing them, they do not necessarily believe that hard effort is required. If you have ability, it is thought, things should come naturally to you; if you are really a genius, you shouldn’t have to struggle.

When such people encounter obstacles, they often want to conceal them. They may even try to feel better about themselves by finding someone else who has done worse than them. They do not address their deficiencies, because this would mean admitting that they are capable of possessing deficiencies. You can guess where this leads. When it comes to the value placed on learning, the enjoyment of effort and even struggle, and the ability to address and surmount obstacles, the growth mindset simply takes people a lot further.

The fear of humiliation is one of the most primal and compelling emotions. What are some ways we can overcome our inhibitions to gain a more productive attitude toward failure?
The fear of humiliation is what goads us into hiding our mistakes or staying in our comfort zone instead of taking risks. This fear often occurs in a fixed mindset, where the concern is that you will be judged: your worth will be determined by whether you are sufficiently smart or talented, whether you have that special ‘it’ or not. In a growth mindset, there is an understanding that everyone makes mistakes, especially when pushing into new areas or embarking on new adventures. In a growth mindset, you try to create a culture in which that experimentation is encouraged and humiliation is not a consequence of failure.

What can managers do to keep from getting the ‘CEO disease’?
It is often the case that when people have experienced great success, it goes to their head and makes them feel infallible. A major symptom of what I call the ‘CEO disease’ is seen when a leader, due to pride or fear or failure, keeps repeating the same actions long after they have stopped working. They may keep doing the same things as circumstances change, and encourage their subordinates to agree with their decisions even if they are bad ones. One example of this approach is Lee Iacocca, who hung on as CEO of Chrysler long after he had lost his effectiveness as a leader. It is very hard to get back down into the trenches and come up with a fresh approach that will take the organization into the future, but nowadays, with the business climate changing so rapidly, it is absolutely necessary to innovate. Past success does not necessarily breed future success, unless you are ready to re-examine things from scratch and make new mistakes.

Jack Welch at General Electric, Lou Gerstner at IBM and Anne Mulcahy at Xerox are amongst the turnaround experts who got it right. What is the secret to their success? They were all learners, for one thing. Not only did they enjoy the learning curve, they learned about every single part of their organization and listened respectfully to people at every level. They also tried to make their teams and their fellow workers into learners, instead of people who worshipped hierarchy, coasted on their status or competed with each other.

You have attributed some disastrous world events to the perils of ‘groupthink’. Please discuss.
In his wonderful book Groupthink, Irving Janis cites the Bay of Pigs invasion as an example of the dangers of groupthink. Kennedy’s closest advisors knew there would be problems with the invasion, but assumed the challenges would be magically ironed out because Kennedy was associated with the military effort. They believed in the ‘Kennedy aura’ -- in the idea that everything he touched turned to gold. Had they spoken up and voiced their reservations, they would have enjoyed a more productive conversation, and perhaps even averted the military failure that finally occurred.

In the contrary example, during World War II, Winston Churchill insisted that everyone tell him the worst case scenario, the worst possibilities, so that when he went to bed each night, he could feel comfortable about not having to wake up to an unforeseen disaster. He even appointed a committee whose specific purpose was to deliver bad news.

How does the possibility of making a mistake resonate differently with creative types?
Creative thinkers understand that sometimes a mistake is the creative breakthrough. One of the top chefs in New York reports that it was a mistake that led to the creation of the molten lava cake that can be found in many restaurants these days: when the chef was done berating the employee who had made the mistake, he realized he had witnessed a radical and winning innovation.

Even when mistakes do not provide a breakthrough, they can define the situation, causing us to ask why the initial effort did not succeed and what we have to do differently the next time. If we hide from mistakes, we are limiting the new directions we can pursue in the future. The growth mindset -- with its willingness to embrace mistakes -- ultimately fosters greater creativity, innovation and achievement.

Carol Dweck is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and the author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Random House, 2006) and Self-Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Psychology Press, 2000). The latter was named Book of the Year by the World Education Federation. She was recently elected the Herbert Simon Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

[This article has been reprinted, with permission, from Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management]