How to develop a growth mindset in career?

Career for most of us now is corporate. We are struggling to move forward and settle in a place where we feel respectable and posh. The truth is every one of us is affected by corporate and its norms in one way or the other. There are two types of corporations if we should simplify.  One is ‘talent - minded’ corporate and the other one is ‘work - minded’ corporate.  

Learn from mistakes

Today, most of them believe that for a successful corporate business, one should have a talent mindset.  Corporates create a culture that worships talent which in turn pushes them into a fixed mindset.

 When people live in an environment where they are recruited solely for their so-called talent, they have great difficulty when their image is threatened.

 For example, Jacob is hired for a manager’s post in a very profitable corporate company. He is hired only because he studied at the World’s best university. People who hired him thought that since he has studied in that university, he is naturally talented.

 One day, Jacob makes a very blunder mistake by forgetting a client meeting. Now, he has a reputation to be saved. What did/would he do? He just blamed others for not reminding him of the meeting. He tries to cover up his faults by blaming others. This is an indication of a fixed mindset.

 A growth mindset will accept the mistake and try to learn from it. As known, learning is the ultimate goal for a growth-minded person. Just by avoiding the situation, you will not learn anything. You have to accept the fact that you have made a mistake and learn to learn from it. 

Do not see hierarchy

People with a fixed mindset imagine that some people are superior and some are inferior. A fixed mindset has a hierarchy. You might be a manager today but don’t forget the bottom line from where you climbed. Because you are in a position to look superior does not mean you are superior. Everyone can learn, everyone can put in the effort to become the person you are today. So, no one is superior or inferior. 

Do not feed your ego through your career 

So many corporates have faced downfall because of fixed minded leaders. These leaders have a “personal ego” attached to them. They always kept the needs and improvements of the company second rate and often put their ego as the utmost priority.

The best example for this is Lee Iacocca, who was once with Ford company and was terminated by Henry Ford II. He also has a huge part in developing the Ford Mustang.

Iacocca applied himself to the monumental task of saving face and, in the process, Chrysler Motors. Chrysler, the once-thriving Ford rival, was on the brink of death, but Iacocca as its new CEO acted quickly to hire the right people, bring out new models, and lobby the government for bailout loans.

 Just a few years after his humiliating exit from Ford, he was able to write a triumphant autobiography and in it declare, “Today, I’m a hero.”  Within a short time, however, Chrysler was in trouble again.

Iacocca’s fixed mindset would not stay put. He needed to prove his greatness—to himself, to Henry Ford, to the world—on a larger and larger scale. He spent his company’s time on things that would enhance his public image, and he spent the company’s money on things that would impress Wall Street and hike up Chrysler’s stock prices. But he did this instead of investing in new car designs or manufacturing improvements that would keep the company profitable in the long run. 

 He also looked to history, to how he would be judged and remembered. But he did not address this concern by building the company. This resulted in a great loss for the company.  

Accept constructive criticism

A fixed mindset hates criticism. People with a fixed mindset always think their ideas are superior and perfect. They have lost the ability to fix their mistakes and move forward. They ignore the criticizers and surround themselves with their worshippers.

Always wanting to look perfect is called “CEO disease.” Lee Iacocca had a bad case of it. After his initial success as head of Chrysler Motors, Iacocca looked remarkably like our four-year-olds with a fixed mindset.

He kept bringing out the same car models over and over with only superficial changes. Unfortunately, they were models no one wanted anymore. Meanwhile, Japanese companies were completely rethinking what cars should look like and how they should run. We know how this turned out. Japanese cars rapidly swept the market. Lee Iacocca surrounded himself with worshipers, exiled the critics—and quickly lost touch with where his field was going. Lee Iacocca had become a non-learner. 

Elevate the life of your colleagues and supporters

 A company that is led by a growth-minded leader has innumerable possibilities of growing into the giant store of developed and skilled individuals. Let’s take the example of Microsoft, the well known super developed technology-based firm.

Microsoft has totally rethought and reformed the idea of growth and development. As a result, previously unidentified — yet skilled — leaders are rising to levels they might not have in a traditional development model. 

The CEO is generally the bellwether of a company’s culture, and under Satya Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft is emphasizing learning and creativity. Nadella believes this is how leaders are made, and that idea is reflected in several programs that have been designed to uplift the company’s employees.

One wise program built by the company is The Hackathon where it offers people to step out of their daily jobs and develop leadership skills like collaborating across disciplines and advocating for ideas. An employee has an idea with business or societal merit — a hack — and then others who share that interest apply to join the team to develop the business plan, create the prototype, and pitch it company-wide. Winning teams are funded to build their projects.  

 By giving many more people chances to become leaders, these programs are unleashing greater potential across the company. By providing greater opportunities they might well attract new people into the company.  

Take care of your asset - employees

A growth-minded company is focused on the growth of the company. Employees are the first step when a company needs to elevate. By taking good care of the employees, by taming them for their growth and providing them with numerous chances increases a growth-minded environment and culture.

When people work in an environment that uplifts their skills and work, they tend to work hard and dedicated to improvising the growth of their company.  

Jack Welch was the chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001. During his tenure at GE, the company's value rose by 4,000%. He is also an author and philanthropist. GE Motors was the most valuable company in the world. Fortune magazine called Welch “the most widely admired, studied and imitated CEO of his time. . . . His total economic impact is impossible to calculate but must be a staggering multiple of his GE performance.”

When interviewed Steve Bennett, the CEO of Intuit for the New York Times he said that “I learned about nurturing employees from my time at General Electric from Jack Welch. . . . He’d go directly to the front-line employee to figure out what was going on. Sometime in the early 1990s, I saw him in a factory where they made refrigerators in Louisville. . . . He went right to the workers in the assembly line to hear what they had to say. I do frequent CEO chats with front-line employees. I learned that from Jack.” 

If you are just starting out in your career or if you have achieved several milestones and at the peak of your career, a growth mindset is necessary anyways. Real confidence is never in your designation, an expensive suit, or a series of acquisitions. It is reflected in your mindset. Your willingness to grow amidst the situations. In your enthusiasm to learn and implement. Warren Bennis, the leadership guru studied various leaders across the globe. He then boiled down to a single point clubbing all the ideas from the renowned leaders. These great leaders said that they didn’t start doing what they do to become leaders. Moreover, they had no interest in proving themselves to others. They said that they just did what they loved.