What is a Growth Mindset?

Stepping into leadership can create an uncomfortable expectation that we're now supposed to know how to lead. We don't.

A new title doesn't suddenly make difficult conversations easier. It doesn't teach us how to influence someone who disagrees with us, make decisions with incomplete information, give useful feedback or understand why one person responds completely differently from another. Those capabilities develop.

That's why a growth mindset matters, particularly early in a leadership career.

It shifts the question from “Am I good at this?” to “What am I learning about how to do this better?”

Leadership Is a Different Job

Many emerging leaders find themselves in leadership because they were good at something else.

A strong technician becomes a team leader. A high-performing salesperson becomes a sales manager. A capable project manager is suddenly responsible for other project managers.

Then the job changes.

Being good at doing the work and being good at leading people who do the work aren't the same thing. Leadership introduces people, expectations, accountability, conflict, uncertainty and decisions where there isn't always an obvious right answer.

We shouldn't expect to be immediately good at all of it. A growth mindset allows us to recognise that our current capability isn't our final capability. We're learning a different job.

Get Comfortable With Not Being Good at Something Yet

Competence is comfortable. Learning usually isn't. That's particularly challenging for emerging leaders who may have been promoted precisely because they were highly capable in their previous role.

Suddenly we're a beginner again.

• We might stumble through a difficult conversation.
• Give someone too much direction.
• Give someone else nowhere near enough.
• Avoid a decision.
• Make one too quickly.

None of those things needs to define us as a leader. The more useful question is what we do next.

Growth mindset doesn't mean pretending mistakes don't matter. It means believing we're capable of becoming better because of what they teach us.

Treat Discomfort as Information

Leadership has a useful habit of showing us where we still have work to do. The conversation we keep avoiding tells us something. So does the person we find unusually difficult to lead.

• The decision we continually push upwards.
• The feedback that makes us immediately defensive.
• The responsibility we'd rather someone else carry.

Growth mindset isn't simply about being positive when something feels difficult. It's about becoming curious about why it's difficult for us.

• What are we worried will happen?
• What capability might we be missing?
• What assumption are we making?

What would someone with more experience notice here that we haven't noticed yet? Discomfort isn't always something to overcome. Sometimes it's something to examine.

Ask for Feedback Before We Think We Need It

Feedback is considerably easier to value in theory than receive in practice. Especially when we thought we'd done well. But emerging leaders who can genuinely ask: “What could I have done differently?” gain access to information that defensive leaders don't.

That doesn't mean every piece of feedback is correct. People see situations differently. Feedback can be incomplete, subjective and occasionally just wrong. A growth mindset doesn't require us to accept everything we're told. It requires us to examine it before deciding what to do with it.

Sometimes there will be something useful in there. Sometimes the feedback we least enjoy hearing will be the thing we most need to consider.

Make Mistakes Useful

We're going to get leadership decisions wrong. That's not an invitation to lower the standard. The objective isn't to celebrate every failure because we've apparently “learned something”. It's to avoid wasting the mistake.

• What did we know when we made the decision?
• What assumptions did we make?
• What did we miss?
• What happened that we didn't anticipate?
• What would we recognise earlier next time?
• And importantly: What will we actually do differently?

Experience alone doesn't guarantee development. We can repeat the same experience for ten years. Reflection gives experience somewhere to go.

Take On Things We Can't Quite Do Yet

If we only accept responsibilities, we're completely confident we can handle, development becomes fairly limited. At some point, growth requires us to operate near the edge of our current capability.

• Lead the meeting.
• Have the conversation.
• Make the recommendation.
• Take responsibility for the project.
• Make the decision without immediately asking someone more senior what they would do.

There obviously need to be sensible boundaries around risk. Development doesn't mean throwing people into situations where the consequences of getting it wrong are unacceptable. But within those boundaries, emerging leaders need opportunities to carry real responsibility.

We can learn a lot about leadership. Eventually, we have to lead.

Keep Expanding What We Can Carry

Perhaps one of the better measures of leadership development is what we can handle now that we couldn't handle twelve months ago.

• A conversation we once avoided.
• A decision we once escalated.
• A person we struggled to understand.
• Feedback we once would have taken personally.

A problem that once felt overwhelming. The situations don't necessarily become easier. We become more capable of carrying them.

Then, as our responsibilities grow, the problems usually become more complicated again. That's not evidence that development isn't working. That's often what development looks like.

Help Other People Develop Too

Eventually, growth mindset stops being only about our own development. Leadership gives us an opportunity to influence how other people see their capability too.

• Do we step in immediately when someone struggles?
• Do we provide the answer, or help them think through the problem?
• Do we allow reasonable mistakes?
• Can people tell us they've got something wrong without immediately protecting themselves?
• Do we give people responsibilities that stretch them?

Sometimes the quickest way to get something done is to do it ourselves. It isn't always the best way to build someone else. As we become more capable leaders, part of the job becomes creating opportunities for other people to develop capability too.

We Aren't the Finished Version

A growth mindset doesn't require us to believe we're capable of everything. We're not.

It asks us not to treat our current capability as the finished version. For emerging leaders, that's important.

• We're going to encounter situations we're not ready for.
• We'll receive feedback we don't particularly enjoy.
• We'll make decisions we'd make differently five years from now.
• We'll discover strengths we didn't know we had and weaknesses we were fairly certain we didn't have.

Good. The aim isn't to arrive in leadership fully formed. It's to remain willing to be formed by it.