When it comes to hiring people, you may be inclined to evaluate applicants based on their skillset.
The more skilled a person is, the less time, money, and effort will be exerted on training them on what they need to do.
A high skill level, however, does not mean that they will automatically succeed in their tasks.
Sometimes, even the employee with a lower skill set may be more successful than the employee who graduated from a top university or has longer work experience.
This may be due to the kind of mindset that your employees have – a factor that can affect how they approach work, learning, and employee relations.
But while some articles suggest that mindset – especially growth mindset – may be nothing more than just a fad, there may be more to it than what is first implied that can truly impact the workplace.
Mindset: Fixed vs. Growth, Negative vs. Positive, Thinking vs. Doing
According to Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, belief play a key role in what you want and whether you achieve it.
A mindset refers to whether you believe qualities, such as intelligence and talent, are fixed or changeable traits.
The World English Dictionary also defines it as “the ideas and attitude with which a person approaches a situation, especially when these are seen as being difficult to alter.”
When it comes to belief of where certain qualities come from, there are essentially two schools of thought: fixed mindset and growth mindset.
A fixed mindset is characterized by the belief that these qualities are inborn, fixed, or unchangeable, whereas a growth mindset is the belief that talents and intelligence can be developed through hard work, good strategies, and input from others.
In terms of attitude towards circumstances that may be uncontrollable, mindset can be differentiated between negative and positive.
A negative mindset makes one anticipate the worst in everything – a little change in routine or status quo can result to more devastating results by the end of the day. In contrast to this, a positive mindset is essentially being optimistic about the situation, especially if things are sour. If something goes wrong, someone with a positive mindset will be able to “see the silver lining”, so to say.
Lastly, mindset over goals can fall between thinking and doing.
Like their names suggest, a thinking mindset is stuck on planning, which can easily push the person further back on their to-do lists. A doing mindset, on the other hand, is observed in someone who not only plans but also executes their plans, eliminating to-dos before adding more.
Does Mindset Still Matter?
Of course, it does!
No matter how skilled one gets, if their approach in life is accompanied with the wrong mindset, they will only lead themselves down the wrong path.
Intellectual growth, ability development, adaptability, and responsibility won’t be cultivated with the wrong mindset, as it puts one in the wrong disposition to grow and develop, and in its place, stagnation and frigidity will cultivate.
Not only that, but mindset also affects everyone around you. As a leader in your organization, you must be aware of how your words and actions impact your team, the stakeholders, and anyone you are working with.
When you show that you have a negative mindset or believe that others’ hard work is irrelevant to their abilities, it affects work relationships as tensions rise between employees.
This can hinder success within the business, as you are all too busy focusing on small, insignificant matters rather than move forward for the success of the business.
How Mindset Affects Behaviour and Results
Between the two mindsets on skills, those with the growth mindset tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset because they worry less about looking smart.
They put a lot more energy into learning, which improves their skills.
On the other hand, those with a primarily fixed-mindset tend to only report cheating and deception among employees to gain an advantage in their field.
Mindset on situations can affect how one approaches work and how they react to details in their lives.
A person who has a negative mindset will most likely start and end their day on a negative note and worry about minor things instead of work on strategies and tasks that will move the business and their lives forward.
Someone with a positive mindset, however, will anticipate everything that can happen during the day and will be more adaptable to change and negative circumstances without losing sight of their goals.
Lastly, someone with a thinking mindset will be eager to start projects and ideas, listing them down, but won’t be able to finish them all, but will continue to plan, nevertheless.
Their to-do list or compilation of ideas and plan will only get longer with unfinished projects.
A person with a doing mindset, however, knows that, before they plan on something else, they need to finish on what they planned before.
They will make sure that nothing is pending before they can move on to a new project or idea – eliminating the clutter on their to-do list.
If you want to propel your business to success, start with the mindset present in your company.
When you show that you are in the right mindset at work, it permeates down to the rest of the employees, which shows in the quality of their work, how they relate to each other, and how they interact with your customers.