Build a Winning Mind, Pt.1

What is a winning mindset?

Law enforcement, along with the military, business and athletics, has accepted that a winning mindset is key to a winning performance. But

What is a winning mindset?
Can it be taught?
If so, how?

For 30 years, Carol Dweck, a professor of Psychology at Stanford University and an expert in motivation and intelligence, has researched what makes some people give up when they encounter difficulty while others - who are no more talented or skilled - press on, persevere and excel.

Her work is rocking the scientific, business and educational worlds and has taken the public by storm in her book, Mindset:The New Psychology of Success.

There are important lessons here for law enforcement in hiring, job performance and supervision. First, let's look at the differences between a winning (what Dweck calls a "growth") mindset and a limited (or Dweck's "fixed") mindset.

The limited mindset

People with this mindset:

Believe ability, intelligence, personality are static - You've got it or you haven't.
Effort is fruitless, or worse - because if you try and fail, you're dumb, a loser.
This person wants to appear smart so...
Rather than risk failing and negatively impact their self-image they avoid challenges because they're hard and success is not certain.
They stick to what they already know and can do.
When facing obstacles they give up. If you have to try, you're dumb.
Any criticism of their capabilities is seen as a personal criticism. They ignore it or are insulted.
They are threatened by the success of others. It's a measure by which they look bad. They may try to convince themselves and others the success was luck or even try to demean it.

The winning mindset

People with this mindset:

Believe ability, intelligence, personality can be developed - Anybody can change and grow.
Effort is necessary to grow and gain skill mastery.
They embrace challenges as opportunities.
They are not discouraged by obstacles or setbacks. Their self-image is not tied to how they look to others.
Failure is seen as an opportunity to learn, so risking it is a win-win.
To them, constructive feedback may provide useful information about their current abilities, which they can learn from.
The success of others is a model from which they are inspired and learn.

Mindset produces different results

What are the results of a limited mindset? These folks level off early and then their beliefs become self-fulfilling. They don't risk, change, or improve much. This confirms their belief that we are as we are. They end up achieving less than their full potential.

And a winning mindset? Seeing challenges and obstacles, failures and set backs as opportunities to learn and grow, these people keep striving and learning. They create a positive self-fulfilling prophecy that encourages them to try harder, learn from their mistakes, persevere and get smarter and wiser.

Research on mindset and performance

Here are just 3 studies.

People's brainwaves were monitored as they answered difficult questions and awaited feedback. Those with a limited mindset were only interested in whether their answers were right or wrong. Once they learned this, they tuned out. People with a winning mindset stayed tuned to learn what the right answers were. Because of this greater interest in learning, they did significantly better when later tested on the material.
Freshman attending the elite University of Hong Kong, where everything is taught in English, entered with different proficiencies in English. They were all told the faculty was considering offering needed instruction in English and asked if they would take it? Amongst those with poor English skills, those with a winning mindset were enthusiastic. Those with a limited mindset were not. They weren't willing to expose their weakness in order to fix it. They were willing to jeopardize their college career instead.
Some struggling students were taught a winning mindset. They were taught the science that shows that every time you apply yourself and learn something new, your brain forms new connections and you get smarter. These students became motivated and significantly improved their grades.

How mindset impacts trainers' and supervisors' evaluation skills

A lot more research is emerging on the effects of mindset in the workplace. Its goal is to see if Dweck's research findings with kids and young adults in educational settings hold true with adults in the workplace. It does.

In a 2005 study, nuclear power plant managers were assessed for their limited or winning mindsets. They were then told to observe and evaluate a video-recorded "poor" employee performance. They were then tasked with observing the same employee exhibit "good" performance in similar situations.

The results? Managers with a limited mindset did not fully acknowledge the extent to which the employees' performance had improved.

In another study they tasked the managers with the same observations and evaluations but the managers were first shown "good" performance, followed by "poor" performance. Managers with a winning mindset more accurately recognized the decline in performance. Winning mindset managers responded more objectively to performance changes.

A follow-up study established that limited mindset managers provided lower ratings of "good" performance if they had first received negative background information about an employee's prior performance.

The implications? Limited mindset managers are less likely to alter either a positive or negative initial impression of an employee's performance. This could have significant consequences.

Employees could become resentful, apathetic or want to leave when their improvements are not recognized. Or, an unnoticed decline in performance in critical professions like nuclear power plants, aviation, medicine and policing could seriously compromise organizational effectiveness and public safety. Performance declines must be recognized so appropriate remedial action can be undertaken.

How mindset impacts trainers' and supervisors' coaching

Lab studies have shown that winning mindset people are more likely to:

Educate rather than punish a wrongdoer
Provide helpful learning suggestions to a struggling fellow student
Express interest in helping other children in need by collecting money for charity.

See, web link for Managers' Implicit Assumptions in which these studies are fully cited.

Heslin, VandeWalle and Latham set out to find whether these findings generalized to the workplace. In two field studies, managers' mindsets predicted how employees evaluated the managers' coaching skills. It seems managers with a limited mindset decide, consciously or unconsciously, why bother investing in employee improvement if you don't believe that significant change is likely to occur?

Now what?

The research in limited and winning mindsets raises important questions.

Can recruits and officers be taught a mindset that increases their willingness to embrace challenges, obstacles and setbacks, then try harder, persevere and excel?
Can their trainers and supervisors be taught a mindset that increases their ability to recognize employee change and coach employees when needed?

The answer is an emphatic, winning mindset, YES!

Next month's Part 2 will explore