I want to share with you the single most powerful tool for building a Growth Mindset – a tool so powerful and effective and so easily applied including to young children.
As you know, cultivating a growth mindset requires openness, the desire to achieve something more, self-awareness, curiosity, and the willingness to be vulnerable in new learning situations.
When you have a growth mindset you believe that you can develop new skills, knowledge, talents and behaviours with practice and effort, and you are open to learning. Your growth mindset contributes to your desire to try something new which in turn fuels your motivation, resilience, and sense of achievement. You see the lessons in every experience, building wisdom, new ideas, confidence, beliefs, and new ways of doing things.
So….what is this powerful tool?
Regular use of the word “YET” by you about yourself and to others about their effort, approach to work, focus and perseverance.
That simple.
Using “YET” is especially effective in 3 situations: Encouraging learning, maintaining engagement and increasing confidence.
There are plenty of experiments which show that by using this approach, abilities can be developed (growth mindset) and that by praising the process – effort, strategies, perseverance, focus, improvement – greater engagement occurred, confidence grew and students were more resilient when faced with difficult challenges outside their current skill or knowledge base. In classroom situations students rose to the task of learning new things.
One interesting thing about fixed and growth mindset is that it can vary depending on the situation we find ourselves in – and this is where the power of “YET” is really useful.
Another interesting thing about mindsets is that organisations have one too. A great topic that I will discuss more in future blogs. Back to the power of “YET”.
To nurture and maintain a growth mindset, strategic use of YET will encourage continual learning and development.
A fixed mindset talks about being good at something – or failing at it – while a growth mindset sets out the steps required to get better. This opens the door for conversations about improving the skills that they are not good at YET. This builds the confidence to admit that there are skills they’re not good at yet, making it easier to adopt a “work in progress” approach to building these new skills. Weaknesses become re-defined as strengths you haven’t developed YET.
The power of YET is that it acknowledges current skills and capacity while providing confirmation that this is OK and encouragement to continued growth and learning.
YET is also very powerful for keeping people engaged in tasks – especially when they seem to be dragging the chain a bit and deadlines are looming. Ask these two questions:
- How are you doing with ……….[the task]?
- Are you ready to review it YET?
This shows that you are expecting to chat with them about the task however you recognise that they may need more time to finalise it. It encourages further conversation about the task and how they are feeling about it which may contribute to a review and adjusting of task or timeline. You put people at ease while clearly encouraging their professional learning and development.
I have shared several ways you can embrace the power of YET – a powerful three-letter word which I encourage you to use to make a positive impact on learning, engagement and self-belief. There will be other ways that you can apply the power of YET – you simply haven’t realised them yet.
There are many different ways that you can work with me including my Deliberate Re-Set program, one on one coaching packages and team coaching. Drop me a note if you would like more information. xx