How to Encourage a Growth Mindset

Anyone who spends even a few minutes around millennials knows they are obsessed with growth. This is especially true for millennials, who have grown up in an era of acceleration and exponential change. 

Thanks to the digital age, they now access more information than ever. 

At the same time, they also have access to more opportunities than any previous generation—which means it can be tempting to keep chasing those new opportunities instead of focusing on what matters most. 

Encouraging a growth mindset helps you embrace change and new opportunities rather than fear them. A growth mindset encourages you to challenge assumptions and ideas and trust that you will grow if given the right conditions (i.e., support, flexibility, and freedom). 

Encourage and Support a Growth Mindset

The first step to encouraging a growth mindset is to know how to communicate it. When explaining your vision of success, focus on the long-term rather than short-term goals. 

Instilling a growth mindset starts with the people you value most in your life. So, what are the habits of people with a growth mindset? 

They view challenges as opportunities and opportunities as risks that can be overcome. They’re not afraid of change and don’t obsess over who they were yesterday but instead focus on who they can become tomorrow.

Develop a Growth Mindset for Success

A growth mindset can be developed by asking yourself what you are good at and what skills you possess. 

What personal qualities do you have that make you uniquely valuable? By understanding your resources, you will be more comfortable with taking risks and challenging themselves. 

Having a growth mindset also means pushing the limits of what is possible. You may feel limited by existing boundaries, but those limits are just opportunities for new possibilities—and chances for success. 

Finally, encourage a growth mindset through positive reinforcement. 

Encourage yourself to brainstorm what could be possible in your next project or even next year if you believe in yourself and work hard enough (i.e., “Anything is possible if you believe it”). 

That way, when the reality of success does come, you will be excited about it because you worked toward it from the beginning.

Growth Mindset Lessons

You can create a growth mindset by intentionally focusing on your future and what you gain. Use your resources to your advantage, even if that means approaching change with a leap of faith. Challenge your assumptions about what you are capable of.

Growth Mindset Strategies

To encourage a growth mindset, you need to teach your team the three principles of growth: 

  • Resources: What do you have access to? What do you have at their disposal, and where can they find more resources? 
  • Constraints: Where are limitations placed on what they can do? This includes infrastructure, capabilities, resources, etc. 
  • Opportunities: What are the opportunities available for your team? What is being offered in the marketplace that could help them grow?

Cultivate a Positive Mindset Everyday

The best way to encourage a growth mindset is through daily reflection. Consistency is key to maintaining a positive mindset as you need a daily fitness routine. 

The mindset you put into your day-to-day work will help determine how well you perform. 

Start with yourself: When you first wake up, ask yourself what points from the day were good and what points could be better. 

Then, take it one step further and reflect on the big picture for the day before going to sleep that night. 

Next, ask yourself what one thing you did excellently is and what was the one piece of feedback you got from somebody during your day. This can be refreshing for you and beneficial for your growth mindset. 

Learn to Deal with Failures

This is hard for most people to do, but embracing change means being willing to fail. Try focusing on the opportunities that result from failure rather than the failure itself. 

Take a step back and learn from what went wrong so you can grow from it. This is not easy, but it’s crucial for future success.

Conclusion

When people have a growth mindset, they’re more likely to persist in the face of obstacles and more likely to try new things. They learn from their mistakes and are more likely to take on new challenges. Develop strategies for success and cultivate a positive mindset every day.