Mindset: The New Psychology of Success book by Carol Dweck

Want to become better at…?

Posted on March 10, 2024June 11, 2024 by Nirmal Thapa

Want to be a better writer? keep writing.

Want to be a better storyteller? keep telling stories.

Want to be a better leader? keep leading.

Want to be a better creative? keep getting creative.

Want to be better negotiator? keep negotiating.

Want to be a better coach? keep coaching.

Want to be a better teacher? keep teaching.

Want to be a better manager? keep managing.

Want to be a better mentor? keep mentoring.

Want to be better skilled at any craft? Keep at it.

Prioritize and work on the craft that you want to become the best in the world at.

Effective Corporate Training

Posted on February 27, 2024February 27, 2024 by Nirmal Thapa

In Carol S. Dweck’s ground breaking book, Mindset The New Psychology of Success How We Can Learn To Fulfill Our Potential, she shares how to make corporate training programs effective.

She mentions:

Look for talented managers who also embody a growth mindset.

Train leaders, managers, and employees to believe in growth, in addition to training them in the specifics of effective communication and mentoring.

Creating a growth-mindset environment in which people can thrive which involves: presenting skills as learnable, conveying that the organization values learning and perseverance, not just ready-made genius or talent, giving feedback in a way that promotes learning and future success and presenting managers as resources for learning.

A belief in human development can make corporate training programs effective and help generate the results needed.

The creative narrative

Posted on May 15, 2022May 15, 2022 by Nirmal Thapa

“She is so creative.”

“He is really creative.”

“That’s the creative team.”

Creativity is hard to define. Each one of us is creative – that creativity can be seen at our homes, workplaces, the hobbies we have, the activities we do, and it can be anywhere and everywhere.

What type of environment helps in facilitating creativity could be a more interesting question to ask. In my experience, the initial moments of feedback given to an individual who is exploring her or his creativity is critical. In those initial moments, the words and behavior (feedback/response) absorbed by the individual will shape how he or she sees creativity and the world around them. These earlier experiences can form a narrative and a fixed or growth mindset can be set towards creativity which can have a profound effect in the individual’s ensuing years. Creativity is a muscle and it gets better through exercises and engagements.

All of us are creative in our own unique ways. Change the narrative, change the outcome!

Books I read in 2021

Posted on December 31, 2021December 31, 2021 by Nirmal Thapa

I enjoyed reading these books in 2021.

Feedback for growth

Posted on November 30, 2021November 30, 2021 by Nirmal Thapa

Growing up in a household or being in an environment where you get mostly or only positive feedback, you will expect that type of feedback in all areas of your personal and professional life. How helpful is the (mostly or only) positive feedback for the person receiving it in the long run? Is that positive feedback motivating the person or setting up expectations/beliefs that are not really assisting her or him? If only positive feedback is being given by a coach to an athlete/by a parent to a child/by a manager to an employee, then it can be more counterproductive than productive.

Constructive feedback is better for us. We need to know where we are good at and where we need to improve. When we get feedback of our strengths and improvement areas, we can allocate our time, energy, and focus accordingly. If we become tempted to create a perfect world of positive feedback from coaches to athletes, parents to children, and managers to employees, we are being in the fixed mindset. It’s important to adopt a growth mindset which “leads to a desire to learn and therefore a tendency to embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, see effort as the path to mastery, learn from criticism, find lessons and inspiration in the success of others. As a result, they reach ever-higher levels of achievement” (Carol S. Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success)

How are you using the feedback you are getting?

the perspective

Posted on November 18, 2021November 18, 2021 by Nirmal Thapa

With new adventures, everyday challenges, feedback from others, conversations between employees and managers, and many other moments in our daily experiences, it’s important to keep them in perspective.

Imagine a scenario of a manager giving an employee honest feedback. It’s tempting for the employee to expect all positive feedback from his/her supervisor and vice versa. Yet do we really grow from just positive adulations? If the employee uses the honest feedback to gain awareness of their strengths/improvement areas and then gathers new skills and knowledge, it’s actually much better in the long term for both the employee and the supervisor. On the other hand, if the employee does not have the proper perspective on the manager’s honest feedback, then he/she can feel down, angry, or even hurt by their words or behavior. The same goes when parents are giving honest feedback to their children, coaches talking to their players/teams, teachers talking to their students etc. It’s all about the perspective.

In her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol S. Dweck says it’s tempting to create a world in which we’re perfect and we can choose partners, make friends, hire people who make us feel faultless. But think about it- do you want to never grow? Next time you’re tempted to surround yourself with worshippers, go to church. In the rest of your life, seek constructive criticism.

Organizations that grow

Posted on October 19, 2021October 19, 2021 by Nirmal Thapa

In Carol S. Dweck’s groundbreaking book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, she talks about the research that Jim Collins and his team did on what made companies move from being good to being great. The five-year study showed that there were several factors that distinguished the thriving companies from the others. In Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great, he states that the one distinguisher that was absolutely key was the type of leader who in every case led the company into greatness. “They were self-effacing people who constantly asked questions and had the ability to confront the most brutal answers – that is, to look failures in the face, even their own, while maintaining faith that they would succeed in the end.”

Carol states that these leaders have the growth mindset and believe in human development. They are constantly trying to improve themselves and surround themselves with the most able people they can find, they look squarely at their own mistakes and deficiencies, and they ask frankly what skills they and the company will need in the future.

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