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I say if you pack an article with Dr. Angela Duckworth's work on GRIT, Carol Dweck's work Growth Mindsets and Anders Ericsson's work on deliberate practice and the 10,000 hour rule then you've got a power packed article. Enjoy. from NPR.org
Before she was a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, Angela Duckworth was a middle school math teacher. As a rookie teacher, she was surprised when she calculated grades. Some of her sharpest students weren't doing so well, while others who struggled through each lesson were getting A's.
"The thing that was revelatory to me was not that effort matters—everybody knows that effort matters," Angela told Shankar. "What was revelatory to me was how much it matters."
This revelation led her back to school, this time as a graduate student, to study a character trait she calls grit, defined as passion and perseverance for long-terms goals. She studied national spelling bee contestants, Green Berets, public school students, West Point cadets, sales representatives, and teachers. Across all these domains, she found those who made it through and did the best were not always the smartest, but they were the grittiest. Since then her work has captured the attention of high-ranking CEOs, educators, and coaches—among them Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks. (You can find out your grit score here). Angela believes grit is made up of four key psychological assets: interest, practice, purpose, and hope.
Most of us can quickly grasp the importance of perseverance for success. But that's only half of the equation, according to Angela. The other half is an abiding interest and passion for a singular pursuit. Gritty people wake up thinking about the same questions they go to bed thinking about. Rather than being "discovered" through angst-ridden introspection, psychologists believe interests are developed and deepened over time through continuing engagement with a pursuit.
And psychologists find people at the tippy-top of their fields engage with their work differently. You've probably heard of the "10,000 hour rule," the average number of hours it takes an expert to become an expert. That's based on research by K. Anders Ericsson, who found that experts do an intensive-kind of practice called "deliberate practice."
In her interviews with people at the top of their fields, Angela found they describe their work as being imbued with meaning and a desire to help others. She finds they are driven by a purpose beyond the self. This is also what psychologists Amy Wrzesniewski and Barry Schwartz have find in their research. If you haven't heard last week's episode, Shankar talked with Amy about how people find meaning and purpose at work. Gritty people also have hope. They're optimistic about the future and their ability to improve and affect change. To cultivate hope, Angela points to Stanford Professor Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset, the belief that intelligence isn't fixed but can change over time. Angela also points to her PhD advisor Marty Seligman's work on learned optimism.
But other research has also pointed to a potential downside to grit. Like stubborness, too much grit can keep us sticking to goals, ideas, or relationships that should be abandoned.
Psychologist Gale Lucas and her colleagues found in one experiment that gritty individuals will persist in trying to solve unsolvable puzzles at a financial cost. And that's a limitation of grit: it doesn't give you insight into when it will help you prevail and when it will keep you stuck in a dead-end.
So what can teachers, coaches, and parents do to cultivate grit? Psychologists are still working that out, but Angela has assembled research on what they do know here.
The Hidden Brain Podcast is hosted by Shankar Vedantam and produced by Kara McGuirk-Alison, Maggie Penman and Max Nesterak. To subscribe to our newsletter, click here. You can also follow us on Twitter@hiddenbrain, @karamcguirk, @maggiepenmanand@maxnesterak, and listen for Hidden Brain stories every week on your local public radio station.
On the day before a big game or competition, both the parent and the athlete were each given a survey to capture their goals for that event and their level of nervousness. They were each asked if they wanted to (or wanted their child to) “outperform their best performance to date”, “perform no worse than they had in the past”, “outperform their opponent”, or “perform no worse than their opponent.”
Anxiety levels of the athletes were measured along three scales; worry, amount of concentration disruption and physical symptoms (tense, nausea, headache, etc.)
Phrasing the performance goal questions this way reflected the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, known for her Achievement Goal Theory. She has defined two styles of learning, Mastery and Performance. A child with a Mastery focus is more concerned and motivated by their own achievement compared to their individual growth, not that of others. A young athlete with a Performance mindset always uses their peers as measuring sticks for their own progress.
By asking the kids and their parents if they want to beat or at least do as well as their personal best, Dr. Kaye was looking for a Mastery mindset. If the focus was more on how they compared to their opponents, then they were using a Performance mindset. Here’s where it gets interesting. A parent’s performance expectations, and especially how they were communicated, predicted their child’s level of anxiety. When a parent set a goal to outperform (known as performance-approach) or avoid doing worse than an opponent (performance-avoidance), the level of worry increased for their young athlete.
However, the parents who set a goal for their kids to beat their personal best (mastery-performance) or at least achieve their previous best form (mastery-avoidance) did not cause any increase in their kids’ anxiety levels.
A subtle change in pre-game conversation from “you need to beat those guys” to “you need to beat your personal best” can make all the difference in maintaining your child’s confidence.
"You might think that's a really positive thing for the child [to encourage them to win], but that's creating a lot of worry [for the kid] as well,” said Dr. Kaye. “I don't think parents are necessarily thinking about that kind of thing."
I suppose we don't have to look much further than the example from soccer, Freddy Adu. Once tagged as the U.S. version of Pele, and now just barely hanging on in the sport. Adu was uber-hyped at 14, and now nearly done at 25. Very much a cautionary tale for those that want to push for too much, too soon.
For many elite team coaches, the greater challenge in developing top young athletes is not improving the ones on your team, but rather finding the talente...
For many elite team coaches, the greater challenge in developing top young athletes is not improving the ones on your team, but rather finding the talented kids that got away from the sport.
While over 35 million kids between 4 and 14 play organized sports in the U.S., over 70% will drop out by age 13.
According to new research, that drastically reduced talent pool may be caused by the athlete's own psychological profile and how a coach manages it.
According to a 2004 study by Michigan State's Institute for the Study of Youth Sport, here are the top ten reasons why boys and girls quit organized sports:
Boys
I was no longer interested.
It was no longer fun.
The sport took too much time
The coach played favourites.
The coach was a poor teacher.
I was tired of playing.
There was too much emphasis on winning.
I wanted to participate in other non-sport activity.
I needed more time to study.
There was too much pressure.
Girls
I was no longer interested.
It was no longer fun.
I needed more time to study.
There was too much pressure
The coach was a poor teacher.
I wanted to participate in other non-sport activities.
The sport took too much time.
The coach played favourites.
I was tired of playing.
Games and practices were scheduled when I could not attend.
Comparing the lists, when a young athlete loses interest and does not have fun, (partly because the coach applied too much pressure or they were a poor teacher), it may be due to their internal mindset based on an educational psychology concept known as the Achievement Goal Theory (AGT).
The average teacher explains complexity; the gifted teacher reveals simplicity.
~ Robert Brault
Psychologists Carol Dweck and Thomas Nicholls, while they worked together at the University of Michigan, both studied students who failed to learn and their research resulted in parallel tracks, just with different terminology. For Dweck, she defined two styles of learning motivation as Mastery and Performance. Take for example, a young soccer player that spends hours in the backyard learning to juggle a ball. For a player with a Performance mindset, he is practicing because of a desire to be the best juggler on the team or maybe because he is embarrassed by his lack of skill compared to his teammates.
On the opposite end, a player with a Mastery mindset is motivated to learn simply by the challenge of the skill without any competitive instincts. Nicholls uses the terms Task to compare with Dweck's Mastery and substitutes Ego instead of Performance. Both Dweck and Nicholls agree that the player's perceived ability and competence also affects their motivation to keep trying to learn the new skill. Here's a great video overview of the concepts by Professor Jonathan Hilpert of Georgia Southern University.
In fact, in a study this year of 167 junior club soccer players in England, Andrew Hill, sports scientist at the University of Leeds, found that a quarter of the boys experienced symptoms of burnout.
"What we see among the athletes showing symptoms of burnout is emotional and physical exhaustion, a sense that they are not achieving and a sense of devaluation of the sport. Even though they might originally enjoy their sport and be emotionally invested in it, they eventually become disaffected. Participation can be very stressful," Dr. Hill said.
However, the results showed that those players who admitted being more afraid of making mistakes in front of others (a Performance/Ego mindset) were also much more likely to suffer from burnout versus those players that were driven by their own high standards (a Mastery/Task mindset).
"Perfectionism can be a potent energising force but can also carry significant costs for athletes when things don't go well," Dr. Hill commented. "Perfectionists are stuck in a self-defeating cycle. They are overly dependent on personal accomplishment as a means of establishing a sense of self-esteem but are always dissatisfied with their efforts. Even success can be problematic because they simply become more demanding until they inevitably experience failure."
A coach can have a significant impact on motivating learning by the type of environment they create, one that rewards players for self-improvement alone or one that rewards improvement compared to others. Last year, French researchers surveyed 309 young, elite handball players about four things, their perception of their coach's motivational environment, their own perceived competence, their type of learning motivation and any symptoms of burnout.
They concluded that "young talented athletes perceiving an ego-involving climate had a higher risk of experiencing burnout symptoms at the season's end. In contrast, players perceiving a high task-involving climate had lower burnout scores when the season concluded."
Once again the coach-athlete relationship becomes critical to development of elite potential and performances. The more training data that can be captured and analyzed, the better the subtle hints of burnout can be detected.
This articles (below) have an awful lot of Carol Dweck and Mindset: The New Psychology for Success and Angela Duckworth's True Grit in them. Perseverance and effort as the keys to success in sports as well as many other life endeavors. Football coaches verbalize it better with "It's not how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back up". Of course, in football they spend a lot of time knocking each other down, so that makes sense from a coaching / motivational perspective. But think about baseball. Not a lot of time spent getting physically knocked down in baseball. Unless you're the high school version of Barry Bonds watching your moon shots leave the yard. Then maybe getting some extra dirt in your diet. But think about the mental aspect of the game or your life outside the game. How many times do we mentally or emotionally get knocked down and stay down rather than bounce right back up? Or check out and stop playing hard, so to speak, for innings or games or days or weeks on end? Oh yeah right, I'm the only one this happens to!! OK folks!! There is so much valuable wisdom for athletes, students, teachers, parents and coaches tied up in some of the quotes below that they do bear repeating. Definitely something to work on. Those life lessons from the ball field, you gotta love 'em!! Now, if we could just stop giving everyone in T-Ball a trophy, we might just have a chance to turn things around a bit.
Our youth sports culture is similar to the classroom. Kids who are divided into “A” or “B” teams at an early age are taught that their development path is set; the skills they have now are the same skills they will have in the future. It becomes a self-fulfilling cycle as the “A” teams get better coaching, play in the better leagues against better competition and the talent gap widens.
Often, parents can also, unknowingly, contribute to this cycle. As in school, when a child is told that his or her success is due to his brain not his effort, the perception begins that when they do eventually struggle with a math test or a tougher opponent, there is little they can do to improve.
Jin Li, a psychology professor at Brown University, has also been studying cultural differences in learning and teaching. One of her research projects recorded conversations between parents and children to hear the language used.
There were subtle differences between American and Asian parents when complimenting their kids. While the Americans praised with phrases like, “you’re so smart”, Asian parents focused on the struggle, “you’ve worked so hard on learning that and now you did it.”
“So the focus is on the process of persisting through it despite the challenges, not giving up, and that’s what leads to success,” Li said in the same NPR interview.
Every young athlete will face challenges as they move up the ladder from youth clubs to high school to college. Instilling them with the belief that they can improve through hard work will keep them motivated to get to the other side of the wall. Their support team of parents and coaches can help this process by rewarding the learning process.
“Think about that [kind of behavior] spread over a lifetime,” Stigler concluded. “That’s a big difference.”
Did you know that more top CEOs in United States graduated from a state college than an Ivy League University such as Harvard, Yale, or Princeton?
Shocked?
Research is showing there’s a far more important predictor of a grad’s future success than the prestige of the school or faculty or even the price of tuition. What matters far more is the graduate’s “personal drive quotient.”
Nothing beats stick-to-it-ness and hard work when it comes to boosting success-absolutely nothing. And research continues to confirm that crucial fact.
One of the most fascinating recent studies on student achievement was conducted by Harold Stevenson, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. Stevenson sought to answer a question many Americans ask, “Why do Asian students do better academically than American students?”
Since 1979, Stevenson’s team of researchers conducted five intensive cross-national studies analyzing students’ achievement in the United States, China, Taiwan, and Japan. Hundreds of hours observing students and interviewing their teachers, the researchers reached a conclusion: a critical key lies in what parents emphasize about their children’s learning. Here’s the difference in parenting styles:
Asian parents strongly stress the value of effort with their children. Over and again they tell their children, “Work as hard as you can, and you will be successful.” By expecting their children to work hard, and emphasizing the attitude: “there are no excuses for poor grades, you just didn’t work hard enough,” perseverance is nurtured in Asian children. And the parental expectations had a remarkable effect on their children. The researchers found on the whole, Asian children worker longer and harder than their American counterparts because they had recognized their success was based on how hard they worked.
Instead of prioritizing how much effort our kids put into their learning attempts, research found that most American parents emphasized: “So what grade did you get?” or “How many did you miss?” or “Did you win?”
The researchers also found that the effort a child put into their process is not nearly as important to the American parent as the end product of the grade or score.
Stevenson also found American parents place a greater emphasis on their children’s innate abilities. They tend to lower their academic expectations for their children if they perceive them to have lower academic abilities.
An Asian parents’ philosophy is different: any child can succeed regardless of an IQ score or handicap–success is all a matter of how hard you are willing to work.
Just think a minute of the long term effect of stressing effort could have on our children!
Our kids would learn from an early age that there’s nothing that can stop them from succeeding if they put their heart and soul into their endeavors. They would see mistakes or failures as just temporary setbacks, instead of as excuses to quit. If they just keep on trying, and use their mistakes as learning clues, they’ll ultimately achieve their goals!
Great work by Angela Duckworth demonstrating the link between perseverance and success. This trait correlates well to success across many different arenas. Who would have thunk it? Score one for the old-schoolers.
From ironshrink.com: True Grit | Iron Shrink: "But Duckworth et al. noticed that none of the Big Five predict success very accurately. Nor does intelligence, by itself. At least one study cited by the authors suggests that any single Big Five personality trait accounts for less than 2% of variance in achievement. Intelligence only accounts for up to one third of the variance in some measures of success."
Something is conspicuously absent from the Big Five. Duckworth and company wondered, as did William James a century earlier, “why do some individuals accomplish more than others of equal intelligence?” Being the intrepid researchers that they are, they began to ask around:
“Our hypothesis that grit is essential to high achievement evolved during interviews with professionals in investment banking, painting, journalism, academia, medicine, and law. Asked what quality distinguishes star performers in their respective fields, these individuals cited grit or a close synonym as often as talent. In fact, many were awed by the achievements of peers who did not at first seem as gifted as others abut whose sustained commitment to their ambitions was exceptional. Likewise, many noted with surprise that prodigiously gifted peers did not end up in the upper echelons of their fields.”
In other words, some people simply work harder than others, but that’s not all. They do it in a particular way.
Long-term goals: Grit involves more than a solid work ethic and self-discipline. Hard work by itself is not enough to secure the type of success created by long-term, sustained effort. Back in my loading dock days, I worked very hard and gained no more reward in that environment than guys who did far less. One of the secrets of grit, according to the authors, is passion for long-term goals.
“Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress. The gritty individual approaches achievement as a marathon; his or her advantage is stamina. Whereas disappointment or boredom signals to others that it is time to change trajectory or cut losses, the gritty individual stays the course.”
Commitment: Self-control is not enough, either. In fact, it’s a poor predictor of success in long-term goals.
“An individual high in self-control but moderate in grit may, for example, effectively control his or her temper, stick to his or her diet, and resist the urge to surf the Internet at work – yet switch careers annually.”
Determination: Even the need for achievement is not enough. In fact, the need for recognition can be a hindrance in long-term success. The gritty individual stays the course even when times are tough.
“Whereas individuals high in need for achievement pursue goals that are neither too easy nor too hard, individuals high in grit deliberately set for themselves extremely long-term objectives and do not swerve from them – even in the absence of positive feedback.”
I think I can, I know I can
The gritty individual sets long term goals, does not waver from them, and is able to ride out the rough patches – even when it means tolerating punishment or foregoing reward for long periods. The authors noticed that grit was a better predictor of first summer retention at West Point then was self-control or the Admission Committee’s prediction of the cadet’s abilities. (Self-control was a better predictor of later academic performance, though.)
Among spelling bee contestants, “gritty finalists outperformed their less gritty peers at least in part because they studied longer. Specifically, weekend hours of practice mediated the relationship between grit and final round.” The pertinacious progenture were clearly more distingue and perspicacious.
If the benefits of grit aren’t obvious by now, the authors spell it out: “among relatively intelligent individuals, those who are less bright than their peers compensate by working harder and with more determination.” It’s these gritty individuals who eventually win the day and achieve their goals. More often than not, great leaps forward are achieved through sustained effort rather than a solid but meandering work ethic. Just ask Winston Churchill.
Hope for guys like me
I love the underdog. Heck, I was the underdog. As a fetus, I lacked the foresight to be born rich or good looking and, like many kids, I had a few legitimate challenges to overcome. The beauty of this study is that it sheds light on one of the great equalizers on an unfair planet. This study offers hope for guys like me.
No matter how we enter the world, perseverance and determination can carry us farther than our talents alone. Sometimes, the rewards of grit can even show up quickly, as they did among undergraduates at an elite university who “scored higher in grit [and] earned higher GPAs than their peers, despite having lower SAT scores.” While the authors did not state it outright, I suspect that sustained effort helps a person develop a level of skill that they would not otherwise possess.
Another beautiful thing about grit: it’s free, and anybody can do it. In one of the six sub-studies comprising this paper, the authors noticed that grit tends to increase automatically with age. Apparently, experience teaches us that “quitting plans, shifting goals, and starting over repeatedly are not good strategies for success.” If we tend to learn that lesson intuitively, then there is no reason a person cannot choose to plot a long-term course and stick to it.
Grit is defined as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” [2] Building upon biographical collections of famous leaders in history, researchers and scientists have reached similar conclusions about high achieving individuals. Specifically, those individuals who were deemed more successful and influential than their contemporary counterparts typically possessed traits above and beyond that of normal ability.[3][4][5] While ability was still critically important, these individuals also possessed “zeal” and “persistence of motive and effort.”[2] Duckworth and colleagues (2007) believe this dual-component of Grit to be a crucial differentiator from similar constructs. Grit is conceptualized as a stable trait that does not require immediate positive feedback.[2] Individuals high in Grit are able to maintain their determination and motivation over long periods of time despite experiences with failure and adversity. Their passion and commitment towards the long-term objective is the overriding factor that provides the stamina required to “stay the course” amid challenges and set-backs. Essentially, the Grittier person is focused on winning the marathon, not the sprint.
Grit is defined as perseverance and passion toward long-term goals (Duckworth et al. 2006). Gritty people tend to persevere, self-regulate and push themselves toward success. Drs. Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman (2006) found that the correlation between self-discipline and achievement was twice as large as the correlation between IQ and achievement.
Additional research suggests that people with grit:
report experiencing more happiness than those who are less gritty, even when controlling for age and education;
earn higher GPAs than their non-gritty classmates, even with lower SATs scores;
are more likely to outperform in spelling bee contests, regardless of verbal IQ.
The article links some of Duckworth's conclusions with those of Carol Dweck (another favorite).
Fixed Mindset People Do Not Love Effort
This is a difficult message for people to embrace who believe in fixed intelligence or proclivity for success. That belief is what Dr. Carol Dweck refers to as fixed mindset. Those in a fixed mindset tend to believe that effort is a bad thing, if they have what it takes to be smart, gifted or talented by nature than they should not need much effort. This type of belief decreases the motivation to work towards long term goals.
Interestingly, according to Dweck, simply learning about fixed mindset causes changes in people’s belief systems. They are more likely to accept a growth mindset- or the belief that effort, embracing challenges and seeking out learning opportunities is a stronger predictor of success. This encourages developing a grittier perspective, contributing to wanting to put more effort and time in.
A few years ago I completed the NYC half-marathon. This was a stretch goal. I had never ran more than 4 miles in my life. It took grit to get to the race and even more to complete it. Nevertheless, afterward I felt so proud and the positive emotions were self-reinforcing.
The mantra of the Army is, “Be all that you can be.” Grit, perseverance and self-regulation towards long term goals can make that happen.
I am just getting through reading the book Mindset: The New Psychology for Success and it is a keeper. I felt the same way after reading The Talent Code. Fantastic book with great application for coaches, parents and players or anyone who is more interested in success than failure. It may even change the way you think about things.
The website The Simple Dollar did an excellent review of the book and I highlighted the areas that struck me the most and are most applicable to what we discuss here routinely. I was particularly struck by her advice on how to more effectively praise success in students and how one way that many of us have likely practiced both routinely and reflexively, may in fact be counter-productive in the end. Much food for thought and a great book.
"In a nutshell, people are usually of one of two mindsets. The “fixed mindset” maintains that people’s ability is innate and static; the “growth mindset” claims that ability is the result of hard work and a learning process. Each of us tends to apply one of these two beliefs, to other people as much as to ourselves, as we go through life; and this has far-reaching consequences for our success and our relationships with those around us.
Of course, empirical evidence from all sorts of fields (from neuroscience to athletic coaching) tells us that the brain has remarkable plasticity, that performance is far more likely to result from sustained effort, and that people are coachable. But they have to be open and willing to grow: no amount of coaching will improve performance if the subject is stuck in a “fixed mindset”. It has been proven experimentally that even toddlers have one of the two mindsets (I can certainly relate this to my own experience as a child, and some of my residual barriers as a grown-up); and that mindset strongly correlates with performance even when it is briefly and temporarily induced."
The book is filled with illustrations from the world of sports, business, and education; for example, it is interesting to contrast the career of a fixed-mindset athlete like John McEnroe with those of growth-mindset ones such as Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and many other less well-known athletes. But beyond this, there are some persuasive insights about how we could bring about societal change. For example, it is the combination of fixed mindsets with gender stereotyping that explain why many girls and young women who decide to pursue maths and science studies end up leaving the field. Only the women with the growth mindset feel a strong and stable sense of belonging and are able to maintain it in the face of challenges.
At first glance, Mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck seemed to be one of those pop psychology books that I usually avoid – another The Secret or The Power of Positive Thinking. Books along those lines just repeat the same ideas that are as old as the hills (or Napoleon Hill, at least) – if you think positively and visualize good outcomes, they’re more likely to happen. Great – but it’s a principle that doesn’t work without action and has been around since the dawn of time.
As I said, I originally lumped Mindset into that group of books, writing it off as more of the same on positive thinking. Then something interesting happened – two different people that I respect quite a bit recommended the book to me within a week of each other. One was a personal friend who said it really changed how he looked at his career and at his relationship with his girlfriend – which surprised me, since he’s not a person I would imagine would typically follow pop psychology talk. Perhaps even more surprising, Jonathan Fields, a blogger and writer I’ve exchanged a lot of emails with over the years, wrote a brilliant article entitled Is Gifted and Talented a Life Sentence? that really shook how I thought about parenting issues with my own kids. Interestingly, Jonathan also pointed strongly towards Mindset as a powerful source of inspiration.
When two people I respect suggest the same book completely independently within a week of each other, it’s likely a book I should make an effort to read. And I’m glad I did.
The basic idea behind Mindset is that people either have a “fixed” mentality – a self-definition that is static and doesn’t or can’t change – or a “growth” mentality, meaning that with work and effort, they can change who they are. Dweck argues strongly that people who are successful in life have the “growth” mentality and offers a ton of ideas on how to get yourself – and those around you – from the “fixed” mindset to the “growth” mindset.
This is something I’ve come to believe in my own life, even before reading this book. The people that always seem to succeed are the people that are willing to really push themselves to the limit. Often, the person with the most natural talent doesn’t win the race – and for a long time, I didn’t understand why. This book (and the surprisingly similar Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell) explains it quite well. Let’s dig in.
1. The Mindsets
How do you feel when you fail?
Some people hate it, as they view it as a clear sign to the world and to themselves that they are, in fact, a failure.
Others love it. They see a failure as an opportunity to grow, to learn about the areas where they need to work, and to become a better, stronger person.
The first attitude points to what Dweck calls the “fixed” mindset. In other words, they believe that the person they are is already defined and the outcomes produced by that person are indicative of the person they are. They can’t change – all they can do is bluff and try to make who they are appear as good as possible.
The second attitude is the “growth” mindset. People who revel in failure recognize that a failure isn’t necessarily a poor reflection on them. Rather, it’s an opportunity to see where exactly they fall short and what exactly they need to work on. It’s a reminder not of where they cannot go, but an insight as to what they need to do to get there.
Here’s another way of looking at it: can you change who you are? People with a “fixed” mindset believe they can’t change. People with a “growth” mindset believe that they can change.
2. Inside the Mindsets
The difference in mindsets is interesting, but how does that really appear in terms of how people behave?
People with the “fixed” mindset often back away from challenges. They want to avoid hard things and prefer to thrive on easy things, things they know they can achieve. They also typically don’t like to read or learn, and they certainly don’t enjoy hard or deliberate practice.
People with the “growth” mindset seek out the challenges. They seek out the hard things in life and prefer to tackle things that push them and make them work hard, even if they fail at them. They usually love to read and learn, and they love practicing and improving at specific skills.
In an email exchange with a friend about this book, he stated it very well: “People with fixed mindsets get bored a lot. People with growth mindsets would give anything for a few more hours in the day.”
3. The Truth about Ability and Accomplishment
Here, the message of Mindset overlaps heavily with Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: the biggest key to success isn’t talent, but focus and practice.
To put it simply, the people that rise to the top of their fields do so because they keep working at it, keep growing, roll through the failures, and practice intensely and often. Kobe Bryant and LeBron James aren’t the two best players in the NBA because of their talent – they rose to the top because of their obsessive work ethics and focus on thriving even through adversity.
Although Dweck doesn’t mention it, I keep coming back to Gladwell’s example of The Beatles. If you listen to their earliest recordings – 1960 and before – they frankly weren’t very good at all (I probably sound better than some of their 1958 “Quarrymen” recordings). By 1963, they were amazing. By 1966, they were arguably the best songwriting and performing collective in the world. What happened? They played almost nonstop for years. They’d play for hours and hours each day in Hamburg nightclubs, then they’d play on their own when they weren’t on stage. They’d mess up songs, laugh it off, and try again – over and over and over and over. Eventually, they went from being the unknown Quarrymen (sounding like a bunch of kids beating on instruments – which they were) to recording albums like Revolver.
To put it simply, effort, not talent, puts people over the top.
Even more dangerous, labels such as talented and smart and skilled give people the opposite message. Hearing things like that tells people they already have the ability and that they don’t need to grow and work for it. The best positive feedback you can give – or receive – is one that complements you on your ethic or work effort, as it nurtures a growth mentality.
4. Sports: The Mindset of a Champion
Yes, we’ve all heard the story: Michael Jordan was cut from his eighth grade basketball team. He then practiced obsessively, made it to North Carolina on scholarship, and the rest is legend.
Michael’s early signals on basketball were that he wasn’t very good at it. If he had a fixed mindset, he would have simply quit after getting cut. Instead, he took getting cut as a giant motivator – he took that lesson and his own work ethic and made hay with them.
It isn’t just an ability to practice obsessively, either. When you reach the top, it takes character to stay there, and character only happens if you subscribe to a growth mindset. You’re not perfect – no one is. What sets the winners apart is that they recognize when they mess up, they accept that they messed up, and they work to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
5. Business: Mindset and Leadership
How do the mindsets work in a modern workplace? It’s pretty simple, actually.
A growth mentality in a workplace focuses on making everyone succeed by having the project succeed. A person with a growth mentality will take on any task that needs to be done to bring on success – often, the hardest tasks are the ones that the growth mentality relishes. A boss with a growth mentality will seek to do everything he or she can to make you better, because the better you are, the better the team is.
A fixed mentality in the workplace features individuals seeking to make themselves look better at the expense of others. Gossip is a great sign of this. Projects where no one steps up to the hard tasks is another sign. A dominating boss who takes credit for everything is yet another sign. A workplace without people pushing themselves and helping others is a workplace that can’t produce amazing things.
6. Relationships: Mindsets in Love (or Not)
Ever been dumped? Some people take it well: they’re hurt, but they recognize that there were problems and that it’s time to move on. Others don’t take it as well: they slip into depression, get angry, and won’t let go of the relationship.
This same dichotomy pops up again and again in interpersonal relationships: some relationships are healthy and mutually beneficial (like a good marriage), while others are not (like bullying or a stalker). What’s the difference? In a healthy relationship, you grow while in the relationship and you grow when the relationship ends – but it takes work to maintain. An unhealthy relationship doesn’t take that effort, but it doesn’t build positive feelings and often results in negative ones.
Every interaction is a chance for growth – or a chance to merely maintain some form of the status quo. Interactions that help people grow result in good relationships over time.
7. Parents, Teachers, and Coaches: Where Do Mindsets Come From?
When you are charged with helping someone else improve or grow, you have the ability to help them have a fixed mindset (likely not successful) or a growth mindset (potential for success).
Teachers, parents, and coaches all have these opportunities.
What can such a person really do, though? Dweck compares the approaches of Bobby Knight (who demanded perfection at all times, yelled a lot, and led his players to a fixed mindset where they had to act as perfect as they could whether or not that’s what was really inside of them) and John Wooden (who never raised his voice, focused almost entirely on fundamentals and character growth, didn’t worry about perfection, and strove to produce great people). Both saw great success in college basketball, but Wooden produced more people that went on to do great things in the world – the true product of a coach.
Praise your children and students for their work ethic and their hard effort. Don’t praise them for their talents or the “greatness” of their end product. If they make mistakes, don’t tell them they’re worthless – instead, guide them into what they can learn from the mistake and encourage them to try again.
8. Changing Mindsets
What if you’re in a fixed mindset, but desire to have a growth mindset instead? The first step is to ask for help from those around you and listen to what they have to say. They’re going to criticize you – and that’s where your real decision happens. Are you going to listen to what they have to say and try to grow from that? Or are you just going to discredit or pooh pooh it?
Another key tactic: realize that the world doesn’t owe you anything. You may be naturally talented. So what? The spoils don’t just fall to the people with natural talent. They fall to the people who can do the job well, on time, and with reliability. You might be the best jazz flautist in the world, but if you don’t practice your pieces and ignore what’s going on around you, no ensemble will want you around.
--- A growth mindset about our talents and abilities: psychologist Carol Dweck
Uploaded by TalentDevelop on Oct 26, 2009
Carol S. Dweck, PhD, a professor of psychology at Stanford, notes society tends to believe that geniuses are born, not made, but she thinks it is clear "from the histories of so many geniuses that motivation is a key component, perhaps the number one component in the realization of genius."
Other experts such as Peter Doskoch of Psychology Today and Geoffrey Colvin ("Talent Is Overrated") say what really counts in helping us realize our talents and abilities is a combination of passion and perseverance, determination and grit.
From my article It takes more than talent to find your true potential
http://talentdevelop.com/328/it-takes-more-than-talent/
Her book: Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345472322/talentdevelopmen
Review: A good book is one whose advice you believe. This is a book that can change your life, as its ideas have changed mine. Robert J. Sternberg, IBM Professor of Education and Psychology at Yale University, director of the PACE Center of Yale University, and author of Successful Intelligence.
Source for video clip: Psychology professor discusses 'growth' versus 'fixed' minds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-wD3M59Uiw
In a conversation with Stanford Report writer Lisa Trei, psychologist Carol Dweck says people's self-theories about intelligence have a profound influence on their motivation to learn. Those who hold a "fixed" theory are mainly concerned with how smart they are—they prefer tasks they can already do well and avoid ones on which they may make mistakes and not look smart. In contrast, she says, people who believe in a "growth" theory of intelligence want to challenge themselves to increase their abilities, even if they fail at first.
Carol Dweck quote "People are, to a large extent, in charge of their own intelligence" from video: 9 Growth Mindset Quotations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPz_h-hAYWY
Related article (with videos): Interviews with Carol Dweck.
http://talentdevelop.com/articles/IWCD.html
Another article: Students Who Believe Intelligence Can Be Developed Perform Better
ScienceDaily news story on research of Carol Dweck, PhD and others.
http://talentdevelop.com/articles/SWBICBD.html
Successful women know only too well that in any male-dominated profession, we often find ourselves at a distinct disadvantage. We are routinely underestimated, underutilized, and even underpaid. Studies show that women need to perform at extraordinarily high levels, just to appear moderately competent compared to our male coworkers.
But in my experience, smart and talented women rarely realize that one of the toughest hurdles they'll have to overcome to be successful lies within. Compared with our male colleagues, we judge our own abilities not only more harshly but fundamentally differently. Understanding why we do it is the first step to righting a terrible wrong. And to do that, we need to take a step back in time.
Chances are good that if you are a successful professional today, you were a pretty bright fifth grade girl. My graduate advisor, psychologist Carol Dweck (author of 'Mindset') conducted a series of studies in the 1980s, looking at how Bright Girls and boys in the fifth grade handled new, difficult and confusing material.
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She found that Bright Girls, when given something to learn that was particularly foreign or complex, were quick to give up; the higher the girls' IQ, the more likely they were to throw in the towel. In fact, the straight-A girls showed the most helpless responses. Bright boys, on the other hand, saw the difficult material as a challenge, and found it energizing. They were more likely to redouble their efforts rather than give up.
Why does this happen? What makes smart girls more vulnerable and less confident when they should be the most confident kids in the room? At the 5th grade level, girls routinely outperform boys in every subject, including math and science. So there were no differences between these boys and girls in ability, nor in past history of success. The only difference was how bright boys and girls interpreted difficulty -- what it meant to them when material seemed hard to learn. Bright Girls were much quicker to doubt their ability, to lose confidence and to become less effective learners as a result.
Researchers have uncovered the reason for this difference in how difficulty is interpreted, and it is simply this: More often than not, Bright Girls believe that their abilities are innate and unchangeable, while bright boys believe that they can develop ability through effort and practice.
How do girls and boys develop these different views? Most likely, it has to do with the kinds of feedback we get from parents and teachers as young children. Girls, who develop self-control earlier and are better able to follow instructions, are often praised for their "goodness." When we do well in school, we are told that we are "so smart," "so clever, " or "such a good student." This kind of praise implies that traits like smartness, cleverness and goodness are qualities you either have or you don't.
Boys, on the other hand, are a handful. Just trying to get boys to sit still and pay attention is a real challenge for any parent or teacher. As a result, boys are given a lot more feedback that emphasizes effort (e.g., "If you would just pay attention you could learn this," "If you would just try a little harder you could get it right.") The net result: When learning something new is truly difficult, girls take it as sign that they aren't "good" and "smart," and boys take it as a sign to pay attention and try harder.
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We continue to carry these beliefs, often unconsciously, around with us throughout our lives. And because Bright Girls are particularly likely to see their abilities as innate and unchangeable, they grow up to be women who are far too hard on themselves -- women who will prematurely conclude that they don't have what it takes to succeed in a particular arena, and give up way too soon.
Even if every external disadvantage to a woman's rising to the top of an organization is removed -- every inequality of opportunity, every chauvinistic stereotype, all the challenges we face balancing work and family -- we would still have to deal with the fact that through our mistaken beliefs about our abilities, we may be our own worst enemy.
How often have you found yourself avoiding challenges and playing it safe, sticking to goals you knew would be easy for you to reach? Are there things you decided long ago that you could never be good at? Skills you believed you would never possess? If the list is a long one, you were probably one of the Bright Girls -- and your belief that you are "stuck" being exactly as you are has done more to determine the course of your life than you probably ever imagined. This would be fine, if your abilities were innate and unchangeable. Only they're not.
No matter the ability -- whether it's intelligence, creativity, self-control, charm or athleticism -- studies show them to be profoundly malleable. When it comes to mastering any skill, your experience, effort and persistence matter a lot. So if you were a Bright Girl, it's time to toss out your (mistaken) belief about how ability works, embrace the fact that you can always improve and reclaim the confidence to tackle any challenge that you lost so long ago.
SAME CAN BE SAID FOR WINNERS!!! LUCK HAS LITTLE IMPACT IN DETERMINING WINNERS LONG-TERM.
I read a couple of articles that highlight some of the difficulties teams have come draft time. The reason that the draft sometimes seems like such a crap shoot, especially if you focus exclusively on the more highly decorated success / failure stories.
Some of the commenters, after the jump of this story, try to spin it into a racial argument but really they miss the entire point of the article IMO. Can anyone really control your effort level? Isn't that what coaches preach, take care of the things you can control? And isn't hustle or effort at or near the top of the list.
ST. PETE TIMES ARTICLE ON THE SUCCESS QUALITIES OF VALEDICTORIANS
In last Sunday's Neighborhood Times feature, "They rose to the occasion," the valedictorians and salutatorians were asked to give their "parting thoughts" by answering five questions.
Two of the questions caught my attention because the answers reveal the major sources of the students' achievement. The students were asked to discuss the "secret" to their success so far, and they were asked to identify the one person who has influenced their lives.
To the first question, the majority said that hard work, motivation and determination were their secrets.
My favorite two four letter words, HARD WORK.
The SPT Article cites:
- Hard Work, motivation and determination cited as qualities that led them to success and the top of the list of valedictorians and salutatorians in their schools. PERSEVERANCE.
- Becoming a valedictorian is similar to a HS player getting drafted in terms of percentile % of kids that participate versus those that rise to this the desired level of success. About 1 in 500-1,000 per class?
- These same qualities--observable but not easily measurable--are unfortuantely what tends to be the difference-maker, what will ultimately separate the high-draft pick that blossoms into a super-star versus the one who turns into a bust.
- It is the same qualities that will give us the free-agent who turns into a quality players at the major league level, in spite of having none of the more easily observable, readily measurable qualities.
It's easy to look at the Peyton Manning / Ryan Leaf draft and say that all this player evaluation / NFL combine stuff is so much wasteful exercise. By the same token, you can look at some of the more successful teams that use the centralized information better than their peers and succeed, and say the process works.
At the team level, we can point to the examples like the University of Michigan continuing to turn to Drew Henson over Tom Brady to show that the intangible qualities that many times you can see and feel but can't quite put a number on will sometimes conspire to throw objective analysis and reliance on measurable standards for a loop.
The player evaluation system works better in the NFL than in the pre-combine days. It is not a perfect system, but is continually evolving and getting better and while the goal is perfection-- a goal that theoretically can never be achieved -- the victory is in continually improving the product and the results. Especially in this day and age of ever-escalating bonuses. Teams simply must be able to justify their investment dollar decisions more objectively than in the past.
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Financial expert Dave Ramsey uses the analogy of having a Gazelle-like Intensity in order to modify behavior and get out of debt when the culture does everything possible to encourage you to be in debt.
- 19 of 20 gazelles under attack eventually evade the cheetah, even though the cheetah is faster than the gazelle.
- The main reason is that while the cheetah is faster in a straight line than the gazelle, if the gazelle manages to zig-zag his way long enough to prolong the pursuit, the cheetah eventually tires and goes on to a weaker prey. The ones that fail are the weaker ones who quit and die.
We do not have the tools to measure this type of quality objectively in humans, so we are left to subjective analysis in our grading. "The kid is a gamer", "A bulldog", "The intensity of a junkyard dog".
HARD WORK, PERSEVERANCE, INTENSITY, FOCUS - DETERMINE SUCCESS OR FAILURE IN SPORTS,
BUT THEY ARE OF LIFE AND DEATH IMPORTANCE TO THE GAZELLE.
They are all factors that allow the "chosen few" to rise to the top and to do so often against peers who appear on the surface to be equally well-endowed as far as the physical gifts that are required for success. Could any of us identify the gazelle that is most likely to give up in its pursuit by the cheetah?
According to Ramsey, gazelle intensity is a role play exercise. The gazelle has to be smarter, not faster, than the cheetah to escape it. In Ramsey’s world, you are the gazelle, and the credit card company is the cheetah. To escape the cheetah, you must be smarter than it. Just as the gazelle has to bob and weave to avoid the cheetah’s single minded straight line attack (apparently, a cheetah is only super-fast when running in a straight line), we must bob and weave and stay on our toes like a gazelle with never-ending intensity to avoid the credit card’s evil single-minded attack via numerous offers and specials and rewards.
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There are 10-15 kids in each graduating class every year that have the inherent academic skills necessary to be the class valedictorian. But only one makes it each year. I suspect it is often the one that has that gazelle-like, almost life-or-death devotion to success.
There are 10-15 baseball players drafted each year that have the requisite ability to succeed at the major league level. Certainly every first-round pick should be capable enough to succeed from the standpoint of physical gifts. But five years after each draft, you can review the selections and wonder what happened to well over more than half of them.
Only 1-2 attack the mission of gettig from draft-day to major league debut with "gazelle-like" intensity needed for success.
THIS STORY ILLUSTRATES THE ISSUE PERFECTLY:
One day a hound dog went hunting by himself in the woods. He spotted a rabbit in the underbrush and chased him out into the open. The rabbit darted this way and that. The dog followed. The rabbit ran, with the dog at his heels, around trees and through an open field.
When the dog began to tire of the chase, the rabbit, with one last burst of energy, dashed into the thicket and escaped to safety.
As the dog turned back for home, a goat herder who had seen the chase jeered at him, saying, "Some hunter you are! You let that rabbit get the best of you!"
"You forget," replied the tired dog, "about the rabbit's strife! I was only running for my supper. He was running for his life!"
In summary, Ramsey is illustrating that in order to get out of debt ( a financial goal ), you have to want it as if your life depends on it!
He uses the following bible verse as an example:
“Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, and like a bird from the hand of the fowler.” - Proverbs 6:5-5
Many times, elite coaches in sports or events that are geared even more towards standardization are surprised by the success of athletes who did not measure up well in the so-called "measurables".
This casts doubt on whether we really know what we are looking for come draft day. What qualities correlate best to future success? Perseverance, confidence in oneself, the patience to tolerate the deliberate practice required to make small gradual improvements at ones craft. These are the qualities one must have to tolerate the 10,000 hours some experts say are required to become an elite master at almost every craft.
Perhaps in the future we will be able to develop a better test to determine who has this "gazelle-like" intensity and perseverance or, better yet, how to develop it in every athlete.
Maybe more of an emphasis on these positive qualities over winning and losing as part of the sports culture.
Oh Slav, there you go dreaming of a better day.....
ADDITIONAL READING:
from the article:
Identifying Talent: What Really Matters by Daniel Coyle author of The Talent Code (highly recommended book)
1. Joey Bart 6-2, 215 C Power arm and a power bat, playing a premium defensive position. Good catch and throw skills.
2. Heliot Ramos 6-2, 185 OF Potential high-ceiling player the Giants have been looking for. Great bat speed, early returns were impressive.
3. Chris Shaw 6-3. 230 1B Lefty power bat, limited defensively to 1B, Matt Adams comp?
4. Tyler Beede 6-4, 215 RHP from Vanderbilt projects as top of the rotation starter when he works out his command/control issues. When he misses, he misses by a bunch.
5. Stephen Duggar 6-1, 170 CF Another toolsy, under-achieving OF in the Gary Brown mold, hoping for better results.
6. Sandro Fabian 6-0, 180 OF Dominican signee from 2014, shows some pop in his bat. Below average arm and lack of speed should push him towards LF.
7. Aramis Garcia 6-2, 220 C from Florida INTL projects as a good bat behind the dish with enough defensive skill to play there long-term
8. Heath Quinn 6-2, 190 OF Strong hitter, makes contact with improving approach at the plate. Returns from hamate bone injury.
9. Garrett Williams 6-1, 205 LHP Former Oklahoma standout, Giants prototype, low-ceiling, high-floor prospect.
10. Shaun Anderson 6-4, 225 RHP Large frame, 3.36 K/BB rate. Can start or relieve
11. Jacob Gonzalez 6-3, 190 3B Good pedigree, impressive bat for HS prospect.
12. Seth Corry 6-2 195 LHP Highly regard HS pick. Was mentioned as possible chip in high profile trades.
13. C.J. Hinojosa 5-10, 175 SS Scrappy IF prospect in the mold of Kelby Tomlinson, just gets it done.
14. Garett Cave 6-4, 200 RHP He misses a lot of bats and at times, the plate. 13 K/9 an 5 B/9. Wild thing.
2019 MLB Draft - Top HS Draft Prospects
1. Bobby Witt, Jr. 6-1,185 SS Colleyville Heritage HS (TX) Oklahoma commit. Outstanding defensive SS who can hit. 6.4 speed in 60 yd. Touched 97 on mound. Son of former major leaguer. Five tool potential.
2. Riley Greene 6-2, 190 OF Haggerty HS (FL) Florida commit.Best HS hitting prospect. LH bat with good eye, plate discipline and developing power.
3. C.J. Abrams 6-2, 180 SS Blessed Trinity HS (GA) High-ceiling athlete. 70 speed with plus arm. Hitting needs to develop as he matures. Alabama commit.
4. Reece Hinds 6-4, 210 SS Niceville HS (FL) Power bat, committed to LSU. Plus arm, solid enough bat to move to 3B down the road. 98MPH arm.
5. Daniel Espino 6-3, 200 RHP Georgia Premier Academy (GA) LSU commit. Touches 98 on FB with wipe out SL.
2019 MLB Draft - Top College Draft Prospects
1. Adley Rutschman C Oregon State Plus defender with great arm. Excellent receiver plus a switch hitter with some pop in the bat.
2. Shea Langliers C Baylor Excelent throw and catch skills with good pop time. Quick bat, uses all fields approach with some pop.
3. Zack Thompson 6-2 LHP Kentucky Missed time with an elbow issue. FB up to 95 with plenty of secondary stuff.
4. Matt Wallner 6-5 OF Southern Miss Run producing bat plus mid to upper 90's FB closer. Power bat from the left side, athletic for size.
5. Nick Lodolo LHP TCU Tall LHP, 95MPH FB and solid breaking stuff.
