In my work around entrepreneurs’ fixed-versus growth-mindset triggers, I came across a common lore—a hoodie-clad frontiersman (usually male, usually young, usually white) hacking his way through the digital brush, grinding it out until he sells or takes his startup public. But wait, that’s a growth mindset in action, right—displaying grit and gumption in the face of one long, grueling high-effort situation? The problem is that all of this entrepreneurial grinding doesn’t always constitute effective effort.
We don’t want to “just apply our grit;” we need to apply it in meaningful ways that actually move us closer to our goals. A growth mindset isn’t just about putting in sheer effort; it’s far more discerning than that, and it’s also far more expansive. When we’re in our growth mindset, we find ways to invite challenge in and to play with the struggle it brings. We focus on possibilities, try new strategies, and experiment. And we do it in a conscious, thoughtful way.
Here are five practical ways to reprogram the negative effort–ability belief and encourage a growth-minded response to high-effort situations.
Break it into manageable pieces
Both rock climbers and inventors use the language of “solving problems,” and they take similar approaches to effort: breaking the larger challenge down into smaller pieces, addressing one at a time. Though this advice might seem pedestrian or obvious, when you’re prompted into your fixed mindset by the prospect of a high-effort situation, your vision contracts as your anxiety and self-focus expand. This can cause you to forget the basic tactic of one step at a time. The McBride sisters, entrepreneurs who were given four months to make 25,000 cases of wine and ship it to Kroger distribution centers, broke down this major accomplishment into manageable chunks. The sisters were successful because they didn’t try to make and ship 25,000 cases. Instead, they focused on what needed to be done next—on choosing grapes and constructing the varietals, on getting the applications filed and the labels printed. Each of those tasks was doable. We each can cultivate this ability to isolate our next one or two steps and start there. And if we have trouble doing this, we can ask trusted advisors, like peers, managers, or mentors.
The same advice applies to managers making high-effort assignments: Don’t toss people in the deep end. To encourage employees into their growth mindsets, dial up the challenge and struggle incrementally. A good tennis coach doesn’t hand you a racket and say, “Good luck!” Instead, they show you how to hold the racquet, then how to hit a forehand. When you’ve had some success, they teach you the backhand, and so on. If you give an employee too much too fast, they are more likely to become overwhelmed by the perception that they don’t have the strategies or resources required to be successful. By exposing them to incremental levels of challenge, you help them build the skills they need to progress.
Self-affirmation
The core tenet behind the idea of self-affirmation is that most of us want to see ourselves as good at something—competent, moral, and effective. When we encounter a high-effort situation and we have an underlying belief that if we have to try hard, we’re not good at it, effort undermines our ability to see ourselves in these positive ways. So many of us tie a chunk of our identities to our work (according to Gallup, 55% of Americans get a sense of identity from their work, and of those with a college degree the number is 70%) that when our ability to do our work well becomes threatened, it makes us question who we are.
The process of self-affirmation broadens our sense of ourselves so that we are less affected by the fear and doubt that a high-effort situation can incite. The first step is to list out every identity and group membership and role that you have as an individual that is important to you. (And you need to actually write them out, not just list them out loud or in your mind.) So, you might write, I’m a sister, a mother, a Texan, I’m a friend, a dog lover, and so on. Once you have the list, rank the identities from most to least important. Then, strike out the one that is threatened at the moment, such as employee. Next, spend 15 to 20 minutes writing about your three highest traits or characteristics (or next highest, if the one you just crossed outranks among the top three). Focus your writing on how important those roles are to you and others, and the positive impact that role has in your life or the lives of others.
This helps you see yourself more broadly. When one aspect of your identity comes into question because you are at the precipice of a high-effort situation that you just aren’t sure you can accomplish, you’re less threatened by it because you have a broader sense of who you are than just that one role. And not only are we less threatened when we practice self-affirmation, we’re also more engaged, and so we’re more likely to triumph in those high-effort situations.
Reprogram your core beliefs
One of the most powerful ways to shift to our growth mindset is to reprogram our beliefs about the relationship between effort and ability. Storytelling is one of the most effective ways to do this. One example is rapper and business executive Shawn Carter (more commonly known as Jay-Z), who was turned down by every major record label he approached. This rejection led him to become a producer himself and start Roc-A-Fella Records.
As a leader, you can engage in and encourage storytelling in a similar way. One of the most impactful stories you can share with employees is your own. Share your struggle stories. By helping employees understand that the way you get better is through meaningful, sustained effort, you can release some of the pressure and fear around being judged as lacking (or decrease the inclination to self-judge). Also, let them know that you want them to feel adequately challenged so they will continue to grow and remain excited and engaged but that you’re also there to provide the resources and support they need to be successful.
Call on the community
One of the reasons high-effort situations can be so daunting is that we often think we need to go it alone. One simple but powerful question can play a major role here: “What are my resources?” When we ask ourselves that question (or mentor our employees to ask it), we teach ourselves how to identify the people who can assist us.
Key to achieving success as an individual is learning how to identify, engage, and learn from the skills of others. We can say the same about organizations—that learning to look outside our own walls, to be open and honest about the challenges facing us, and to actively engage others in supporting us makes high-effort tasks more achievable. There is power in teams that create their own microcultures of growth around them.
Tune the environment to growth
Leaders can set team and organizational agreements that tune the environment to growth. Consider how you might have the equivalent of back-pocket problems ready for your employees or yourself when you’re not feeling challenged. According to 2022 data from Gallup, only 21% of employees report feeling engaged at work. As any HR exec will tell you, lack of engagement is a major challenge to employee retention, so keeping employees on a growth trajectory isn’t just good for their careers, it’s also good for the bottom line. For individuals, those back-pocket problems can look like putting yourself on your manager’s radar for stretch assignments and flat-out asking for new challenges. Maybe your manager has a task on their plate that’s become easy for them that they’d be happy to offload to you. This gives you a chance to grow and provides your manager more bandwidth to take on novel opportunities of their own.
Adapted and published with permission from Cultures of Growth by Mary C. Murphy, published by Simon and Schuster. Copyright © 2023 by Mary C. Murphy. Reprinted courtesy of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Mary C. Murphy is a social psychologist and author of Cultures of Growth. She is a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University, the founding director of the Summer Institute on Diversity at Stanford University, and founder and CEO of the Equity Accelerator.
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