Professor Carol Dweck of Stanford University believes humans have essentially two mindsets, growth or fixed, and through her research with employees of Fortune 500 companies, she found that managers with a growth mindset are more innovative.

Why is this important? According to the author,

“Growth mindset managers create better work environments. They are more open to feedback from employees (because they’re interested in learning); they are better mentors (because they believe in development); and they are perceived by their workers as more fair (because they believe everyone has the capacity to improve). Furthermore, those who have a growth mindset acquire the skills for success.” [Source]

It seems our mindsets dictate how we feel about ourselves and how we relate to situations, ideas and other people. For example, someone with a fixed mindset may believe his or her intelligence or talents are predetermined (or fixed) – you’ve either got brains and talent or you don’t. Those traits, therefore, are as good as they will ever be, so there’s no need spending time and energy developing them further. People with fixed mindsets are what we might consider “set in their ways.”  They think they’ve got it all figured out and any challenge to their way of thinking is a personal affront.

By contrast, people with growth mindsets believe that brains and talent are just the starting point; these folks believe their basic abilities can be improved with hard work and dedication. For this reason, they love to learn, are open to new ideas and perspectives, and they don’t let failure set them back; they learn from mistakes and capitalize on those lessons to find new and better ways of doing things.

Apparently, we can have different mindsets about different things: I may have a fixed mindset about my golf game, but I have a growth mindset about how I run a dealership. And, we have the capacity to change from a fixed to a growth mindset.

As you might imagine, we don’t see that many with fixed mindsets in our classes at the NCM Institute. Here we see managers and dealers who want to learn new skills and better processes so they can improve their performance and enjoy greater personal and professional success. It’s not difficult to spot the ones with fixed mindsets, though. They are usually either very quiet or a bit combative when we expose their way of doing things as less efficient or effective.

Want to know how to spot your dealership’s innovators? Find the employees and managers in your dealership who don’t try to cover up their mistakes, but use them as lessons for improvement. Chances are, those are the ones with growth mindsets.  Harness their drive and enthusiasm by giving them every opportunity to expand their knowledge and skills where it will benefit you both.