Developing a Growth Mindset Habit to be an Elite Leader

As a leader, it’s important to have good habits that will make you an effective leader, one that your people need and want to follow. One habit to nurture is that of having a growth mindset.

A growth mindset is when you are open to changes and challenges, and work to develop the skills and grit needed to maneuver them. This is opposed to having a fixed mindset, where you are resistive, procrastinate, and keep doing the same things over and over.

When deciding to create a new habit to pursue, it’s easier to look at all the things we shouldn’t do as a place to begin. We want to stop smoking or stress eating. We want to learn how to say ‘no’ or to quit spending so much time on social media. We want to stop allowing fears to hold us back.

But have you ever considered the flipside of all those by building a habit that’s positive? What if the habit you formed was one of growth and personal development?

Having a growth mindset positively impacts your life in multiple ways, so it’s a great healthy habit to build into your life. What are the benefits of developing a growth mindset?

1. You keep learning. Learning is important as you not only discover new ways to do things, but by making a practice of constantly learning, you develop new ways of thinking, and new ideas. Learning connects you with more of the world and helps you see things with a deeper significance than you ever thought possible. But more than that, people who stop learning very quickly stagnate. Studies have shown that the practice of learning new things when you are older helps ward off problems related to dementia. In short, learning is good for your brain!

2. You learn perseverance. As we learn new things, we adapt and change how we think. That gives us the ability to see other solutions to problems that would have frustrated us in the past. By challenging yourself to grow, you learn how to push through obstacles and find new paths, to stay the course in the face of any adversity.

3. You learn how to embrace challenges. Growth can be challenging. But by pushing yourself to grow, that means you’re also pushing yourself to look at challenges differently. An obstacle now becomes an opportunity to learn something new and to do things in a way you haven’t before. Challenges help you to shift and change course as needed.

4. You learn how to embrace failure. When you’re interested in growing as an individual, you start to see failure differently. Everything becomes a potential lesson in a way that you didn’t think would work. Failures are learning curves to inspire new ideas and practices; learn from them to see where to shift and regroup.

5. You become more open to criticism. By being willing to grow, you start to see that the input of other people has significance. You see their words not so much as something negative, but something you can use to develop as a person and learn something about yourself. You might not always like the lesson, but that’s part of growing too.

By embracing personal growth, you find the best version of yourself. You’re able to become more than you ever thought possible, and then you turn that around by finding out that you can become more still. You’ll find that the furthest edges of yourself are far beyond what you thought you ever could be.