Mindset
The New Psychology of Success
Carol S. Dweck, PhD
Who should read: Anyone who has experienced the journey of training/learning in veterinary medicine.
Favorite quote: “In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, oh, I’m going to reveal my weaknesses, you say, wow, here’s a chance to grow.” “Becoming is better than being.”
Why I feel it is important to veterinary medicine: I believe the highly competitive nature of vet med has cultivated some truly harmful habits, and mindset is one of our more dangerous and individually resolvable consequences.
I Failed. A presentation by me.
Do you remember M&M Rounds (Morbidity and Mortality Rounds)? Did you ever have to participate in them? If not, bless your sweet, innocent and pure soul. As an intern and resident, I had a mixed experience of them. I had to present on multiple occasions. Which meant that I had to take a mistake I (or my colleagues) made, and present it to a large group of peers, mentors and authority figures, for the sake of the learning and betterment of all. These were inevitably cases that had made me cry and lose sleep and judge myself painfully and harshly. Imagine taking your worst nightmare of a case, all the emotions and pain of it, and putting it on display for everyone to see. And not only did they get VIP tickets to that horror show, they then picked the entire situation apart to figure out where things went wrong and what should have been done differently. With you standing there answering their questions and critiques. A judgement was rendered, and you were always found lacking. I kid you not, I burst into tears in the giving of one of these presentations and had to flee the room of students, fellow residents and faculty to hide in the bathroom sobbing, because I was still grieving the loss of said patient.
The purpose of this sadomasochistic exercise was so that the next patient benefitted from the errors we made, instead of allowing those errors to perpetuate. When you are the one who made the mistake, standing in the spotlight, it feels like the worst work nightmare becoming a reality, with an audience to heckle you through it. When you are part of the audience, it is a strange mix of horror at the witnessing of someone else’s demise, and an incredible opportunity to avert your own inevitable demise towards making a similar mistake. I dreadfully looked forward to them when I wasn’t presenting, because I always walked away with perspective and incredibly valuable information. But I also was guaranteed to walk away with the fear of The Gods of Veterinary Medicine imprinted on my soul and brain. I always found M&M Rounds to be a striking contrast of what “Better” could look like and the pain and misery of the reality of what it took to get there in the current environment of veterinary medicine. The purpose of M&M Rounds was generated from a growth mindset. The execution and experience was a fixed mindset.
We failed. A presentation by us (the veterinary field).
What just happened for you when you read my experience? Did you have a minor anxiety attack? A sense of panic and fear? A need to vomit? A gratitude you didn’t choose the road I did? Sorry about that. I feel you deeply. I understand. But I want you to understand too. Understand how pervasive this problem, our view of failure and not being perfect, is in our field. It’s abundant. It’s harmful. It doesn’t have to be this way. And we definitely need to fix it. Let me back up a minute, and explain why I think this is a topic of importance to our profession.
We spent years and years trying to get the best grades possible, striving to be in the top of our class in order to be a part of this field. Once we got into vet school, the workload and expectations were crushing. We rushed through, not really realizing how we, much less our minds, had been warped along the way to continue to tell us that we needed to be the best. If you chose to specialize or do advanced training, you were dependent on continuing that striving. You were constantly compared to your peers. You had to be flawless to stand out and make the cuts. If you didn’t pursue that specialization, there’s still a strong chance you didn’t see a reason to break the habit that pre-vet cultivated.
Once you entered practice, mistakes had SERIOUS consequences. You were now dealing with lives. People’s treasured family members. Failing was/is devastating. No one ever taught us how to fail well. Or how critical the act of failing is to becoming a better version of ourselves. How it can radically alter our life, the way we treat others, and our mental well-being. We pass that dangerous subconscious behavior on to everyone else we work with. We (the veterinary profession, but also the world at large) value and reward individuals that appear to naturally perform well over those that earn their skills with effort, tears and struggle.
Enter: mindset.
Mindset
This is not a spiritual or esoteric discussion. This is the concept of whether you trend towards a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. A fixed mindset believes that you succeed because you have talent, intelligence, natural abilities and qualities that allow you to succeed. A growth mindset believes that all qualities are changeable, and that success is learning. For these individuals, success is not a standard to compare yourself and everyone else against.
A fixed mindset requires that you prove your skill/talent/ability, and if you can’t, you aren’t of value and you won’t have the ability to be. Your capacities are static. Your value is performance. Effort is only for people who are deficient. A growth mindset allows us to thrive when we are stretching ourselves. It promotes seeking new and challenging opportunities, and an understanding and acceptance that ability follows a growth curve, directly impacted by effort and input into the process. Our value is in our growth.
The Consequences of Mindset
The research is startling as to how destructive a fixed mindset is towards individual growth, integrity and the impact on the people around it. Dr. Dweck has conducted and published countless research studies evaluating the impact of mindset on people. She has discovered it impacts performance, relationships, the success of businesses, our education system, our parenting, and our clinical practice (OK, I inferred that one!).
People that act with fixed mindsets are threatened by challenges, for fear it will unmask deficiencies. Thus, they don’t take opportunities that could challenge their skills and promote growth. They refuse to recognize, and therefore address deficiencies, because that labels them as a failure (in their minds). They take very little joy in their work, and abandon things quickly if don’t feel successful immediately. They believe (and act as though) those that aren’t as good as they are are inferior, and feel threatened by those they perceive are better, often acting to sabotage or distance themselves from them. If they are placed in a position of leadership, they can become abusive and controlling, and worse, they tend to push everyone around them into a fixed mindset. They struggle to communicate honestly, openly, or take responsibility for what they consider less than perfect performance.
On the other hand, a growth-minded person defines failure as informative, they feel ownership and deep involvement in their success, and they see others as having a wide range of potential. This kind of leader has a tendency to ask many questions, be able to face the hard answers, and believe that they can still succeed in the long-term. These individuals use their positions to grow the entire company, rather than using it (and those they lead) as a means to stroke their own ego. They are also much more likely to be frank with others about their opinions, as well as allow others to express theirs- even if they disagree with each other. They tend to become as great as the fixed mindset person thinks is necessary, simply because they find so much joy and engagement in learning. The byproduct is growth and improvement.
The Reality of Mindset
The vast majority of us have a mixed mindset- we may have a very growth minded perspective in certain areas of our life (say the hobby we find joyful, rather than a means to perform or prove our value), and a fixed mindset in others (say the belief that you cannot be happy in vet med). If you don’t see both in yourself, there is a high probability you are pseudo-growth minded- taking the idea of being growth minded as the standard for existence, and unable to honestly assess your potential areas of growth! The reality is that for most of us, a fixed mindset has served us well at some point. For example, the ability to excel beyond others landed us the privilege of entering the veterinary field. Dr. Dweck gives the example that children need to feel loved and appreciated, and the fixed mindset seems like a simple, straightforward path to doing so. ‘If I am the thing my parent values, I will be loved.’ I propose that isn’t limited to children. I think employees (and all humans) have that need to be appreciated and loved. In a profession that is so fixated on performance, populated with an overwhelming infestation of overachievers, we aren’t prone to giving positive feedback unless it exceeds “average” achievement. So feeling appreciated and valued in this environment is not a common occurrence because we’ve skewed the “average” to a level that isn’t practical. Operating with a fixed mindset seems the quickest way to achieving that desired recognition and appreciation.
How to Shift Mindsets
One of the most exciting findings of Dr. Dweck’s work is that it is very possible to learn to shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. One of the intriguing but painful findings of her work is that the opposite is also true- having a leader or an environment, or even a mentor, who operates in a fixed mindset is effective in shifting neutral or growth minded people into a fixed mindset. So, our environment and self-awareness matters quite a bit in impacting your state of mind. You are not imprisoned within the mindset of your environment, but you may need to be very vigilant and intentional about your beliefs and self-talk in certain environments or situations.
She and her collaborators have actually developed entire courses on training people towards a growth mindset, with remarkable effectiveness. Again, alarmingly, they have also effectively “trained” study participants into a fixed mindset!
She summarizes a strategy for ‘growing’ into a growth mindset. She encourages your journey to include:
- Embracing your fixed mindset
- To judge your fixed mindset behavior is further handing control over to your fixed mindset narrative! Everyone has fixed mindset behaviors somewhere, and they will persist if they aren’t accepted as the present reality of the situation.
- Recognizing your fixed mindset triggers
- Certain people, situations, or feelings may unearth a fixed mindset- learn to see the patterns for where you finding this mindset controlling your experience of a situation
- Treat your fixed mindset as its own distinct persona
- Give this persona a name, and learn to recognize when this persona is defining your perception of situations
- Educate your fixed mindset persona
- Remember- everyone has a full range of potentials, including your fixed mindset! When you see it showing up, take some time to gently educate it with a growth mindset perspective.
Call to Action
How would your experience of veterinary medicine differ from your reality if there were safe, open discussions about challenges, concerns and struggles in your day to day working environment? Would you expect skills, level of care, comradery and support to change as a team? Would you be able to start approaching your fears and frustrations at work with an expectation of improvement and level of control over the situation? Remember how conflicted I was about M&M Rounds? I could approach them with a growth mindset, but the attitudes around me, and the behaviors that were exhibited, along with my own personal tendencies catapulted me into a fixed mindset quickly. There are two things we can do to change this culture that is pervasive for our field. First, we can work to change our mindset. We are one of the culture, and we contribute passively or actively. By changing our behavior, we create a culture of our own. Second, talking about this culture gives other people in our proximity a different model to consider when managing their own mindset. The more open, honest and supportive we are in managing ourselves and others, the more room other people feel in attempting to manage their mistakes with a growth mindset. This is a perfect example of how to be the change you want to see. Are you in? I know it’s not going to fix everything about veterinary medicine. But I think it’ll make a world of difference for many of us.
Practical Implementation Exercises:
Questions to ask yourself to assess your mindset:
Am I seeing this mistake as an action (growth), or an identity (fixed)?
In order to cope with this mistake, are my thoughts dwelling on studying people that performed worse than me (fixed) or better than me (growth)?
If other people succeed, do I see myself as a failure (fixed)? Do I see them as a model and get curious about their strategies (growth)?
What would increase my skill and capabilities as a doctor: exploring and learning from this mistake (growth) or having never made this mistake (fixed)?
Additional resources:
- Becoming the best we can be, in a healthy manner: Book Rounds: Performance
- Generating an environment of appreciation in the workplace: Book Rounds: Appreciation in the Workplace
- The author’s Ted Talk: The Power of Believing You Can Improve