Sublime

The other thing exceptional people seem to have is a special talent for converting life’s setbacks into future successes.

He attributes his success to one skill that has served him over the years – his ability to take in new knowledge from all types of people, identify patterns in this knowledge, and devise new models for decoding the world.

But it was those with the fixed mindset who accounted for almost all the inaccuracy. The people with the growth mindset were amazingly accurate.

Most exciting, the growth mindset can be taught to managers.

Yet I think by now we’re getting the idea that character grows out of mindset. We now know that there is a mindset in which people are enmeshed in the idea of their own talent and specialness.

No one knows about negative ability labels like members of stereotyped groups. For example, African Americans know about being stereotyped as lower in intelligence.

The sweet spot is when people are proactive and growth oriented. That’s when they become sponges. They consistently take the initiative to expand themselves and adapt. That character skill is especially valuable when the deck is stacked against you—as

it makes it look like a choice between fun and excellence. However, this point is crucial: The growth mindset does allow people to love what they’re doing—and to continue to love it in the face of difficulties. The growth-minded athletes, CEOs, musicians, or scientists all loved what they did, whereas many of the fixed-minded ones did not.

Studies by Peter Heslin, Don VandeWalle, and Gary Latham show that many managers do not believe in personal change. These fixed-mindset managers simply look for existing talent—they judge employees as competent or incompetent at the start and that’s that.