Carol Dweck | Life Back West

February 7, 2010July 7, 2020

[Jerry Rice] The (Simple) Secret to Your Success

There is a secret to your success.

It’s on page 9 of the Sunday, February 9, 2010 print edition of the San Francisco Chronicle’s article about American professional football player Jerry Rice.

It’s the same secret that Malcolm Gladwell covered in Outliers, when he reported on the work of K. Anders Ericsson.

It’s the same secret that the research that Stanford professor Carol Dweck uncovered and reported on in her book MindSet in which she identifies two types of approaches: a “fixed mindset” and a “growth mindset.”… Read the rest

December 10, 2009April 8, 2020

[Scott Berkun] How “Trying” Improves Your Performance

Readers of this blog know that the body of emerging research by people like Carol Dweck from Stanford or Angela Duckworth at the University of Pennsylvannia show that trying, self discipline, and constant learning – rather than simply going to the right schools, having a high IQ, or having the right credentials – is what drives performance over the mid-to-long haul.… Read the rest

November 4, 2009May 16, 2019

[Lunch with Harry] Predicting Success

The holy grail of management development programs is being able to assess skills, and predict who will – and who won’t – succeed. The hits and misses of what it takes line the walls: IQ and schools attended have become big misses, perseverance in trying and “grit” have become big hits. While work by researchers such as Carol Dweck, K.… Read the rest

October 18, 2009April 8, 2020

If You Only Had ONE Job Interview Question to Ask? – Revisited

The question “If You Had Only ONE Job Interview Question to Ask” was posed this past May. The suggestion merits revisiting based on an aside Carol Dweck made this past week when I caught her presentation at my son’s grade school, Marin Country Day School.

Dweck’s research – which has more depth and vigor than I’ve distilled here – has pointed to the existence of two types of mindets – that of a “fixed” mindset and that of a “growth” mindset in children as well as adults.… Read the rest

October 6, 2009April 8, 2020

[Coaching Tips] The Secret to Your Success

While the exact formula for what makes someone successful in work over a period of time is still cloudy, the outlines through research are taking shape. Those outlines can begin to inform who you hire, who you work with, and – if you’re prone to introspection – what your own personal profile looks like.

These trends and factors didn’t just pop-up today: in some cases, as in the importance of emotional intelligence, they’ve been building for decades as the old control and command models of management gave way to greater teamwork and collaboration norms.… Read the rest

September 17, 2009April 8, 2020

[Life Back West] September 2009 – “Back to School”

There are random events, and there are events that are chock full of patterns: the trick is knowing one set of events from the other, and in figuring out what, if anything, any patterns mean.

Something as simple as a run chart stuck up on your bulletin board wall helps you plot experience, whether it be the number of times your seven year old wakes-up at nights (less common lately – thank goodness) or the number of times things a client calls with one “last” change.… Read the rest