Afford Anything - Stanford Researcher Dr. Mary Murphy on How to Cultivate a Growth Mindset

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

#508: Recently I chatted with Stanford researcher Dr. Mary Murphy, a renowned expert in the field of psychological and brain sciences. Dr. Murphy, who is a Professor at Indiana University and conducts research at Stanford University, shared insights into the concepts of fixed mindset and growth mindset. We deep dived into her extensive research on how these mindsets impact motivation, performance, and relationships at work and home. She conducted research alongside legendary psychologist Dr. Carol Dweck, who created the original studies around fixed vs. growth mindset. If you’ve ever read about fixed vs. growth mindset in the past, you’ve undoubtedly heard of Carol Dweck, who is legendary in the space. Dr. Dweck mentored Dr. Murphy at Stanford, the university from which Dr. Murphy received her Ph.D. Dr. Murphy's insights can help you cultivate a growth mindset to overcome challenges and achieve your goals. If you want to improve your performance — at work, at home, at the gym, as a world traveler, as an investor, or in any other domain — understanding the research behind mindset is critical. Enjoy! For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode508 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our money habits are guided by our mindset. But what is mindset? At a deep, scientific level, what is mindset and how can we change it? To answer these questions, today we talk to Dr. Mary Murphy, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Stanford as well as Indiana University. Dr. Murphy received her PhD in social psychology at Stanford, where she now performs research at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. She was mentored by Dr. Carol Dweck, whom many of you have heard of before,

because Dr. Dweck is renowned for her research in the distinction between fixed mindset versus growth mindset. So Dr. Dweck mentored Dr. Murphy, and five years ago, Dr. Murphy was awarded the 2019 presidential early career award for scientists and engineers, which is the highest federal award bestowed on early career scientists and scholars. Dr. Murphy is also on the faculty at Indiana University, where she studies both psychology and brain science. Correct. Yeah. By the end of this podcast episode, you are going to learn what to do if you have ever had the thought, I'm bad with money, or I'm bad at investing, or I'm just really bad at saving, right? If you've ever had those

thoughts or if you know somebody who does, you're going to learn what to do to address that. You're also going to learn how to improve the culture of mindset, the culture of growth in your family, in your company, in your small business or your side hustle, in any organization that you're with, ranging from a two-person friendship to a 20,000 person organization. So, welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else. And that doesn't just apply to your money.

It applies to your time, to your focus, to your energy, to your attention, to any limited resource that you need to manage. And that opens up two questions. What matters most? And how do you make decisions accordingly? answering those questions is a lifetime practice, and that's what we are here to explore. Welcome, Dr. Murphy. Thank you so much, Paula. It's a pleasure to be here with you. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. At Stanford, you studied under and worked with Carol Dweck for at least

I'd say half the audience. That's a very familiar name. Professor Carol Dweck is famous for her development of fixed mindset versus growth mindset. Can you describe what that is? Sure, sure. So the idea that Carol really pioneered was this idea of the fixed and the growth mindset. And the fixed mindset is a belief that we have that suggests you either have it or you don't. You're smart or you're not. Talent, intelligence, ability. It's a relatively static trait. We're born with a certain amount. And though we can change in some ways here and there, those levels can't really increase significantly over our lifespan. The growth mindset, on the other hand, is the belief that our talents, our intelligence, our ability, their potentials. And we can grow and develop them with trying new strategies,

seeking help from others and persisting through challenges. Now, the way in which mindset has really been used as it has exploded in certain contexts, particularly in education, but more so nowadays in business as well, we have seen it actually get misapplied in many different contexts to your earlier point. One of the ways in which we really, I think, I argue in my book, we need to do a mindset reset around some of these ideas, is that we get it wrong by identifying mindset as one or the other. You either have the growth mindset or you have the fixed mindset. And you can see this is kind of an ironic way of thinking of mindset, right? So we have a fixed mindset around. Absolutely. Absolutely. And this comes from many different places. But if you were to Google

fixing growth mindset and you look at Google images, you're likely to see an image where you have one head, usually a green head that shows you all its growth mindset and the good things that come from being in that mindset. Then one red head, that's a bad head, right? That's a fixed mindset and all the bad things that come from that. And literally you'll see questions, which mindset do you have? Which one? is most salient, which one do you have? And we see this actually in classrooms where teachers have been trained. Teach for America uses mindset, Carol's book and others. I say, I teach with mindset, but we see these posters on the wall and no one can talk about the fixed mindset. The growth mindset is the only thing. We start to see people labeling students or labeling adults in the workplace as,

oh, that person just has a fixed mindset. There's nothing I can do about it. They need to change their mindset. And this becomes problematic because we know that that's not actually the way mindset functions. And just for context in terms of establishing how influential Carol Dweck's work has been around fixed mindset versus growth mindset, for context, I was the other day listening to the audiobook of The Art of Learning by Josh Wadskin. He's a world famous chess player who the movie searching for Bobby Fisher was very much based around him. It was, I think, produced. by his father, if I'm not mistaken. At any rate, within that book, and I was not listening to that book for the purposes of this interview. I was just randomly listening to that book. Within that

book, he devotes a pretty significant portion of it to talking about Carol Dweck's theory of fixed mindset versus growth mindset and how that applies to the world of chess, right? And that's just one example of countless examples in which Dweck's work comes up over and over and over again in areas ranging from from chess to investing to business to education, right, to parenting, to needlepoint. That's right. I mean, you know, yeah. Anything you want to take up, it's a question of are you taking it up from your fixed

or your growth mindset, right? And how being in your growth mindset allows you to sort of try new things, make mistakes, understand and rest the learning from any mistake that we've made, whether we're, whether were willing to persist through challenges or whether we'd rather avoid challenges altogether, right, if we're more in a fixed mindset. Right. Within Dweck's work, is there research that shows that mindset is inculcated in early childhood and sort of fixed at that stage?

No. So we understand mindset actually on a continuum now, right? And this is actually a return to the way that mindset was first developed and understood by Carol and her students. we tend to misunderstand it as this false dichotomy that we've talked about, right? You either have the fixed mindset or you have the growth mindset and that it sort of is fixed early on, right, through some exposure or some learning that might happen in early childhood. What we know is that instead we all have the fixed and the growth mindset within us and it exists on a continuum,

I call it the mindset continuum. And we move between our fixed and our growth mindset based on different predictable situations and the people around us. So I know for myself, right, I can be very much at the end of the day in my fixed mindset, this is the right way to load the dishwasher. And I am like, sure, this is the right way, right? And so, you know, we can occupy fixed in growth mindset in different contexts with different levels of energy, with different people around us. And so understanding those mindset triggers, those situations that move us between our fixed and growth mindset become essential. But to your question about kids and where mindset can come from, there was this very cool study done by Carol Dweck and one of her students, Kyla Hamovitz. And what they did

in this study was they brought kids and their parents into a lab and they gave the kid an unsolvable puzzle. So the kid was never going to get this puzzle right. And what they did, they knew they were recording the situation and the parents knew they were being recorded. Nonetheless, the parents were there to kind of sit and watch their kid as their kids struggled with this puzzle. They didn't know it was unsolvable. And what predicted the kid's mindset and their persistence on the puzzle? Was it the beliefs of the parent? Did the parent have a fixture growth mindset for their kid? Or was it their behavior? And what it turned out was that the beliefs inside of parents' head did not predict whether the kid persisted on the challenging task or tried new strategies or their own mindset beliefs

as measured later afterward. Instead, it were these micro nonverbal behaviors. When the kid got something wrong or got stuck, if the parent kind of winced or they were like, or even worse, helicoptering, taking it away from the kid and saying, let me try it here. I'm going to do this for you. Let me like figure, figure this out. That actually predicted kids willing to, to actually put in more effort and try to figure out new strategies and try something new and persist on the task, it also predicted their mindset beliefs afterwards. So I think that we tend to think that somehow our mindset beliefs are just going to be communicated to someone directly. And what we know from research after research study, whether they be with kids, whether they be

in education, looking at how teachers mindset beliefs and practices actually influence students, whether we look at how managers and leaders' mindsets actually influence their direct reports and people in a company, we actually see that it's much more about behavior. It's what we actually say and do with each other that shapes our mindset in a moment. And given that we all have the fixed and growth mindset within us, it's those things that move us along the mindset continuum. So what I'm hearing then is mindset is environmentally influenced and is dynamic in that it is influenced moment by moment. moment. That's right. That's right. We all have a mindset set point on the continuum where we kind of might chronically hang out on a day-to-day basis. If nothing's going on, we wake up in the morning, how do we generally tend to feel around whether what we can do today is something we can grow and

develop and learn or whether we'd rather play it safe and kind of do the things that make us feel smart and intelligence and talented, right? So you have some level of our mindset set point, but as soon as we're in interaction with other people, as soon as we're in context where we might have to prove or perform for someone else, that's when we know that we shift along the mindset continue and based on those interactions with people around us. And so that brings me actually to a line that you wrote that I really liked, mindset isn't just in your mind. Absolutely.

Mindset, therefore, is a reflection of the people around us, the places that were in, the spaces that we're in, that the environmental and social triggers and cues that surround us. Absolutely. So given that, what do we do if we find ourselves or when we find ourselves in environments that we feel are not queuing us to be our best selves, environments that are queuing us to adopt a fixed mentality? Yeah. Well, I think there's lots of things we can do.

I think the first thing for us as individuals to do is to really understand our mindset that really move us between our fixed and growth mindset. This can happen in our personal relationships. It can happen in family relationships. Certainly can happen in the workplace and in business context. And so these are evaluative situations, high effort situations, critical feedback and the success of others. And knowing which one of these or ones of these, if you're like me, all of them, can trigger

you between your fixed and growth mindset means that then you're, you can be aware when that situation is in front of you and that you can sort of move yourself with many different strategies more towards growth than fix. So let me give you an example of one. Let's say that we are having a team meeting and I'm the leader of the team. You did a great job. And so I want to give you some praise right at the meeting. What would I normally say? What do you think? As a team leader? Yeah. Hey, great job in the report. I love the way that you put it together. It reads really well. It looks really good. The Jaden, they're solid. The layout is amazing. The report looks very polished. Yes, Paula, a plus growth mindset. Feedback.

And so for many people, what we do when we praise people, especially in front of other people, we just give them a real great job, good work, way to go. I was impressed. And what you've done there in your feedback is you really highlighted what I do. well in the context, and then what I should repeat going forward or what should I build on, because you've highlighted the things that were really great about it. And if we were really going to create a true growth mindset culture in that interaction and for that team, we'd not only highlight the specific things that we really wanted to see increased, but we might also give a couple of pieces of feedback as to what could be even improved beyond that. I love the way

that you gave that data in that presentation. I think it'd be really strong if you close the presentation with the story. If you do that, everyone will be able to relate to it. It'll really move the client and I think we'll be able to close the account, right? So even when we give praise, if it's an opportunity for learning, right, rather than just making us feel good, I'm all about feeling good, but feeling good doesn't necessarily tell us what we've done well, what we should repeat and what we should build on. And that's how we would create a more growth-minded culture, not just for us and our personal interactions one-on-one, but the whole team is watching and they then can understand, okay, Paula did this great in her presentation. The next time

I do my presentation, I'll be sure to incorporate some of that feedback. And it's a way to effectively learn in the moment. If I am a manager and I know the success of others, when other people get praise, kind of moves you to your fixed mindset in a chronic way, right? If she's so great, how does it mean that I will ever be great? We start to get in that zero-sum mindset that they're going to only be a little bit of success to go around, then me as a manager, I can sort of create success and create praise in a way that will help people understand how to grow and learn. And the same thing can be done for all four of those mindset triggers, where we really understand where people are likely to embody their fixed mindset, kind of as a default, and then how to build the context for growth.

I want to go through the four triggers in a moment. But before we do that, let's talk about how this applies to money. Yes. Right? Because the way that we handle our money is so heavily influenced by mindset, how does that framework and plus the extension of that framework and fixed in growth in the context of environment, how does that apply to the way that we manage money? Great question. So in our fixed mindset, you either have it or you don't. You're smart or you're not, right? You're talented or you're not. You're good with money or you're bad with money. Or you're bad with money. Right. exactly. And so we can set up ourselves in those boxes, which can make us very risk averse. It can make us not want to try new things, kind of play it safe, right? You can think about the consequences for that

for different investment choices, for example. I would also say that when it comes to spending money, we also see mindset really influencing what we're willing to spend on. What is money good for, right? And so if the question is, what is money good for in the fixed mindset, I want to show myself to be someone who's smart, who's talented, who's capable, who's competent. And so I will want to spend money on things that help meet myself enhancing goals, things that make me look good, the very best, right? And so we see people, if they're triggered to their fixed mindset, very much paying attention and seeking information out about what can optimize the way. that they are seen both to themselves and to others. The fancy cars, the fancy watches, the fancy handbags. Absolutely.

Blow it to show it. Absolutely. Am I buying this French cookbook in order to impress my friends with this incredible dinner that I plan to do? Or if I'm in my growth mindset, the goal, what is money good for, is usually about learning. It's about learning about myself. It's about learning about the world. It's about learning about others.

And that's what I'm going to want to spend my money on. And so people spend a lot of money on experiences, especially those that will contribute to their learning and development. You can think about the French cookbook. Am I doing it for the dinner party that's going to impress all my friends? Or am I doing it to really stretch my culinary skills and to learn some new things and see how it goes, right? Two very different reasons for the same kind of purchase. And what we see over and over is that companies know this. And so companies know that there are different ways that consumers are really going to be approaching product services and things that we are looking to buy.

And so they will really describe and show different kinds of products and services in these ways that speak to people either in their fixed or their growth mindset. What are some examples of that? Yeah. So in a study we did, I did with Josh Clarkson at the University of Cincinnati, we did this study where we looked at priming people either towards or fixed or their growth mindset. And we can do that because we all have both within us, right? And so we moved people to their fixed mindset. And then we gave them choices as to the kinds of things that they would prefer. We gave them a certain amount of money and we said, these are the kinds of things you can purchase. What do you think you might be interested in? Merleau lovers, they wanted the highest point Merlot possible, right? The one that was off the charts

in terms of how delicious and prestigious it was if they were in their fixed mindset. If they were in their growth mindset, they preferred a totally different wine than their favorite wine because it would allow them to learn the distinctions between categories, right, how different things were from each other. We gave them chocolate choices. In the fixed mindset, I want the best, deepest flavor of chocolate in the growth mindset. I'm willing to try the most exotic one, the one that's going to be. the one that I'm not sure I'm going to like or not, but it'll give me a sense of what's possible

in this category, right? Software, am I willing to try the beta? That's in my growth mindset. I'm willing to learn new things. Yeah, there might not be perfect, but I'm really going to get a chance to see the cutting edge here and to learn about how this is working, whereas I want the award-winning software if I'm in my fixed mindset, right? We also did it with electric vehicles, right? Like, do we want the highest performing electric vehicle? That's the fixed mindset. All. about prestige and performance and what's going to make me look good, or do I want a new technology that's just being developed in this electric vehicle? And so we see that these different pieces, people are attracted to different things based on whether they're coming from their fixed

or their growth mindset. Is there overlap between growth mindset and novelty seeking or risk-taking? Yeah, that was what we were actually looking at. In another study that we did, we had people do something like pick for the fifth is free. So make like a five grouping of different kinds of things. We did toothpaste. We did songs if you were going to put together an album from downloads. We did all kinds of different things. And what we found over and over was that when you're in your fixed mindset, you tend to go for less diversity, right? Less risk seeking. You want to do things that are similar, but you want the things that you perceive as best or most prestigious. Because that's going to reflect well on you. It's also going to expose you to what is best in the product category. But in the

growth mindset, we see that people are willing to go for much more diversity, right? I'm going to pick in that five things of toothpaste. I might pick three or four, maybe even five different ones in order to really see the differences between them. I'll walk away with those, right? Or the music downloads. I might pick different genres rather than the top three or four or five songs in the same genre that I'm really interested in and that I like. That's more of the fixed mindset choice. And so we do see that people really create their worlds, the things they surround themselves with, the things they actually are attracted to based on whether we're occupying our fixed or our growth mindset in the moment. The holidays are right around the corner and if you're hosting,

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That's what being a fifth third better is all about. It's about not being just one thing, but many things for our customers. Big Bank muscle, fintech hustle. That's your commercial payments, a fifth, third better. You mentioned earlier that fixed and growth mindsets live on a spectrum, and we all have both fixed mindset and growth mindset tendencies within us. And you also mentioned that there are four triggers, environmental triggers that can sometimes push us towards having a fixed mindset. What are those four triggers? They are evaluative situations, high effort situations, critical feedback, and the success of others. Oh, okay. So those are all big, fancy words. Yeah. Let's break them all down. Let's start with the first one, evaluative situations.

Evaluative situations are when we anticipate being evaluated or judged by others. Okay. So we think we're going to get judged. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Absolutely. We're doing something and we know the judgment is likely to come. Someone's going to read it. Someone's going to respond to it. And judgment is coming. Okay, yeah. And I can see how that would lead to fixed mindset thinking. What's the second one? The second one is high effort situations. These are situations that are often new or novel to us. We might be getting a stretch assignment or we might have to master a totally new domain when we get reassigned to a new team. And so it requires a lot of time and attention. And a lot of times that moves us to our fixed mindset because we think that if it doesn't come easy, maybe I don't have it. So that can really threaten our sense of ourselves and move us towards our fixed mindset. So we have to become a beginner again. That's right. That's right. All right. What's the third one?

The third one is critical feedback. Now, instead of anticipating someone's evaluation, the evaluation has come and the response is not so good. And so a lot of times that moves us to our fixed mindset because we start to take that critical feedback as a pronouncement on our goodness or our badness, our intelligence and our competence, who we are rather than the problem or the issue at hand. And so there's ways to move us to growth mindset in those moments of critical feedback. Okay. So we like we internalize critical feedback basically. Yeah, as as about us rather than about the thing. Right. And what's the four? The last one is the success of others. And this is the idea that when we praise other people or we see

people praise, this is the trigger I call the frenemy trigger when people watch others' careers they hear that someone has actually been promoted, how does that actually make us feel? Does it move us to our fixed mindset where we say, oh, wow, success is zero sum. If she's so good, how can I ever be as good? Or in the growth mindset, the success of others is, wow, she's so good. I'm so inspired. I'll figure out what she did to prepare and I'll figure out how to apply that next time. Okay, so this is like watching someone that do really well with investments.

That's right. Like your buddy from college did really well in. investing in real estate and you're watching their success and you're like, well, man, I must be a bad investor. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes, exactly. A lot of times we can think about time also in that example.

If he had this incredible success in this amount of time, I'm so late to the party. I'll never be able to catch up. Yeah. Oh, I hear that. I hear that audience. I'm looking at you. I'm looking at you. I hear that from a lot of people.

people say, I'm too late to the party. That's right. That's right. And that's our fixed mindset, sort of rearing its head in the moment, right? There's nothing I can do about it. I'm just too late. And a lot of times it will stop us from taking action going forward, unless we can occupy our growth mindset where we can sort of say, okay, I'm now in a different moment. I can learn. I can grow. I can develop. I can try some things. What we see is that in our growth mindset, people are really tuned to data. In our fixed mindset, a lot of times we just rely on our gut. If we have it or we don't, we think we're smart.

We just are willing to take risks based on our gut rather than actual information and data collection. But if we can move to our growth mindset in the moments where we think we're too late to the party, we can actually start to learn. We take in new information. We can develop. We can grow. We can gather data along the way and make sure we're making progress in the right direction

and gathering that data relatively frequently so that we can pivot soon when we see that we're off track. It's actually a much more effective investment and a strategy through the lens of the growth mindset than the fixed mindset. Going back to success of others, that reminded me of something that I've heard you describe the culture of genius as opposed to a culture of growth. Can you talk about what a culture of genius is? Because it sounds, when you talked about the success of others, it reminded me of this genius worship that we sometimes can have. Exactly, exactly. So the culture of genius is a context. It could be a team. It could be a one-on-one relationship. It can be a whole organization that really embodies that fixed mindset idea. You either have it or you don't. It could absolutely be a family. It could be in a friendship. but it's this embodies that idea of the fixed mindset together in that dynamic. So in cultures of genius, we focus on star performers. We give those star individuals, the ones who have it, usually with some idea that they have

some kind of innate talent or skill, they were just born with it. They're just born lucky, right? Or they're just born knowing how to be good with money. And we kind of worship that individual. We put a lot of resources and status and strategies around them. They get to decide how it is that we're going to invest. They get to decide how it is in the workplace that we're going to make a strategy and move forward in our plan of execution of that strategy.

And so the culture of genius really reifies these individuals who are thought to have it, those who are smart, those who are talented, those who are naturals, right at this. The culture of growth, on the other hand, really embodies and holds at the center that growth mindset belief that no matter where we start, no matter where we start, no matter what when we start, we all have potential within us that we can grow, learn, and develop with the support of others and seeking help on Northstock and pivoting and trying new strategies. And so that is a really different context because then those contexts actually do provide a lot of supports for people to grow, learn, and develop, right?

And they're going to give people feedback on a regular basis because they know that that feedback's going to be used and helpful for someone to figure out what their strengths and weaknesses are and then how to develop in that context. What I often hear about startups and about new companies is, is so much of it is based on who the founder is. Yes. And does that founder have a vision and can they execute on that vision? And as a founder, you do have to have a vision.

You do have to be committed to it. You do have to sort of filter out the noise from the cacophony of people who are telling you to change course. So how do you square these together? Yeah. You want a culture of growth and a culture of collaboration, but also you do at some point need a visionary. And I kind of say that with air quotes, but also with, you know, I mean it in the most literal sense possible. Yes.

You need a person with vision who is committed to that and who is willing to filter out noise that is a distraction from that. Yeah. I think that a lot of times people think that there's a tradeoff between ability, or leadership and mindset. And what we know from the literature and from our own research studies is that these things are orthogonal to each other. They are independent.

And so everybody wants, particularly when it comes to investors who are looking to invest in early stage companies and entrepreneurs and others, they're going to want high ability people, people who are visionary, people who are leaders.

The question is, do you want those individuals to have a fixed mindset about their vision, a fixed mindset about their leadership and their skills, where they really, we have seen in the data, actually become very rigid in the ways in which they think that vision should be implemented or kind of blind and deaf to the market conditions that they might need to actually pivot and move around. And you can see people actually get very fragile in that context because that fixed mindset about this is what I'm good at. This is what our company is

to do. This is how the company is going to do it actually puts people in a box, not just the people who are working for that individual, but that person themselves. We actually find that the highest performers prefer a culture of growth to a culture of genius. Because in that culture of growth, right, there's room for growth and learning. There's room to make a mistake and to learn from it. there's room to actually assess on a weekly basis, on a quarterly basis, on a monthly basis, looking at the conditions around us to say, what is it that we actually need to learn here, what do we need to do to pivot, how are we going to respond to these kinds of contexts, while maintaining that vision, while maintaining that high level of ability as a leader.

The culture of genius puts a straight jacket on leaders. There's no room to grow and develop. A mistake is deadly because it's a sign that maybe you don't have it, that you're not skilled, that you're not talented, that you had the wrong vision. Because in a culture of genius, it's you either have it or you don't. Right. And then this is where imposter syndrome can flourish. A hundred percent. We've talked a lot about how these triggers and these cultures influence a given environment.

We've talked a lot about how this plays out in the workplace. So I want to ask this question with two branches that some people who are listening to this are employees of the big, large institutions that are very static and slow to change, largely because of their size. So maybe they work for universities. Maybe they work for government agencies. Maybe they work for Fortune 500 companies. What can those listeners do to influence more of a culture of growth or growth mentality within their organization? So that's one element of the question. Big question. The second branch of the question is.

is for the other portion of the audience who they either work at super small businesses or they are entrepreneurs. Yep. And they either work solo as freelancers or maybe they have a small team of two, three, four, five people, right? What can they do? Because they're starting a brand new culture from scratch from the ground up. And it's nimble and it's flexible because it's their company or it's a very small business.

That's right. So two situations. Yeah. We'll tackle each of them. Let's start at the beginning of that question. So one thing I will say about this is that I am a strong believer that everyone, regardless of their role, regardless of their organization, regardless of their team, culture and climate, everyone is a culture creator. And we have the power in our personal interactions, what we say and do, how we interact with each other, how we give feedback to each other, how we give feedback to each other, how we. how we ask people to join us on various projects and in teams, right? We all have the power to create the

mindset culture around us. So I'll just start there. Then the question is, how do you do this in sort of a slow moving organization or worse, maybe in a dominant culture of genius, right? Where the whole organization seems to have a pretty strong culture of genius. What I'll say is that just like personal mindset is not fixed or growth, right? It's a continuum and we move between it. So too is mindset culture. It's a mindset culture continuum. And what I see in most very large scale organizations is that many of these companies are a mixture of a culture of genius and a culture of growth. So one of the things I do when I start working with a very large company is we usually use post surveys that already exist in these companies and we'll measure mindset culture in the

context. And then we will look at the different teams and divisions of the organization. and we'll do what we call a bright spot, hot spot analysis where we can really find the places that are super culture of genius, very fixed minded. And we can find the places in the company that are very growth minded. And what we can do there is really understand and go deep, create these case studies that really show how did that culture of growth actually take root? What are they saying and doing to each other? How do they lead team meetings? How do they give assignments? How do they do all of the work that everybody is going to do as part of the company?

particularly to build the strong culture of growth. And then we can understand that and share it with others. Now, that's at the organizational level. If I'm an individual, let's say, and I'm surrounded by more of a culture, a fixed-minded culture of genius, there's several things I can do. One is to find other people who are dedicated to growth and development by creating our growth mindset pods, right? Sometimes those can be individuals inside an organization.

Sometimes there are people outside of an organization, other friends that work at other companies, because they might have different ways of growing and learning and developing that I might not think about in my own organization. But with some creative thinking, with some creative strategies and approaches, I might be able to adopt them for myself in this environment. Another thing is to really understand the mindset triggers of your boss. If you're a regular individual contributor and your supervisor or manager has particular mindset triggers, understanding their fixed and growth mindset triggers. So you can present your work

to them in a way that's really going to help them see where your strengths are and how you can develop further. One thing I talk about a lot is if you are an individual contributor and you really want a growth opportunity and you see that your manager has a particular task, they have to do it weekly or monthly, it's kind of annoying to them and they know how to do it while they could do it in their sleep. You can ask if you can help support them on that. That gives you a growth and learning opportunity, it also frees up their time so that they can try something new. And so you're subtly creating, right, this like culture of growth, even though the dominant culture might be a culture of genius. So there's room for these microcultures within larger cultures in organizations, especially these

large companies. So create a microculture. That's right. Create a microculture. Look at everything through the lens of learning. How can you actually rest the learning on a day-to-day basis? from the things that you're already doing. And that's where being able to talk with someone else, here's the way I've always done it. I want to try something new. I want to kind of move into this other direction. How do you think I should go about doing it? Who should I talk to? Those kinds of ways, really mindset we have learned is not something you need to do on your own because it's not just in our head, right? It's something you create in context and with others, in company of others. And so finding that growth mindset pod and building that over time can really be helpful.

You know, a lot of people who are listening to this have a side hustle that they maybe at some point want to build into a business. Yes. But it's going to start at least as a small business, a business of one, two, three people, maybe four or five. Yeah. In those cases, you're starting a company culture from scratch. Yes. I'll preempt this question by saying prior to starting afford anything or prior to really growing it. I never really understood the notion of company.

company culture. But as we were starting to grow out the team, it became clear to me like, wow, company culture is, it's not just a nebulous term. It's incredibly important. Yes. It guides our data, everything about our day-to-day interaction. That's right. So when you're starting a culture from scratch and you really get to think about how you want to build it, how do you build it in a way that facilitates growth mindset? And I guess within a family, You know, you're also creating culture. How do you create that growth mindset culture? Yeah. So there's a couple of ways I could take this. One, I will just say that we have a lot of research on this question. I've done studies with hundreds of entrepreneurs, founders, and early stage

leaders in like series A, series B type companies. And what we find is that the mindset beliefs of those leaders are extremely important for shaping the way in which they will set the mindset culture of their company. So that how does it actually show up? It shows up in who I look to recruit, who I look to retain, how we deal with mistakes, how we deal with challenges that we're going to come up against. All of these questions are shaped by our mindset. So let me give you an example. What we found in this study of hundreds of entrepreneurs, and these were largely technology companies, we found was that when founders and leaders had more of a fixed mindset, that belief. They wanted their company to be innovative. They wanted it to be really grow their market share

of whatever they were producing or developing, but they didn't want to hire people who were smarter than them. That's a real problem. That's a huge red flag. How good luck to you. Right. Trying to build a company at the edge of technology, pushing that technology forward, but you want people who have a skill set that is less than yours so that you feel good about yourself. So you feel like you're the resident genius and nobody else, right? And we see story after story and example after example of growth-minded individuals who really, when they bring on team members, they're going to look for complementary skills. They're going to look for skills that actually don't already exist in the company so that individuals can really figure out how to grow, how to move in directions and the knowledge base that they're

bringing is something that's actually going to challenge perhaps the leader's ideas. That's true growth mindset culture is one that's willing to learn from others that's going to seek out people with different kinds of skills and abilities. When we make a mistake, do we kind of flinch? Do we fire people automatically? Do we bring them along to help them learn and grow? Do we kind of rest the learning from that and share it across the small organization so that everyone benefits? So we don't make that mistake again. And we can iteratively and more quickly and efficiently make progress towards what it is we're doing together as an organization. How do we apply this to families? Hmm. Families, it's a really interesting dynamic. One of the favorite practices that I have seen, and it's based in research. Several studies have shown the effectiveness of this, is a lot of times people talk about highs and lows at the dinner table, right, with their kids to sort of show that every day you're going to have a peak and you might have a valley, a rose and a thorn, right? That's good. It shows the dynamic nature of what we experience in life, shows that things can change, which is.

is growth-minded. But instead, I recommend the practice of my favorite mistake. So what was my favorite mistake that I made? What was your favorite mistake that you made today? Right? And we can sort of, some of them will be serious and some of them might bring some tears and some of them are going to be funny and kind of we can laugh about them. But either way, you're sort of showing that making mistakes is good. It's something we actually want to celebrate doing. And we want to be learning from those mistakes together as a group. And if we haven't been able to learn from the mistake yet, maybe that's something we can do as a family, right, over dinner, over conversation. The ways in which we describe mistakes, the ways in which we respond to shortcomings in our family environment

really creates the mindset culture. I'll say another thing in families, particularly when there's more than one child in the family, a lot of times what we see, and this happened in my own family, this kid is the good one at school. This one is the smart one. And this kid is the sporty one. And this kid is the creative one. What does that do to us over time? Right. It's very fixed minded. And it's a culture of genius because then you're supposed to excel at the thing that you're, yes, supposed to be good at. That you have been identified as being good at, right? And you go down that route. And then suddenly you wake up, you're 30 and you're like, wait a minute. What if I want to try art? What if I want to try art? What if I want to try music? What if I want to try something totally different than the academics that I've been put in

the box for, right? It's a process of unbecoming. It's a process of becoming someone new. And it's challenged by that previous fixed-minded culture of genius that was created in the family. So we can actually think about how we do that, how we actually support growth and development, trying new things, even though, yes, we might have some strengths initially or some places where we really excel, trying to keep our kids flexible in that and pushing them. Michelle Obama used to say that for her kids, she would give them a choice. They would be involved in two activities, extracurricular activities. One that they got to pick, and it was usually the thing they were very good at, and one that she got to pick.

And it was usually something that she thought would be a challenge for them, that they might not like immediately, but that was the deal, right? Because that's how you create a culture of growth. You kind of expose kids to these ideas that challenge learning something new. Even if you don't like it at first, you never know. It might be something that ends up being a passion, right? But you don't know unless you don't try. And it wasn't that she forced them to stay in those, right, areas, but that actually just the process of trying new things created that growth mindset for themselves

and created a growth mindset culture in the family. Well, we're coming to the end of our time. My final question for you, what would you say to anyone who's listening? who thinks, I'm bad with money or I'm a bad investor or I really suck at saving. Yes. Well, I would say it sounds to me like you're in your fixed mindset. Let's figure out ways to go towards growth, right? So maybe you can surround yourself with people who could be money mentors, people who you

could learn from in a safe way, right, about how to get progressively better, looking and doing some research on what small steps and actions you can take to kind of move yourself out of that way of seeing yourself. I think the first thing we have to do if we want to move towards our growth mindset is to recognize that we are in our fixed mindset, that we've put ourselves in these boxes. And then to realize how that's holding us back, it actually makes us less likely to take the first step, to do research to figure out what those next steps could be, to actually gather data along the way to see if we're making progress. Is our effort effective or not? And so, I would say understanding, okay, wow, that's my fixed mindset. Oh, there's my fixed mindset again. It's

normal to have a fixed mindset. Oftentimes about money, especially if we grew up in context where there was that kind of language or it was a comparative context or we were in a situation where we were in lack, right, in many contexts, then we can come up to think about ourselves as not having enough money or not being good at money or seeing this kind of thing. But recognizing that that's our fixed mindset and then being able to say, okay, I'm not going to let that hold me back. I know that it's possible to move towards growth. And here are some initial steps I can take to do that. That's what I'd say we can do. Nice. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they'd like to hear more about you and your work? Yes, you can find me at maryc.murphy.com. There you can see my book. You can take mindset trigger

assessment. You can actually, based on your own context, whether you're an entrepreneur or whether you are in a very large company, you can do a culture cues audit to see whether you're in a more culture of genius or culture of growth and get some strategies for how to affect and be a great culture creator. Thank you, Dr. Murphy. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one. Dr. Murphy establishes the definition between a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset and understanding the distinction is crucial for the discussion that follows. The fixed mindset is a belief that we have that suggests you either have it or you don't. You're smart or you're not.

Talent, intelligence, ability. It's a relatively static trait. We're born with a certain amount. And though we can change in some ways here and there, those levels can't really increase significantly over our lifespan. The growth mindset, on the other hand, is the belief. that our talents, our intelligence, our ability, their potentials. And we can grow and develop them with trying new strategies, seeking help from others and persisting through challenges. We all have

the fixed and the growth mindset within us. And it exists on a continuum, I call it the mindset continuum. And we move between our fixed and our growth mindset based on different predictable situations and the people around us. And so fixed mindset versus growth mindset exists a long a continuum. That is the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two. In the second key takeaway, Dr. Murphy describes the research around how external environments can impact the mindset that we hold. Understanding this allows us to more intentionally choose the environments in which we place ourselves so that we can choose environments that facilitate growth rather than environments that lead to us feeling stuck, stifled, or unfulfilled.

We actually see that it's much more about behavior. It's what we actually say and do with each other that shapes our mindset in a moment. And given that we all have the fixed and growth mindset within us, it's those things that move us along the mindset continuum. We all have a mindset set point on the continuum where we kind of might chronically hang out. on a day-to-day basis. If nothing's going on, we wake up in the morning, how do we generally tend to feel around whether what we can do today is something we can grow and develop and learn or whether we'd rather play it safe and kind of do the things that make us feel smart and intelligence and talented, right? So you have some level of our mindset set point, but as soon as

we're in interaction with other people, as soon as we're in context where we might have to prove or perform for someone else, that's when we know that we shift. along the mindset continuum based on those interactions with people around us. And so that is the second key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number three. Now, let's recap. So far in our takeaways, Dr. Murphy has shared the definition of fixed and growth mindsets. She has described the fact that mindsets actually shift back and forth,

and she has talked about how our immediate environment can influence these mindsets. shifts. In this last takeaway, Dr. Murphy shares which factors within our environment are most influential at triggering shifts between fixed and growth mindsets. I think the first thing for us as individuals to do is to really understand our mindset triggers that really move us between our fixed and growth mindset. These are evaluative situations, high effort situations, critical feedback and the success of others. And, knowing which one of these or ones of these, if you're like me, all of them, can trigger you between your fixed and growth mindset means that then you can be aware when that situation is in

front of you and that you can sort of move yourself with many different strategies more towards growth than fixed. Evaluative situations, high effort situations, these situations are potent influencers as we shift between fixed and growth mindset. Once we understand this, we can start implementing strategies that help us shift towards the growth mindset that we desire, the growth mindset that's good for us. And so, those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Dr. Mary Murphy. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do three things. Number one, most importantly, share it with a friend or a family member. Number two, please follow us in Apple Podcasts and Spotify, as well as on YouTube. You can find us

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