High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 289: Success Mindsets with Ryan Gottfredson, Ph.D., Consultant, Trainer and Speaker

Episode Date: November 19, 2019

Ryan Gottfredson, Ph.D. is a cutting-edge leadership consultant, author, trainer, and researcher. He helps improve organizations, leaders, teams, and employees by improving their mindsets. Ryan holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources from Indiana University and is a leadership and management professor at the Mihaylo College of Business and Economics at California State University-Fullerton (CSUF). He is a well-published leadership, management, and organizational behavior researcher in several industry leading journals: Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Business Horizons, Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, and Journal of Leadership Studies. Ryan has consulted for dozens of organizations across a variety of industries including banking, healthcare, education, and energy. In this podcast, Ryan and Cindra talk about: Ryan’s new book “Success Mindsets” (available What leaders need to do to be successful The 4 types of mindsets The 4 desires that lead to negative mindsets 4 ways to change your mindsets You can find a full description of the podcast episode at cindrakamphoff.com/ryan. You can find Ryan at https://ryangottfredson.com/.

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. You're listening to episode 289 with Dr. Ryan Godfrinson. My name is Sindra Kampoff, the host of the podcast, certified mental performance coach, author, and speaker. And today I'm excited to bring to you Ryan. Now, Ryan is a cutting-edge leadership consultant, author, trainer, and researcher. He helps improve organizations, leaders, teams, and employees by helping them improve their mindsets.

Ryan holds a Ph.D. in organizational behavior and human resources from Indiana University and is a leadership and management professor at the College of Business and Economics at California State University Fullerton. He is a well-published researcher in topics such as leadership, management, and organizational behavior, and he's published in journals such as the Journal of Management and the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies. He's also worked with dozens of organizations across a variety of industries, including banking, healthcare, education, and energy. Now, I am most excited about this podcast and bringing this to you because I got a copy

of Ryan's book. So Ryan's new book, which is available on pre-order, is called Success Mindsets, Your Keys to Unlocking Greater Success in Your Life, Work, and Leadership. And I was able to read the book before interviewing Ryan. And so in this book and in this interview, we really talk about these four types of mindsets that are highlighted in his new book, Success Mindsets, that are really helpful. And everything that he talks about is based on research. So I really appreciated that in this interview. We also talk about what leaders need to do to be successful,

which again is backed by the research in leadership and organizational behavior. We talk about four desires that lead to negative mindsets and at least four ways to change your mindsets. So I think you're going to really enjoy this interview, really practical based on research and I think you're going to learn a lot. So we'd love to hear from you. You can find both Ryan and I over on Twitter and on Instagram and on LinkedIn. So we'd love to hear from you. Let us know what you took from the podcast. Now, my favorite part of this podcast is when he says,

our mindsets are the drivers of our thinking, learning, and behavior. Here we go. Without further ado, let's bring on Ryan. Ryan, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here today to share with us your wisdom and your knowledge about mindset. So how are you doing over there in California? I'm doing great. I'm guessing I'm warmer than you if I'm assuming you're in Minnesota. Yes, we actually already have a little snow on the ground, which is kind of a bummer. Yes, it is. But I'm controlling what I can control, right? For sure.

I love being in the state. But the winters sometimes are a little chilly. I can imagine. There's a reason. I mean, we joke around that we get paid in sunshine dollars. So California is a more expensive place to live and where we make it is in sunshine dollars. I love it. I love it. So Ryan, I'm looking forward to talking with you today about your upcoming book, Success Mindsets.

And I thought I would just kind of start the interview by, if you could tell us a little bit about what you're passionate about and kind of, let's go from there. Yeah. So, um, why the way that I come at mindsets is from the leadership realm. So to give you just a quick backstory is when I was in high school, my favorite class was sports psychology. And in that class, I, which, you know, resonates with you. I read Steve Benarkuby's book, seven habits. I read a book by Mike Krzyzewski, a book by Pat Riley, a book by Rick Majerus. And these were all on leadership. And I just remember thinking, if there's a career where I could study leadership and promote it to others, like that's what I want to do. But I had no idea how to go about doing that.

So several years later, I met a Harvard Business School professor and I asked him, what do you teach? And he says, organizational behavior. And I said, well, what's that? And then he goes on to essentially say all the stuff that I had learned in my sports psychology class. I said, okay, well, this is for me. So then I set down the academic route to do a PhD in organizational behavior, which I did at Indiana University. And my dissertation was on leadership. And for the last 70 years, the primary focus on leadership has been what do leaders need to do to be effective? So on leadership behaviors.

But and so I studied that as part of my dissertation, but it felt a little empty to me because and I think you'd probably agree with me that leadership is more than just doing the right thing. It's about being a certain type of person. So for the last six or seven years, I've been on this quest to dive into this being element of leadership. And that's led me to mindsets. So one of the things that I've learned about mindsets, as you articulated, is our mindsets are our mental lenses that shape how we view the world and how we view the world shapes our thinking, our learning, and our behavior. They're truly foundational to everything that we do,

but most people aren't conscious to those, to our mindsets. So if we can make these mindsets conscious to ourselves, we can empower ourselves for greater success in really every aspect of our life, whether that's personal success, leadership success, or athletic success. Excellent. And so what are your thoughts on how do we make these mindsets more conscious or something that we're more aware of? Yeah, because this is the tricky thing, right? I've heard other people say that mindsets are the secret to success. But part of me says, well, are they really that big of a secret? I think most people understand that mindsets are important for success. I think where the secret comes in is when you ask the question, well,

what mindsets do you need to have to be successful? And that's where I found that not many people have clarity on. and so I think that the first step for unlocking greater success through a focus on our mindsets is coming to some sort of clarity about what mindsets we need to create and we need to put labels on those because if we don't have a label for something we can't focus on it and so if we could put labels to our mindset, it allows us to evaluate our current mindsets and also the mindsets that we want to adopt. And then that provides the direction for shifting our mindsets and upgrading our success. And in your dissertation, Ryan, when

you were looking at, you know, in terms of how leaders be instead of maybe do? Tell us generally, what do you see? What does the research say about what the best leaders do and who they are? So when it comes to the doing element, there's a variety of different perspectives on this. And hence, you probably heard we've got transformational leadership, authentic leadership, servant leadership, responsible leadership. And the list is only growing. And that's one of the things I find problematic is because the reality is that all of these different leadership types, while they have a different bent to them, the reality is they're incredibly overlapping. And so when we boil down the doing to leadership, it really

boils down to two primary factors. As a leader, you need to build positive relationships with those that you lead. And then you need to be able to provide them with effective guidance and direction. So you need to give them a purpose. You need to give them expectations. And you need to, together, we personalize, when we put those together, we personalize our approach and allow for this individualization effect to occur. And once we individualize, figure out their unique whys, give them direction, remove barriers, then we set people up for success. So that's kind of like, it's a good approach because it gives leaders kind of boxes to check off. Absolutely. And that's kind of like, it's a good approach because it gives leaders kind of boxes to check off. Absolutely. And that's really helpful. But if we're just checking off boxes

and not kind of being that ourselves, we come across as being hypocritical oftentimes or disingenuous. And that's just as important. In fact, some of the more recent research that I'm working on is what we're finding is that the followers perceptions of the leader's motives matter just as much as the leader's actual behaviors and oftentimes more. So our perceptions of their motives matter more than what they do in many instances. Right. And so that helps us get closer to this idea and the importance of mindsets when it comes to leadership. But the reality is that I'm talking about this in terms of leadership, but it's the same in terms of being a parent, being a friend, being a coworker.

Like, it's just all about being somebody and having the proper motives. And when we have the right being, when we have the right motives, then people become willing to be influenced by us. And if we want to be a positive influence, we've got to be focusing on our being. And I think mindsets is one of the best ways to do that. And, you know, when I follow up on that kind of finding that you just said about of three different motives, a self-focused motive, an organizational focused motive, and a follower focused motive. And what we found is, maybe it's no surprise, leaders who come across as being self-focused, generally that doesn't lead to very good outcomes. When they have an organizational focus, this is generally quite good. Followers see this as a good thing. We're glad that they're focused

on organization success. But the best focus to have, and it's no surprise from a follower's perspective, is if the leader has a follower focus in their leadership. So the idea is the more the leader is focused on his or her subordinates or the people he or she is leading, the more he or she is going to get out of their people. And so that's the basic idea. So that's some of the motives that we're looking at. But I think you're right. There's a broader aspect of this, which is our purpose and our why that is critically important as well. Absolutely.

And I think it does start with mindset because if you're just fully focused on yourself and, you know, maybe what you can gain from the followers, you know, then the people that you lead really can see that they can see your mindset come through, through your behavior. Yep, for sure. In fact, let me give you, and this will be a prequel to some of the things that I'm assuming that we're going to chat about, but let me give you four desires. Okay. So the first desire is a desire to look good, a desire to be right, a desire to avoid problems and a desire to get ahead. Okay. Right. Do those seem like bad desires on the surface? No. Right.

They don't. I mean, who wants to look bad, be wrong, have problems and get passed up? Absolutely. Nobody does. Right. But then we ask ourselves, where is the focus when those are our desires? On us. On us. Right. So when we have these desires, we are in self protection mode and, and that's, and these are associated with negative mindsets actually, but there's higher levels of thinking. And so instead of wanting to look good, we want to learn and grow. Instead of wanting to be right, we want to find truth. Instead of wanting to avoid problems, we want to accomplish goals. Instead of wanting to get ahead, we want to help everybody get ahead. And those are just higher levels of thinking. And when we make that shift away from self-protection

mode, it moves us into organization advanced mode. And I imagine, you know, we were talking before we jumped on is I'm a little jealous that you get to work with professional athletes. And one of the things that you said is this is very cutthroat context environment because, and it oftentimes will make players turn inward to be in that self-protection mode. But if they're in that self-protection mode, they're not going to be performing at their highest level, right? They need to be in that organization advance mode. And one of the things that we've got to realize is they've got to make some efforts to get there. But also teams themselves have got to try to figure out an environment and a culture that allows for that to occur. And that's just as important.

And so when I work with organizational leaders, that's the approach that we take is, okay, what do leaders need to do individually? And what does the organization need to do as a whole to create a culture where leaders don't feel like they need to self-protect, and instead they can focus on organization advancing? And what would you say are, you know, one or two of the top ways that teams can do that and that we can create this culture where people can really thrive and not be in like self-protection mode. Yeah. So when you, when you look at those desires that we talked about, looking good, being right, avoiding problems and getting ahead. So we actually need, not that we want to encourage this, but we need to create space for people to look bad, for people to be wrong, for people to make mistakes. And we've got to try to limit the competition involved.

And in professional sports, that's a really hard piece to do. That's really hard. But as a whole, what we need to do is we just need to create, in other words, a safe space. And when people feel safe, they're able to bring out their best. You know, and so one of the things that's been interesting, and I'm not sure you're tuned into this working with NFL athletes, but one of the things that I've seen is that the Indianapolis Colts have a field goal kicker at the moment. He's been there forever. One of the best field goal kickers of all time. And he struggled this season. And so some people are saying, well, are the Colts going to cut him? Because it's a typical thing in the NFL. If your kicker's not

doing well, you just cut them and get a new one. And, and they've decided to stick with him. And what they're doing as a whole, and who knows how it'll turn out, because he's getting up there in age. I believe he's the oldest NFL player, and who knows if he's just out of his prime or if he's just in the front. We don't know. But what the Colts are doing is they're probably sending a larger signal to everybody else on the team that suggests that we have got your back. This is a safe place for you. And I talked to a former NFL player a couple months ago, and he played with three different teams. Played with the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Oakland Raiders, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And I said,

which team did you like playing for the most? He said, hands down the Pittsburgh Steelers. I said, why is that? He said, it is a family atmosphere. Like the ownership at the top, it starts with the, it's a family leadership and that carries down through the organization. He said the other two were much more just kind of cut and dry. You didn't feel welcome there. You didn't feel like family. And so that kind of speaks to some of those cultural dynamics that the organizations need to create. It reminds me of the concept of psychological safety, right? That you know, yeah, that you know that people have your back and that you're not going to be ridiculed or embarrassed when you make a mistake. And I mean, I see in sports for sure, when athletes

get behind their coach and their leaders, it's usually a place where they feel warm and welcome and they feel safe. And it's okay if they make a mistake, they're not going to be embarrassed on the sidelines or going to be yelled at or called out. And I think that's hard. I think maybe that's maybe a little bit more of a new way of coaching or leadership than kind of this old school. I don't know if you've been following Minnesota sports, but P.J. Fleck would be like a great leader who really does create this family atmosphere where people it's OK if you make a mistake. Right. Like and I think that's important where we kind of learn and we're not so tight and anxious that we can't be ourselves. Yeah, for sure. Can I give you an example of how I saw this come out the other day? Sure. And I'll be honest, I'm going to throw my wife under the bus a little bit.

Normally isn't like this, but it was really interesting because I think this is the typical reaction to a leader or a coach or whatever. So we just had Halloween, right? And we have a playroom that we just recarpeted. So it's kind of like the new no shoes zone in our house. And the other day, she went in there and there was chocolate, like embedded into the carpet. And so she was just like, who did this? Who is it? Own up to it. You're in great, you know, you're in big trouble. And then of course, my two kids are like, Oh, I didn't do it. I didn't do are in great you know you're in big trouble and then of course my two kids are like oh I didn't do it I didn't do it because you know she's already a little upset and in one way like you get it right like this is the typical approach of a coach is you did something wrong we need accountability own up to it and and I need to i need to set the tone so this never happens again right but the

reality is is it's probably going to happen again right and so when when you come down really hard on somebody for this little mistake what happens if they make a mistake in the future or they fail again they want to sweep it under the rug as opposed to bring it to light. And that's what we want to happen because we want to address the problems when they occur. Because in reality, what I want to have happen with my kids is if they spill chocolate or something again on the carpet in the future, I want them to be able to come to me and tell me right away so that we can clean it up rather than have it dry in and get all, you know, gross and disgusting. And so as a coach, that's, you know, some coaches take that hard line, you know, and I've got my Indiana mind on where you get Bobby Knight, right, who just drives a hard line approach that when people make a mistake, it's the end of the world. And you're promoting people to live up to that

benchmark. But at the same time, the players don't feel safe. And they're more concerned about avoiding problems than they are about excelling. And the absence of disease does not equal health. And so I think it is interesting to see this dynamic change, not only in the coaching world, but I think we also are seeing it in the military world as well. Wow. Well, and it sort of reminds me of some of the research on sport and high level performance that we know the best athletes are adaptively perfectionistic, right? Like they're, they can be flexible when they make a mistake and they still, they still have really high

expectations. And I think about how maybe a style of leadership or coaching that punishes mistakes right when they happen, like the chocolate example is a perfect example. You know, that doesn't, makes us feel like we have to be perfect and we can't be, you know, it's impossible. So let's dive into mindset, Ryan. And you talk about in your book, success mindsets, and it's called your Keys to Unlocking Greater Success in Your Life, Work, and Leadership, which will be out in February on ebook, right? And is it May or April in hard copy? Yep. Okay, awesome. So let's kind of dive into some of these mindsets. And you say in the book that, and thank you so much for giving me a copy ahead of time so we could prepare for this, but are the drivers of our thinking, learning,

and behavior. So tell us kind of what you mean by that before we kind of dive into these four different types of mindsets. Yeah, let me give you an example here is, let's say you're coming up on the street corner, and you see a homeless person standing there. And we've all been there. And then ask yourself, how do you see that person? Do you see that person as not doing their best? Or do you see that person as doing their best? And, and I'm ashamed to admit this, but I'll own up to it that for most of my adult life, I would pull up to that street corner and they'd be asking for assistance. And I would think that they are not doing their best. Yeah. And when I think that they're not doing their best, I quickly become critical. You know, I think, what are you doing with your life? What

are you doing with your time? What maybe, why don't you get a job? And what's my likelihood of being able to help that person? Not very good. Cause you're coming from like a really judgmental standpoint, right? Right. But what happens, and this was cued into me by when I read Renee Brown's book, Daring Greatly. And so when, when I learned this is okay, what if they are doing their best? Then that led me to ask the question, what in the world has happened in their life that has led them to believe that this is the best way to live? By asking that question, I immediately become empathetic to their position and I'm going to become much more likely to give them assistance in some form that is best for them. So what I just demonstrated is there's, we could see one situation in two

different ways and how we, depending upon that, because what we're doing, we're talking about a mindset here, is depending on how we see that situation, we're going to think differently, we're going to learn differently, and we're going to think differently, we're going to learn differently, and we're going to behave differently. And one is going to be much more effective than the other. And it all starts with how we saw the situation. In other words, you know, again, our mindsets are foundational to everything we do. And one of the statistics that I've seen is that 90% or 95% of our thinking, feeling, judging, and acting is driven by our non-conscious automatic processing.

What guides most of our non-conscious automatic processing? It's our mindsets. And so if we, as we mentioned, if we could become conscious to our mindsets, we become empowered to change and improve those so that we think, learn, and behave better. And would you say like the best way to become more conscious of that is awareness? Or what do you think about, you know, like how do you do that? Because I know people are wondering that as they're listening. It's like, this is really good. Like how do I change this in myself? Well, boy, do I have an option for you? No, just kidding. So that's just such a fantastic question. And that's something that's led me to create a personal mindset assessment. It's free. It's on my website. People can take it.

And the purpose of the assessment is to make something that is rather complex, digestible, and personal. And so people could take it's 20 questions, it's like seven minutes long. And when people take it, they get a comprehensive report of their mindsets. And we focus on four different sets of mindsets. And in this process, what we're doing is we're putting labels on these mindsets, we're helping them identify where they currently are, where they need to go if they want to improve, and then how to make that improvement. So all of that comes with the assessment. And then as you mentioned, my book's coming out to support all of those ideas. But if we could put some labels and some objective information, then that starts to bring these things to life and make them

real and tangible as opposed to abstract. Absolutely right because they seem like big ideas but I like what you said about that it really does you know impact our mindset impacts the way I think what you said was like the way we see the world or the situation the way we think about it the way we learn and the way that we behave. So it really does you know shape everything that we do. And I can see, you know, in the book, when you're talking about your mindset is the way to really unlock your success because of, you know, just the connection you just made. Do you care if I just say just a couple of things that you brought up is one of the things that I think is interesting is I've had about 10,000 people take my mindset assessment.

Of those 10,000, only about 5% consistently are on the top end for each of the four sets of mindsets in the top quartile. So that means that 95% of us have got some work to do. We've got some room to unlock greater success. And I think even those that are all in the top quartile, we could still improve our mindsets. And so I think one of the things to keep in mind as we take it is we may not, you know, we may get results that suggest my mindsets aren't the best. Well, this isn't something to beat ourselves up over. Because what we've got to realize is we've probably never given any sort of concerted effort to improving our mindsets. And how should we expect to be great at something we've never given concerted effort toward? And so this,

for me, I hope that it is an awakening process for people that just awakens to where I'm at. And oh, I didn't realize I could see the world in a better way, but now I see a path on how to do so. And now they can navigate that path. At least that's been my journey and some of the people that I coach. Yeah, I love it. And Ryan, I had the opportunity to take the assessment. I thought it was really, really helpful. And I've been somebody who's been working on their mindset for a long time. And I would say, you know, my awareness is pretty high in terms of what I think about and how that impacts what I do.

And I'm really goal-driven and know exactly, you know, where I'm going. But it really was eye-opening because, you know, for me, it helped me really learn about ways I can continue to tweak my own mindset. So I thought that was a really awesome way to contribute to the world and help people better

understand how they can apply these mindsets to their life and to their career. Awesome. Yeah. Okay. Let's dive into the four types of mindset. You talk about growth mindset, open mindset, promotion mindset, and outward mindset. I think we should just go into the first one, growth mindset. Yeah.

So and to just set this up so that maybe listeners can almost visualize this is these four sets of mindsets, they're not my ideas. They come from research that's been done for the last 30 years in different disciplines like psychology, marketing, management, and education. And what I've done is I just, I had the question initially, what mindsets do I need to have to be successful? And I hunted these down in academic literature and they largely weren't talking to each other. So what I've just done is I've put them together into one framework. And the thing that's unique about these different mindsets and sets of mindsets is they range on a continuum from negative to positive. And so we've got a negative mindset and we've got a positive mindset. So fixed versus growth. Fixed is more negative, growth is more

positive. And while in our discussion, we may talk about these in terms of like a dichotomy, kind of white and black, but the reality is this is a continuum and our mindsets fall somewhere within this range. And so hopefully as we talk about the difference, the negative side and the positive side, it'll help us get a sense of maybe where we stand a little bit. Does that help? Yeah, that sounds great. And I know, you know, Carol Dweck's work, maybe for the listeners, I would guess that they're most familiar with growth versus fixed, but maybe some people who are listening aren't necessarily familiar at all with Carol Dweck's work. So kind of, yeah, just tell us about these differences that you see. Great. So when we have a fixed mindset, we don't believe that we can improve our talents abilities and intelligences it means we

kind of we are who we are and there's nothing we can do it another way to say that is we're either a have or a have not but when we have a growth mindset we believe that we can change our talents abilities and intelligence and what carol dweck has found about 50 of the population has more of a fixed mindset the other half has more of a growth mindset. And the reason why the fixed mindset is so problematic is because if you don't believe that you can improve and you fail, how are you left to interpret that? Well, you're left to interpret that as though you are a failure.

And so, so to give you a quick example of this, I've got a nephew who, when he was growing up, we would play board games together, like Monopoly or something like that. And whenever he got to the point where he knew that he was going to lose, he would topple the table. Right? And what leads somebody to do that? Well, somebody who, because of their mindset, causes them to think, if I lose at this game, that means that I'm a loser, right? So that's the fixed mindset talking. And so what that means is when we've got that fixed mindset, we want to avoid failure at all costs. So we don't want to take on any challenges, because challenges mean that there's a likelihood for failure. We don't want to take on any challenges because challenges mean that there's a likelihood

for failure. We don't want to put forth effort. If it doesn't come naturally to us, it means I shouldn't head down this route. I need to take the more easy route. A personal example for me is my freshman year of college, I went away to school and I was thinking I want to become a medical doctor. Well, I got the worst grade I'd ever received in that class. I got a C grade. And at the end of the semester, my fixed mindset said, well, that didn't come naturally to you. You better switch your major, which is what I did. I didn't even think if I had a growth mindset, it would have said, hey, you know, becoming a medical doctor is going to be difficult. You may want to re-evaluate your study habits. You may want to be a little bit more disciplined. But my mind just didn't even

go there. My fixed mindset was driving my decision making in not the most effective way. So a growth mindset, on the other hand, is when we believe that we can grow and learn and develop, then that allows us to focus on that. So rather than focus on looking good, we focus on performing and excelling. We become much more willing to put forth effort. We're going to be more persistent. So when failure occurs, we don't shy and back away and give up. We press forward. And so research for over 30 years has led experts to say that cultivating a growth mindset is the single most important thing to help you achieve success. Because if we can't meet challenges in a healthy way, we're just never gonna reach success. And so that

growth mindset component is really really important that's a bold statement right the single most important thing to create success is to cultivate this growth mindset and do you think Ryan that there are times or situations where we might have a fixed mindset and growth mindset you know or is it more like a trait so that's one of the things I love focusing on mindsets our mindsets are things that we can shift. Now they're not the easiest thing to shift in the world, right? We could shift our attitudes much more easily than we can our mindsets. But these are things that we can shift. And what research has found is relatively small interventions allows for that shift to occur

at least for a short period of time. To give you an example of that is there's one really interesting study where they showed a group of people, a three minute video promoting a positive mindset, a three minute and then another group of people, a three minute video promoting more of the negative mindset. And then they track their engagement performance and blood pressure over the next three weeks. Those that saw the positive mindset video had higher engagement, higher performance and lower blood pressure. And so that effect didn't last beyond those three weeks. But just imagine, so when we think about shifting our mindsets, what if we could stack interventions like this repeatedly over time is what we're now doing is because what

our mindsets really are is their neural connections in our prefrontal cortex. We've all got a connection that's associated with a fixed mindset. We've got a neural connection associated with the growth mindset. What drives how we think, learn, and behave is the strength of one neural connection relative to the other. Because if one is stronger, it's going to fire more loudly and more quickly. And so if we've got our fixed mindset that's firing loudly and quickly, it's not like we can't see challenges as things to learn and grow from. It's just that doesn't come naturally to us. So what we've got to do when we shift our mindsets is we've got to work out the more positive mindset neural connection

through these small interventions. And as we do that, we strengthen those positive mindset neural connections so that we rely upon them at our foundational level. Those become natural to us as opposed to the more negative mindsets. Awesome. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. Totally. And so if people are listening and they're thinking, oh, wow, I need to really kind of develop more of this growth mindset, which would be more on your positive continuum over the fix on your negative continuum. Tell us about how might people maybe just give us one or two or strategies or ideas that we could implement. Yeah, one thought that I think this is really interesting is there's a great change researcher out of University of Michigan. His name is Robert Quinn. And one of the things that he has learned is that transformational change comes about in one of two ways, either through a crisis or through learning. And one of those is we have control over the other we don't. Right.

And I think most of the time when somebody goes through a transmit transformation, it's usually because of some sort of crisis. But the reality is, is we have the ability to engage in deep learning. And as we engage in deep learning, the only option is to change and to transform. And so I think one approach when it comes to fixed and growth mindsets and really any of these positive mindsets is one is we just got to learn more about them. As we learn more about them, we will naturally see their benefits and we will naturally transform. But then beyond that, what we can do is we can do small interventions and that can involve reading articles, watching videos on fixed and growth

mindsets, like Eduardo Brasino has a great TED Talks on it, we can learn about brain plasticity, because what fixed mindset people believe is that you can't change who you are. And if we can learn about brain plasticity, it kind of breaks down some of those walls. And we can have discussions with those that we live or work with around where do you see a fixed mindset come out? Where do you see a growth mindset? What are the benefits? What are the limitations? And so those are all examples of small interventions that we could do that will shift mindsets over time. Awesome. Awesome. So let's dive into the second type that you talk about closed versus open and the closed is more of the negative on the other side of the

continuum and open is more on the positive. So tell us a bit about this type of mindset. Yeah. So when we're closed, we are closed to the ideas and suggestions of others. When we're open, we're open to others' ideas and suggestions and we're willing to take them seriously. Let me give you kind of two analogies to help us understand this. So I think when you have a closed mindset, it's kind of like we have a bucket that's full of water. What happens if we try to add something new to that mindset, this doesn't mean we just run with whatever somebody says. I think we could always have a stiff back, but what an open mindset means is that we also have a soft front. We're able to take in ideas and we're able to sit with those. And when we have this open mindset, the level of water in our bucket isn't to capacity. And here's the difference and why this matters is when we have this closed mindset, our bucket is filled to capacity. We believe that what we know is right.

When we believe that what we know is right, we want to be seen as being right. We want to be the one providing answers as opposed to asking questions. This makes us out of touch. We avoid feedback. We avoid new perspectives. We see disagreement as a threat. But if we believe that we can be wrong, in other words, the level of water in our bucket isn't to the top, we believe that there's information out there that we don't know that could change our decisions,

what this does is it changes how we want to be seen. So instead of wanting to be seen as being right, we want to find truth and think optimally. And so when we want to find truth and think optimally, instead of being the one providing the answers, we're asking questions, we're inviting feedback, we're inviting new perspectives, we see disagreement as an opportunity to learn. And hopefully as I'm giving some of these comparisons between the two, people are recognizing, again, just how we see the world and kind of how we see how full our bucket is shapes how we think, how we learn, and how we behave. And, you know, when I think about a barrier to having an open mindset, I see people like take things personally, maybe when they get feedback or people disagree. And I like what you said about that soft front.

You know, you can kind of just see it in their face and in their maybe how tense their face gets or how angry they get. So what are your thoughts on, you know, the ways to continue just to have more of an open mindset? Yeah, for me, you know, part of it is just thinking about that bucket is you ask yourself, what is my bucket? I think some additional things, again, if we focus on the deep learning component, of course, you know, hopefully my book will be beneficial. Another resource that I think is fantastic is a book called Clothes by Ray Dalio. He's the founder of the largest and most successful hedge fund of all time, Bridgewater Associates. And his book is fantastic because he demonstrates how he drove his business to the ground in 1982 because of his closed mindset. So when he established it, he said, I've got to change

in order to be successful. And the whole book is about what he calls radical open-mindedness. And he believes that that's what's led to their success. So that's a great book to think about that. helpful to just talk to other people is when do you see me having a closed mindset? When do you see me having an open mindset? And what are the ramifications for you? And you brought up the idea of psychological safety earlier. Absolutely. Having an open mindset is so critical because it fuels psychological safety. And what Google has found is that psychological safety is the number one factor that drives their top performing teams. And the only way you can have a psychologically safe environment, which means that you believe that you can speak up and take risks without negative repercussion, is if those that you work with allow you to speak up without negative repercussion. So it requires us to have an open mindset if we want to create that environment of psychological safety. Awesome. So helpful, Ryan.

I know people are just like eating this up and really getting some good information, but reflecting on themselves. So let's go on to the third type of mindset. You got prevention on the negative side versus promotion, more on the positive side of the continuum. Yeah, I think you'll like this one.

So when we have a prevention mindset, we are focused on avoiding losing. When we have a promotion mindset, we're focused on winning and gains. And since you play in the football world, you know, you hear the word prevention defense, right? Which is generally means that they score on you. But the way that I want us to think about it is that when we, I want us to think about it as though we are a ship captain out at sea. And if we're a ship captain with a prevention mindset, our number one focus is on not sinking. So we want to avoid any problems. We don't want to take any risk. We don't want to rock the boat.

And so a promotion mindset captain, on the other hand, it's not that they're not concerned about sinking. It's that their primary focus is on a destination and making progress towards that destination. And here's where the big difference comes in. Imagine you're, you know, these ship captains and you see a storm come on the horizon. If you're a prevention minded ship captain, what are you going to do? What am I going to do? Maybe I might even avoid what's going on. You know, I'm not going to like take it head on, right? When I think about promotion, I think about like winning games. And I think about like having vision and knowing exactly where I want to lead my team. Exactly. So if we have this prevention mindset, the storm comes on the horizon, we run for safety.

We go to a harbor, a port where we're going to be safe. If we have a promotion mindset, we're going to ask ourselves, does that storm stand between me and where I want to go? And if it does, we say, well, we're going to do it. And what we do is we prepare for any problems. We batten down the hatches. We become more to take risks because that's where we're going. Like, just think if you're like the pilgrims sailing from England over to America and the storm comes on a horizon and they're like, I don't know about that. Let's just go over to Portugal. Like they're going to end up in a destination they didn't choose if we have this prevention mindset. It's only when we have a

promotion mindset that we're able to end up at a destination of our own proactive design. And so, which is, so when we have this prevention mindset, I think that is our default mindset. If we don't have a purpose, if we don't have goals, if we don't have a destination, our default will be a prevention mindset, which means that we're more focused on ensuring our comfort than we are ensuring our progress. And that's the big difference between the two. Yeah, I was thinking a little bit about like comfort versus courage here as you're talking about, you know, I think I work with a lot of like,

I do some executive coaching with people in sales or the financial industry and I think about when, you know, when they have a really clear understanding of where they wanna go, like their goals, it's easier to pick up the phone and even if they're gonna face rejection, you know, somebody's have a really clear understanding of where they want to go, like their goals, it's easier to pick up the phone. And even if they're going to face rejection, you know, somebody who's not going to get back to them or they're going to say no, but that's really hard to do. And I can see how maybe this prevention mindset gets in the way. Like, I'm just going to avoid that, not even do the really hard stuff because, you know,

I might fail or it's going be difficult yeah and when I work with organizations this is the one probably most organizations struggle with and their leadership teams and it's really interesting when I try to dive into this because the reason why they've developed a prevention mindset is they've learned that if they have problems with their customers their customers leave and so they become all about avoiding problems. For sure. And so this creates a culture where if problems occur, you know, the heavy hand comes down because we're trying to prevent these things.

But again, what happens when problems occur then? Well, employees want to skirt it under the rug as opposed to bring it to light. And you can never be innovative and creative while simultaneously focusing on avoiding problems. Because creation and innovation require problems. That's the only way we elevate our game. And so when I sit with leaders and they see, oh, we've got a prevention mindset culture, Well, they felt very justified in their approach, but they had a hard time seeing the long-term negative effects of that. And so it's usually a really big eye-opening moment, like, oh my goodness, we felt very justified in our approach,

but now we're seeing that there's a better way to go about doing it. Because we're taking care of our customers and because we're just trying to address the problem. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So let's go to the last one, inward mindset, which is more on the negative side of the continuum versus outward, which is more of the positive side of the continuum. Yeah. So I'm going to put you on the spot, Cinder. I know you're guilty of this, but I'm guilty as well. Have you ever prevented somebody from merging into your lane when driving, even though they had their blinker on? Oh, so I'm pretty open usually when I'm driving, but once in a while, if I have somewhere to go and maybe I'm late, you know, or I see this happen a lot when there's like construction, you know, and maybe people have been in this lane for a really long time and then

people kind of sneak up and I can see, I can see people get really mad about that. For sure. Right. So we've all been there. Right. And, and what this is getting at is in that moment, how did you see yourself relative to that other person? Right? In those moments like that, we saw ourselves as being more important than you. Yes, sure. And, and when, so that's the inward mindset. When we see ourselves as more important than others, we see others as objects. Maybe they're a tool to get us where we want to go, or maybe they're an obstacle that's standing in our way. But we have a tendency to see others as objects. When we have an inward mindset, the more positive mindset, we believe that others'

needs and wants matter just as much as our own. This allows us to see them as people and to value them as such. So that's the difference between the two. Inward mindset is we see others as objects. Outward mindset is we see them as people. So when we have an inward mindset, we're focused on our success. We want to be the one to be in the spotlight and we prevent others in it. And we see others as not doing their best. So remember that homelessness example we talked about earlier is that was an inward mindset. We saw them as not doing their best. So remember that homelessness example we talked about earlier is that was an inward mindset. We saw them as not doing their best or when we saw them as not doing their best. Then an outward mindset is we see others as valuable partners.

We become willing to share the spotlight and invite other people into that. And then we generally will see others as doing their best. There's a beautiful question. There's a TED Talk by Benjamin Zander. He's the under and conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. And he talks about his transition from an inward mindset to an outward mindset. And what he says is when he, for the first half of his career, he was a stereotypical conductor, kind of this authoritative leader. And he said that he saw his people, not as people, but as instruments there to play the music the way that he wanted it to be played. But then he said he had an epiphany that while he may be the face of the CD or album, whatever

we want to call it, he does not play a note. And to him, that caused a shift. And so he went from saying that these are people there to play the music the way I want it to be played, to thinking, how do I get them to play the music the best way that they are capable of playing? And that totally shifted his approach. He started asking for feedback from them, whereas before he never would. And the way that he said this is his purpose now is to awaken the possibility within other people. And he says that one of the ways that you could do that is ask how many shining eyes do you have? And I think that that's a beautiful way of thinking about it.

He says he judges his success by how many shining eyes he has in front of him. And so when something goes wrong, where do we point the finger? Do we point the finger out the window and say, where's the problem? Or is the first question we ask is into the mirror? Who is it being that their eyes are not shining? And when we can take that approach, that's indicative of this outward mindset approach. Because we're allowing ourselves to see others as being just as important as ourselves. And we're willing to look at ourselves as maybe being the issue

and not always other people. Yeah. And I'm thinking about how, you know, something I talk about my book is like taking a hundred percent responsibility for your own self. And I could see that having really this more outward mindset, right? That you're taking a hundred percent responsibility. You're looking at the mirror and you're looking in the mirror and not blaming other people for what's happening or situations. Yeah. So to me, as we've gone through these four sets, what I'm hoping listeners just kind of at least get a taste of is the power in labels, right? Because until this, you may have never heard about fixed

or growth, closed or open, prevention, promotion, inward or outward. But now we've got labels and we've got a language that we can focus on and we can ask, where am I along this continuum? My guess is we've talked through some things. We've seen some areas where, oh yeah, maybe I don't have that right mindset. But to kind of bring it back full circle to remember, we talked about desires at the beginning of this. Yes. Well, the associated desires of the fixed, closed prevention and inward is a desire to look good, be right, avoid problems and get ahead. And again, those don't seem bad on the surface. And that's the thing about the negative mindsets. If we possess the negative mindsets, and I've been there, and I think there's a reason why I focus on mindsets, because I was there. And we can just, when we're in those

negative mindsets, we can justify those away. But that doesn't necessarily make us right in terms of us being in a position where we can capitalize the most on success. And so as we can shift our mindsets, we shift our desires from being in self protection mode to being more in organization advanced mode, where we seek after learning and growing, after finding truth, after reaching goals, and then helping lift everybody as opposed to just ourselves. And I like how you just went back to the beginning, sort of the why. And, you know, I think that's important to talk about at the end of this conversation is like, okay, why does all this matter again? And I like what you said about, you know, the mindset is your ability to unlock your greater success and is the driver of your thinking,

learning and your behavior. Yeah. So one of the things I also like Ryan, I think since I've been following you, I've been getting your blogs, which are pretty cool. So I don't know when your last blog came out. Maybe I just remember reading it as I was laying down and relaxing. Really good stuff in your blog. And the most recent blog is about self-limiting beliefs and then how these limiting beliefs really connect to the four mindsets. And you talk about how you just said this may seem simplistic, but in reality, we structure and live our lives based on our beliefs. And if our beliefs are incorrect, they can significantly limit our success.

Therefore, if we want to optimize ourself for success, we must seek to improve the accuracy of our beliefs. So tell us a little bit about that. And then also how we might kind of continue to follow your blog and follow what you're doing. Yeah. As you said that, I was like, man, that's some good stuff. That came from me. Wow. All right. I must've been in the moment. Love it. Yeah. So, uh, and another way to think about kind of these mindsets is I do think that there are particularly the negative mindsets are connected to self limiting beliefs

that can be common. And so this is just one example, and this blog post is one example of a way, a tool that we can use to identify whether or not we have self-limiting beliefs. And the tool is that when we think in terms of either or, I think that's an indication of a self-limiting belief. Okay, cool. So we're seeing things in terms of black and white instead of, you know, the full rainbow is what's going on. And when we can see that full rainbow, we're going to be much more successful than if we're seeing in black and white.

So just some of the examples is when you have a fixed mindset, you believe you either are a have or a have not. But a growth mindset would suggest that if you aren't good at something now, it doesn't mean that you're a have not. It means that you're just not a have yet and that we can get there. When you have a closed mindset, you feel like you either have the answer or you are not credible. But an open mindset says, I may not, it allows us a space to say, I may not be right on this, or I may not know everything. Help me out here. And that gets us to being credible. And so that's the difference there. For prevention is you either protect yourself or you fail. So you, when you're in this protection mode is,

I've either got to look out for me or else I'm going to fail. Whereas a promotion mindset is you believe that if you want to accomplish your dreams and goals, you're going to have to take risks and venture out into the unknown. And then for inward, it's you either succeed or other people succeed. It's kind of like a deficit mindset. It's a fixed pie, like you need to capture as much of that pie as possible. But when you have an outward mindset, we believe that everybody can succeed.

And this promotes this abundance mindset that rather than a fixed pie, we have an expanding pie. And the larger we can work with other people to expand that pie, that allows us to capture larger pieces, even though it may not be like a larger percentage of the pie, if that makes sense. One of the ways that I've seen that recently is you look at Microsoft. Microsoft has gone through a huge cultural and mindset change ever since Satchin Nadella became CEO five years ago.

Prior to Satchin Nadella, Microsoft would have never worked with Apple. Now they are partners with Apple. They work together. And by working together, they are increasing the pie in which they can play in. And while their market share may not get any greater in terms of percentages, the amount of revenue that they can bring in with their market share elevates. And so I think that that's kind of a fun example to kind of demonstrate this difference between deficit and abundance mindset. That's a great example. And for people who want to continue to follow your blog or, you know, I think your work is so awesome. I really appreciate you sharing these different types of mindsets with us. And I think your book's going to really take off and be a good resource for people. So Ryan, tell us how we might connect with you, follow you on your blog, get the assessment and take the assessment so we can learn more about these four types of mindsets and how we might, you know, score on each of these? Yeah, so go to my website, ryangofferson.com.

There's a little button to push to take the mindset assessment. You can opt in to my blog by clicking a little box when you take the mindset assessment. You don't have to, no pressure at all. Really, this is just, I hope it helps people awaken. Beyond my website, LinkedIn is probably the place where I'm the most active on social media. And that's another place where you get access to the material. And hopefully, the book is available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and any other place that you'd want to get it, I'm sure. So hopefully this provides a little bit of motivation to jump in and do that. And if you find this stuff beneficial, feel free to share

that mindset assessment with others, including this great podcast. And I know I'll be doing the same because I know your work, Sindra, is really valuable. And I know that it's work that the people who follow me will really resonate with. So I look forward to sharing this with them. That's awesome. And tell us a bit about the work that you do with organizations. I know you do quite a bit of speaking. So tell us a bit about that for people who might be like, wow, you know, this stuff is really good. I like this four mindsets idea and I need to bring Ryan to my business. Yeah. Thanks for asking. So usually what I'll do is I work with a group of employees. I mean, sometimes the organization is big or small enough that I can work with everybody,

but oftentimes it's leadership teams and we will have them take the mindset assessment in advance. And then the really cool thing that we can do with that is I can aggregate those results to give a collective mindset report. So we could say as an organization or as a leadership team, here's where we stand on these continuums on the mindsets from negative to positive. And this allows us to dive in. What does this say about our culture? How did we get here?

What are some of the fears that might be driving some of our behavior? And then as we unpackage that, it leads for a very clear guidance in terms of next steps for shifting not only mindsets, but the culture as a whole. Because really what a culture is, is the collective mindsets of the people. It's the collective thinking of the people. So this collective mindset report really is a really quick and easy way to get a snapshot of the quality of our current culture. So I just did this with an organization on Tuesday. And there's some people that came up to me afterwards and says, like, wow, what is, and we talked through a few things, but they essentially said, what is your take on our organization? Okay. You know, it was pretty blunt.

And I said, based upon what I'm seeing, I don't think people are excited to come to work on Monday. And they're like, you couldn't be more right. And they're like, it's incredible that you can, you know, find this out through a 20 question assessment. So it provides really, I think, really powerful information, but at the same time gives some direction for improvement. Awesome. Well, Ryan, what I really appreciate about this interview, and maybe speaking from a PhD, you know, it's like that your work is based on science, great examples, great analogies of like how we can better understand these mindsets. And I think the takeaway is really like, how can people use this and learn more about themselves? And I think the assessment is a great way. And also kind of when I asked you about like, how do we develop, you know, this different type of mindset, you said, like, learn about them, figure out what, you know, what maybe you naturally really do,

have some small interventions. And I was thinking about interventions with myself, right? And how I can apply that. Watch a video, learn about the brain and, you know, just like learn more about mindsets in general. Talk to other people so that you're maybe aware of maybe how your behavior really impacts them and that behavior stems from your mindset. So thank you so much for joining us here today on the High Performance Mindset. I'm grateful that you took some time on your Friday to talk with us today. No, thank you. And thanks for trusting me to be somebody who could hopefully add value to your listeners. Heck yeah.

Thank you so much, Ryan. You added a lot of value today. So thank you very much. Awesome. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you liked today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend and join the conversation on Twitter at Mentally Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out drsindra.com.