Few of us make it to middle age without a little attitudinal calcification. That is, we get stuck in our ways. We want things done the way we want them done, we’ve long since decided what we’re good and bad at, and our tolerance for frustration is, well, just about zero.
Whether attitudes like these are signs of a narrowly fixed mindset or a prudent appraisal of one’s own limitations doesn’t matter. What matters is that such insights are unhelpful in times of trouble.
Staying competitive calls for a growth mindset. In this worldview, challenges are opportunities to learn and grow, one’s abilities are determined by one’s efforts and overall attitude, and adapting to changing circumstances is a given.
Change Is Constant
A Growth Mindset is no guarantor of success. Rather, it’s a way to make success more likely and more enduring. It’s the difference between getting fit to meet a particular short-term goal (weight loss, say, or an impending 10-K) or to facilitate a permanent move to a healthy lifestyle.
In normal times a Growth Mindset can be the difference between staying competitive or not. In hard times, it can be the difference between staying in business or not.
In her book “Mindset,” Dweck examines the consequences “of thinking that your intelligence or personality is something you can develop, as opposed to something that is a fixed, deep-seated trait.”
If you think your attitude or mindset is a fixed trait, and experience has instilled you with the view that change is always bad, then you’re going to resist strategies for overcoming negative changes.
For Dweck, shying away from trouble is not a workable strategy. “Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them?” she writes. “Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset.”
When the Going Gets Tough
In other words, our ideas about risk and effort are shaped by our mindsets. Our mindsets influence how willingly we learn, how generous we are with praise, how easy we are to work with, and how willingly we buckle down to confront challenges — even when the timeframe and the rewards are uncertain.
In the best of times, the most successful financial advisors are eager change agents. This helps them survive demographic shifts, disruptive technologies, regulatory dictates, economic downturns, and heightened competition.
Dweck holds they’re able to handle all this because they have growth mindsets, which makes them equal to challenges small and large.