The Power of Mindset

Grow a high-performance mindset in leaders, their people and their culture.

The Problem

Most people believe, somewhere deep down, that intelligence and talent are largely fixed. That quiet belief shapes how a team responds to challenge, failure and feedback, and how far they are willing to stretch.

For a leader it cuts deeper: it shapes whether they believe their people can grow at all, and therefore whether they invest in growing them.

The Insight

Research by Dr Carol Dweck of Stanford University shows that people who believe their intelligence and talent can grow (a growth mindset) persist longer, bounce back faster and reach higher performance. The leaders who unlock this in others, and build a culture of it, get the very best from their teams. This is the Power of Mindset.

The Program

Leaders walk away able to model a growth mindset themselves and, just as importantly, to cultivate it in their people and their team culture. The thinking tools are fresh, yet rigorous and extremely practical, and tied to the real situations leaders face.

Where it comes from

We have worked with Microsoft since 2011. In 2014, when Satya Nadella became CEO he decided that the one cultural change they needed to make was adopting a growth mindset. People of Influence was selected as their partner to activate and embed a growth mindset across the Asia Pacific region. The impact we had was very gratifying.

What is a growth mindset?

A growth mindset is the belief that intelligence, talent and creativity are not static, but can develop and grow. It sounds simple, yet most leaders unknowingly struggle to apply it, to themselves and to the people they lead.

It shapes how a leader responds to challenge, failure and feedback, and how they see their people: whether they believe they can grow, and therefore whether they invest in developing them. Get it right and they build a culture where everyone keeps improving.

Key Outcomes

What your leaders walk away with

01
Know what great looks like
Leaders understand what a growth mindset really is, and what it looks like in a leader and across a team.
02
See it in themselves and their people
Leaders spot where a fixed mindset quietly shows up, in them and in how they lead, and what it costs.
03
Grow it in others
Practical ways for leaders to shift from fixed to growth in the moment, and to cultivate a growth mindset across their team at scale.
04
A toolkit and an action plan
Each participant receives a Takeaway Toolkit, plus their action plan built in the session for themselves and their team.
05
Nudges that reinforce over time
Behavioural nudges keep the growth mindset front of mind for each leader and their team long after the session.
Session Flow

How the session unfolds

An experiential run, built around a psychology experiment in the room.

1
A Psychology Experiment
Using our experiential approach to learning, we first put participants into groups and they attempt to complete a rather odd puzzle. What they don't realise is that there are layers to this activity that we are testing: we are testing their mindsets and introducing factors that change their mindsets during the activity.
2
What is mindset?
In the debrief of the activity leaders understand - both experientially and conceptually - what mindset really is.
3
Why does mindset matter?
Why this mindset is an invaluable tool for continuous improvement, grit, high performance and leadership.
4
How do we change mindset?
An easily applicable process to move your thinking from a fixed to a growth mindset, and how leaders can create a culture that shifts the mindset of their people at scale.
5
Language that triggers it
Specific, powerful language cues leaders can use to trigger a growth mindset in themselves and others, and avoid the pitfalls of the fixed mindset.
6
Make it real
Each leader commits to the specific shifts they will make to grow a growth mindset in themselves, their people and their culture.
Format & Delivery

Shaped around your context

Duration
90 minutes
Delivery
In person or virtual
Audience
Leaders and people managers
Two ways to work with us

People of Influence is the consultancy through which Michelle Rushton and Shaun Kenny deliver leadership programs, team offsites and impactful conferences.

Contact People of Influence →

Leadership Engine is our proprietary platform for diagnostics, dashboards and roadmaps.

Visit Leadership Engine →