Questions answered from our webinar “Grow Beyond the Pandemic”

Thank you everyone who took the time to come on our call last Friday. And thank you to Franz and Sharon for sharing your growth mindset assessment results for all the world to see – and to having them analysed too! Thank you too, for everyone who posted questions. My one regret is we did not have the time to answer any questions from you – something I have learnt (see the learning dimension here?) and will make changes to. Hence, our next webinar will be 90 minutes long, and will start at 8PM Singapore time. (We started later this time around due to Ramadan).

Did you download the e-book yet?

For what it was worth, we knew that 60 minutes, or even 90 minutes, would not be able to adequately cover the information. We knew that you would have 101 questions which would not be adequately answered on the call. Hence, we decided to go light on the webinar and then throw in the heavy guns in the e-book. I hope you have already downloaded that. If not, here’s the link <https://media.wix.com/ugd/c3c24a_9299cc2262664dc1870752c0935e858b.pdf>

Additionally, there were questions that came on the chatbox during the webinar and also after it, that I would now like to take the opportunity to answer.

Question from Allen: A person with a high score on risk taking does it mean automatically the person has a high score on forward?

Good question, Allen. The answer is no. Of course, we do wish a person with a high Risk score also has a high Forward score because they lead the person to finding out what he/she does not know. But that does not happen all the time. When a person has a high Risk score and a lower Forward score, it means that the person is willing to take more risks within the confines of his planning. It means that the person will gather his confidence from the plans he/she makes in moving from Point A to Point Z. Now, it depends on the person’s Bounce Back to see if he/she will embark on that plan because we all know that plans will change as the environment changes. No one expected Covid19 to cause such a huge impact on our business at the dawn of this new decade, but now everyone is forced to deal with it, regardless of the type of mindset. But those who are able to deal with the uncertainty better, will be the ones who come out of Covid19 stronger. Hence, for someone who has a lower Forward score, we still need to see the impact of Bounce Back and Learning on it. I hope this answers your question.

Question from Tanya: Does demographics impact the score - So the younger we are, the less pride, the older more pride etc?

No, demographic does not affect the score. Of course, we have seen the stubbornness of older people during Covid19 lockdown period; but this is not a Pride response, it is probably the loneliness response we are seeing. The greatest impact to our mindset is really our experiences; did we have “failure” experiences or “success” experiences? Invariably, our upbringing, our social structure, our attitude towards success and failure – all these impact our mindset. In fact, if children grow up in an environment that eschews failure and is driven to always be the top student, and who are rewarded for attaining 99% and above, and punished for attaining 92% - these children may grow up with a fixed mindset very early on. Other families insulate their children from failure; they try to protect their children from failing, and as such, do not push them past their abilities. They will also grow up with the fixed mindset. Hence, experience makes the mindset, and the question we need to ask ourselves is, “Are we insulating ourselves from failure?” Because if we do not know how to deal with a setback from young, if we have always been successful from young (within the narrow confines of that success), if we have celebrated ONLY achievements from young, we would develop the fixed mindset from very early on. Hence demographic does not impact the mindset, environment and circumstances do!

Question from CM: How does this self-awareness help me in applying the 5 Dimensions?

Well, as they say, change comes first from awareness, then determination, then action. The first thing I need to say is that one does not need to be growth minded in all the dimensions; it all depends on what you are doing. Hence, if you are a custodian of wealth in a family office, we expect that your Pride dimension is low; since compliance and governance are key. Yet, if you are the investment manager of that same family office, then I expect that you have a mid-level score for Pride; since I want you to be flexible and not be stoic in your convictions, yet still be mindful of compliance. So really, the first thing you need to know is what profile does your job or role require for you to be successful in it. Second, you want to see which dimensions are higher and which are lower than what you need for your job; and then from there to see what you might need to develop yourself to do your job better. Finally, once you know what dimensions you should focus on to develop yourself, then start taking positive steps to move those dimensions forward. And from the call, we realise we don’t need to work on every dimension, just the key ones!

Question from CM: Supposing my profile fully meets the requirements of my job. Does this mean I am in my ideal job?

No, your ideal job is not determined by your mindset profile. In a way, I am even questioning if indeed there is such a thing as an “ideal job”. I believe every new job is “ideal” until it no longer is. Change will always happen; a new boss, a new customer, a new environment (like that of Covid19). These changes knock the “idealness” off our job, and we are now faced with an “unideal” job. In fact, I might even say that the “ideal job” is a figment of the fixed mindset! When you are driven by the growth mindset, you are driven by change, simply because we don’t know what we don’t know; and what we don’t know usually has a very surprising way of sneaking up on us and biting us on the behind when we least expect it! Hence, even if your mindset profile meets the needs of your job today, it does not mean that it meets it tomorrow! And that is where we need to operate out of. So, will you always be in your “ideal” job? My bet is, the answer is no, and that is why we cannot rest on our mindset laurels. You will never know when it will be unideal for you.

Question from Gunnar: The participants certainly got a good understanding of why it would be good for them to develop the growth mindset personally. But how would it help an HR function or a whole organisation? Why would they invest in it?

Finally! An organisational question, coming from a HR expert, no less! I am hoping that my e-book might make the case for it, but if not, here goes. Organisations are made up of people, and those of influence can impact the whole mindset of the organisation. I used to work in an organisation that had fixed mindset owners. Even while they purported to be growth minded, their actions were clearly fixed, and so were their decisions. A fixed minded business owner can only be supported by fixed mindset individuals. Hence, all the growth mindset people quit the company. How do you think a company comprising all fixed mindset people would do? Obviously badly. I have been told that their revenue has been on a steep decline since the growth minded people left. Now, I am not saying that a company has to be filled only with growth minded people, because it is hard to pin growth minded people down, and we do need some element of fixed mindedness in the organisation to balance it up. So while HR is traditionally concerned with behavioural and functional competencies, they should also keep an eye on the mindset of the business leaders; those who are customer-facing, those who create service and brand value, those who develop new products and services. This is because a fixed-mindset leader would be more interested in keeping the status quo, in betting big, in moving around in the space that he is confident in, in keeping the “mystical aura” of his somewhat-distant-past success. Yet the future is already upon us. Covid19 has disrupted everyone and what worked successfully just 5 months ago, is already broken. Without the willingness to admit that organisations don’t know what they don’t know, to go out to the market and formulate a customer hypothesis, co-create a solution with them, and finetuning it along the way, the organisation will be stuck in the past, and be overtaken by more nimble, growth-minded, future-focused competitors. Now if this is not what they must invest in, then I really don’t know what else they should be. The future of the organisation rests on being growth minded!

Conclusion

Thank you everyone for your keen interest in the growth mindset, our assessment and how the growth mindset is a KEY component for business success post-Covid19. In fact, as we labour to undercover what works and what does not work, we realise that we are already in a new normal, and things that worked in the past for us as individuals and as organisations already do not work. So rather than wait for the new economy to deem us irrelevant, and push our organisation out of business (and us, out of a job), let us take a more proactive step to create a more resilient, adaptable, growth-minded organisation so that we can GROW BEYOND THE PANDEMIC!

I wish you good growing!

PS: Do take advantage of the free 30-minute one-on-one coaching on the growth mindset assessment. Hope to “see” you soon!