Carol Dweck: The Mother of the Growth Mindset Tells All

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0:50I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. We're on a mission to make you remarkable. Helping me in this episode, and I've waited a long time for this episode, is one of my idols, Carol Dweck. Her book, Mindset, The New Psychology of Success, is one of the two most important books in my life. The other being Brenda Ulan's If You Want to Write. Carol is a professor of psychology at Stanford University. This interview was conducted in her office at the psychology department of Stanford. She has her PhD from Yale and a BA from Barnard College. Her work spans developmental psychology, social psychology, and personality psychology.

1:40She is focused on self-conceptions and their impact on behavior, motivation, achievement, and interpersonal dynamics. By the way, this is the first in-person interview since 2020. It took me two years to get on her calendar. Remarkable people like Carol are worth waiting for. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. And now, here's one of the guiding lights in my life, Carol Dweck.

2:17I don't know if you realize what an impact you had on my life. I do. When I read Growth Mindset, it was life-changing for me. So I would say that your book and If You Want to Write by Brenda Ulan are the two biggest books in my life. Fundamentally change my entire outlook and everything. I wanted people to know they had a choice. We're all a mixture of both, of course, both mindsets, believing we can grow and improve, but also worrying that maybe it's fixed and we don't have enough. I made a choice at one point because I realized through my research, but also in my life, my sixth grade teacher seated us around the room in IQ order.

3:10I felt like she was sealing everyone's fate. And although I fared well in terms of my seating, it really pounded a fixed mindset into my head. And so even though I had always loved learning and always loved taking on new things, suddenly all I wanted to do was be smart and look smart and not take risks. And ultimately, this became a focus of my research. The whole goal of my career was this has been to help people fulfill their potential. I wanted them to know they had a choice. They could unlock that potential or they could worry about it and protect it. And I wanted them to go for it. And you discovered this at sixth?

4:07No, I didn't discover it. I lived it in sixth grade, but then I discovered it in my research and with my students spelled it out as clearly and exhaustively as possible. Maybe you could give us a quick little update. Have you had any refinements or changes? So let me just talk a little bit about it and then in our research, we saw some people favored more of a fixed mindset, the idea you have a certain amount of intelligence or any attribute. And that's it. That's who you are. You're lucky or you're unlucky, case closed. Other people tend more toward the belief, hey, you have abilities, but they're capable of development.

4:57You can grow them and expand them through taking on challenges and sticking to them, by trying the strategies, by getting lots of input and help and mentorship. And we found over time that it made a big difference. People who had more or endorsed more of a growth mindset, they took on those challenges. They wanted to grow those abilities, those in more of a fixed mindset. So challenges are threatening. Maybe I'll be unmasked as an imposter. Maybe I'll find out I'm no good. They also gave up quick. In a fixed mindset, they also gave up quickly because they saw mistakes and setbacks as meaning they didn't have ability.

5:51In a growth mindset, welcome to learning. There are mistakes. There are setbacks. And remind them for what you can learn and how you can move forward more effectively. So what's kind of the basic idea? Again, in our research, we showed it predicted kind of some long-term outcomes. We developed short programs for students to change their mindset, and we saw it help them do better in school, especially the lower achieving students, low income students, students from underrepresented groups that flourish more under the growth mindset. Then the first big thing we learned was that it's not that you have one mindset or the other, we fluctuate.

6:42We can be mostly in a growth mindset, but have a big setback. Whoa. Outcomes that fix mindset. Or social comparison. Oh my God, that is the scourge of our current civilization. Social media forces you to compare yourself to others, forces you to seek as many likes as possible. Whatever you put out there, you're on the line. Is anyone going to like it? How many people are going to like it? So those kinds of experiences, even if we're mostly in a growth mindset, a lot of the time can trigger us into a fixed mindset. And we kind of have to find our way back. We have to kind of talk to that fixed mindset, say, thank you very much.

7:33I assure you, I know are trying to protect me, but I'd like you to hop on board with my growth mindset plan. And over time, make friends with it, harness its energy, bring it along with you. Don't try to squelch it, that won't work. But the other really big thing we found is mindsets are not a lone enterprise. it's not like you have your gross mindset and you take it with you when you are challenge-seeking and resilient. The environment you're in matters hugely. And this was brought to my attention by a former student, Mary Murphy, who's coming in, professor now, has done a lot of work on this and is about to come out with a book.

8:27So I recommend her for your show. She's fantastic. Anyway, she said, marched into my office one day, we had an appointment, but she marched in and she said, you're treating mindsets as though they're just something inside someone's head and it's their responsibility to have a growth mindset. And I realized, and she said, what about the setting they're in? Can't the setting, the organization, in the classroom, can't that have a mindset too? And I said, whoa, you're right. Let's go for it. Let's do this research. And I also realized that teachers felt, many people had the same misunderstanding. Teachers felt, I'm going to give the students a growth mindset.

9:15I'll put a chart in front of the room. And then they should act like growth mindset people or organizations felt. tell our people to have a growth mindset, teach them what it is, then it's their job to have the growth mindset. No, it has to be supported by the beliefs, the philosophies, the practices and policies in the culture. So imagine a teacher teaches growth mindset, puts up a chart, wants students to have it, but that teacher's practices could embody a fixed mindset. Like my teacher, Mrs. Wilson, who seated us around the room in IQ order, what could convey more of a fixed mindset? And she assigned all of our responsible tasks based on IQ as well.

10:12quick mindset, not just large, but huge. So teachers needed practices where on the first day of school, they say, I believe all of you can learn to a high level. And here's what I'm going to do. I want everyone to raise their hand as soon as they're confused. Let's work it out. That's valuable for me too as a teacher to know what I'm not getting across. Every time you do homework, I will give you feedback and we will work through what you didn't understand. When you take a test, I'll allow you to take it again later and get some credit back because I know you can learn to a high level. I want students to work together and mentor each other till everyone gets to a high level.

11:04So organizations too, the idea that everyone has something valuable to contribute and everyone is capable of growth. To see that in action is amazing. But again, the policies are about developing, not just choosing the high potential people and giving them the opportunities. It's about committing resources to everyone. So I'll just give an example. I went to give a talk at a large, old financial organization. I expected it to be very buttoned up and stodgy. No, the opposite. I walk in, the mail at the door waves my book Mindset at me. Professor Dweck, we're so glad you're here. I go to sign in the person at the sign-up deck.

12:00Professor Dweck, we can't wait for your talk. It wasn't just for the financial bigwig. There were sign-up sheets in the lobby for exciting projects. Anyone could sign up. You could be the person who fixes the boiler and you were invited to sign up and be on any of these projects. So the whole environment was about you can develop, you can be more. We don't ramble you based on your present job. We work with you to be the person that you can be. So that was the second big thing. First, you can get triggered into a different mindset and then the environment is big. It's not just growth mindset people, it's growth mindset environments that allow you to use that mindset effectively.

13:04Are you saying that the fixed mindset can occur chronologically? Or when you're young, you have a certain mindset. When you get older, it changes. Or you're saying that you could be fixed mindset about, let's say, academic subjects, but growth mindset about hobbies. I think I'm saying the latter. First, you can have different mindsets for different areas. Yeah. I can think my intellectual ability could grow forever and I'm always working on it. But my, and I'm just making this up, my athletic ability, it's fixed. I'm, or my artistic ability is fixed. You can have a different mindset for each ability area or even about your personality.

13:59Some people think, hey, I am who I am. I don't like a lot of it, but, you know, I'm doomed. Or, wait, I'm capable of growth. I'm capable of learning new ways of being. And by the way, researchers are now finding that teaching the growth mindset about personality is making a dent in depression and anxiety in adolescence. so you can have it for any area, fixed or growth mindset. In addition, I'm saying, hey, situations, no matter what your favorite mindset is, say mine is a growth mindset. Some situations can flip me, at least temporarily, into a fixed mindset. If they're super evaluative and I'm struggling, I feel judged, I have doubts about, those abilities and whether they can develop.

15:02I think one of the points that maybe many people don't quite understand is that it's almost like a fixed mindset is a negative. So the people who have it are losers. But you're also saying that you could be a MacArthur award winner in mathematics and you have a fixed mindset at an extreme that would mean, well, I'll never try surfing because I'm only good at math. I'm going to maintain that self-image. Yeah. And I'm not going to try anything that's going to make me look like a jackass. Yeah. But so winners can have fixed mindsets too. They can. They can. If you think it's fixed and I have infinite amounts of it, I'm smarter than anyone else, that could serve you for a while.

15:50For a long time, you can win awards. You can be feverishly pursuing those awards and pursue them successfully. But I feel like, first of all, it's not as enjoyable because you're easily threatened and you have to keep competing and beating everybody else as opposed to enjoying your own progress and learning. And then at some point when the younger people are coming up and they're the ace new mathematicians in these emerging and crazy new fields, you're threatened rather than saying, wow, let me get into that, let me find out about that. And just kind of welcoming these new times of growth. And just getting back to organizations, the opposite of a growth mindset organization is what Mary Murphy and I called culture of genius.

16:49It's a fixed mindset organization. Who's the genius? And we found in our research that in these cultures of genius, people cheat. They steal each other's ideas. They cut corners. It's a dog-eat-dog. And that often is to the detriment of the organization. You think Apple under Steve Jobs was a culture of genius? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah? you certainly can't fault tim cook for what he has done post steve right i don't think there's a culture of genius there now no and it took a long time for me to believe that but i i do believe it and they really got interested in growth mindset and its implications oh i want to tell you some we're going to say something go ahead i just wanted to tell you are you watching the nba playoffs the national basketball three of the four final teams are growth mindset teams seriously like you consulted to them i haven't directly consulted no but they've talked publicly about adopting growth mindset principles and applying them and do they understand you're the center of the universe?

18:12They even say my name. Not! Off! Really? Yeah. It's very exciting for me. I am a sports fan. Are the Warriors one of them? The Warriors were eliminated in the last round. Oh, I didn't even know. Sadly, sadly, sadly. Even though they were eliminated, were they a growth mindset? Yeah, very much so. You would assume that with Steve Kerr. Yes. Huh. Forget all the big corporations. That's.

18:53So how, whether it's a basketball team or Apple, how does it, I can understand a teacher. Yeah. But how does a company, I can't say the CEO of a company saying, we just hired you. We believe you have growth potential growth mindset. So Microsoft underwent a big transformation when Satya Nadella took over as CEO. And they formed all kinds of programs where people could get funding for a new idea, assemble a team, hackathons, they call them. and if the project looked promising they'd get more funding to try and that's where a lot of ideas have bubbled up from places you wouldn't have imagined people who wouldn't have been seen as leaders also when he took over he said that he was gonna give big bucks and big teams to a few different projects, and he expected at least half of them to fail.

20:04High risk, high payoff. But the ones that succeeded really brought the company back, put them in the forefront of cloud computing and other things that were new at the time. So how do I boil that down? So if you're talking to a CEO and he says, listen, we're stifled, we're not innovating anymore. Carol, how do I catalyze the growth mindset in my company? Well, first I would say read Mary Murphy's new book, which will be coming out. Okay. And then second, what are the programs, what are the ways of announcing your belief in everyone's potential, your beliefs that everyone can make a really good contribution to the company and maybe the world?

20:59What are your mechanisms for getting their ideas? How is a manager's mentoring each and every one of their charges? And how are the employees coming back and mentoring the manager? How are the employees mentoring each other? Okay. What are projects people are offered that show faith in their potential to grow? So collaboration and teams get the credit, not individuals. Okay, so we talked about teachers, talked about CEOs. What about parents? Whoa. I'm really worried because now we hear so much about helicopter parents who do everything for the kids. And these kids are suffering. They're doing more poorly in hard courses like STEM.

21:57They're having mental health problems. So what are these parents communicating when they do everything for the child? They build the child's science project. They write the child's college essay. Or they employ a team to massage the child's resume. Communicating to the child, you can't do it on your own. I don't trust you to be the person that I could be proud of, the person who will get into the top schools and become the top X, Y, or Z. So what a parent does to give that child confidence and the growth mindset that goes with it is to support the child in their learning. Keep it the child's job to learn.

22:55Kids love learning. They're born taking on challenges. Forget such a thrill from mastering something. Capitalize on that. When they do get frustrated, we call it scaffolding. Build a scaffold to the next thing. Hey, what do you think you should do now? Do you think you might try one of these and the child takes it over again and then tries it. You think it could be the blue one or the red? You're narrowing it down. You're helping them on that road to learning, but they own it. Let them try hard things. Help them master, but keep the learning their own. and similarly in school. You can be a resource.

23:45Don't do it for them. Okay, so very tactical question. Is there a role or what is the proper role for tutoring for a student? Sure. And there are great tutors. So a tutor is also someone who supports the child's learning and helps them to understand. And like the parent I was just describing, focuses on the process of learning, the understanding, not just getting the right answer, not just rushing the child to the correct solution, but really enjoying. And the expert tutors that have been studied in research, like the research of my former colleague, Mark Lepper. It doesn't even look like they're teaching.

24:38They're doing a lot of talking to the kid. They're joking around. They're making it fun. They're asking questions they almost never give in. They're asking questions. And then the student is figuring it out based on this support, based on this question asking, based on this fun situation. Yes, there's a role for tutors, but not the kind where a parent hires five tutors so the kid can get 100 on every test and get into a top school, even though they're now five years old. So no, not that kind of tutoring, but that kind of supportive tutoring that helps a child love a subject and learn a subject.

25:30For employees or for kids, do extrinsic awards, do extrinsic rewards positively reinforce the growth mindset or is it perverting it? Positive, concrete or extrinsic rewards like paying for grades or giving someone a treat if they've done a puzzle, whatever research suggests that it dampens the child's interest and enthusiasm for the task gee as the story goes if they have to pay me to do this it must not be very interesting in the classic research we give awards to kids for doing a puzzle and then afterwards they were are done into puzzles as the other kids in the study. So never say never, but try to heighten the intrinsic.

26:34So maybe the extrinsic has a place if a kid hates a subject or hates doing something, but they should be weaned off that as it becomes, as you make it more enjoyable for them. Okay. Is there a sequence in the sense of you have a growth mindset, you're successful, that reinforces the growth mindset? Or are you successful, you get a growth mindset, so you get more success? Is there a chicken and egg question here? I think it could go either way. You can start with a growth mindset and feel rewarded by the progress and feel that your growth mindset is reinforced and you set the next big goal for yourself.

27:26Or you can do things that you didn't think you could do and you go, whoa, I didn't realize I could grow my abilities. What happens when there may be systemic issues that, you know, people try the growth mindset, but because of the rigidity of how scores are kept or whatever, they cannot succeed. Yes. Then what happens? Yes. The growth mindset failed? I don't want to put, you're so right, I don't want to put all the responsibility inside the person. There are structures, there are hurdles, there can be unfairness in hiring practices and admissions policies. You could be discriminated against or you could be unlucky.

28:25Right. So, yeah, it's a misinterpretation of a growth mindset to say that's all you need, and then there are no excuses for why you couldn't rise to the top. But a growth mindset also orients you toward looking for opportunities. People with more of a growth mindset take on mentors, seek out mentors, seek out learning opportunities, figure out where to be, where to go, and in that way, enhance the likelihood that they can use their growth mindset successfully. I'll show you my bias before I ask you the question. Oh, good. So I think chat GPT is an absolute game changer and will foster growth mindset because it is is the ultimate patient, infinitely wise research assistant, as opposed to write the essay for me.

29:29I don't believe in that path. I do believe in the research assistant path. So I just want to know what your opinion is of this chat GPT cripple you or empower you. It could be both as chat GPT. We've only begun to see its enormous potential. and so we could be frightened and maybe we should be by write the paper for me because they can write a great paper it or it I don't know is it an it or the it can write a great paper I saw a talk last early this week where a professor asked Chad GPT to outline his talk and it outlined it just like the talk he gave. It was an amazing outline. He asked it to design an experiment on a certain topic.

30:25It designed a terrific experiment. I thought, wait a minute, that's the assignment I give to my class. I don't want them going to chat GPT to have it design the experiment. So there's a lot of potential, and even the inventor is now asking for limits to be placed on it. At the same time, we're doing a project with my former student, David Yeager, of using ChatGPT to do gross mindset tutoring and gross mindset advising. So right now, or at least a few months ago, things changed rapidly, students would go to a chat GPT type advisor, an online advisor, and say, oh, I don't know if I'm college material.

31:23I'm kind of depressed. I'm not sure I should. And it might say, not everyone's college material. Do something else you're comfortable with. I don't know. I don't think someone should be counseled out at that point. Whereas gross mindset inspired materials are being developed that say, hey, a lot of people feel this way. Tell me why you're feeling this way. And then it supports an exploration of different paths the student can take, and encouragement to try to take a path of challenge and growth. And also in tutoring, ChatGPT probably already understands the different kinds of mistakes students are making and exactly what they need to know to surmount those mistakes.

32:29That could be incredible that everyone will have this expert private tutor. So the possibilities, the upsides and downsides are really tremendous. Conceptually, is it possible that someone has too much of a growth mindset? I, it could be, I don't want to blame the growth mindset for it, but it could be that people feel they have to be learning everything all the time. A growth mindset also would make a person feel they should never give up. But I don't say that. Sometimes you're wasting your time. sometimes because a gross mindset doesn't promise you that where you'll end up or how much ability you will end up having it's just the idea that everyone can develop and we never know where we're going to get with it so a person always has to do a cost-benefit analysis am i making progress If not, how can I enhance that progress?

33:47If I'm losing my job and my family is starving because I'm not giving this up, maybe I should put it on hold for a while. So you've got to be kind of reasonable about it. And asking the flip question, are there times where a fixed mindset is a good thing? so you can give up on something saying it's not yielding to my efforts now you don't have to say develop a fixed mindset that i can't ever develop these abilities but you can decide to give up and apply your growth mindset somewhere else for the time being i also i give my students I teach a course every fall with a freshman seminar, it's called, and it is on the topic of mindsets.

34:44And I ask them, if a fixed mindset is a liability, why has it survived? Why is it so common? Yeah, and? And, oh, they come up with a lot of good reasons. First, it gives you a sense of who you are. I am good at this. I'm not good at that. I like this. I don't like that. I'm interested in this. I'm not interested in that. I grant you that. It tells you what to expect from other people. That's a bad person. That's a smart person. So it creates this false sense of certainty, this anchoring of who you are and what to expect in your world. But aren't you saying that those kind of shortcuts or proxies can be useful?

35:40Not as a whole way of life. Okay. Not as, I can do this, I can't do that. Not that you've decided prematurely who you are and who you will always be or who someone else is and who they will always be. Because you're a sports fan, how does Carol Dweck interpret Michael Jordan trying to switch to baseball? You know, I thought about that the other night when I watched the movie Air. I watched Air 2. Yes. Yes. I loved it. Oh, yeah. It really was something. And then when it came to the part where he was swinging the bat, I said, what do I make of that? First of all, I really celebrate that he went for it.

36:36That was brave. He was at the top of the pyramid in basketball. and he said, you know, I also loved baseball. I could have gone either way. I don't know what I make of the fact that he didn't make it, even though he gave it his all. Some people thought, oh, maybe he was older and he didn't have the habits ingrained. I'm not sure how to understand that he couldn't advance very well toward another point in his career. But I love that he came back to basketball and did amazing things despite his age. Do you know the Japanese concept ikigai? I have heard of it. Essentially, it's your reason for living, the reason why you wake up.