Carol S. Dweck Quotes

Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.

I have not tried to argue that anyone can become Albert Einstein or Mother Teresa, but I have tried to argue that we do not know what anyone’s future potential is from their current behavior. We never know exactly what someone is capable of with the right support from the environment and with the right degree of personal motivation or commitment.
In addition, an incremental theory does not say that people will change. In many cases, it would be extremely foolish to believe that a person continuing in the same environment, without any psychological or educational help, will change. So an incremental theory does not predict that people left to themselves are likely to become better people over time, not at all. It simply says that people are capable of change.

Praising children's intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance.

Every situation is evaluated: Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I feel like a winner or a loser?

Many growth-minded people didn't even plan to go to the top They got there as a result of doing what they love. It's ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it's where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do.

Most exciting, the growth mindset can be taught to managers. Heslin and his colleagues conducted a brief workshop based on well-established psychological principles. (By the way, with a few changes, it could just as easily be used to promote a growth mindset in teachers or coaches.) The workshop starts off with a video and a scientific article about how the brain changes with learning. As with our “Brainology” workshop (described in chapter 8), it’s always compelling for people to understand how dynamic the brain is and how it changes with learning. The article goes on to talk about how change is possible throughout life and how people can develop their abilities at most tasks with coaching and practice. Although managers, of course, want to find the right person for a job, the exactly right person doesn’t always come along. However, training and experience can often draw out and develop the qualities required for successful performance. The workshop then takes managers through a series of exercises in which a) they consider why it’s important to understand that people can develop their abilities, b) they think of areas in which they once had low ability but now perform well, c) they write to a struggling protégé about how his or her abilities can be developed, and d) they recall times they have seen people learn to do things they never thought these people could do. In each case, they reflect upon why and how change takes place. After the workshop, there was a rapid change in how readily the participating managers detected improvement in employee performance, in how willing they were to coach a poor performer, and in the quantity and quality of their coaching suggestions. What’s more, these changes persisted over the six-week period in which they were followed up. What does this mean? First, it means that our best bet is not simply to hire the most talented managers we can find and turn them loose, but to look for managers who also embody a growth mindset: a zest f

We as educators must take seriously our responsibility to create growth-mindset-friendly environments - where kids feel safe from judgement, where they understand that we believe in their potential to grow, and where they know that we are totally dedicated to collaborating with them on their learning. We are in the business of helping kids thrive, not finding reasons why they can’t.

People with a fixed mindset were only interested when the feedback reflected on their ability. Their brain waves showed them paying close attention when they were told whether their answers were right or wrong.

I looked for themes and underlying principles across lectures,” and “I went over mistakes until I was certain I understood them.” They were studying to learn, not just to ace the test. And, actually, this was why they got higher grades — not because they were smarter or had a better background in science.

They know it when they see it — it’s the ability to dig down and find the strength even when things are going against you.

Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.

With the threat of failure looming, students with the growth mindset set instead mobilized their resources for learning. They told us that they, too, sometimes felt overwhelmed, but their response was to dig in and do what it takes. They were like George Danzig. Who? George Danzig was a graduate student in math at Berkeley. One day, as usual, he rushed in late to his math class and quickly copied the two homework problems from the blackboard. When he later went to do them, he found them very difficult, and it took him several days of hard work to crack them open and solve them. They turned out not to be homework problems at all. They were two famous math problems that had never been solved.

Just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn’t mean that others can’t do it (and sometimes do it even better) with training.

In 2001 came the announcement that shocked the corporate world. Enron — the corporate poster child, the company of the future — had gone belly-up. What happened? How did such spectacular promise turn into such a spectacular disaster? Was it incompetence? Was it corruption? It was mindset.

Groupthink can also happen when a fixed-mindset leader punishes dissent. People may not stop thinking critically, but they stop speaking up.