What separates Fortune 500 CEOs who successfully navigate digital transformation from those who struggle? Neuroscience research reveals a critical difference in leadership that determines organisational success: the implementation of a growth mindset. This article invites you to explore the powerful possibilities that Agile Leaders can unlock through a Growth Mindset. If you’re ready to discover what neuroscience reveals about developing extraordinary Agile leaders, this article is for you
Who is this article for?
“Food for Thought” is a series of mini-articles, inspiring content designed to enrich the perspectives of conscious, modern Agile leaders. Each article in the series is designed to encourage reflection, provide inspiration for further exploration, and serve as a starting point for fruitful discussions.
The Food for Thought series is dedicated to thoughtful agile leaders in different forms
- Senior Leaders, Team Leaders, Product Leaders, People Leaders and Organisational Leaders interested in maturing their leadership
- Product Owners, Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Delivery Managers interested in developing their leadership.
- All those who see themselves as modern Agile Leaders continuously seek new ways to perfect their craft.
In the following paragraphs, I will briefly explain the roots of the growth mindset, provide a definition of fixed and growth mindsets, and describe the characteristics of fixed and growth mindsets in the next chapter. Then, I will briefly explain why agile leaders should be interested in the Growth Mindset.
Roots of Growth Mindset
The concept of the growth mindset was defined by Dr Carol S. Dweck (Dweck, 2008). In her work, Dweck explores how our beliefs about our abilities can shape our behaviour, relationships, and achievements. Dweck introduces the concept of two contrasting mindsets: fixed and growth. These two mindsets influence various domains of human life including business, education, sports, and personal relationships.
The growth mindset is the belief that one’s abilities, intelligence, and personal qualities can be developed through effort, learning, and persistence. It contrasts with the fixed mindset, where individuals believe their traits are static and unchangeable, leading to a focus on proving rather than improving themselves.
Fixed and Growth Mindsets
- Fixed Mindset: Individuals with a fixed mindset believe their intelligence, talents, and personality are innate and unchangeable. This belief drives a need to prove their worth, as failure or effort is seen as evidence of inadequacy.
- Growth Mindset: Individuals with a growth mindset believe that abilities can be developed through effort, learning, and persistence. They embrace challenges and view failures as opportunities to grow.
Characteristics of the Growth Mindset:
- Embracing challenges: They see challenges as opportunities to learn rather than threats to their ego.
- Valuing effort: Effort is viewed as a pathway to mastery, not a sign of inadequacy.
- Learning from failure: Failures are reframed as learning opportunities rather than reflections of fixed ability.
- Openness to feedback: They welcome constructive criticism as a tool for growth.
- Focus on development: Success is defined by progress and learning, not immediate perfection.
- Resilience: Growth-mindset individuals persist through setbacks, believing in their potential to improve.
- Accurate self-insight: They realistically assess their abilities to guide effective learning..
Characteristics of the Fixed Mindset
- Avoids challenges: They shy away from challenges to avoid failure, believing that challenges are threats to their self-image
- Devalues effort: sees effort as a sign of inadequacy, believing talent should suffice.
- Fears failure: views failure as a reflection of unchangeable limitations.
- Ignores feedback: dismisses constructive criticism to protect self-image.
- Seeks validation: focuses on proving worth rather than personal development.
- Lacks resilience: gives up easily when faced with setbacks, doubting improvement.
- Fixed self-image: Believes abilities are static, labeling self and others as “smart” or “dumb.”
Why a Growth Mindset Is Essential for Agile Leaders and Organisational Success
Agile Leaders shape the organisational culture through their behaviours and actions (Rola, 2025) . This is how they gain influence and shape both people and the organisation.
Dweck’s book (Dweck, 2008) explores multiple benefits for Agile Leaders and provides examples. Below are a few of them.
Leaders with a growth mindset view challenges as opportunities for growth rather than threats to their competence, just like Anne Mulcahy, who faced Xerox’s near bankruptcy. Mulcahy took on the challenge of restructuring the company. She worked tirelessly, sought feedback, and made tough decisions compassionately, leading to a remarkable turnaround. Mulcahy has shown that, despite her misgivings, she can deliver results in a hurry. Under her leadership, Xerox moved from losing $273 million in 2000 to earning $91 million in 2003. By last year, the company’s profits had reached $859 million on sales of $15.7 billion. At the same time, its stock has risen, returning 75% over the last five years, compared with a loss of 6% for the Dow Jones Total Stock Market Index (Knowledge at Wharton Staff, 2005).
Growth-minded leaders create environments that prioritise employee development, collaboration, and innovation, leading to sustainable organisational growth. Just like Jack Welch, who transformed GE by fostering a culture in which leaders were encouraged to learn from mistakes. He openly sought feedback, even addressing 500 managers to discuss errors, creating an environment where growth was prioritised over perfection. Jack Welch’s growth-mindset approach delivered unprecedented results at GE: 2,500% stock price increase over 20 years, revenue growth from $25 billion to $130 billion, and market capitalisation rising from $14 billion to $410 billion—demonstrating the quantifiable impact of growth-oriented leadership on enterprise performance (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007).
Growth-minded leaders remain resilient and adaptable, enabling them to navigate complex challenges and lead through uncertainty. A great example is Lou Gerstner: Gerstner’s ability to adapt IBM’s strategy to a rapidly changing tech landscape showcased his growth mindset, leading to a successful transformation.
Employees working in companies that value a growth mindset are 47% more likely to say their colleagues are trustworthy, 65% likelier to say that the company supports risk taking and 49% likelier to say that the company fosters innovation (Shetti, 2022).
The above-mentioned benefits and others presented in Carol Dweck’s research suggest that leaders can build resilient, innovative, and successful organisations by adopting a growth mindset. Agile leaders with a growth mindset will better cope with uncertainty and complexity than those with a fixed mindset.
Growth Mindset in Business Transformation
The key element of using a growth mindset by agile leaders lies in the self-belief of leaders that their and others’ abilities can be developed. But even more important is to focus on creating an environment, culture, and management systems that support genuine learning, risk-taking, and continuous improvement. As an Agile leader, you probably get some similarities 😉
My advice is to be a realistic and pragmatic leader by initiating change from within. Changes in leaders’ mindsets will impact their behaviour and actions, gradually extrapolating to affect teams, products, and organisations. The growth mindset is an intellectual concept that individuals can work on and enrich, helping Agile leaders to grow.
If you’re leading transformation and want practical support on embedding a growth mindset in your Agile teams, visit pawelrola.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Let’s work together to bring the organisations of the future!
This article was originally published at: pawelrola.com Direct Link