It happened more than two decades ago, but I vividly remember the emotions: sense of failure and melancholy.
I was facilitating a session on Key Account Management for the first time. I had prepared for it for days. By lunch, the participants were walking out of the room! They found the session extremely boring. My manager quickly stepped in and brought a co-facilitator; in reality changed the facilitator. I was merely standing on the side trying to hold back my tears with all the strength I could muster.
You may recall incidents like this, ones that shook you up!
The key to our success depends not on these incidents, but on how we react to them and what we do later. Our success depends on our ‘growth mind-set’, a concept defined by Carol Dweck.
She defined two mind-sets: ‘Growth mind-set’ and ‘Fixed mind-set’.
🪴 A growth mind-set highlights that one’s qualities can be cultivated through effort. People differ greatly – in aptitude, talents, interests, or temperaments – but everyone can grow.
🔴 A fixed mind-set comes from the belief that one’s qualities are carved in stone: Intelligence, personality, and creativity are fixed traits, and cannot be developed.
Growth mind-set can act as a pathway to one’s success, few actions that helped me:
✅ Be open to negative feedback – it hurts, but it’s important not to allow the emotions to reject the feedback, but let it to sink in without any bias.
✅ Have an honest self-reflection – on what went wrong, why, what could have been done differently; not to blame others, but take ownership.
✅ Ensure you have a confidant, be it a colleague, friend, spouse – someone with whom you can have a heart-to-heart conversation. Someone who will truly guide you to chart out a path and stay on course.
✅ Believe in yourself – Whenever I fail at something, I tell myself, “no one is born doing this, if others can learn, I too can”
What actions do you take to foster growth mindset, specially when you fail?
Perspectives 