As I am just 2 days away from turning 47, I wanted to share a life reflection which is so relevant for one of the main limitations I find in family business owners and leaders. Mindset is everything. If that statement seems too strong, consider that we bring so many basic assumptions to every decision and action we make. Left unexamined, they may unnecessarily restrict us or lead us in the wrong direction altogether. Perception may not truly be reality, but when it comes to how we approach challenges and opportunities, mindset determines the world we encounter and possibilities we apprehend. So ultimately our mindset can be our most enabling or our most limiting factor.

In her 2006 book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Stanford Professor Carol Dweck distinguishes two extremes of the mindsets people tend to have about their basic qualities:

• In a fixed mindset, “your qualities are carved in stone.” Whatever skills, talents, and capabilities you have are predetermined and finite. Whatever you lack, you will continue to lack. This fixed mindset applies not just to your own qualities, but to the qualities of others.

• In a growth mindset, “your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts…everyone can change and grow through application and experience.” Qualities like intelligence are a starting point, but success comes as a result of effort, learning, and persistence.

Therefore, the distinction between fixed and growth mindsets has tremendous implications — as individuals and organisations — for how we address the growing pressures around us.

The Mindset Paradox: The greatest threat to success is avoiding failure. One of the most provocative aspects of Dweck’s work is what it says about our approach to challenges. In a fixed mindset, you avoid challenging situations that might lead to failure because success depends upon protecting and promoting your set of fixed qualities and concealing your deficiencies. If you do fail, you focus on rationalising the failure rather than learning from it and developing your capabilities. With a growth mindset, you focus on learning and development rather than failure and actively pursue the types of challenges that will likely lead to both learning and failure. This sounds a lot like the questing disposition we have discussed previously.

What does this ultimately mean? It means that MINDSET PROFOUNDLY SHAPES THE BUSINESSES WE OWN OR ARE LEADING!!!!!

If you have a fixed mindset, you believe that there are a finite set of smart people and valuable resources outside your company. The challenge is how to identify, connect with and mobilise them to deliver more value to the place — static resources tied together in a static ecosystem. If, on the other hand, you believe that both the resources and the ecosystem itself are dynamic, then the role of the ecosystem is not just to connect and mobilise existing resources but to build relationships that help all participants get better faster. This leads to a more powerful form of increasing returns — not just network effects but new mechanisms to accelerate learning and performance improvement — as each participant learns faster as more and more participants join the ecosystem.

A fixed mindset leads you to focus almost exclusively on attracting and retaining talent. The assumption: each person’s skills and capabilities are set. You will tend to devote too many resources to those with a perceived stock of knowledge and overlook (and eventually lose) employees with limited stocks but great learning potential. Worse, because you underestimate the value of learning and development, you won’t likely get the most out of those employees you do value. With a growth mindset, you understand that individual and organisational capabilities can be cultivated and developed, to improve performance and to expand in new directions. You focus more on talent development, creating work environments and practices that enable employees, regardless of work classification, to develop new skills and to learn by working with others, by problem-solving and experimentation.

A fixed mindset fosters a zero-sum view of the world: if you win, I lose. This perspective fosters conflict and mistrust and, not surprisingly, relationships governed by relative power, tend to be transactional and are rigidly defined to protect each party’s share of the value. A growth mindset fosters a broader view of the possibilities: by working together, we can create more value than if we work individually. While there are still issues around allocation, relationships are cultivated based on a goal of creating an even bigger pie. These relationships centre on improving the performance of all participants, and the process of creating value together fosters trust. The levels of collaboration and trust deepen with time, creating a more valuable relationship.

I firmly believe that success belongs to those who can adopt a growth mindset. Those with a fixed mindset will likely be increasingly stressed and overwhelmed by mounting performance pressures and sustained uncertainty. Worse, the more they avoid failure, the more susceptible these individuals and organisations can be to failure as they are not learning from mistakes and missing opportunities.

So here are some questions I invite you to ask yourself:-

• What assumptions do you make about the world and how do they play out in your decisions?
• Can you identify which assumptions you hold most strongly too?
• Can you examine these assumptions and try to see their true objectivity?
• Have you succeeded in actually changing your mindset?

I remain mesmerised by Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search For Meaning. Viktor Frankl was a Austrian neurologist and psychotherapist, who on the 25th September 25th, 1942, was taken prisoner by Nazi Germany and spent more than three years in concentration camps, including Auschwitz. During this time, Frankl examined how he and other prisoners faced endless life-defining challenges every day, often every hour. It’s hard to imagine a more stressful, heart-wrenching daily experience. With curiosity, he explored why humans behave differently when up against challenges, or in this case, the most horrific conditions imaginable.

Frankl found that some responses actually produce better outcomes. He discovered that when one’s response is grounded in purpose and meaning — with a positive, optimistic mindset — it nearly always increases the odds for better results. He found this was the defining difference between those most likely to survive the death camps and those less likely to persevere. Frankl wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Let that sink in for a moment: A positive mindset can literally open up better possibilities and increase the odds of better results. This is Frankl’s case for defaulting to optimism. It’s about responding to whatever life may bring you with positivity. We’re talking about choosing your mindset, despite life’s circumstances. It’s the glass-half-full approach. Looking at the bright side. Seeing the best in people. Fighting away dark thoughts. Resisting negative self-talk. Not participating in gossiping and complaining. Always bringing your best self to any situation.

Frankl also wrote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. In our response lies the opportunity for something better.”

Make no mistake: In everything, we have a choice. Every human being possesses the power to choose how they’ll respond to life. But isn’t it curious how frequently we don’t? As business leaders it is especially critical today to remain awake and positive, and to avoid the constant undertow of critical voices, stress and negativity.