Wendy Tan
Author, Keynote Speaker & Managing Partner of Flame Centre | Human Skills Institute
Great question!
Imagine if we can recruit agile learners who take ownership of their learning, learn fast and effectively, and pick up cross-disciplinary skills easily, what happens? The competitive advantage to your team and organization gains will be enormous.
An organization or even a nation is as competitive as the collective skills it has!
Yet, the question remains, does learning mindset equate to growth mindset?
Is it sufficient to attribute one’s learning to just growth mindset. I love asking this question to my audience, many of whom are working professionals, learning & development professionals and learning experts. Invariably, like the poll results you see in the image above, the overweight is on growth mindset, we think the most important learning attitude is growth mindset, we believe we can grow with effort.
Really? What about humility, perseverance, courage to make mistakes, a sense of curiosity and just being proactive? Surely these matter too?
I conducted a quantitative survey with 340 working professionals on learning attitudes influencing learning outcomes like growth in capabilities, expansion in one’s identity and engaged employability like higher engagement with more career options.
Here are 2 findings:
1. Significant positive correlation between attitudes like curiosity, courage, humility, perseverance, proactive with learning outcomes.
Beyond growth mindset, there are other attitudes associated with learning. A curious person seeks to find answers to new questions. A humble person seeks out mentors. Someone with courage is willing to take risks or make mistakes in the learning process. A perseverant person persists despite not understanding new concepts and spends another hour to nail them. A proactive person takes action to engage in learning activities. All these attitudes are related to learning. Not just growth mindset.
2. Proactive initiative is the significant predictor of learning outcomes.
Among all these various learning attitude factors, which one(s) are most important?
I measured these factors and performed regression analyses to identify the predictors of learning and growth outcomes. The results were surprising. Growth mindset did not emerge as a significant predictor. Instead it was proactive initiative. I examined it more closely and still got the same result.
I scratched my head and realised. Perhaps a possible explanation is just belief without action will amount to little. The belief we can grow with effort can be liken to the belief that exercise is good for us.
However, just having this belief alone does not mean we actually exercise. We need to actually exercise.
This is where proactively taking actions for our learning, whether it’s attending a workshop, applying and experimenting or seeking out mentors, results in concrete learning outcomes. Without these learning actions, belief alone is useful, but insufficient. This could be a logical explanation why proactive initiative is predictor to learning outcomes over growth mindset.
Therefore, contrary to popular belief, learning mindset is just not growth mindset.
So do not try to encourage learning by simply having people develop growth mindset. It is insufficient. Instead focus on proactive initiative and a broader range of learning attitudes, like curiosity, courage, perseverance and humility. This will be more effective to help people build capabilities and increase career options.
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