Camille: How's it going, George?
George: It's going great. Happy whatever day it is that this podcast drops cuz that's when we're recording it. I mean, minutes hot off the griddle. We did it, we uploaded instantly thanks to the internet and then it's there of yours. So happy Tuesday.
Camille: It does come out on a Tuesday.
Camille: So clearly we're not recording on a Tuesday. We're not quite that good at the fast turnaround of the podcast.
Camille: How are you doing? Ah, I am doing well. I am just thinking about how when I told you what today's topic was mm-hmm. So behind the scenes for our listeners, I text George the morning of our recording to make sure we're still on.
Camille: I say, Hey George, are ya up for recording, and here's today's topic. And so I told you today's topic was, hey, we're gonna talk about growth mindset and what was your response?
George: I wanna talk about shrink mindset cause I have too many things going on in my life.
Camille: is there a whole episode?
George: Can I make a comment about that? Yes. Because one of the things that we talk about that I hear you talk about to business owners is being able to clear out space. You can focus on what you need to focus on and just not doing like.
George: Too many things and getting overwhelmed with sprawl. But there are certain areas of my life where I have this, I can always have more attitude. Like friends, even though I know there's a finite limit to how many people I can physically talk to in a day. I will always take on a new friend.
George: I realize my limits, but I still find it helpful to have this mindset of plenty. I guess it's related to what we're gonna talk about today. You know what I mean?
Camille: I do. You are like the ultimate abundant mindset guy.
Camille: You're also the, I'm going to take on all of the abundance in life, right? Like you just have seemingly unlimited energy for that. I do not have unlimited, I like that way of thinking, but I, this goes back to one of my favorite ways of thinking about those things is to have, Jomo, like the Joy Of Missing Out.
Camille: I'm okay with that, right? I'm OK with missing out on stuff like that the introvert in me is like, nah, I don't, I don't need to go to that. I'm gonna miss that. You know? That's awesome.
Camille: But it is related to this idea of learning and developing a growth mindset. When I was listening back to last week's episode where we talked about lean and continuous performance improvement.
Camille: And at the heart of that conversation, it was just, it was learning and growth mindset. Cuz what I really wanna talk about is the idea of how do you as a small business, develop this idea of being a learning organization. Huh.
Camille: Because that's an accelerator for your business, right? The faster I can learn, the faster I can grow my business, or I can improve my business. So when I was thinking about that, I thought, wait, there's a precursor to this that we need to talk about, which is just the idea of having a growth mindset. Cool.
Camille: So this is gonna be kind of like a two-parter.
Camille: So this episode, we're gonna just talk about growth mindset, and then in the next episode we'll talk about translating that into creating a learning organization and how do you do that?
Camille: And especially how would you do that as a small business owner? What kinds of things do you even do and why do you care? And all that good stuff.
Camille: But today it's just about you as a small business owner and how you embrace a growth mindset. Sound good?
George: Can't wait. Sounds awesome.
Camille: Welcome to The Belief Shift. The show that explores. What you really need to know about building a successful small business.
Camille: I'm your host, Camille Rapacz: small business coach and consultant who spent too much of her career working in corporate business performance.
George: And I'm George Drapeau: your co-host and her brother. I'm a leader in the tech world bringing my corporate perspective, but mostly my curiosity.
Camille: Together, we're exploring beliefs about success and how to achieve it. But mostly we're bringing practical solutions so you and your business can thrive.
Camille: All right, so I do think that you and I have a pretty healthy growth mindset.
Camille: And it probably comes more naturally to you than to me. I sort of had to develop this over time. Wow. That makes you
George: interesting, .
Camille: Well, and I think it makes today's discussion interesting, right? Yeah. Like what does it mean to develop that versus sort of have it innate in you. But then when you said, you know, when I, your response to this was like, I want a shrinking mindset.
Camille: I was like, oh, this is brilliant because that's a rarity to me for George and I wanna explore that because we don't always have the energy to have a growth mindset, right? Yeah. Cuz it takes energy.
Camille: So maybe this is the best question to ask you, do you ever have these moments where you look back and you think, gosh darn it, I really got in my own way and I just missed an opportunity to learn something either from somebody or in a conversation, like, give a walk away and you're like, dang, I didn't really, I didn't really engage the way I normally do.
George: No, rarely have that kind of moment. I observed that about other people, all the freaking time.
George: I do get in my own way plenty of times, that happens.
Camille: What does that mean? How do you get in your own way?
George: Usually when it happens, it's my over enthusiasm about something. Gets me going on a journey with somebody about that particular thing I'm interested in. They were talking about maybe five, three or four things and I pick one and we rat hole on that for a while and then I realize, oh, I'm stopping us from having, letting their natural conversation go, cuz my enthusiasm just kind of went with it.
George: And we were happy, we had fun, but it wasn't really where they were wanting to go.
Camille: Yeah. I totally get this where you just, you really focus on a thing and you start to realize, oh, I'm actually taking the conversation in a direction they actually didn't want it to go. They really wanna make this other point.
Camille: And I have just gotten off track. I catch myself doing it more often than I would like really? Especially as a coach. Yes. And it's so frustrating where I just realized my stupid little monkey brain just got in the way and just decided like I really wanted to share some knowledge or I really wanted to just quickly help somebody or, or I just was too lazy to actually engage in the exercise of being curious and being open to possibilities.
Camille: What, yeah. You know, some, it's, sometimes I'm just lazy. Happens.
George: It, it does take energy to be like calm and present. Listen. And that's true. Takes a lot more energy than people think.
Camille: Yes. Yeah. And it takes focus because you actually, you're having to move your ego out of the way.
Camille: Our natural tendency you know, our bodies, our brains are just built to simplify things for us, right? Yeah. And so we're sort of for sure fighting against that.
Camille: So learning is like our brains are doing work as we're taking in information and we're deciding what we're gonna store. And I wanted to go into this whole thing about how the brain learns, maybe that'll be a whole other episode, but I was like, oh, that's gonna be way too long.
Camille: But there is this work that's happening as we're learning and engaging in those conversations. And so, of course our brains naturally want to avoid it, right? Yeah. So it's not always easy to like maintain this growth mindset, but it's so very important. Yeah. And when I think about what we talk about all the time on the podcast, so this falls into the category of mindset, which is one of those three pillars I talk about in my high performance business framework.
Camille: I have clarity, clarity systems and mindset systems, system mindset. Yeah.
Camille: Without mindset, the clarity in the systems don't really matter. You need all three of them. Right? And so this is that essential component of mindset that we have to have for success.
Camille: But it also aligns with our belief shift of curiosity over self-criticism or judgment. Absolutely. Yeah. So I just love that it brings kind of these two ideas together.
George: I'm just gonna make a goofy comment that is worth nothing here, but like, curiosity over self-criticism or curiosity over judgment.
George: Why would anybody choose judgment ? Curiosity is so much more fun than self-critique. Self-criticism. So much more fun!
Camille: You heard it here. Why not choose curiosity? It's true. It is more fun. So why is it so hard for us?
George: Why is it so hard for us?
George: I don't think we're generally raised to encourage curiosity. We're raised to follow rules by our parents and if we're lucky, we have parents who say, yes, be curious about the world. But very few parents are present on it to follow up on that constantly.
George: And so the curiosity is kind of constantly shaved away as we're kids and then we're put in classroom systems, which they do their best but they've got a lot of people in the classes and very few teachers. So there's not enough time to really continually help the kids build that curiosity mindset.
George: Sound more down on the public education system than I really am. But I do think education in general does focus on conformance a lot so that we can spend time focusing, but it doesn't really give us so many tools to keep building your curiosity.
George: And I find that curiosity is a muscle that you have to keep working or it will atrophy. So there's my made up answer. What do you think?
Camille: I think you're onto something. I mean, again, not being an expert, we probably should asked your wife this question, who actually understands how education works, but there is something to the way that we learn and the fact that in school we're all expected to basically learn in the same way when we don't all learn in the same way.
Camille: And I think just that we are all kind of supposed to go through this exact same process for learning. Yes. And maybe also that we didn't ever take a class on how to learn.
Camille: We were just putting classes and told to learn, but not taught how to learn. So I think that's part of the challenge too, is we don't really think about this as a skill to develop.
George: Yeah. Right. Absolutely.
Camille: This makes me think of, do you know this book George, called Mindset by Carol Dweck?
George: I have not read this book. No, this is the book. Oh. Can you just put it
Camille: through the screen? I'll just take it. Yeah. I'm just gonna send it to you.
Camille: We talked about doing like a top three, our top three books, and I realize this might actually be one of them.
Camille: So it's called Mindset, the New Psychology of Success: how we can learn to fulfill our potential. And it's not just for business, it's really, she talks about parenting, business, school, relationship. She talks about different angles. But this is where the discussion around a fixed versus a growth mindset, she really brings this to the forefront. So she's a PhD in psychology and talks about all this stuff. I'm gonna put a link in the show notes too.
Camille: Someone who did a really great summary this guy named Shane Parrish. Do you know this podcast: the Knowledge Project?
George: Yes, but I have not listened to it in It's
Camille: very good. Oh, okay. It's very nerdy, you would enjoy it. Anyway, this guy, he did a blog post that summarizes her book really well from his perspective.
Camille: So I'll put a link in the show notes for people if they haven't read the book or aren't sure if they wanna read the book, but I highly recommend it. But it's a really good quick way to get a summary of what this book is about. But essentially what she talks about is that a fixed mindset is where we believe that our abilities are set in stone.
Camille: And the growth mindset is that our abilities, talents, and things we can be developed. So for a long time I think that we had this in psychology, this thinking that, you know, we get to a certain age and then our, like you can't teach an old dog new tricks, right? Yeah. We're just, we're just set in our ways.
Camille: And more recently psychologists and, you know, they've studied and realized that's actually not true. We can keep changing and learning and adapting and it, so she brings it forward in this idea of fixed versus growth mindset. So to simplify that way of thinking about it is a fixed mindset is someone seeking approval and growth mindset seeks development is another way.
Camille: Interesting to think about it. Yeah, I thought that was interesting too. This is one of those things that as it comes out, you know, people either attack it or they oversimplify. It's really easy to take this concept and just oversimplify and dilute it and and then misapply it. Right? So I wanna be careful how we talk about it.
Camille: When we think about this, what she talks about when she says the value of a growth mindset, it primarily occurs in situations where either, a, we don't know an answer to something. B, we make an an error or a mistake. Mm-hmm. C, we experience failure or D when we're just anxious.
Camille: So this is really the value of a growth mindset, which I think is interesting because I'm like, oh, we're growth mindset just means I like to learn. It's actually most valuable in these moments of challenge or a tension or, ah, you know, as she spells out actually anxiety.
George: That's very interesting.
George: I had not really thought about it that way. That's cool.
Camille: Yeah. Yeah. It's beyond just I'm a curious person. Right? Yeah. It's actually this really cool tool in your toolkit for how do I deal with, and I, and the reason I think this is so important for small business owners is we are constantly up against things we don't have the answer to.
Camille: We are fraught with making errors as we're fumbling our way through this, how do I build a business? We are definitely going to experience failure. Mm-hmm. and there's plenty of anxiety to go around, right? It's sort of built in, it's built into this job of I've gotta build a business. So I love this as a tool in the toolkit for how do I at least mitigate some of those things?
Camille: And the growth mindset is a way to do it. So this is why I think it's so important, but it also is the path toward learning and creating this learning organization that we'll talk about next time. Okay. So part of our challenge, you know, as business owners, we're getting too focused on that end game, and we forget to remain open to learning.
Camille: And it's because some of this stuff enters into our world, we start to experience failure which creates doubt, and we start making mistakes and It's really hard to learn when you feel anxious. It's hard to be curious when you just made a big mistake.
Camille: We get caught in the self-criticism, we get caught in the judgment for all the whatever crazy societal reasons that that's the world we live in. Well,
George: when you're anxious, what's going on is your brain is processing rapidly. It's busy. That's what anxiety is.
George: It's trying to figure stuff out. So of course, how can we be learning when your brain is already busy spending its brain power on processing? Yeah. Yes. Even when you're anxious, you're not just idle. It's exactly the opposite.
Camille: Right. That's right. Yeah, all your brain power is going to this anxiety topic or thing, whatever's happening to you.
Camille: So yeah, you don't have any brain power left for the other stuff. Right? Yeah. No way. Yeah. So one of the quotes from her that I really love is she says, in a growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. Yeah. But it doesn't define you. So it's a problem to be faced and dealt with and learn from, and not something to just feel shame or judgment or the pain of, and I think that's the, that's like this beautiful way of thinking about it.
Camille: And then also we read the words on paper and you're like, yeah. Easier said than done. Right. Yeah,
George: absolutely. Easier said than done.
Camille: But we gotta talk about it and we gotta, as business owners, figure out how to be good at it. One of the consistent things that I see with my clients, my small business owners, is that they're often frequently beating themselves up for a mistake they made.
Camille: Mm-hmm a poor decision that they make cuz it's all on them. They're making all the decisions. So we got into this thing of, well, I wanna run my own business because yay, I'm in control. And then, oh crap, I'm in control. I like, I'm responsible for every mistake and poor decision that happened in this business, especially if it's one that costs money, then I feel horrible.
Camille: Like I'm not supposed to lose money making bad decisions . But how can you not as a business owner? Like can you imagine perfectly running a business and never making a mistake? We also know that's not realistic and yet we still can't help ourselves from judging ourselves. And so once they do make a big mistake or they do have this port, it's something that does cost them money, has real ramifications.
Camille: It causes them to start, oh, I, they start holding back. They start to not trust themselves, and they're less likely to wanna take another risk or take another chance, which means eventually that business is just gonna stagnate because business is about placing a bet, taking a risk. Right? Absolutely. I, I don't absolutely really know if this is gonna pan out, but I'm giving it my best shot.
Camille: So that's why I think this is such an important mindset, is if we get into that spiral that keeps us from continuing to learn and grow and take more risks in our business, then our business is eventually just gonna fail.
George: You know, there's so many mindset, potential mindset changes just in that narrative you had, like, you mentioned the business owner who's criticizing themselves and not focusing on the learning, and I think, yeah, of course, of course.
George: You wanna be making mistakes and, and learn from your mistakes. Get to that place as soon as you can, because your next challenge really is how can you get the other people in your business to be learning as well? If you own everything, you're making all the mistakes, it means you're doing all the learning, great.
George: You get a lot of learning done, but you don't wanna be the one doing all the learning. So hurry up and get used to learning so that you can figure out next how to help others learn, which is gonna amplify your power.
Camille: You're actually making the case for why this is so important as an individual Yeah. That we get good at. Because you want to expand this to everybody that you work with in your business. If you're just a team of three people, even more important, I would say.
George: A friend of mine has said when she told me about how she thinks about skiing, if I'm not falling, I'm not learning.
George: If I can only skis that I never follow and I'm never really pushing myself and so I'm never really getting better. So the trick is two tricks. You definitely wanna be failing. Cause if you're not failing, you're not taking enough risk for sure. You don't wanna be failing too much cuz then you will just go bankrupt.
George: But you wanna find the spot where you're doing enough to, you know, build your business, be profitable, but also be pushing your boundaries.
Camille: Yes, spot on. I think that if we don't have a growth mindset, we're not okay with failure, we will learn so much faster by pushing up against that edge and failing than if we stay in the safe zone.
Camille: And don't ever take any risk. Don't ever take a chance. Don't ever, you know, try something different. That's the essential part of it, right? Yes. We're too busy trying to just prevent the pain of the mistake.
Camille: I always equate this back to just the simplicity of why do, when I go to the gym, am I supposed to stress my muscles until they hurt?
Camille: Because that's how they grow. And your brain is the same way. Like, I'm not gonna grow intelligence in my brain unless there's a little bit of hard work, there's some hurt in there, right? Yes. And that pain of a failure, yes. This is the learning, like your brain is processing the, oh my gosh, I'm mistaken.
Camille: What would I do different? And you're trying to decide what you're doing about that. But that's the good part actually. Yeah. It just, it sucks that it's turned into a painful event for us. But yeah, that's, that's how humans are wired.
Camille: So I wanna talk about how you do it. Okay. And it's like anything, this can be, again, highly either misinterpreted or oversimplified.
Camille: So I don't wanna make this sound like, Hey, just do these six things and magically you'll have a growth mindset. But I do wanna give people some ways to start.
Camille: All of these are just about kind of, I gotta reframe, or, I mean, in the theme of this podcast, I need to shift my beliefs about how I approach a mistake or a failure or any one of these topics.
Camille: So that's really what we're focused on. So I wanna talk through these. And again, this isn't intended to say that all we need is a growth mindset, and you don't ever need help from an expert, for example. So, like your friend's example, she can keep skiing and falling down, but at some point she probably wants a lesson to learn how to stop falling down every time she does the thing.
Camille: Coach. Yeah. You need a trainer, you need a coach, you need a mentor. Like, you need people to help you. So it's not intended to discount that. And there are you. Better times than others when this is really applicable. So it's not a panacea for like all your business woes either, but I do think it's really essential.
Camille: I'm gonna link to another article that they basically talked about some of the challenges to Carol Dweck's work which in the end it ends up standing up, but it's in Scientific American and it was just some other studies that happened and it really talks about, you know, how sometimes these studies, one study studies one aspect of this and another studies another aspect and they kind of miss the essence of the whole point of it.
Camille: And it's kind of, that was what was happening, but I thought it was important to also include in here so people could see if maybe as you're looking at this, you're having your own counter-arguments that might help you kind of process through how to really think about this stuff.
Camille: Awesome. Cuz at the end of the day I'm talking about this cuz I think it's just a really powerful tool to have in your toolkit. We all need to know how to embrace this growth mindset for all the reasons we talked about. And so again, while I'm about to give you some ways to do this, just remember that these are behaviors and beliefs we're talking about, and they're not easy to change.
Camille: So as you're listening, pick one and micro remove your way into it. that's what we always say. Just baby step your way into thinking about how you might start working on this. Okay?
Camille: Because this first one I'm gonna mention, this one can be a whole just big old doozy for any individual who struggles with this, which is the idea of embracing imperfection.
Camille: Yeah, we're all imperfect , so why shouldn't you be however, Those of us who have challenges with perfectionism, we have this tendency that it leads us into needing to have the answers instead of being open to not knowing things and to instead discovering as we go. Cuz we need to be perfect and we need to show that we are perfect in something. And there's no way we can possibly have all the answers.
Camille: And even though we inherently know this, people who have perfectionist tendencies, it still doesn't matter. The need to show that we're really expert at something or perfect at something, even in your own area of expertise, disper perfectionism will get in the way of you continuing to develop your expertise.
Camille: What makes you an expert is the fact that you've never stopped learning or developing your skills in an area. Mm-hmm, not that you've learned it. And I think that's a big misconception, right? Yeah. There's nobody out there who you think of as an expert in their field who would say to you that, yep, they've learned everything there is to learn about that topic.
Camille: A true expert would never say that. Yeah, never. So, I'm curious, George, have you ever struggled with perfectionism?
George: I'm pretty good about this one I have before. But I'm usually, I mean, first of all, I'm too lazy to be a perfectionist.
Camille: What does that mean?
George: I, I don't wanna spend the time like, God, I have to spend all this time being perfect.
George: No, I don't have enough energy to do that. Let me just get too good enough for something that feels good.
George: In some areas, I work toward perfect, but I, I'll give you an example. When I was in college and I took a computer music class or an electronic music class, and I composed music, built it in the studio, wrote all the parts, did everything, the whole production of it.
George: And I spent a lot of time getting a, you know, a two minute piece produced a lot of time cause I wanted to get everything about it right. But it was impossible. Not everything can be done right. And part of, I think what, what studio engine recording engineers learned, what I learned is you have to figure out when things are good enough and you can stop because you will never, never stop.
George: There's always something that can be better or different and you'll just head to script yourself. So I learned like indulge my perfectionism to a point, and then I have to learn when to stop and just ship product .
George: But mostly this isn't a problem for me. Sometimes when I'm really, really passionate about something, I have to look at it and take that attitude of like, okay, indulge it for a while and then pick a stopping point.
Camille: Yeah, and I think you actually just described a really great example of when perfectionism actually gets in the way that of would apply to small business owners, which is, if you are seeking perfection before you put something out in the world, that is the slowest path to progress on the planet.
Camille: Yeah, that's sure. And it gets in all of our way. And I had the struggle as I started to think about writing blog posts or even doing this podcast and just really, yeah, I'm like, I'm gonna put this out in the world and then it's permanent, which is also not true by the way. I can go edit high blog whenever I want, but just embracing even the idea of, you know what, there might be some grammatical errors in this thing.
Camille: Whatever I'm not perfect. And then the people that would give you the comment about something you put out, and it would be a comment on a grammatical error. I'd be like, did you care about the content? Or you just wanna correct me?
Camille: So there's this level of just understanding, like, I could put imperfect things out in the world, and the people who are gonna value it, they're not gonna care about that imperfection.
Camille: They're gonna care about the essence of what you're putting out in the world. And so that's, I think, an important thing as small business owners and wanting to perfect a service. You can't literally perfect anything, by the way, without it being in the world and having, you know, some interaction mm-hmm.
Camille: I can't perfect a service to clients until I actually deliver the service to those clients to see how it works for them. Yeah, because the point of perfection is how's it working for them?
Camille: There's this myth of being perfect and that I could actually achieve that without sharing it in the world.
Camille: Absolutely. And that's the learning process, right? That's the painful learning. I'm like, maybe I put out in the world and I'm like, oh, nobody liked it.
Camille: Well guess what? I gotta go back to the drawing board. But there was no other way for me to. Yeah. I had to experience that pain to know it so I could make a better service or product.
George: I love that point. It brings to mind that old phrase, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Camille: And I think that it helps when you get yourself in that mindset of, I am purposely putting out an imperfect thing, and I know that, so I'm prepared to get some feedback around these things I know aren't perfect, but I'm doing it because this is when I'm actually seeking to achieve.
Camille: Again, it kind of gets back to the, I'm gonna run this experiment, I'm gonna test this hypothesis. I'm gonna put this thing out there and see how it lands. Yeah, right. For sure. Not worrying about these other things that aren't as important and whether they're perfect or not.
Camille: So yes, embracing imperfection is a big one when it comes to creating a growth mindset. Yeah.
Camille: Another one is to check yourself when you are seeking approval from others. Whoa. This gets right to the intense heart. Yeah. It gets right to the heart of that curiosity over self-criticism or judgment from others.
Camille: We're sure we should be seeking approval from yourself. I know, right? Yeah. So this one can get deep cuz sometimes we're seeking approval from our parents and Yeah. You know, thank you mom for always being so approving of us, but thanks mom. Not, not everybody has those kind of parents and they're really trying to get approval.
Camille: Now I'm not equipped to deal with that issue in my profession. However, there are other layers of this. And a big one again, for small business owners is what we were just talking about is that approval of something I put out. And it could just be as simple as putting a post out on social media that is for your target audience.
Camille: Sometimes we get back weird random replies to the things that we share on social media. Yeah. And it can really impact us. I mean, we've all heard the stories of people who've decided to leave social media because they got so much negative feedback from seemingly random people. I heard somebody the other day say, you know what?
Camille: I've learned to really look to like, okay, who made that comment? How many followers do they have? Oh, they have like three followers. Why do I care ?
Camille: I was like, that's so brilliant. Because it's always the people who don't actually have a major account and they're just trying to get a dig in.
Camille: So if you think of growth mindset, this is where I think we get into a struggle. We're supposed to remain open to feedback in order to learn and to grow. And that's part of having a growth mindset. However, sometimes people criticize us just cuz that's their game and oftentimes that criticism says more about them than it does about us.
Camille: It's not helpful feedback, it's just them ranting or trolling or whatever. And in this day and age, trolling is such a big issue. I think we do have to be really clear about separating out what is good feedback versus what's just. Useless criticism for no good reason.
Camille: And so there's work to do here. So check yourself when you are seeking approval from someone else, or maybe even think of it as when I really just wanna drive my point home to somebody, is it worth it? Yeah. Right. That's a great question. Is your need to be right in this situation, that important?
Camille: Or would you rather just be content and walk away? Hmm. Yeah.
Camille: So that can really shut down our ability to have this growth mindset is this focus on, I wanna seek approval and be right. As opposed to, I wanna be open to feedback and hear what they have to say. Or in the case where, you know, that feedback isn't coming from a valuable source, it's not even worth my time.
Camille: I'm gonna walk away. Yeah. Because I think that's growth too, is just saying, I'm gonna Absolutely, I'm gonna, I'm gonna disengage from this conversation. It's not helpful to me.
George: Yeah. I'm letting that sink in very healthy. Yeah. And you're not wasting, it's not holding, letting just to hold you back. Absolutely.
George: It's cool.
Camille: Yeah. Yeah. And we've all been there, right? When we just really wanna like, make this point to this person and be right. Yeah. And because we're so sure that they're wrong, even if we think we're doing them a favor, but it turns out also, there's another aspect to this, which is that when you are really trying to make a point to somebody who has such a strong emotional, response to you or something you've said, data doesn't actually help.
Camille: Facts do not help. Facts actually make things worse. People will entrench more because their resistance is to like, no, no, no, no. I'm not gonna let you get in my way. And we see this all the time, right? So it can happen in your business too, where you're trying to make a point really what you want is for your audience to value your work.
Camille: But you also have to remember that your work isn't for everyone. So if some people disagree with you, it's okay. Or they just don't like your style or the way you talk about it, it's okay. That's supposed to happen. If you were trying to have a message that was for everybody, it would be so boring.
Camille: Nobody would listen. So I just think about it as like, you know, don't be discouraged by that. And you know, to quote my favorite Mandalorian: this is the way.
Camille: So my question on this for you, getting back on topic.
Camille: Have you ever experienced this where somebody came at you and you were really struggling, like you found yourself getting caught in this loop of why am I still in this conversation with this person? Why do we keep seeking to get their approval or get them to agree with me?
George: Yeah, I'm sure I have. I'm trying to think of a specific example when has happened recently. I know that feeling when I really value how this person thinks. And so maybe I'm wanna share an idea with them I'm interested in or feel very emotional about and I want to get their approval on it. And, and at some point I realized, oh, I'm just looking for their approval in a different way.
George: I'm losing focus on what's valuable about their time to me . Yeah. Yeah. That's happened.
George: And it happens the other way too, where people will come and ask me and it's easy for me to disrupt that. If somebody comes to me and it's clear that they're just looking for approval, I usually mess with their heads in a fun way that helps them get out of it.
George: Like I'll say, look, just stop here. If you're looking for my approval, you've got it. Hold that over here. And now what do you want to talk about?
George: Actually, this reminds me, and in high school there were a few of us, would just make this joke to each other and say, I approve of you.
George: I don't even remember how it started, but there was, I like that we'd get in some silly argument and would just straight to jump straight to I approve of you. So I've had this mindset for a long time, but usually in a jokey way.
Camille: I like that. Maybe I should use that , cuz sometimes I'll have , even with my clients, which, you know, they're coming in, they're supposed to be vulnerable and open with all their problems.
Camille: Like I'm supposed to be the safe space and I create that space for them. It still doesn't keep them from, a lot of times when they first show up on the call, they're just either shaming themselves for what they didn't accomplish last week, or they're trying to impress me with, all the things.
Camille: Like they're not actually hearing me and so I have to move through. Same thing. I like that. Okay. I approve of you. I like that. Yeah.
Camille: I approve of you. now let's just talk about the real stuff, right? who are you trying to impress here? You don't need to impress your coach.
Camille: Like, that's not what I'm here for. Yeah. Sometimes I tell 'em, Hey look, if you don't every once in a while show up a hot mess, then I'm kind of wondering what you hired me for . Like if you show up perfect all the time I'm not really sure what we're doing. Right. Yeah, that's true.
Camille: So checking yourself when seeking approval or trying to prove yourself it's a great one, is a really great, great mindset.
Camille: Another one is, and this one I think is, Ooh, this was a doozy. This was a big one, in creating this culture of continuous performance improvement, which was how do we reframe and embrace problems and failures as opportunities?
Camille: Doesn't that just sound lovely?
Camille: It does sound great, and it sounds so lovely that it's like, seriously, people, why is it so hard for us to do? Because we don't learn nearly as much when things go well as when they go wrong. Mm-hmm. We know this is true, and yet we still struggle to see when something goes wrong as like, Ooh, this is great. This is an opportunity to learn. Right. There's, cuz it's still painful.
Camille: And these failures and problems can really keep us from learning when we just shut down because of them. Right. We get into a cycle of blame, shame, judgment, all that horrible stuff we've talked about. And this can be either doing that to ourselves or also doing it to others.
Camille: We can have this impact on others. We would always talk about if something went wrong in the business, focus on the process, not the people. The process fails the people, not the people fail the process. That's another way to think about reframing problems and failures in a business.
Camille: Yeah. Is something about our process here failed our people? How do we improve that? And so this is a great place where our favorite concept and thing to do is reflection. It's a great place for that. Yeah. You know, move through the problem and the failure. Make sure you, you're doing some reflection, whether it's you, whatever you call it.
Camille: A hotwash. Lessons learned, debrief after action report. Hotwash?
Camille: Yeah, so there's this term, it comes from the Navy, I think, where they would do an after action, it's basically another word for an after action report. Okay. Like immediately after you could do this hotwash, like Wal, everything was still hot.
Camille: I guess maybe while the engine term is still hot. Yeah. I tried to find the source. I knew it was from Navy, but yeah, it is a cool term. Like let's do a hotwash. Like it just happened.
Camille: So a lessons learned is usually sometime later. Yeah. After things have cooled. Yeah. Hot washes nothing has cooled. We just had this thing happen. Let's talk about it right now. Yeah. And so you could see, you'd get very different kind of conversations in those two things, right? Yeah. It's super important. Absolutely.
Camille: So do you have norms with your team, George, about how you handle problems and failures and how you guys process those?
George: Yeah, absolutely. Plenty of them. I'll give you one example. We just last week did our quarterly business review and I continually get great compliments about our QBR as people. I heard one this week in a different meeting where I was talking to somebody about what my group is doing and I said, oh, by the way, we just did our QBR r and if you want the slides in the recording, you can go here.
George: And one of the two people on the call said, yeah, you know, what I've heard is somebody said, if you want to hear how a great QBR R goes, go to George's teams qbr. They're mind blowing.
Camille: I doubt it. I wanna sit in on one of these now.
George: It's not that mind blowing, it's just, I think the standard for them is so low, but.
George: What we do in this QBR R is we do not talk about accomplishments like a lot of QBR do. Here's all the great stuff that happened last quarter. I find another forum for doing that because frankly we have so much. That would consume the whole time.
Camille: We're so great.
Camille: We don't even have time to talk about
George: it. No. Look, we're not gonna bore you with how awesome we are. Instead, the current format, and we tweak it all the time, is to talk about what we observed last year. And I'm making it very clear, observations are emotion neutral. You know, there's no critiques. Like what did you observe that stood out to you?
George: Could be good or bad. I'm not gonna tell you which whatever's really caught your interest, which I think is a very freeing concept. They don't have to be critiquing, they don't have to be looking for big wins. Just, Hey, what was observed and then what are our recommendations?
George: Those two things, they are value neutral words, but they all have in inevitably in that stuff, you're gonna hear about mistakes.
George: So I'm not telling them what we observed.
George: Each of those leads is talking with their peers. So they're forced to think this through themselves. So everybody gets a chance to explicitly walk through, what did we learn, what went wrong? You know, they own that, they own that knowledge and then we get outta the way as soon as possible so that we can create conversation time.
George: Cuz that's when we do the most learning from that conversation, explore the issue.
George: The whole point is present some data and then discuss what we've learned.
Camille: I like that. I think you need to have that, which is this very clearly a structured, recurring process for it. I also think that businesses should have a, what do we do in the moment? Right. So if we really had a critical failure mm-hmm, how do we process that now, not three months from now? Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. That's the hotwash idea. Like, okay guys, we need to get in a room now.
Camille: Because one, you actually, it's an opportunity to really just deescalate any tensions and emotions around it. People instantly just, our nature is to go to wanting to blame somebody. And this lets you take it into the focus of like, it's just facts and data. No emotion, what actually happened.
Camille: Focus on the process, focus on the data and process through that. And that will, it gets back to the whole point of this growth mindset, which is about this struggle that we have in situations where we've made a mistake or we've experienced failure and the, the stress that that brings into us. So I think as a business owner, if you can build in a way to handle them in the moment, it'll be hugely beneficial.
Camille: For some people it's, they call me as their coach, right? Hey, I'm having this crisis happen. Do you have 30 minutes? And I make time for them. And that's what I do. That's cool.
Camille: The next one is they use the not yet approach. I like this one. I use this one a lot with my clients. So the not yet approach is things like, well, I don't know how yet, or I haven't solved this problem yet, or I haven't mastered this skill yet. So it's really, instead of saying, I'm just, I'm not good at like, so this was actually a real thing I had to challenge myself to when I first started my business.
Camille: I would consistently catch myself saying, I'm just not good at marketing. Well, I wasn't good at it cause I'd never had to do it before and I didn't really know what it was. Yeah.
Camille: I had to reframe it into, I'm not good at marketing yet. I still don't think I'm great at it, but man, I'm so much better than I was in understanding how it works and what to do.
Camille: I got some expert help. I took steps, but if I had stayed in the space of I'm just not good at marketing, that's basically the end of my business. There is no business without marketing. Unless I get incredibly lucky, but otherwise I can't do that. So reframing these things and putting that just not yet into our thinking and then it opens us up, like, oh, that means I have an opportunity where I could actually figure this out, solve that problem, get better at this thing, whatever it is.
Camille: So this one, I think it's so simple and straightforward and it's one of my favorites that I use all the time. It's beautiful.
Camille: Is there anything today you would use your, the not yet approach to? Are you trying to master something that you'd be like, but not yet?
George: I'm naturally a not yet kind of guy. I do use this technique all the time. As you're talking about it, I was thinking, I can imagine. What if I really felt like I wanted to be a professional musician? I mean, something that's really out of the realm of possibility for me right now.
George: I will not take that approach if it's out of the realm of possibility. If I seriously wanna be a professional musician, I will say, how do I put this? I will say, okay, do I really wanna be a professional musician? If I really wanna do it, it doesn't matter that I'm in my late fifties. I know how to learn.
George: I know what kind of discipline it takes to be excellent at something, and I know so much about how to give myself chances to do that. If I really wanna do it, then I should get on that path and also recognize that I'm still fighting odds. It's hard for people to become professionals at this, but get myself in a position where I'm making a choice.
George: I can decide how much effort am I willing to put in. What my point is, it doesn't matter how difficult the task is. I have this not yet approach. Like, look, I'm not there yet, but I know how to learn.
George: I know how to get help learning. I can get much closer if I want. These tools exist. I don't wanna be in a, I don't know how to do this position. I wanna be in a, is it worth my time position.
Camille: Yes. Yes. So what? Yes, I could hear you were like mixing up, there's two ideas in here.
Camille: But it's really important to this thinking as well and, and why I think some people were poo pieing this growth mindset also, it kinda gets to the heart of that, which is like, well we can't all just be experts in everything.
Camille: Oh well, yeah. Just because time, like there's only so much time in the day and in our lives, so we do have to make trade offs and make decisions about where we wanna put our time and energy.
Camille: Yeah. But if you choose, so if you choose to go be an expert musician, you can do that. And you not knowing how yet is very clearly like, yes, that's accurate. Correct. You can go be an excerpt musician. Musician if you choose to. That's different from becoming a professional musician who makes money at it.
Camille: Yeah. That's a whole other set of skills. Because it requires you being able to go up against the odds of what it takes to make money as a musician. Mm-hmm. So that's another level of, you could also say not yet and decide you wanna pursue it. You've chosen not to and to pursue something else you love doing.
Camille: Yeah. There's choice in what you choose to do or not do. So even in my example, I chose to learn more about marketing because I knew, well, if I'm gonna have a business, I need to know something about this. But what I didn't choose to do was go become an expert in marketing. Yeah. Right.
Camille: I'm gonna hire experts Exactly. To help me do this, but I'm not gonna try to be an expert in the way I think of I'm gonna be good enough that I can do it in my business. Yeah, I'm very good at it, but when I need experts to help me with specific aspects of this, I'm gonna hire somebody to help me with that.
Camille: So it's not just saying, this isn't a growth mindset of I can learn all the things because I do have to make choices. I only have so much time in the day. It's more about being open to, there are all of these possibilities and not shutting those possibilities down just because I think I'm not capable.
Camille: Yeah, you're not shutting down that possibility of not being a professional musician because you're not capable, you're choosing not to. You're choosing a different path. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Yes. So those are different things, but they are highly related when you think about this growth mindset, right?
Camille: Yeah. And maybe that helps kind of relieve people too. It's like, oh, growth mindset doesn't mean I'm supposed to go get good at all the things. No, you could though. The idea is that you could, yeah. You just have to choose which ones to put your energy into because...
George: It puts you in control of it. How much?
Camille: Yeah, exactly. Yes. It puts you in control instead of you just giving up on something because you just think you're not, good enough.
Camille: All right, next one. I like this one a lot. This was related to leadership, I think, which is, think about the idea of you making a mistake in front of someone else as a gift to them.
Camille: Yeah, we'll add to you, but you know how great it is when somebody else makes a mistake and they do it in this, you see that when somebody does it and they do it in a graceful way. Mm-hmm.
Camille: Maybe you see like some live television thing and somebody kind of has a flub up, but they move through it gracefully and you're like, wow, that was great.
Camille: And you feel great cuz you're like, oh, I could totally see myself doing that. So think about that. If you're gonna make mistakes and you're worried about making mistakes, and this is, it kind of relates to the idea of perfectionism where we might not be willing to do things in front of other people like speaking because we're afraid we're gonna fumble it.
Camille: So I usually tell people, I'm like, be honest with your audience what you're worried about. What you think you might flub up, because once you open that up, you've just created this connection and you've created empathy and they're connected with you. Like, oh yeah, they're a real human too.
Camille: They can always make these mistakes and we're all gonna make mistakes, but if you do it in front of others, it gives others sort of that permission to like, oh, it's okay. I can make these mistakes too. It is part of normal life.
Camille: If we pretend that mistakes don't happen, like that's just ridiculous.
Camille: Right? Yeah. Have you ever had this, have you ever seen like a leader or somebody where they made mistakes and they were open about it and you were like, wow, that was some serious leadership that's some incredible vulnerability for that person and courage to be out there with that mistake?
George: You know, my current s v P does it in very small ways all the time when we're in a meeting, she's asking to understand something. She'll use she'll try to relay something back. Her understanding if she gets it wrong, she wants to hear that she's got it wrong. She will apologize for getting it wrong and then ask for somebody to repeat it, which in the small, it's a very nice technique.
George: I really appreciate that about her. I, my previous senior vp, I've been meetings with him where he's talked about investments that we made, and those bets turned out to be very bad bets. And he will own up to it and he'll laugh at himself about it, and say, I really thought I was smart. Really got that one wrong.
George: He wont call himself an idiot though.
Camille: Well, you just made such an important point that I think we have to focus on here, which is not calling himself an idiot.
Camille: So owning a mistake is different from turning yourself into, I'm just stupid, or I'm not smart enough. you don't wanna have that sort of presentation to others, like, that's not helping them. You just diminishing yourself is not the point of it. You wanna actually elevate yourself by leaning into this idea that you made this mistake.
Camille: And, you know, you can joke about like, oh, well that was kind of a goofy whatever, but don't ever turn it into a judgment about yourself, because then instantly you've turned it into a negative for everybody else because they will think, oh, I can't make any mistakes because then I will also be an idiot.
Camille: Yeah. Right. So you do have to walk that fine line of accept the mistake, but don't turn that into just a judgment on yourself. You can just get stuff wrong and be a really smart person doing it all the time.
Camille: So the last one is one that we have talked about in depth in a whole episode. So episode 20, if you haven't listened to that one was about process over outcomes.
Camille: And so this is another way to focus on this growth mindset, which is to really just don't get hung up on the speed or this final outcome. Cuz that kind of gets back to like, I want this perfect outcome, or I wanna make this thing happen and instead just focus on the work and the process and the learning along the way.
Camille: And that is a great way to also just have this growth mindset enter into the way that you approach things, is just focusing on the process is a way to do it. Yeah. There's a whole bunch of stuff we could talk about. I don't wanna repeat all of that again. Episode 20. Go listen to it because it really is helpful in hoping you make progress towards these outcomes.
Camille: It's important to know what outcomes you want, but when we get really hung up on them, we tend to shut down. We shut down the learning, we shut, like we lose our patients for that too, right? We're just trying to drive to these results instead of thinking about how we're gonna get there.
George: I'm big bought into this one.
Camille: It's one of our belief shifts. It is.
Camille: So any last thoughts on growth mindset, George? How's your shrinking mindset? Did we improve it?
George: No. There's a thing that I do that's I think is related to growth mindset that helps free my mind. One of the things about a growth mindset is the removal of constraints.
George: One of the problems we have on this planet right now is we're energy limited and we're energy limited because most of our energy is from fossil fuels and there's a limited amount of production we can get and there's only certain places where it can come from and there's gonna be less of it over time and there's gonna be all these big problems.
George: So when I think about the case for renewable energy, like solar, ever since I was a kid, I would think, what would it be like if we had enough solar panels on the earth that we had five times as much energy generated as we're actually using?
George: There's an abundance of energy. How would we think? How would it would change our lives? What would we do if you didn't have to worry about paying an energy bill, and in fact, if you had five times as much energy coming to you as you're currently using, is there something you would do different?
George: Sometimes I will u make fantasies where I remove a constraint.
George: Constraint here is not enough energy. Or think about if everything that you offered to a customer. Went over well, everything that you offered, would that change how you think about your business product introduction? Any constraint that's bothering you? Just remove the constraint and then fantasize with yourself about if that goes perfectly or better than perfectly, what happens?
George: That's a very helpful tool for me.
Camille: I love this. As you were describing, I wasn't sure where you're going, and then I realized, oh, you're describing a technique that I use with my clients when I'm trying to get them to describe an ideal state, either.
Camille: So when people are starting a business or they're first time really trying to design their business strategy and plan. I start with like, well, what does it ideally look like? Yeah. Not realistically look like. Yeah. So what we do is we remove constraints.
Camille: Let's say you are the most brilliant person about business. You have no trouble finding your clients. Money is not an issue. You have all the money that you need to get this business going. We remove all of the constraints that they imagined in the business. And then we describe what would it look like? What would you be doing? Who would you be serving? And it's this great exercise because it's not to say they're gonna literally create that ideal. Yeah.
Camille: What is to open up all the possibilities of what their business could actually be. Cuz there's a bunch of stuff in there they can do. Yes. But they've shut those options down because they pre-built in these constraint.
Camille: To me, that's like next level growth mindset is how do you think even beyond these obstacles that sit in your way and to thinking about an ideal state and how that opens up new ideas and opportunities for you.
Camille: That's sort of getting into this level of creativity that I love.
George: It takes practice too. To really think, okay, what would an ideal state be like? That's not easy if you're not used to it.
Camille: It's not. It's not, and it's, it's definitely something. When I work with clients, they, oh, consistently, most of them struggle with that idea.
Camille: They'll write this ideal and I'm like, oh, wow. That's still pretty light. Like, no, let's go further. And so it's always a coaching conversation. How do I help them get into thinking bigger about what they could actually do? Because there's always somebody like, oh, why did that come up?
Camille: Well, cuz ideally I would like for blah, blah, blah to happen. Like, well, What if you could do it, but in this version, oh. And they just hadn't thought about it. They'd shut the whole idea down. Instead of taking part of it kind of also gets back to the black and white thinking. I can either have all of that ideal or none of it.
Camille: Yeah, yeah. Instead of, oh, maybe I could have pieces of it, and how great would that be? Yeah. Like how great would it be if you could get part of the way towards your ideal life and business? Yeah. Fantastic. Right. Instead of settling for less. Absolutely.
Camille: Last question. Okay. Do you think it's ever useful to have a fixed mindset?
George: I do, I mean, this sounds like a trick question to me.
Camille: I don't think it's a trick question. I really wanna know your thoughts.
George: I have a couple thoughts.
George: One is, let's not confuse growth mindset with mania. A fixed mindset can be a good counterbalance to mania. Like, I can do anything. I'm gonna, let's gonna go crazy. You know, mania is bad. Going on either extreme is bad.
George: So it's if you find yourself going manic, and I don't know how you would detect that, but if you find yourself going like way off track, it is useful to like, okay, let's put some kind of boundary around here to kind of rein me in a little bit.
George: That is useful. And then I think , to quote Clint Eastman from Dirty Hairy, maybe? A man's gotta know his limits. We do have practical limits that it's good to acknowledge and pay attention to. That doesn't mean we have to lose a growth mindset. Come on, be realistic. I am not gonna be a professional basketball player and that's cool.
George: So if I think that's what I wanna do, help me really think, what am I really going after here as a way to kind of focus my desires. So sometimes the limits I think are, are helpful to help me focus.
Camille: I like that. Yeah. What do you think? You know, I was thinking about this as sometimes I think it's okay to have a fixed mindset if you're like, you know what, I am good at this.
Camille: I am an expert. Oh, I, I have got this. Yeah. And just giving you this level of confidence you need. So like, say you're gonna, that's cool. Go into some kind of speaking or something where you're just like, no, I, I totally got this. That can, I think, be really useful at times to just be like, mm-hmm.
Camille: I'm, I'm going in strong with this. Which kind of relates to the other thing I thought about, which was the idea of, I guess these are all kind of related, the idea of accepting of yourself.
Camille: And so I was thinking this in terms of just like aging. Like if you don't just accept that, we're aging and things are happening, if you have resistance to this, you're constantly gonna be wanting to improve what's happening to you as you age. Yeah, go get your Botox fillers. And I don't have anything against anybody who's out there wanting to get Botox fillers, but you know, we see this go to extremes, right? Yeah. Instead of just being like, you know what? I'm just gonna accept myself the way that I am. Yeah.
Camille: It's okay. I don't have to perfect all the things about me that are frankly just part of the natural course of aging. Yeah, for sure.
Camille: Which then relates to the idea of just feeling enough. Sometimes I just, I just need to feel like I'm, I am enough. And so, yeah, I do find that the growth mindset for me, I can hold in my head that I am enough and that there is yet more for me to learn and grow into.
Camille: And I like that way of thinking, but it doesn't work for everybody. I know people who really struggle with, I constantly feel like I'm not enough. And it's kind of this maybe bastardizing of the growth mindset. What makes you feel like, oh, I'm supposed to constantly be growing, which means I'm not good enough.
Camille: Oh, I see. So if you struggle with that, sometimes I think it's okay to just sit with like, yeah, I am enough. What I've done is enough. What I am doing is enough. Like I'm doing enough to grow my business. I'm doing enough for my family, whatever it is, you feel like it's really easy for us to get caught in this, especially in our world of like do more, get more done, be more productive.
Camille: So if growth mindset makes you feel that way, I think sometimes it's okay to flip back to the like, it's okay to just be enough. Yeah. And then I can move back into growth. You can move back and forth. Right. I don't consistently have to stay in that mindset cuz it's, again, it takes energy and it's hard to hold it.
George: Yeah. That's for sure.
Camille: So in closing, I just wanna say, and again, this having a growth mindset, it really is the first step in this journey we're going on right now toward creating a learning organization. Because this is, this is really, today was focused on the mindset of the business owner and how you use this growth mindset to help you overcome some of the bigger challenges of, again, a failure and all that fabulous stuff that's gonna happen to us or is happening to us.
Camille: But it's also leading to this conversation we're gonna have next time around, what does it mean to be a learning organization? And how do you as a small business do that and leverage that as the path to high performance?
Camille: Because that's what we're seeking. We're seeking this high performance business, whatever high performance means to you, right? You are defining that for yourself.
Camille: But to get there, this learning organization concept is the way to do it. So we will talk about that next week. So do not miss next week's episode. Don't miss it. Cause that's really gonna get in, get into the details of that. Very cool.
Camille: All right. Any last words, George, before we No, this is
George: really, really a lot of fun.
George: There's a new growth mindset. It's so much more fun than the alternative.
Camille: You know what? At the end of the day, I think that's all we really needed to say. You didn't need to listen to this whole podcast. All you need to do was hear George say growth mindset is just more fun people, go do it. It's just more fun.
Camille: Take it from George .
Camille: Alright, well, as usual, please go say hello to us on the voicemail widget that's on our website, the belief shift.com. We wanna hear from you. What do you think we do? Are you practicing being a growth mindset? What else do you want us to talk about? We would love for you to leave us a message.
Camille: Also, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. So we've been getting a couple more reviews. People are still liking us, but we'd love to hear more. Awesome. So leave us a review that'll help us get seen by all the people.
Camille: So those are your things to do besides be a growth mindset. Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast and that way you won't miss next week's episode on learning organization.
Camille: Awesome. Thanks everybody. Have a
George: great week, everybody Next week.
George: See ya.