All the discussion about
Super Bowl this week has me thinking about a key finding in motivational psychology: If you want to succeed at something, you should focus on getting better rather than on being good. It’s a little counterintuitive. Isn’t everyone's ultimate goal to be good? Or even great? That’s certainly what football players hope they’ll be when they step onto the field. But focusing solely on the end result
leads people and organizations to perform worse and quit earlier when faced with extremely challenging tasks than those who focus on the process of improving.
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Motivational psychology has
a few lessons for this guy |
Focusing solely on the end result is evidence of something Stanford psychologist
Carol Dweck calls a "
fixed mindset." This is
the belief that the reason you are going to succeed is because of your innate talents and abilities. (Think, for example, of a football team that believes it will win because it’s bigger, stronger, and better than the opposition.) But when people with a fixed mindset encounter truly major road blocks, or begin to fail, they don’t know what to do. They often give up altogether. After all, if you think you’re not smart enough or strong enough to do something, there’s no point in continuing to try.
Contrast a fixed mindset with people and organizations that have what Dweck calls a "
growth mindset." They
believe that talents and abilities are malleable and can be improved over time. When doing work, people with a growth mindset focus more on the process of getting better than on the end result. They are likely to look at each challenge as an opportunity to improve. They are likely to look at each failure as something they can learn from for the next time. Another motivational psychologist, Heidi Grant Halvorson, has conducted experiments showing that people
can be taught to have a growth mindset. And those who have it are less likely than their fixed mindset brethren to get stymied by tough tasks. They persevere. Over time, they can learn to be gritty and resilient.
How does this relate to football? Good question. Maybe you can guess where I’m going with this.
