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NatWest Business Builder
How to develop your skills
1. Believe you can learn
Believe you can learn and place effort over talent – it sounds simple, but when you’re under pressure, lacking confidence or listening to your inner critic, it can be hard to change your deep-rooted beliefs about a challenge you face.
Think about this simple equation and how it affects the actions you take:
Belief = Action = Growth
Basically, if you believe you can learn and grow, and change your ability through applying effort, then you’ll be more likely to take action, resulting in growth.
The flipside – a fixed mindset
Often this is a vicious cycle where you’re afraid to try in case you fail. There your beliefs are limiting you, so you believe you either can’t change your ability, or you don’t need to try because you were born with natural ability. Then you’re unlikely to take action, which in turn means you’re unlikely to grow and develop as a result.
How can you grow?
Carry on developing your self-awareness – having awareness of your thoughts will allow you to understand and control your emotions, and help you recognise what triggers your fixed mindset beliefs or behaviours.
Ready to have a go?
Try this:
Take some time to identify three key areas, skills or abilities that you have previously approached with a fixed mindset but would like to develop further. Reflect on what was stopping you from developing these skills in the past asking yourself these questions to help:
- What was stopping you from developing these skills?
- Can you identify any common triggers or situations that would bring on a fixed mindset?
- How did it make you feel?
- What do you worry about?
Your neurons make connections
In your brain, cells called neurons are always making connections to thousands of other neurons, and the strength, number and location of those neurons affect how the brain works.
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New connections rewire your brain
Amazingly, these connections change all the time, and, as the result of our experiences, new connections can be formed, or strengthened, making the brain smarter by literally rewiring our brain.
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Keep on going when it gets tough
Brains, like muscles, need to be exercised to develop, and can do that through effort, practice and hard work. Working on something challenging can cause anatomical changes to your brain.
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Repeat those experiences
If you repeat those experiences, the connections will get stronger – and those things will become easier!
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3. Watch your language
The language we use can have an impact on our mindset.
Praise effort, not results
Using words like smart as praise, can create what’s called a ‘pedestal effect’. This is where the person praised instead of trying to get better and improve on their work, worries about staying on that pedestal (and not looking stupid). It’s subtle – but research has shown that praising effort instead of result can bring a focus on hard work.
The power of yet
This is about focusing on the process of improvement, rather than the end goal. Adding the word yet to the end of a sentence like ‘I’m not a good dancer’ changes the way we understand it. ‘I’m not a good dancer yet’ changes the belief of being able to grow that ability. Try it for yourself!
4. Enjoy the journey (and learn how to fail)
Probably one of the strangest sounding tips – but a key part of developing your growth mindset is in how you respond to setbacks.
Try to view mistakes, or setbacks, as learning opportunities, and the practice of doing that will help you control how you react to certain situations. Most entrepreneurs only got to where they are now after experiencing failure. But with the right mindset you can work past it, and grow from it.
Ready to put all you’ve read into practice?
Try this:
Take some time to reflect on your answers from above in the ‘how can you grow’ section. Identify three key actions (remembering that words have power) you can take to overcome that fixed mindset and start to develop those abilities.
Consider how much, by when and who you need to support you.
