5 Principles of a Growth Mindset for Professional Development

Approaching your job and role with the right professional mindset is the key to growth and development. Identifying your targets with a growth mindset enables you to strengthen your skills, improve in your role with the aim of escalating up the professional ladder and essentially, keeping your employer happy with your quality of work.

Here are the 5 principles you’ll need to nurture a growth mindset for your own professional development:

Your intelligence is your tool, don’t underestimate it

Our brains, our mental capacity and our frame of mind are the key tools that every employee or entrepreneur has in common. Accessing your mind to its full ability and potential is what sets you apart from the crowds and into the professional growth sector.

We’re often taught that our IQ is what defines our intelligence, but our mind can be trained, developed and guided into the idea of a growth mindset. A growth mindset is mostly defined by the desire to improve and grow in your professional journey, generally through Continuous Professional Development (CPD), stepping out of your comfort zone and ultimately taking the bull by the horns with determination and a whole lot of self-confidence.

The key is being open to try new things. Knowing what you can handle in a job is what will push you to higher levels and thresholds, knowing when to say no and ask for help is yet another aspect of stabilizing your professional mindset., while looking out for the overall benefit of the company.

If it’s a challenge, you might be able to embrace it

Embracing a challenge, accepting risk and taking a chance on a new sub-role within your company could open your eyes to a whole new aspect of your professional career that you could really excel at. And there’s no other way to know this than by trying it out.

It’s great to be the top dog in your role and deliver the most professional results to your company, but what if you’ve been working in that role for a long number of years? Wouldn’t it be easier to stagnate? Fear of failure is what holds us back from trying out new professional growth opportunities that are essential to our development and success.

Be sure to take on challenges in a humble way, there’s no need for disclaimers stating that you’re new to this and might stumble, but there’s a lot of credibility and honour in asking for help when you need it, researching to get the job done right and most importantly learning from our downfalls, no matter how much they might sting.

Don’t give up, give it another try

The biggest downfall for people trying to break into a new career or line of work is that they give up way too easily. Mix ups, failure and disappointment sometimes come with a new venture, ask any successful start-up company how many setbacks they’ve endured! But the attitude of giving up will never set you on the path of greatness, this applies to our personal life and professional development.

The greatest icons in technology, innovation and even entrepreneurship, all failed at some point in their life. Take Steve Jobs or Elon Musk for example. Jobs’ relationship with Apple wasn’t always as plain sailing as he’d hoped, but from his setbacks came the iPod – a revolutionary music tool that led to so many groundbreaking creations.

The same can be said for Elon Musk during his exposition for the Cybertruck. If you watched the viral video, you know exactly what we’re talking about, but if not, the take-home message was this; even though during his presentation of the Cybertruck’s indestructible design, a prop used in his talk to demonstrate such innovation, damaged the car’s window, Musk cracked a joke and went on to describe what makes the Cybertruck so innovative.

All you need to do is pick yourself back up and get to thinking yet again, ironing out any cracks till the result is perfect – this effort is what will lead you to mastery.

If they criticise, prove them wrong

It’s so easy for us to criticise and look at things in hindsight – and these words of wisdom generally come from a superior who doesn’t quite understand the ins and outs of your efforts. But at the end of the day, their monitoring and critical view point is what keeps their business running smoothly – it’s their job.

So instead of planning a revenge plot for your manager’s criticism, why not learn from it? Take their feedback, sift through the valuable commentary and develop a new plan that showcases your best abilities while keeping your superiors and clients happy, engaged and hungry for more.

It’s quite a tough pill to swallow, but once you learn to manage criticism in a healthy and productive way, your growth mindset will flourish and your professional development will most definitely be recognised by the professional employers you work for.

Who’s your role model? Your idol, the icon you look up to?

Aiming for success is a natural human desire. We want to be successful, it’s in our nature. This success can be calculated in so many ways, from monetary worth to company valuability, we all want to do well. So let’s take a closer look at our mentors, be they household names in your industry or that manager who you thought was an absolute legend.

What is it that your role model did to improve their growth mindset? How did they approach a problem? How did they take criticism? How did they prepare for a big meeting or change in role?

These are the answers to success and discovering more about how our technology idols, innovation gurus and business leaders took hold of the reigns could be the solution for our own professional development.

So what’s your next step to improving your growth mindset for professional development?