Brain-Based Growth - Trellis in Purpose

Growth mindset is both the belief that skills and abilities can be improved, and that developing your skills and abilities is the purpose of the work you do. To maintain a growth mindset, it is essential to have a trellis, or structure, to help you overcome and mitigate your brain's bias.

We live in an era of widespread institutional failure. These times call for a new consciousness and a new collective leadership capacity to meet these challenges in a more conscious, intentional, and strategic way. The development of such a capacity would allow us to create a future of greater possibilities.

Some people lean more toward the view that interests are inherent in a person, simply waiting to be awakened or found — this is what we call a fixed mindset of interest.

Others lean more toward the view that interests can be developed and that, with commitment and investment, they can grow over time — we call this a growth mindset of interest.

Innovation requires both reaching across fields and, often, acquiring a deeper understanding of those fields. This means that when people reach across fields, they must maintain that interest even when the material becomes complex and challenging. A growth mindset of interest may help promote this kind of resilience.

Intellectual Humility Self-Assessment

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Your Brain At Work:

We have developed various biases to help us navigate the world with minimal effort. Without these mental shortcuts, the brain would exhaust itself. This is because making a conscious decision requires a surprising amount of mental energy; the prefrontal cortex (PFC)—the hub of rational decision-making—is highly efficient but easily exhausted. 

Biases, while fallible, are automatic and unconscious, which means that they can still function on a low mental battery. While logical reasoning is our preferred method for making decisions, more often than not, decision-making is automatic, unconscious, and unintentional. And vastly impacted by the following SEEDS of Bias.

Neuroleadership SEEDS Model

Similarly: People like me are better than others

Expedience: It feels familiar and easy, it must be true

Experience: My perceptions are accurate

Distance: Closer is better than distant

Safety: Bad is stronger than good

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