IntelliSport

Summary

Carol Dweck has shown that there are two mindsets athletes can have about their talents and abilities. Athletes with a fixed mindset believe that talents and abilities are fixed, while athletes with a growth mindset believe talents and abilities can be developed. Most exceptional athletes, including Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, and Tom Brady, have had growth mindsets.

Growth mindsets allow individuals to embrace learning, challenges, and mistakes. Growth mindsets also lead athletes to appreciate the role of effort in improvement.

Growth mindsets are fostered when coaching staffs present athletic skills as acquirable, value passion, effort, and improvement, and avoid glamorizing natural talent.

Winning Mindsets

Sep 27th, 2009

In a recent article*, Carol Dweck describes that most athletes have one of two mindsets about their talents and abilities. One group of athletes believes that their talents and abilities are fixed. These athletes believe that their talents are determined at birth, cannot be changed, and as a result typically fail to reach their athletic potential.

Another group of athletes has a growth mindset. These athletes believe their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, practice, and good instruction. While not all of these athletes believe they are the next Usain Bolt, they do believe that Usain Bolt would never have reached his potential without determination and practice.

Research has demonstrated that a growth mindset fosters more productive attitudes toward training, a healthier desire for feedback, greater abilities to overcome challenges, and better overall performance. If one considers some of the best athletes in history, such as Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Michael Phelps, it becomes clear that most champions possess growth mindsets.

Dweck goes on to describe recent research in the fields of neuroscience and psychology that supports the theory that the brain is highly malleable, and can has tremendous capacity to change and reorganize. In addition, research has shown that practice is perhaps the main contributor to greatness. These scientific advances support the value of a growth mindset, and show that a growth mindset can be developed with proper encouragement from a coach.

Developing a Growth Mindset

When athletes are young, mindsets are not strongly relevant to ability level. However, as athletes gain in age and experience, those with a growth mindset tend to outperform their peers. Fortunately, mindsets are nothing more than beliefs, which can be influenced and changed. Thus, young athletes can develop cultivate growth mindsets as they mature. How can a coach encourage the development of a growth mindset among athletes?

A leading influence in the development of a youth’s mindset is the form of praise the young athlete receives. Generally, praising athletes for their talent or intelligence results in a fixed mindset, because youths learn to associate their performance with innate talent. Dweck describes research that shows how athletes who receive praise for talent and intelligence seek less challenging tasks in the future, because they don’t want to risk their reputation for being talented.

On the other hand, research shows that repeatedly praising an athlete’s work effort or dedication will develop a growth mindset. Such praise has been shown to lead toward athletes seeking new and different challenges, and leads towards athletes remaining highly motivated for long periods of time. Thus, coaches should focus their praise and attention on an athlete’s effort, practice habits, and learning. Such praise will help athletes understand what they did to reach their current level of success, how to overcome setbacks, and what they need to do to improve further.

Conclusion

Dweck concludes her article by explaining that on an athlete level, a growth mindset leads to a higher value on learning, an embracement of challenges and mistakes, and a respect for learning and effort. This mindset is developed when coaches praise the mindful acquisition of athletic skill, value dedication and effort, and do not over-value natural talent.

Finally, coaches themselves can adopt a growth mindset. Instead of operating in a fixed mindset as a simple judge of talent, coaches with a growth mindset foster hard work and develop talent, not just identify it.

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*Material for this article has been drawn from Carol Dweck’s article Mindsets: Developing Talent Through a Growth Mindset, found in the USOC Olympic Coach E-Magazine’s Winter 2009 issue, which can be found here.

By IntelliSport

Implementation

• Present athletic skills as acquirable, not simply as abilities that result from natural talent. Give your team examples of famous athletes who have overcome areas of weakness through practice and dedication. Analogize these examples to current areas of weakness among your own team members, and explain how hard work and focus will lead to improvement.
• Praise athletes who display the most effort and practice the most conscientiously. These are elements of a growth mindset, and these are the attributes that should be valued most highly. These are also the elements that lead to improvement.
• Avoid emphasizing the value of natural talent and intelligence. While these factors do play a large role in any athlete’s success, they should not be valued for their own sake. Only when combined with the attributes of a growth mindset will natural talent and intelligence lead to truly great results. By avoiding an emphasis on natural talent and intelligence, you will encourage your athletes to place a higher value on, and develop, growth mindsets.