Awareness is the first and essential stepping stone to change. Without it, effort and action make way for frustration — not progress.

What role does awareness play in mindset? Mindset is often perceived as passive and untouchable.
There’s some truth in that idea: childhood, education and personality all work to define our mindset.

There’s an element of autonomy in that mix, too. But that choice doesn’t exist without awareness.

We have to understand how our mindset functions before we consider how we can change it. This task has been made far easier by scholars who have organized the human outlook into two helpful categories: growth mindset and fixed mindset.

What’s more, our modern age has produced tools that help individuals untangle their thought patterns to discover where on they fall on the growth-fixed spectrum.

Why growth?

American psychologist Carol Dweck spent years examining the self-conceptions that inform behavior. “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work — brains and talent are just the starting point,” Dweck wrote. “This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.”

Some jobs make a growth mindset an absolute necessity. A teacher, for example, would be greatly helped by his ability to see the opportunity for learning in his students’ inability to distinguish between there, their and they’re. So might a researcher benefit from her willingness to work through the frustration of failure to discover the makeup of a toothpaste that fights garlic breath.

In short: Any job that requires comfort with ambiguity, willingness to take risks and ability to change quickly requires a growth mindset.

Why fixed?

Growth mindset is great. That doesn’t mean fixed mindset is inherently awful.

Dweck spoke quite harshly of the fixed mindset. “In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits,” she wrote. “They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them.”

True, there are real drawbacks to the fixed mindset. But it’s also an appropriate frame of mind for jobs that require audits, strict compliance and reduced risk, for instance.

A fixed mindset may also help workers whose jobs rely on strict processes. A product — an N95 mask, maybe — may require several checks throughout manufacturing to ensure quality and safety. Someone in quality assurance would benefit from a mindset that responds to process well.

Similarly,  few would want to employ the electrician who sees beyond the guidelines of code and wires a house according to her creative instinct.

At the same time, self awareness could aid the electrician who believes their skills to be unimprovable. A mindset that is too fixed could lead them to give up her wires and seek out an easier gig. Or, they could nudge their thoughts along the growth-fixed spectrum and apply a little practice until they win a deeper understanding of the lightswitch.

Making sense of mindset in everyday life

Why does mindset matter day to day?

Whether we’re at work, home or play, our mindset influences our thoughts and actions. Perhaps you feel stuck in a project that tests your abilities. Does your frustration make you want to stress eat those stale donuts lingering in the office kitchen? Or does it motivate you to ask your boss to get you some additional training?

You may see mindset at play in the home. How does your partner respond when a simple tiling the kitchen backsplash turns into DIY lessons on YouTube? How does your child react when the training wheels come off the bike?

Mindset matters. When you use tools like PeopleBest’s Growth and Fixed Mindset measures, you unlock the awareness you need to see your thought patterns and unlock the path to growth. Alternative views and constructive criticism can create a culture where a greater level of trust and transparency can live.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies.

Application, interview, decision. The hiring process may look simple, but that three-step process is a disaster at most companies.

Here’s the reality: Applicants are piled with forms; talent professionals are slammed with busy work; managers are overwhelmed with interviews; and employers are debating decisions.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Companies are stuck in the traditional hiring process, but it doesn’t serve their needs.
Future-focused employers are headed another way, and you can join them.

Resumes — Are They Really Worth It?

The vast majority of employers use resumes as a first line of defense in selecting a new worker. Applicants — sometimes thousands of them — hand in a single sheet of paper detailing the proudest moments of their professional lives, and talent teams spend hours examining each delicately crafted scroll.

Right?

Not so much. Research shows that recruiters look at a resume for an average of seven seconds. Seven seconds may be more than a glance, but it barely constitutes a quick scan. It’s certainly not enough time for talent professionals to understand whether an applicant can do the job they’re looking to fill.

Of course, resumes aren’t necessarily the most reliable sources of information. A 2020 report from ResumeLab revealed 36% of Americans admitted to lying on their resumes.It appeared the fibbing stemmed from insecurity; most of those who confessed their dishonesty said they lied because they didn’t have enough experience.

There may be a better way. Instead of relying on a resume to kick off your recruiting process, consider identifying the most important aspects of the role you’re looking to fill and screening candidates based on how their strengths match up.

Go Beyond The Interview

Recruiters need to understand the candidate on a fundamental level — not what they’ve done, but who they are. Most employers assume they accomplish this in an interview. Most employers are wrong.

As one Stanford lecturer wrote in the Harvard Business Review, many employers pass over great candidates because they’re asking the wrong questions. “If you are working on innovation, you need someone who can think with you,” Nilofer Merchant wrote in the article. “And by focusing on capability over experience, you increase the chances you find that person.”

The problem with interviews goes beyond bad questions, however. Interviews can’t produce completely unbiased assessments of a candidate’s strengths. Assessments can. With a standardized assessment, companies can measure the strengths and opportunities each candidate presents. Equipped with that information, they can select the person who best fits the needs of the job.

Getting To Yes

PeopleBest assessments find the unique ‘code of success’ inside of people, offering insights and identifying critical missing areas that may frustrate an employee — or drive them to quit. By discovering how workers score in each category, companies can better understand what workers want, how they stay motivated, and where they can grow to better contribute to their team.

To find out how PeopleBest can serve your team, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies.

When the coronavirus hit in the spring of 2020, remote work came on scene as a short-term fix. Some nineteen months later, it’s a normal part of the way humans work. With no signs of slowing, it’s become a necessity for both employees and companies alike.

Employers have adjusted to get remote work right. They’ve invested in technologies like Zoom to make face-to-face meetings possible. They’ve thrown the traditional 9-to-5 out the window, allowing workers to log hours when they can. And they’ve changed long held expectations like dress code—who cares about ties and heels when there are hoodies and slippers to be worn, on camera or off.

Despite these changes, employers are still stuck on one remote work complication: office culture.

These issues are bigger than ping pong tables

Before the pandemic, a quiet movement advocating for better office culture had begun. Tech companies had long offered workers shiny amenities like ping pong tables, nap pods and kegs. But workers pointed out that such comforts made little impact on office culture when deeper, darker forces such as sexism, racism and overwork were at play.

Then coronavirus swept the globe, and companies could no longer offer such perks. Their absence forced the question, yet again: What is our office culture now?

Employees have been vocal about what office culture isn’t. In a May 2021 survey from Paychex, just 9%
of participants said that virtual get togethers like happy hours and trivia nights made them feel more connected to their coworkers.

Survey results showed that something much more metaphysical was working to bring workers together. Participants said they felt close to their teams when they were allowed to talk about their work frustrations. They said they related better to their colleagues when they were asked about how things were going outside of work.

These results and other research indicate that office culture is about much more than company perks. This is great news for remote workplaces. Culture will thrive at remote organizations when leaders focus on three key ingredients:

1. It starts with Empathy

Empathy is the foundation of office culture. Leaders and managers must model it as they interact with each other. At the beginning of the pandemic, consulting and benefits firm Mercer emphasized the importance of empathy by creating solutions that emphasized their well-being through focusing on their own growth and ways to overcome struggles individually and collectively, which kept turnover low. Mercer linked an employer’s empathy with long term loyalty from its workers, customers, and candidates.

2. Employees WANT growth

Employees will disengage with work when their skills aren’t sharpened regularly. Employers that provide regular opportunities for growth will find that workers not only get better at their jobs, but also leap for opportunities within the organization, rather than jumping ship for another company that recognizes their potential.

3. Find your own DEI solutions, and find them quick

Companies are placing more importance on DEI, and many organizations are hiring executives and other professionals who deal directly with the matter. DEI efforts can’t be one off, however. For diversity, equity and inclusion to truly define office culture, they need to be valued at the organizational level. Recent research published in the Harvard Business Review indicates that companies need to focus on reducing bias systemically, rather than on the individual level.

Learn more now

As you take the necessary steps to build a positive remote workplace culture, it’s important to see yourself and the people you’re leading. Think about Google Maps or Waze. When you understand your natural tendencies inside of your personality and behaviors and that of your team you create a starting place to begin your journey. Your next step is to determine where you want to go, your success end point. From there your map and journey should be one straight line in growing and developing yourself and your people, using the three points we’ve discussed.

PeopleBest measures the success inside people by looking at five simple ‘styles’ to predict success inside of people, teams and companies. PeopleBest also introduced an exclusive index to determine how productive and engaged a person will be called ‘Work from Home’.

To find out how PeopleBest can help you and your team, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to look at what makes success happen inside people, teams and companies.