The CUBE of Personal Leadership: Grow

Imagine a piece of paper that stands before you on a table. The piece of paper is folded in an unusual, non-trivial way. Then, you get a piece of paper of your own and without touching the paper on the table you need to recreate it. The question is: how do you do this?

There are roughly two groups of people. The first group looks at the piece of paper on the table endlessly, trying to figure out how to solve this complex puzzle in their head first without using their own piece of paper. The second group tries to recreate the paper on the table by folding their own piece of paper. When they are unsuccessful on their first try, they start over with a new piece of paper. And so on, until they used an entire stack of paper. All the while, the first group endlessly looks at the piece of paper on the table, without success.

These two groups show the difference between a fixed- and a growth mindset. The group with a fixed mindset is unused to making mistakes and more importantly, that making mistakes is a good thing. The second group has a growth mindset: they know that the only way to improve is by trying and making mistakes along the way.

Try to grow instead of being fixed.