This set of resources has been curated to help you embark upon, and deepen your exploration of growth mindset, and help you find your own adaptability and resilience in uncertain times.

Drawing on leading-edge materials, it aims to:

• Help you get to know yourself better, including how you respond to ‘triggers’, stress and anxiety.
• Introduce you to a range of perspectives and research – made practical so that you can deepen your own learning journey.
• Explore the latest ideas from neuroscience, psychology and learning theory, to give you practices that can transform negative experience into greater self mastery.
• Support and enable you to connect with others differently, even in the midst of difficult situations.

Growth mindset, stress and anxiety

Understand human needs to build trust

Trust appears either explicitly or implicitly in just about every organisational ‘value statement’ document.  We use the word as if it were something simple that could just be demanded at will – of ourselves or each other.  When we combine this with an overly mechanistic view of the human being at work (for example 20th Century ideas such as “leave you emotions at the door” etc), we have lost touch with the fact that TRUST is profoundly human, based on the degree to which we are able to be vulnerable to ourselves and each other, and feel confidence that our deepest needs will be met with integrity.

This lesson uses the latest neuroscience, psychology and sociology to explore our deep human needs.  Take this lesson slowly, think it through and ‘feel’ it through as you go, allowing it to touch you and tell you something about what is important to you.

It deepens our understanding of our personal ‘triggers’ – those stress moments or periods which catch us and plunge us into a non-resourceful state, potentially defensive and reliant on old fixed habits - blocking adaptation and change.  Making a link between these and our deepest human needs, gives us the capacity for self-compassion and a deeper understanding of others - from which we might go on to enhance our capacity to adapt, renew and learn.

Introducing growth mindset

To enable change in ourselves and others, we need to adopt a mindset founded on learning and inquiry.  None of us are in this growth mindset all the time – and believing that you are would be the first sign of NOT being in growth mindset!

This lesson explains the basic underpinning ideas of growth mindset (drawing on the work of Dr Carol Dweck and others), with relevant examples.

It goes on to offer a straight-forward (yet challenging) way of engaging in your own journey from fixed mindset to growth mindset.  It deepens our understanding of our ‘triggers’ (stressor events) and helps us develop our ways of interrupting auto-pilot reactions.

Growth mindset 'under fire' - stress, anxiety and threat

Despite our best efforts, there are just some things that will push us all the way into a "fight-flight" reaction.

This lesson takes you on a deep dive into the neuroscience of resourcefulness and anxiety, and the kind of reactions and behaviours that can occur in moments of extreme stress.  We also explore Dr David Rock's SCARF model in more detail, and leave you with lots of tips and ideas for how to manage not only your own resourceful state, but also how to lead others in the most generative way.

Learning to bounce-forward

Learn from 2020 – Why you need to mitigate risks of burnout and lost productivity/connection (draft)

This lesson captures the learning from what might be described as the ‘world’s largest experiment in virtual and remote working’, namely, the mass adoption of ‘work from home’ triggered by Covid-19 in 2020.

We have scoured a global selection of resources (peer reviewed research, social media, top Business School Review Journals, newly published books, TED and other videos etc), to separate the hype (and, my goodness, there was a lot of it), from the helpful.

Restore your sense of autonomy and control – practices to build choice and impact in the ‘new normal’

We need our minds to be quiet, resourceful and clear in order to find the insights, solutions and learning essential to any complex job – and this means interrupting ourselves when we get stuck in a self-depletive pattern, and simply trying harder, wears us out even more.

It is important to find ways of restoring your own autonomy and choicefulness - and that can simply take the re-establishment of a few routines (simply in theory - but always challenging in practice) which create reasonable boundaries. 

This lesson will help you find some practices that work for you.

Boosting cognitive, emotional and social resilience (draft)

In a number of different lessons, we have explored how you can work with mental, emotional and social wellness in your workplace, community or team.

We aim, in this lesson, to deepen your craft – focusing on developing a deeper understanding of your own resilience (which will additionally make you more able to understand others’). 

This will enable you to take some simple actions to enhance your capacity to stay resourceful during periods of high challenge and change.

Your ‘bounce-forward’ toolkit to share with your team (draft)

There will be occasions, no matter what precautions you take, when you or someone around you suffers a shock or breakdown of their mental health - and this can be even more difficult to notice and deal with when working remotely.

This lesson is about equipping you to have confidence to step in and help yourself and members of your team when they are in (or on the brink of) distress.  We often call this ‘mental first aid’ – and it is something we should all get good at as leaders.

This isn’t about being a therapist, or even a counsellor – these roles take years of professional learning, and the territory they enter is definitely best left to those qualified to handle it.  But there is a vast range of practical things that the lay-person can offer, of real value and benefit, which go a long way to restoring wellbeing and mental/emotional health.

Getting help on your journey

The opportunity to join a Peer Support Group

When we try to develop our learning, unlearn old habits and assumptions and develop new approaches, we are often put in very vulnerable positions.  As leaders especially, showing our ‘learning out loud’ is challenging.

You may already have been assigned to a Peer Support Group as an inherent part of your programme.  If not, you now have the potential to join a virtual Peer Support Group.

This lesson explores the commitments and benefits of such a group and explains the preparation for a PSG meeting.  If you don't have a group, and would like one, you can contact us to explore how this would work.

Frequently asked questions