Remarkable Minds

The Power of a Growth Mindset

• Daniel Stark • Season 1 • Episode 1

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On the first ever episode of Remarkable Minds, Wes Lockett and Steven Hooker join us to discuss why developing a growth mindset is so important for continued success in your life. 

Listen for stories and tips about fixed vs growth mindsets, perspective shifts, and more. 


This podcast is brought to you by Daniel Stark Injury Lawyers, a personal injury law firm that protects our clients from getting SCREWED by big insurance.

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Speaker 1:

People talk about strengths and weaknesses, but some of your strengths are weaknesses in some scenarios, like they don't apply here, and your so-called weaknesses are really strengths when it is in another situation.

Speaker 2:

Get ready. Drop the confetti, Get ready, get ready.

Speaker 3:

Get ready, drop the confetti. Get ready, drop the confetti. Welcome back to Remarkable Minds hosted by Daniel Stark Leaders. Here we unbox insights for professional growth. My name is Claudia Yanez. I do marketing sales here at Daniel Stark, and today joining us is Wes Lockett, our chief operating officer, and Stephen Hooker, our team lead and newly announced partner of the law firm.

Speaker 3:

So by the way, congratulations on that, thank you, chloe, y'all were absolutely in mind when we selected. What leaders would we love to come on set to do a growth mindset and talk about what a fix versus growth mindset looks like and really the benefits of that and how people really just rob themselves of the opportunity to grow in that fixed mindset. And who better than y'all two here? Because when y'all started, you know you started as an attorney and then moved up to a team lead position and then to a partner in such a short amount of time. And Wes also started as a paralegal to a director, to a chief operating officer. So like, obviously what you needed was a growth mindset. Y'all exhibited that and so let's honestly, let's just dive in. Y'all ready. Yeah, we're ready. Okay, let's talk about honestly, let's just dive in, y'all ready yeah.

Speaker 3:

We're ready. Okay, let's talk about first, let's just define it what fix versus growth? Like how would you describe a fixed mindset, someone who has that? You want to take this.

Speaker 2:

Sure, I can lead us off.

Speaker 2:

The way I see a growth mindset is somebody that never, ever sees themselves as a finished product, themselves as a finished product.

Speaker 2:

So I think a lot of times people, when they get to a certain professional threshold in their career, they're thinking okay, I've made it, this is who I am, and now I'm just going to coast, for lack of a better term, whereas people with gross mindset they look for little, incremental ways to get better and over time that turns into something very powerful and meaningful.

Speaker 2:

Because a lot of times when you're looking for opportunities to grow, you may not notice it in the moment and it may take some time for those little things to kick in. But then, a year, two years removed from that, you look at yourself in the mirror and you say I am a almost fundamentally different person than I was two years ago, and I definitely saw that with Wes. I've hopefully embodied that at least partially in myself, but I mean, it's to me. It's just looking for those, those little angles where you can I call it shaving off the fat, where you know you come in as this unfinished product and you're trimming the fat and then hopefully you get to a point where you've sculpted yourself and you're the person that you want to be, but you're never finished.

Speaker 3:

I love that because you're always you come at it from a student perspective. You're always learning and you feel like you still have more things to learn, more ways to grow, and I've never heard of it in that way like an unfinished product but, yes, like we're never finished, and kind of the vice versa to that fixed mindset is people like who believe like this is just who I am. I'm not changing they shut down I don't have the skills for that or like they just give in to their constraints.

Speaker 1:

I'm too old for that or you can't teach an old dog new tricks like I can't stand that. I was actually thinking about it last night and I think I think it comes from Atomic Habits by James Clear about one percent every better, better every day. You, just, those small things, become these massive things over time. And if you're just working on these small things, small things, and it may not be career growth, it could be personal growth, it could be health, it could be mental health, it could be learning a new language, like whatever it is, because while both of us have progressed professionally and so have you, by the way, she didn't even give herself props, but kudos to you. She also started an LST, I think which wasn't even called that at the time, what was it called Resource?

Speaker 3:

Resource, and so that's equivalent people who don't know what these departments are named. This is equivalent to people who are just answering the phone line setting up cases.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and now she's our chief marketing and sales officer, so look line setting up cases, yeah, and now she's our she's our chief marketing and sales officer.

Speaker 1:

So so all of us just hustlers around here, but so 1% better every day. It's just. It can look like so many things and really just being curious about everything. So I, I, I don't even really think about myself in a growth mindset, but I always think of myself as curious, like well, what am I going to learn out of this opportunity? What am I going to learn from this? You know, this thing, this project, we did this failure, this case, like what did we learn from this last quarter? And that's something that we ask our team members, like what, what, what did you take out of the last 90 days and what can I apply to it? Or it's even in our social contract, like dedicated to growing personally and professionally. So really like taking that to the next level is absolutely something I love to do. I just it like it makes me feel excited, like I'm jacked up about it.

Speaker 3:

yeah and you and you like, jumped right into two, three questions down the line in regards to like how, like those practical ways that people can help, can start shifting their mindset.

Speaker 3:

And being curious is absolutely one of those practical things. And asking those questions and before we get more into that, let's let's talk more about do you ever recall a time that that maybe someone has called out to you or you felt in yourself, I mean, because we weren't like this out of the box, like would you say, like I, just from a, from as long as you can remember, this is always who you've been like in this mindset. Or can you remember a time where you like thinking about, like, oh yeah, I can see like I had a fixed mindset during that time in my life and what did that look like for you?

Speaker 2:

I think that for me it's gone through quite a few different iterations and so I was sports my entire life up until law school, and then that obviously changed gears and I became an attorney. But one of the things that sports teaches you is just to be comfortable in failure and embrace the failures and don't let it become you. But within that I mean everybody's kind of riddled with insecurities and when somebody gives you feedback, even if it's well-meaning or constructive, automatically your defense mechanism kicks in and you want to protect yourself, and so setting that aside is a process.

Speaker 2:

It's not something that like oh, I want to have a growth mindset and it happens overnight.

Speaker 3:

That's right.

Speaker 2:

It's like looking for those little opportunities throughout your life, throughout a given day, week, whatever it is. To not do that, to not react, even if your first, your first reaction is to be defensive or to feel attacked to be able to set that aside and hear the substance of what somebody's telling you. So for me, and back to your actual question, when did it switch? For you, it never. It's not a light switch, it's more like closer to, like a dimmer dial, like it's. My defensiveness and unwillingness to change in some degree has gone down over time, and that's from feedback. I mean, both of you guys have given me feedback over the course of my career which is extremely valuable. I mean Danny and Jonathan and others at the firm have given me great feedback and at some point I'm like, oh, like I don't want to hear that or I don't like it because it doesn't make me feel great. But ultimately you push past that. You're just going to be that much better each and every time.

Speaker 1:

I don't think I came out of the box that way.

Speaker 1:

When it came to a growth mindset and there were certainly things that I didn't have a growth mindset about I came out curious and that was probably extremely annoying for lots of people around me.

Speaker 1:

But I think what was not a switch flip, as you say, but I think what really made a difference in being able to hear that feedback is starting to have lots of people around that you felt like really believed in you, like they were giving you the feedback because they cared about you, not because they were harsh or they wanted to win, but because they really wanted to see you do better, like they cared about your success and it made it easier to hear the feedback.

Speaker 1:

Like maybe the feedback wasn't delivered in the way you needed to hear it at the time, but I truly knew that person was giving me that feedback because they wanted me to be better, do better, grow more. They gave a crap about me as a person and so I could hear what they were telling me in a different way and that started to kind of help me elevate and move past those insecurities, to kind of help me elevate and move past my those insecurities. And then I was seeking the feedback and that was maybe a bigger change and shift in me, where it wasn't somebody giving me the feedback or I was like actively, like OK, well, what can I do better? What can I be? How can I be better, what can I do? Where else can I improve, where can I tweak? And that was probably the biggest shift is from people giving it me, being able to receive it and then seeking it.

Speaker 3:

Those were maybe like the steps for me as a person and I a hundred percent can relate to that because that's really similar to my journey and I would say my journey even came from a place of fear where I and I also kind of grew up in sports and I definitely did not appreciate it for what it was and what it taught me at that time and looking back, I absolutely can see all of that. But I definitely had a lot of fears and I was absolutely in victim mentality mode up until like even after college and a lot of that. And with my fixed mentality of like I can't do this, I started to believe like what people around me said or how they thought. And so that's an important, important part if you are really wanting to grow in this area, so you've got to watch out for who you surround yourself with and that you're surrounding yourself with people who do have that growth mindset, because if not, that stuff just kind of just spills right over to you. And that was a lot of what I was experiencing and it just kind of helped nurture that that wound and nurture those that just ugly narrative in my in my head. And it wasn't like until you said I had people that I knew care about me and spoke into my life and were really telling me the things that were preventing me and constraining me from like moving forward and the ways I should and and some of the other things I remember.

Speaker 3:

Noticing is just a consequence that I had in my personal life too, or in in my marriage or in other personal relationships, and that's where the fear came in. Because I did not want to lose these people in my life. I was really afraid and something had to give and I knew I needed to let them. So seeking that out to people that I trusted good mentors help get that started. And then when I started to develop this confidence in myself and I started to feel like worthy and more valuable, like oh my God, I can actually accomplish a lot more than what I previously thought, and that just it just opened this, complete, this other side of my brain and just made me approach things so differently. And then on to kind of where we're at, fast forward 10 years down the road and I see challenges and kind of like Jocko, like good.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Good, I love it. Yes, and almost sometimes to a fault, because the way you think and your mindset and the way it perceives problems. You know, brittany told me one time this analogy and it's always. I always remember it, and it's about whether you drown in a pool of two feet or 20 feet of water. You're still drowning. Good for you that you don't drown in two feet of water, but for that person that's in two feet of water, they're still drowning.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And that kept it in perspective because I can be like Jocko good, good, but I got to remember who I'm talking to. I got to remember where they're at in their journey and how can I help them, like, move out of that and help them grow. And you know, as leaders, we notice this within our teams and who you're dealing and who you're talking to, so it changes a little bit the conversation and how you're going to have it with them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I remember.

Speaker 1:

so Claudia and I kind of moved up the chain together and have that kind of bond and where our friendship or trauma bond, yeah, our trauma bond together and I remember it was when we moved from associate director and it felt like we were our, our firm was scaling and we were trying to figure some of those things out and scale our processes. And we didn't have that experience Really. We had some tools that we were trying to Frankenstein together to make things right for our departments and I remember us having a conversation like, okay, more problems, more job security and that kind of like flipped the switch.

Speaker 2:

We were like oh, that's a new perspective. Like okay, All right, All right. Like.

Speaker 1:

I got it Fantastic. Like we're not, we're not going anywhere. They put us. They put us here to solve all these problems, Like that's right. So sometimes it's just about like a perspective shift and the way that you think about things. And people don't have that experience and so I was.

Speaker 1:

I was texting her trying to get ready for today's conversation and that made me think of the upside of stress, and that's exactly what that book talks about. Like if you think about what's happening in a different way, it it literally makes your body react differently. Like I think that there's a story in that book that the like maids in new york, if they're cleaning rooms like they're literally exercising, but if they don't think about it like exercise, nothing changes in their body. But if they started to think about it as exercising, they started to lose weight and like gain muscle, like so. So if you just if you're telling yourself I'm stressed out, your body has a stress reaction.

Speaker 1:

But if you tell yourself like I'm excited, like I'm so jazzed about this, your body's like, oh, this is great and your brain's like this is amazing, Like I'm going to problem solve this, so Endorphins released. It's really just sometimes about a perspective shift in unlocking a different part of your brains. It's like when you think like I can't do this versus I can't do this yet, and it just you're like oh, this one word really changes the way that my brain perceives this problem and this challenge and how I can approach it. And if, if I even can solve the problem because I said I can't or I can't yet, and your brain's like oh yeah, I will solve this later.

Speaker 1:

And so sometimes it's just you just haven't learned these tricks for yourself and these tool sets and you've got to teach people how to swim on your team and you're like, oh, I figured all these things out. Let me tell you, it's super easy.

Speaker 3:

That's right. So we all work with different personalities, people on different journeys, and have y'all can y'all recall a time where you have encountered you're talking, you're trying to grow someone on your team that you believe were operating from a fixed type of mentality or mindset and growing them Like what are those things that you're seeing and what are some practical advice that you've given them? Those small, incremental but yet consistent?

Speaker 2:

So yeah, to your question, claudia. I've definitely encountered quite a few people over the course of my career that have not had a growth mindset. I mean, and there's a lot of little hallmarks that you can see when you're talking to somebody that doesn't have a growth mindset or that is resistant to change or is defensive, and I think it comes from a couple of places. One of them is maybe me as a leader. I didn't establish that baseline of trust to have the tougher conversation, so part of that is on me as growing as a leader to establish that trust before we have these tough conversations, but then also explaining to the person that this isn't an attack on you personally. It's an attack on a certain subset of behaviors or something that you're doing or that you're not doing that you could potentially improve on. So you talked earlier about your confidence and how your confidence grew. You did better, you believed in yourself more, and it was just kind of this self-fulfilling prophecy loop, and I always think of it as like you're building your confidence brick by brick and so, like, every time you have a small success, you put another, you put another brick on there. The bigger bump is when you have a failure and you're able to push past it. That's when you're putting up scaffolding in a in a building, and so for.

Speaker 2:

For the people that have been on my team over the past five, six years, I keep coming back to that I'm like look, you're a product of not only your successes but, more so, of your failures and how you can build from your failures and how you can become better and stronger, because most times your failures, they're not going to break you.

Speaker 2:

You might feel embarrassed in the moment, you might feel like, oh, I failed in some astronomical way, but really and truly, if you're not failing, then you're not expanding outside of your comfort zone, you're not stepping into a place that you can become a better version of yourself.

Speaker 2:

So what I look for when I talk to people now are like those that they fall into either in an excuse loop where it's like, oh, this happened and I did it, but it's, because of all these reasons, looking outward as opposed to looking inward, and so that's the mentality that I'm trying to shift with all the folks that I'm supervising is look, look internally first. There may be some things that have gone on in your life. There may be some things that have gone on at work that aren't ideal, that are out of your control, but to the extent that you can control things, you should, and you're in control of your mentality. You're in control of the way you see the world and, like Wes, you talked a little bit about that and the psychology behind it, and that's what I want my team members to embody, because you're going to be on a fast track to improving quickly if you can reframe your challenges as opportunities.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. You mentioned something about looking internally and I recently have like recently recently, like in the past month recalled this one or two it's probably several, but one or two moments in my childhood that I remember like set the stage and why I'm so insecure in a specific area. Because although overall I feel like I operate out of curiosity, always a student, always wanting to learn, I'm not a hundred percent always in that growth mindset. There are times, and there are very specific times, that I go into this fixed mindset. We're like I can't do that, I can't learn that and I'll be very honest and vulnerable and let let's just say that that's math, like my financial acumen and that was one of my yearly commitments this year is to really grow on that and improve and just be more just financially literate in terms to our business and everything that comes with that. And there are certain people that I can just not. I don't, I can't do math with, I don't want to learn from and do math from, and they're not the best at teaching it and the way that I need to be taught math because I've never been one of those students that's just immediately smart. They get it. I have to really work for it. I have to really learn to be a good student and to absorb that knowledge and information. And our CFO is great at doing math. There's definitely no talking about speaking about her. She's great. I love learning from her. She really explains it down.

Speaker 3:

But, looking inwardly, like why do I have such a fixed mindset when it came to learning this one area that I know can really propel me forward. And I remember times when I would bring my homework home and my mom was like super math nerdy. She freaking loved math, mathematician, but she would yell at me every time we sat down and did homework and I didn't understand the question and she would like, why don't you just understand? Like, why don't you get it? Not knowing then and what I know now, it shot my confidence. It just made me think like there is something wrong with me. My brain just does not work like this. I'm just I'm not going to get it.

Speaker 3:

And it followed me throughout school and even into my profession. So, like, looking inwardly, it's a big one. So I have to, I have to acknowledge and honor when I realize that, okay, I have these flags going in, I feel it. Why am I telling myself that I can't do something, why am I shutting down? That's the first thing I do is I look inwardly and I try to say like what's at play here and if I can name it, if I can identify it, okay, now I know what the real enemy is. Now I know what I really need to work on to get past this constraint. And it's easier said than done. But if you can get to that part of it, then you can put a plan together and try to like if you can diagnose it, then you can probably solve that.

Speaker 1:

So that's real high-level thinking, like lots of people, especially if you're developing. You're a leader that's developing people. They don't have that level of self-awareness and so if we're trying to give people like tools, tips, tricks, I think we're bringing it back to curiosity.

Speaker 1:

We could have a whole podcast on that I think it's what I feel like has worked best for me is to ask the team member enough questions where they go with me here or become accidentally self-aware.

Speaker 1:

They're like, oh, like that you watch the lights go on behind their eyes, they're like, oh, my gosh, they've unlocked something in themselves and they're like, whoa, that's crazy.

Speaker 1:

Where you, if you can ask them enough questions and help them start peeling back the layers and the layers and layers to get to that root issue, so they can figure out why they have that constraint, or so they can recognize, because sometimes they don't even recognize they have the constraint and they're not ready to see it and because they're feeling that defensiveness and they're not ready to really take that feedback. But if you can start asking them enough questions like that, they'll self-recognize the constraint and then they will start working on it. Like you watch the light go on behind their eyes and they're like. They're like wow, and then they'll work on it, especially on our team, because we have so many high performers that they don't want to have that constraint. They're ready to get tools, they're ready to fix those things, and so for me that's one of my it doesn't feel like that's a huge tool, but it is a big tool.

Speaker 1:

It's super practical for me. I'm like, okay, let's just keep asking questions until we get there, and then they do, and they unlock something in themselves and they do the work. They have to do the work, really, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

The irony constraints that you have may be nestled within a strength.

Speaker 2:

So you may have a certain set of skills that's gotten you to X point in your life, but now you're trying to take the next step in your personal journey or your career and changing that over. So, for me specifically, I had some issues with sometimes being a little too antagonistic, sometimes being a little too aggressive. I don't shy away from tough conversations, but I was dying on a lot of hills that I didn't need to be dying on and not being emotionally aware or reading the room, so to speak, and so taking a step back and understanding that, like you may have a strength in a certain area, but it doesn't translate to every area, especially interpersonally. And so sometimes people are like man you know, I've gotten to this point in my career Like I've kind of made it, so to speak, and they're not ready to take more criticism when, in fact, like that's your opportunity to take the next step, when you've done well in one area, but now the world's kind of opened up to you a little bit.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. I think Simon Sinek says something he talks about. Like you know, people always talk about strengths and weaknesses, and he talks about something that I really like, which is you have strengths. People talk about strengths and weaknesses, but some of your strengths are weaknesses in some scenarios, like they don't apply here, and your, your so-called weaknesses, are really strengths when it is in another situation. So I kind of like that, because I can see that that's gotten you really far, and I know that that's true for me too, where some of the things that people would call my constraints or my weaknesses have really served me in some situations.

Speaker 1:

And I still need to call on them in some situations. That's right, but I'm not going to do away with them. They're not going to go away. I still need to call on them in some situations, but I'm not going to do away with them. They're not going to go away. I still need them for some things and some opportunities, but I can shore up these other skills and other skill sets that I need for other situations and other opportunities. So maybe there's some other language that could be used that would better serve us for those things. Like, I need other skills. I need other skill sets to grow my opportunities that I have in the future.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 3:

Market that I will. I bet you will. I'm going to market the shit out of it.

Speaker 2:

I didn't know we could swear in this.

Speaker 1:

I would have been swearing more, for sure.

Speaker 3:

I definitely need to define that for you and what that is. But yes, so let's kind of you know, and you mentioned like, as far as like practical high level, and I'm going to dare to say even like short term, like those are some short term practical ways to kind of help you shift that mindset. You know, coming becoming curious. You talked about asking those questions, leading questions, looking inwardly, quick glance through, just kind of figure out if there is anything there and identifying that the verbiage that you're using, even like a little post-it note, some of the verbiage that you're using, is a good indicator that you are in a fixed mindset and when you're in this mindset it will be much harder for you to solve problems, grow your skill set and therefore benefit from opportunity. That's like currently you're confronted with, or that you're faced with an opportunity just down the road and even and even and how to again just shift over to that growth mindset.

Speaker 3:

but some long-term advice is always to do the hard work do the hard work if you actually want to diagnose the problem and you know I know we don't like using this, the word fake it till you make it and fake it till you become it. Like, go put in that work, whether that's just mapping the journey of how you got there, where this is contributing from, whether that's doing the therapy Please, wes, is like always Everyone but identifying where that stemmed from, how that's impacting your life today, making a plan, having someone to hold you accountable to it and really just slowly chipping away at that problem and you can realize the benefits that that can lead to. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about, dare I say, when you refuse to move out of that fixed mindset, what can you expect?

Speaker 2:

You'll expect everything that you've already gotten, and nothing else.

Speaker 3:

Same old, same old, right? Yeah, absolutely. And even so, you can expect to lose.

Speaker 1:

Actually, yeah, I was gonna say well, and the people around you might keep growing, so it may not actually look the same.

Speaker 3:

That's right. You could lose a lot. And exactly If the people around you are evolving and growing and you're getting left behind not in the sense of like, professionally speaking, but I'm talking about in relationally yeah relationally.

Speaker 3:

You get left behind. That's a real fear. At least that's what it was for me when I first initially got started. What about the benefits of that? We talked about that. Yes, there's a lot of benefit. You know professionally and how we see things. You have a lot less stress like bad stress in our life. There's a lot of opportunity for growth, a lot of opportunity for advancement to just really enrich your life, and a lot of opportunity in the relationships and new relationships that come with and just really I feel like who I am today versus who I was 10 years ago. I can just like man. I'm proud of this person.

Speaker 2:

I'm so proud of her Absolutely.

Speaker 3:

And I think y'all can say that for yourselves person. I'm so proud of her and I think y'all can say that for yourselves. And even like with my spouse and my spouse and me. It's just enriched our relationship as well. Are there any others?

Speaker 1:

I just feel like it's about if you're really intentional and some people don't do it intentionally but if you are really intentional about the way you want to grow, how you want to grow, what areas you want to grow in. It's about living the life you really want to have and living it fully. Like you only get one life. Like what do you want it to look like? So the benefit is having the life you want, with the people that you want, and really experiencing it. That you want and really experiencing it Like that's so beautiful. It sounds really cliche, but I feel like that's one of the things that I continue to focus on. Like I want my depth and complexity of relationships and like one of my goals this year was specifically around enriching the community that I have in my life. Like that for some people that sounds like a nothing burger and I'm like that's really important when you look at long term.

Speaker 1:

Things like why do people live a long time? Having a community system is one of the important key factors in having a long, rich, healthy life and being able to live a long time, and so that was a goal that I personally had this year, and so spending time building a system and those relationships, that was important to me, and so having habits around them and enriching it. What does that look like? Who's in it? How does they support you? What are those activities Like? So, when you try to grow things, when you try to have that growth mindset that applies to so many things, like it, it can be whatever you want, like what is important to you. What does that look like? And it's just about having the most beautiful life in whatever that means to you.

Speaker 2:

That's, that's what it means to me beautiful life in whatever that means to you. That's what it means to me, absolutely. And if you look at the flip side of that coin, you can see it in the people that you talk to that don't have a growth mindset, that have a fixed mindset and their lives have not necessarily gone the way that they wanted them to. And what you'll find is, when you talk to those people, more times than not, the prevailing theme that comes out of those conversations is look, I'm a victim of my circumstance.

Speaker 2:

I had X, y and Z happen to me and that's why things are, or this person continues to do me wrong. I mean you just kind of insert excuse here and then you contrast that with what the two of you guys are talking about, with your growth mindset and looking for those opportunities to be better. And what you said, wes, actually resonates with me. Once you get to a certain point in your growth mindset, reinvesting yourself not only in like where you are as an employer or supervisor in that relationship, but people in your life and your family and friends, and seeing opportunities to maybe subtly make them better, because you're not going to want to preach to your family and friends all the time Like hey, you have a fixed mindset, you should grow more, but you can feather in little things that might help them out long term.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. That is the stealth way.

Speaker 1:

The Jedi mind trick. Yes, the Jedi mind trick. You will grow. That's what I do with my husband. Let's read this book together.

Speaker 3:

And he would be like no, I was like, I'm just going to give little.

Speaker 1:

I heard this quote today.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's right, it's not written on your mirror.

Speaker 3:

Oh, that's so funny because I have so much more to say about that portion of it. All of this great practical insights and advice on how to one identify that you are in a fixed mindset, or maybe you're working with team members that are in a fixed mindset by the verbiage, how they close off the. You know, I can't do this, I can't learn that. I'm just not good at math and I'm just not good at whatever X is. I've never been good at it. That kind of those are kind of easy triggers that help you identify people that are just operating from that and knowing that as a leader, leader and just on a personal level, the amount of opportunity that they will have if they learn to just slow, incremental, consistent, little changes that they can make to move themselves over to that growth, mindset, Curiosity, ready to learn.

Speaker 3:

If you come in ready to learn I got something to learn from this every single time You'll just get so much further along to short term, to long term of actually investing that time back in and then having that accountability. You know we briefly mentioned that and I know for me and my team is if I know I'm working with someone specifically on this and I know that there has been times where that person has been challenged. I always circle back. I make it a point to circle back with them and go through a couple of questions of how they're feeling, how you're going to grow from this and just again, just kind of like exercising, you got to build that muscle, build the muscle Like that's what I hold my team members accountable and how I want to be held accountable when I'm working on my own personal constraints and want to get past that. What about the two of you? What does accountability look like for you?

Speaker 1:

Sometimes, well, depending on the team member, I ask them that question how would you like to be held accountable? Like, what works for you, so it works for some people, it doesn't work for other people. For me, it depends on what type of action or task or goal it is. So I need a full call out when it comes to some things like hey, you're doing it, you're doing the thing that you said you weren't going to do, or that you're not doing the thing that you're supposed to do.

Speaker 1:

So I need a full call out. I like it very direct, I like it very sharp, um, and some things. I just need something subtle, like I, I like track all my health data, for example, and so I've got all my alarms set up. Like I have a system in place that it's like I've got my program set, I got my alarm set up to get me up when I'm supposed to get, I've got my, my coffee is pre ready to go every night. Like I have a whole system that is designed to make sure it's easy and I don't have no excuses. And I've got all my alerts that go out when I exercise from my Apple Watch. So that's kind of part of the accountability and because I've developed such a good habit there, I don't need as a heavy-handed of accountability. Then, when it comes to team members, it's kind of degrees of accountability.

Speaker 1:

Like you said you were going to do this and you didn't do it. What's the due date? Like we're going to talk about this in this amount of time. We're going to talk about it on Friday. We're going to do this because you didn't do this? Or, hey, I know you struggle with this. Like would you like me to sit next to you while you finish it. Some people just need different levels and sometimes it doesn't have to be heavy handed. Like I know this is going to be really hard. Like, would you like help with it? Do you need somebody to go with you? Would you like to knock it out together? Like it can be a lot of different things for my teams.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, A couple of things that come to mind just listening to you talk, Wes, and considering the question is accountability to me with my team members specifically looks like reciprocity.

Speaker 2:

So I ask them for accountability for me and I'm going to extend that accountability to them, and that, to me, produces this air of trust where, like, I'm not infallible, I make mistakes and my team members have to know that and be comfortable giving me critique, and that in turn, makes them more receptive of my critique. So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy to some degree that you get these, these accountability partners, in ways that you wouldn't have even anticipated, Cause I think you're a. Your typical accountability partner would be somebody that's farther along than you, that you're like. Okay, this person I respect. I want their feedback, but sometimes the feedback that I've gotten that's the most valuable are people that you know. I don't want to call it subordinates, because they're not that, they're just team members, but the folks that are under my custody. For that time they've given me great feedback, especially because they see it through the lens of how you're being perceived as a leader versus somebody above you that's looking down the pyramid, so to speak. So that's helped.

Speaker 3:

That's definitely helped me. So I like what you said about the, the holding them accountable to doing it, and I know that I've had this conversation with some of my, you know, even with a, with a peer or another leader in the firm where it's been a. No, I'm not going to do that Like again. You can just tell like we're not, they don't want to and trying to diagnose it in a sense like what part about this is scary, what part about this is hard, is it, you know? So break down the overall problem and just kind of like, just try to diagnose it into. Let's just section it in zero and on what? What's the one thing in here that's just making this the entire thing? Just an immediate no for you. What's the real issue?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's what we always like to say. What's the actual, real issue?

Speaker 3:

And sometimes, when we get to the real issue, sometimes it's like oh yeah, I can. Obviously it makes it so much more digestible, depending on what it is, and sometimes it's just a realization, like, look, I just don don't want to learn about, I don't want to, I don't want my time or resources really learning about this, because it's not something that I care to do and that changes the conversation, that changes the dynamic of like. Okay, and depending on how that conversation is and what exactly um and what context is, is in, sometimes that's okay. Okay, you at least are aware and you're making a decision like I'm okay not going there and I'm okay with you not wanting to do that, that's fine, absolutely, you made a decision there. However, but if it's part of a like, well, this is actually in your top five roles, or this is actually something that's critical to the team, or this is actually that's critical to the success of so and so then it is a problem.

Speaker 3:

And so, as we're talking about fixing growth, I wanted to really talk about like when it actually is a problem and when it's not, and if it's okay for people like this is just who I am and I'm happy being who I am I'm happy with. I'm content. You know I'm not complacent, but I'm content with my. I'm content. You know I'm not complacent, but I'm content with my life and where I'm at.

Speaker 3:

And I really just want to spend my time and resources here because, again, what we're not trying to say go be a subject matter expert in all these other skills and all these areas of your life, no, but if it's something that you really like you said what's the life that you want, what's the life that you want to live and there's something holding you back because of a fixed mindset, then, yes, go put that energy and those efforts into that and let it reward you on a personal level and in your professional life as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I definitely think that it's every individual's decision to make as to how you want to progress and how your life unfolds, and obviously everybody wants the best for themselves. But the challenge that I would give to somebody that looks like they're looking down the barrel of a fixed mindset would be have you gone through the self-discovery exercise? Have you figured out exactly who you are as a human being? And if you've done that, then you have the scaffolding in place to make a decision about what's best for your life. But a lot of times, what I run into are people that they want all these great things for their life, but their actions aren't commensurate with what they want in their life. And so if you haven't gone through that element of self-discovery and done the actual work to figure out who you are, who Wes or Claudia are as human beings, then you can't possibly make that decision because you just you just don't know what you need to know, and so what I would challenge people to do would be to take that on, and it's going to be painful at times, like I'll. I'll tell you right now, when I had to take a hard look in the mirror a couple of different times, it was like Hmm, like this isn't who I want to be, this isn't, these aren't the reactions that I want to have to things, this is not what I want to be putting out in the world. And then you can make that fundamental shift and figure out what's right for you and most times, because you've gone through the exercise, you will transform into somewhat of a growth mindset just by virtue of the exercise.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. I love that. Yes, don't look at me such great insight for this show, and if you have any more comments or suggestions or want to dive into this conversation more so please send that over to podcast at danielstarklawcom. Till next time, stay remarkable. Get ready, drop the confetti. Get ready, drop the confetti.