Five Key Mindsets for Life, Learning, and Leadership

Introduction and Pre-Learning Activities 2

Five Key Mindsets for Life, Learning, and Leadership

1. Global Mindset 4

2. Future Mindset 7

3. Innovation Mindset 10

4. Growth Mindset 13

5. Ethical Mindset 15

Author’s Note and Follow-Up Learning Activity 16

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Introduction and Pre-Learning Activities

A mindset, as it is used in this resource, is a way of thinking, a frame of mind, a perspective or way of looking at the world that helps to positively shape your outlook, understanding, behaviors, learning, and performance, leading to successful outcomes for you (and the world).

I developed, researched, and wrote this resource for high school students, college students, and adults of all ages interested in improving their performance, accelerating learning, and developing key leadership skills and frames of mind applicable to success at school or work, or in any life pursuit. These mindsets, some adapted from best-selling books, are presented in a simple, practical way, designed for you to quickly understand and absorb the core concept. This resource also uses simple visuals and graphics, another important element for accelerating learning and facilitating long-term memory. My hope is that this resource will empower you to find your voice in life and be an effective and successful leader and life-long learner. In fact, you can’t do one without the other: in this rapidly changing, complex, global world we live in you will have multiple jobs and careers in your lifetime that require you to be continually learning and provide you with enumerable opportunities for personal and professional growth. I want to leave you with the idea that there are some simple mindsets, practices, ideas, and tools out there that can accelerate your learning and facilitate your success in school and beyond. The first three mindsets—global, future, and innovation—not only are important perspectives to develop, they are also key realities of the rapidly-changing world and economy we live in. The last two mindsets, growth and ethical, focus more on you as an individual. How do you want to show up in the world? What is important to you in terms of the type of person you want to be throughout your life? Also see: Eight Great Ideas for Life, Learning, and Leadership

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Pre-Learning Activities Think About Your Own Experience Questions for reflection…

1. In your own words, what does it mean to have a global mindset? Think about a time when you had a cross-cultural misunderstanding. What happened? What do you think was the root cause of the misunderstanding?

2. What do you think will be the most important changes in the world in the next 3–5 years? What are some tools we can use to try to understand and anticipate the future?

3. What is your favorite example of innovation? What types of innovation are there?

4. Carol Dweck talks about the importance of having a growth mindset, as opposed to a fixed mindset. Even if you have not read Dweck’s book: What do you think, in your own words, the two terms mean? Try to think of a time when you have had a “growth mindset”? What happened?

5. Have you ever confronted an ethical dilemma at school, work, or home? How did you handle it? Would you do anything differently next time? Who are your heroes? Think about one of your heroes and describe how he/she handled a challenge he/she faced in his/her life.

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Global Mindset

When working across cultures (or for that matter when communicating with anyone) if you feel that communication is breaking down ask yourself: Are we talking about the same thing? Nothing could be more basic–or important! Given that we all come to where we are with a different set of experiences, perspectives, and cultural and linguistic imprinting, it is easy to suddenly find ourselves talking past each other at times—especially when there are cross-cultural differences. Traveling is wonderful and fun: that is why people love to visit new places. But cross-cultural communication is also like negotiating a mine field. At any moment a simple word or concept could pop up in conversation or business negotiations where on the surface things seem simple, but below the surface each side has different connotations for the same word or concept leading to misunderstanding. There are millions of potential “culture bumps” in intercultural communication, such as in the drawing above showing different interpretations for the simple word dinner. Americans who are invited to dinner at a friend’s house who is from India or Spain may find themselves hungry–surprised by how very “late” the meal is served (which, in India, is often between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm at night)! Another example: in negotiations with Japan, American trade representatives wanted the Japanese to open up their markets to exports of rice from the U.S. That seemed only fair given our big trade deficit (the huge number of products we import from Japan). The problem is that rice is not just any generic commodity to the Japanese: it is a very ancient, integral, and even spiritual part of their culture and way of life, normally eaten at two or three meals a day (in fact most Japanese don’t feel like they have had a meal if they have not had rice all day). Not surprisingly, rice became a sticking point in negotiations between the two sides. The U.S. and Japanese trade negotiators and political leaders were really not talking about the same thing! Having a global mindset does not mean that you have to like, agree with, or adopt what other cultures do (although be open minded and learn everything you can from others): it does mean that the more you know and understand about other cultures, and about how cultures can differ, the better you will be at intercultural relations. It is important to know how to identify and negotiate mine fields! Having a global mindset is an essential skill in today’s inter-connected, global economy. It is emphasized in MBA programs and by CEOs worldwide. Having intercultural experience and skills is a prerequisite these days not just for leaders, but for all of us to be better global citizens. Tips for developing a global mindset…

Think about the global perspective and implications of any issue you hear in the news. There is a drought in California What are the issues around water shortages now and going forward in the next 20 years in the world? Who will be most affected and why?

Study up on the basics of the history, geography, language, politics, economy, and cultural dos and don’ts of countries you travel to, or even if you will just be interacting or working with

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someone from that culture. You have a meeting with an older Chinese business man If you are aware of major events in modern Chinese history, like the cultural revolution (one of the great catastrophes of the 20th Century), you will know some of the contours that shape his cultural and historical experience and be able to understand better where he is coming from. Of course, just like in our country, there are multiple generations co-existing side by side in the workplace with different experiences and perspectives. Young Chinese today are growing up in an increasingly affluent, highly modern country that is a global economic superpower. A Chinese student coming to study in the U.S. in the 1980s would have struggled economically and felt like a fish out of water: today, practically every U.S. university has a significant number of Chinese students who are affluent enough to afford the high tuition and cost of living in the U.S.

Benchmark everything you do to the best available global standards. No matter where that takes you in the world, study and learn from the best. Ask yourself: Who has the gold standard? Who is the best in the world at building high-speed train systems? (It’s not us: it’s the Japanese, the French, and the Chinese.) You are taking your state’s standards of learning or the SAT or ACT Time to learn about the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which is designed to test your critical thinking skills at a deep level and benchmark how education systems are doing around the world. Click here to see some sample questions!

Don’t let it be you…The commonly heard joke in the world (sad but true) goes like this:

What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual Two languages? Bilingual One language? An American

Develop intercultural and linguistic competence. Keep working at studying other languages,

and also develop a deeper understanding of your own country’s history, culture, and language(s). Go from assuming that people do things the same way everywhere to knowing many of the different ways that cultures can vary, from parenting styles, hospitality, and notions of hierarchy (Americans tend to be more informal and individualistic) to different norms for personal space, gift giving, and when and how to start “getting down to business” (in many countries things proceed more slowly in business contexts; relationship building is key).

Learn as many international “languages” as you can, like the following: science, technology, engineering, math, computers, history, art, geography, business, sports, popular culture, movies, TV shows, food, and music. Even if you are not a big soccer fan, it helps to know a little about it! Go from the simple joys (which are cool) of visiting different kinds of websites around the world to developing more in-depth knowledge of other countries and cultures. In our global, interconnected world, being fluent in various “languages” will help you make friends, find common ground, and build partnerships: something we need because the most challenging problems today, from poverty to global warming, are global in scope.

Questions for Interaction/Discussion: What other tips for developing a global mindset do you have?

Activities for Further Learning:

• Take the global news challenge! Next time there is breaking global news, visit the websites of several newspapers around the world to see different perspectives on the same story! If you know a little French or Spanish, try to read the headlines from France or Mexico. You can do it!

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• The CIA is our spy agency, but they have a good public website to get quick facts on countries around the world. Click here to visit their country profile guide or google The World Factbook.

• Study the culture iceberg, below, then do the reflection activity.

The Culture Iceberg

The culture iceberg is a very commonly used model and metaphor for describing the inherent complexity of intercultural understanding, communication, and identity. Intercultural competence is an essential skill for leadership and learning in the multicultural, global age we live in. The model shows that some things about cultures can be easily seen, such as Japanese people using chopsticks or taking off their shoes before entering the house. Many more aspects of culture, however, operate out of sight as unwritten rules or norms, often beyond our awareness. The part above the wave line can be thought of as surface culture, the parts below the wave as deeper culture. Something to keep in mind is that many aspects of culture and language, when you boil it down, are quite arbitrary. We are used to them because they are familiar. For example, most Americans cut down an evergreen tree and put it in their house as a beloved custom every December: that might seem odd to many people around the world who did not grow up with that tradition (or who have few trees around)! Similarly, the English word for bear just happens to have one syllable, while the Japanese word for the same concept kuma has two syllables. At the end of the day, the concept is real, but the labeling is a quite random collection of sounds relative to a particular cultural experience, a linguistic cultural accident of sorts. Neither babies learning a language nor bears in the woods will care how it is labeled!

Reflection Activity on the Culture Iceberg:

o Think of an aspect of your culture that is likely “obvious” for a person coming from another culture to see and understand, even without studying about your culture or language.

o Now think about another custom, practice, rule, or expectation in your culture or community that might be new or easily misunderstood by someone from another culture.

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Future Mindset

The future is already here–it’s just not evenly distributed.

William Gibson

Technology Nanotechnology used to create super-efficient solar power cells, bioinformatics, personal drones spying on people, cars that drive themselves, the first smells sent across the Atlantic (digitally), a robotic exoskeleton you can wear to help you lift 40 more pounds, a GPS jammer that makes your car “invisible,” big data, cloud-based computing, 3-D printers, bio terrorism, DNA sequencing, voice recognition on your smart watch, sustainable smart homes going off the power grid, a personal electronic airplane that lands vertically, practical and ethical issues around genetically modified foods, biometric authentication, remote surgery, growing job opportunities for information security analysts, plans to capture an asteroid, shoes with a built-in charger to power your cell phone while you walk…All already here. And much more. Google “top technology trends” or “cool inventions”… Here are more key words to help you think about the future!

Megatrends As the name implies, megatrends are major issues that will have a huge impact into the foreseeable future. The United Nations has identified the following important global megatrends: the rapid pace of urbanization around the world (an unprecedented number of people living in mega cities, especially in developing countries); the effects of climate change (global warming); population growth (the current world population is estimated at 7.2 billion people; it will grow to 8.3–10.9 billion by 2050); migration and food issues (of the 2.5 million+ refugees from the current war in Syria, half are children; an estimated 842 million people in the world don’t have enough to eat); and water and energy insecurity (one in ten people in the world now lack access to safe drinking water; if current trends continue, more than half the world’s population could face risks due to water shortages by 2050)… What do you think are the biggest megatrends facing businesses in the U.S. today? What are the megatrends facing universities?

Forecasting People who study the future are called futurists. One of the things they do is forecasting, an imperfect but important science, just like weathermen and women try to forecast the weather for you. The Futurist magazine has some interesting forecasts for the next ten years, including the following: due to overfishing, pollution, and climate change the world’s oceans may face one of the great mass extinctions of plant and animal species in the history of the earth; a revolution in new smart materials (like carbon nanotubes) may create a new energy boom; robots may take on many caregiving roles, like lifting patients out of bed; India may eclipse China in population and innovation by 2028; a handheld breathalyzer may diagnose diseases in seconds. Forecasting trends is important for businesses, governments, and individuals, to prepare for the future and identify opportunities!

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What if things don’t go as planned?

Scenario Planning Scenarios are possible, postulated outcomes, developments, or chains of events that might occur in the future depending on how various complex variables interact. In 2003, as the U.S. military successfully invaded and took over Iraq, overthrowing Saddam Hussein, U.S. General David Petraeus famously turned to a reporter and said “Tell me how this ends.” It is the job of various types of planners, analysts, and leaders in government, business, education, and many other fields to develop and discuss possible scenarios for the future: What scenario “A” is most likely to occur, and why? If scenario “B” happens, even though it might not be the most likely development– then what? How can or should we prepare for other possible scenarios? Computers are helping make scenario thinking, analysis, and planning more sophisticated using simulation games which help policy makers visualize possible outcomes, and how different complex variables and interventions might interact. Use scenarios for your college and career planning! What types of schools (scenarios) are a good fit for you in terms of their cost, size, location, and academic and social offerings? Is there a scenario whereby you can graduate from college debt free? If you study subject “A,” what is the projected availability of jobs in that field in six years, and at what salary? Where will the biggest needs (and therefore opportunities) be in the world 5–10 years from now?

Prevent accidents before they happen.

Be Proactive Many students and adults mentioned procrastination as a bad habit they have! The opposite of procrastinating is being proactive! Being proactive is taking care of problems before they occur. As a student, space your learning and reviewing out over a longer period of time: you will do better quality work and be ahead of the curve (also important in driving!) if something unexpected comes up. Being proactive is also a wise strategy for leaders of all types, whether planning ahead and preparing for natural disasters or building future economic success by investing in education and infrastructure (bridges, roads, rail lines, etc.). Bad things can happen, so be alert and prepared. For example, practice defensive driving, like keeping a long following distance behind the car in front of you. Prevent accidents before they happen!

Vision Business books praise business leaders like the late Steve Jobs of Apple as visionary if they have a clear vision of the future combined with effective strategies and guiding principles that result in success. Various Native American cultures required teenagers to go on vision quests where they went into the wild on their own to find their own unique vision for the future, their place in the tribe and the world. City planners need to be thinking decades or even centuries down the road. For example, the Olmstead brothers (who also designed Central Park in New York City) came to Seattle, Washington in the early 1900s and planned a very extensive city park system. At the time, many people thought they were wasting public money! However, they had a vision, not only of how the city would grow (as it did, into a large urban area), but also of what a livable city should be like in the future. Envisioning the future takes courage, leadership, knowledge, wisdom, advocacy, communication, and teamwork. Today, people in Seattle love their parks and even wish there were more! What is your vision of an ideal job for you? What is your vision of an ideal university for the future?

Interconnected The internet, international travel, and the spread of ideas, investment, and jobs across the world have us living in a highly interconnected, digital global economy. There is a reason they call it the world-wide web. Another key ingredient for future success is interdisciplinary thinking: think about all the subjects in the world as an interconnected web of knowledge.

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While developing expertise in your primary career areas, keep learning broadly so you have insight into what people in other fields know, and how they think. Many future innovations will come from people who make connections across disciplines. As Steven Johnson points out in Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, software engineers developing web applications and city planners trying to understand city neighborhoods can learn a lot from ants! Knowing about other fields will make you more marketable. For example, if you are in sales, knowing how doctors or engineers think will help you communicate with them. Learning Tip: Use your TV DVR to record quality shows on the Science or History channel or a business network (etc.)–topics outside of your normal interests.

Sustainability The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a simple definition:

Sustainability is based on a simple principle: Everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment. Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations. Sustainability is important to making sure that we have and will continue to have, the water, materials, and resources to protect human health and our environment.

Native Americans value being stewards of the environment to “the seventh generation.” Sustainability is one of the primary organizing principles of our time. Our modern global economy is highly unsustainable right now given our energy use and pollution levels, and human impacts on biodiversity, habitat, and climate change. Although renewable energy resources are emerging rapidly, from a systems thinking approach, many natural resources, like our forests and fisheries, are being harvested much faster than replacement levels (more output than input into a system = unsustainable).

Wicked Problems/Good Questions Simple problems are linear. They are pretty easy to diagnose and fix. For example, your cell phone is not working, so you follow a few simple steps to download a new app or update your software and—problem solved. There is straight line from problem to solution. As the pace of social and technological change in the world continues to accelerate, however, we are confronting an increasing number of complex, changing problems some call wicked problems. Wicked problems are not only extremely challenging to resolve, it is also essential to be working on the problem at the same time you are trying to figure it out–the path from identifying problem(s) to finding solution(s) is never a straight line, and no one person has all the answers. Crime and drug use are examples. Humans will never “wipe out” or “eliminate” either, but we have to keep trying and experimenting to see what works best (meanwhile, circumstances are always changing, such as when new drugs emerge). Climate change is another wicked problem with many complex human and natural variables. We know we need to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, so a renewable energy source like hydroelectric power is attractive, but there are always tradeoffs, such as between salmon, dams, jobs, agriculture, and the IT industry’s need/desire for cheap electricity–to power our cell phones. The complexity of problems today means that often the most important thing is asking good questions! What additional key words and questions do you think are important for the future?

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Innovation Mindset

Innovation …the process of having original ideas and insights that have value, and then implementing them so that they are accepted and used by significant numbers of people. By this definition, a major innovation is one that is so successful that soon after its introduction few people can remember what life was like before the innovation was introduced.

Rick Miller, President, Olin College of Engineering in Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World by Tony Wagner

Innovation can be as simple as noticing things around you more carefully, making connections between various branches of knowledge, or just having the courage to say or do something insightful at the right time, like the child in the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes” who was the only one to point out that the emperor’s new “clothes” (made by the finest tailors) were a con: the emperor really didn’t have anything on! Innovation can come in many different forms and touches every aspect of our lives:

Product Innovation and Design

• Toyota’s popular Prius often averages over 50 miles per gallon. It’s aerodynamic, hybrid design combines existing technologies in creative ways. It has an efficient internal combustion engine with a sophisticated battery and an intelligent synergy drive system that knows when to power the car from the engine or the battery. When idling at a stop sign, no gas is used, only the battery. When decelerating (foot off the gas), the turning of the wheels charges the battery!

• The inventor of Velcro got the idea when he observed how burrs lodged themselves on his dog’s curly fur using hooks. After a bit of trial and error, he figured out how to make a convenient, cheap hook and loop fastener based on that principle—now a multimillion-dollar industry!

The wind has been blowing dust around for millions of years. But it was not until 1901 that H.C. Booth thought of using the wind in reverse, and thus created the vacuum cleaner.

Don Fabun

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• The amazingly successful i-phone helped create the cell phone industry because Apple was not satisfied with good: they wanted something great. A key feature of the phone is its wide display glass and narrow edge–but that didn’t happen by accident. In fact, it was a huge technical challenge. Apple’s engineers did not give up on their vision: they kept searching worldwide until they found suppliers who could make the components they wanted and needed to fit their innovative design.

Making a Better World • The international development field focuses on reducing poverty and empowering low-income

communities and nations. Microloans, very small loans of say $100 or $1000 given to poor people to start a grassroots business of some kind in a village or city neighborhood, are now one of the primary income-generation strategies used worldwide to fight poverty. They came into being in Bangladesh when social entrepreneur, banker, and economist Muhammad Yunus (shown in the photo below) had the common sense, courage, and compassion to trust that poor people would pay back their loans. At the time, many lenders considered impoverished people poor credit risks: as Yunus demonstrated, they actually have a higher loan repayment rate than other groups!

• Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. pioneered the use of nonviolent civil

disobedience to confront terrible social injustice and bring about massive historical changes in their countries. Ghandi’s movement ended British colonial rule leading to India’s independence in 1947. As the leader of the Civil Rights Movement, King transformed the U.S., inspiring millions and changing immoral laws and social practices leading to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Processes for Improving Performance, Interaction, and Learning • In the 1980s, American business men and women were busy studying the practices of Japanese

companies (Japan had become an economic juggernaut) like kaizen, a Japanese concept for a continuous performance improvement in manufacturing, engineering, and business management. You can catch the kaizen spirit by asking yourself: How can I or we do what we are doing more efficiently, with better (and measurable) results? For example, some companies have a “no email” time during the week to give people time to focus in depth or work on something creative.

• Harrison Owen had a flash of insight during the coffee break at a conference. He noticed that

people were very animated and excited to be networking with each other during the break in contrast to the often dull lecture formats of the pre-planned conference sessions (in the same way that kids bound out to the playground when they get out of class!). He asked a penetrating question: What if a meeting had no agenda? What if we trust the participants to create the topics? From that was born a “new” form of conference and group meeting, Open Space Technology, where the participants themselves design the key issues they want to talk about on the spot!

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innovating, changing, altering transforming, improving… a new method, process, product, service…

• Do you like homework? Does it help you learn? Innovative teachers have been asking themselves

that and experimenting (with great success) with the flipped classroom. Instead of doing homework at home, students listen to the teacher’s lesson via videos or other means at home. Then, they do the “homework” at school, which allows the teacher to see how each student is doing on the work and assignments during class time and provide individual help as needed.

• Consultants are often asked to help a struggling organization such as a business or a school. They

usually come up with a check list of things that are wrong or need improvement. Not surprisingly, this approach often meets with resistance: people have a hard time listening to criticism and once the consultant leaves the people left behind may not want to make changes. David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva at Case Western University’s Department of Organizational Behavior flipped the script, developing a “new” approach to organizational learning called appreciative inquiry (AI).

AI also helps groups analyze and improve their performance, but begins by asking a different key question: What is working well? What are the core values and practices that motivate and guide people to want to do well? For example, for a restaurant to be successful, the owner, cooks, and waiters all have to care about and appreciate what they are doing and work together to deliver quality food and service in a clean, welcoming, and appealing environment for customers. AI can help groups improve communication, understand the perspectives of team members, identify the problems themselves, have more buy-in to solutions, and remember what is important.

Public Policy Innovations • Colleges like Oregon State University or Oklahoma State University are Land Grant Colleges

which were created to make college education more widely available and support applied research in areas like agriculture and engineering. They were a key part of the development of the U.S.!

• The U.S. national park system was created in the early 1900s thanks to visionary activists like John Muir and leaders like President Theodore Roosevelt. Today it is the envy of the world!

• The GI Bill made it possible for millions of returning veterans to go to college after World War II: it

was a big factor in the U.S. becoming the dominant global economy in the second half of the 20th C.

Questions for Reflection/Discussion:

• What makes GEAR UP an innovative and successful federal grant program? • Think of an innovative idea, process, or product that has made your life better!

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Growth Mindset

Another hugely important—and easy-to-grasp—concept is having and developing a growth mindset. Carol Dweck’s fabulous and influential book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success; How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential, can be boiled down to that two-word phrase: growth mindset. The opposite of a growth mindset is having a fixed mindset, which includes things like not wanting to try beyond your comfort zone, fear of failure, and not giving what you do your full, best effort. People who have a growth mindset are focused on learning, improving, and growing—throughout their lives. They embrace their mistakes (are motivated by them to do better next time), learn from their failures, and keep moving, growing, learning, and adjusting. Not only do people with a growth mindset have a better, more accurate knowledge about their strengths and weaknesses (a key aspect of effective learning!)—they also tend to be much more successful in reaching their potential. Ask yourself every day: Do I have a growth mindset? What would it mean to be doing this activity with a growth mindset? Develop it, and you will be happier and more fulfilled in life, living with fewer regrets.

The only place Success comes before Work is in the dictionary.

Lauren R. Donaldson (and, perhaps, many others)

Two related concepts in regard to having a growth mindset are effort and grit. Success demands not just effort, but also patience, perseverance, and grit. Grit is persevering through adversity (stick-to-it-iveness!) combined with passion for long-term goals that you care about. Have you got grit? Want to develop it as a skill? Click here to watch a TED Talk by an expert on grit, Angela Duckworth. As Duckworth points out, while grit operates over the long term, self-control is critical in the short term. Many studies have shown that the ability to be patient and delay gratification (have a measure of will power and self-control) has a strong correlation to long-term success!

Did I win? Did I lose? Those are the wrong questions. The correct question is: Did I make my best effort? If so, you may be outscored but you will never lose. Becoming is better than being.

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Picture your brain forming new connections as you meet the challenge and learn. Keep on going.

From Carol Dweck’s book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success; How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential

If a runner wins a track event, did she do well? It is certainly not bad to win a race! But was it a good performance for her? What if the winner ran seven seconds slower in the mile than her personal best and was basically coasting, while the woman who got second ran a personal best by five seconds? As many parents, teachers, and bosses know, it is generally better to emphasize and praise the importance of effort. Many kids—or, for that matter, people of all ages—have been told for years how “good” they are at something, whether as a singer, athlete, student, or artist, to the point that they think of themselves as “good” and start easing up in their own efforts to improve and get better. That’s a mistake, because according to the 10,000-hour rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in the best-selling book Outliers, to be really good at something you have to not just put in the time and effort in deliberate, effective, and focused practice, you have to do so over a long period of time: try 10,000 hours! Whether it is exactly 10,000 hours or not, the point is that if you want to be an expert in a field or endeavor, you have to put in a significant amount of time spread out over months and even years. Think about what that means for you. The 10,000-hour rule shows that it takes long-term effort, commitment, and practice to be really good at something, which means setting priorities: there is only so much time in a day! Also, deliberate, conscious effort focused on new challenges, a type of positive change you introduce into your own environment, is something you can and should make part of your practicing, training, and learning. When you challenge yourself, you create a strategic type of micro change designed to help you improve your performance. Deliberate practice is where effort, grit, growth mindset, goal setting, concentration, habits, energy, and (positive) change all meet up. It is very common, for example, for a beginning guitar student who is learning a song to practice the easy parts of the song over and over, and avoid the new, difficult chord or difficult rhythmic part of the song that they really need to focus on. It is human nature for us to hold on tight to what is easy, and not spend the time we need to on the challenging part. The greatest rewards, however, lie in making what was once difficult easy—learning to play the whole song well. Questions for Discussion/Reflection

• What do you want to be an expert at? What do you want to be known for? What goal is so important to you that you might be willing to put in “10,000 hours” of practice to achieve it?

• What other skills do you want to be good at? Whether you want to be an expert guitar player, fluent in Chinese, or really good in soccer, what is your game plan for practicing?

Resource for Further Learning

• To learn more about Angela Duckworth’s research on grit and self-control, click here. You can also take a grit test!

• To learn about the famous “marshmallow test” of self-control in children click here. • Check out these bulletin boards on Pinterest focused on Growth Mindset:

http://www.pinterest.com/explore/growth-mindset/

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Ethical Mindset

In the 2014 World Cup, Luis Suarez of Uruguay bit an Italian defender during an important part of the game…I think we can all agree that that is a major ethical violation of both the rules and the spirit of soccer (not to mention it’s gross)! Some ethical issues are simple. That is something you are supposed to learn in elementary school. (Another good lesson to learn early on in is that we all make mistakes, but if you do, the sooner you come clean, the better. Probably 90% of TV comedy shows have the same plot: the main character messes up then spends most of the show covering it up in some hilarious way, endlessly torturing himself in the process, until he FINALLY learns his lesson!) As the pace of technological and social change accelerates these days, ethical issues are becoming more and more important in all walks of life. Cyber bullying, for example, is unethical, wrong, and dangerous. Ethics are important for us as citizens in a democracy too, so we have, for example, elections that are clean, fair, and transparent, including knowing where the money is coming from. Every profession has to be concerned with ethics too. Whether you are a teacher, coach, engineer, lawyer, soldier, or a real estate agent, every profession has codes of conduct or ethics that act as guidelines or a moral compass. Some guidelines can be very specific to the point there may be legal issues involved or people can lose their license (like teachers, lawyers, or pilots) if they cross the line. In some professions, like the airline industry or health care, people can lose their lives if mistakes are made. Others codes of conduct are very broad, like the following, the most famous injunction for doctors or any health care professional:

First do no harm. Translated: given that the goal of medicine/health care is to make the person better, no matter what you do, try not to make the patient worse! According to Howard Gardner, a person with an ethical mind asks herself, “What kind of a person, worker, and citizen do I want to be? If all workers in my profession adopted the mind-set I have, or if everyone did what I do, what would the world be like?” Stephen Carter shares three core characteristics of integrity (with a few sample key questions provided below):

1. Discerning what is right and wrong…What are the legal issues? What are my core values? 2. Acting on what you have discerned even at personal cost…Am I willing to be a whistleblower?

Can I live with myself if I don’t say anything? What about my reputation? 3. Saying openly to others that you are acting on your understanding of right and wrong…

Am I modeling my values? Am I adhering to high standards and encouraging others to do so?

Resources for Further Learning: Integrity by Stephen L. Carter 15

Author’s Note and Follow-Up Learning Activity

These resources were researched and written in 2014 by

John Donaldson Alexandria, Virginia donaldsonjohnc@gmail.com

Author’s Note: I learned about these mindsets from various sources and experiences, including my travels in 41 countries (which also involved living in Japan for six years), studies at four colleges in four states on my way to a couple masters’ degrees (in teaching and organizational learning), work experience over 30 years (teaching and managing diverse programs), reading books, attending or organizing conferences throughout the U.S. and worldwide, and engaging in a lot of conversations along the way. My formative experiences include being a runner and being frequently humbled over the years trying to learn new skills like languages and how to play music. I also worked at a salmon cannery in Alaska for three summers and was a resident assistant in a college dorm. Finally, I am grateful for all that I have learned from my family and the many different types of teachers I’ve had along the way.

Follow-Up Learning Activity

• Which of the mindsets in this resource interest you the most? Why? Which of these mindsets do you think are “strengths” for you? Which ones do you need to work on the most?

• Within the next few days, talk with someone you know about two or more of the ideas in these materials. For example, try to define innovation, growth mindset, or ethics in your own words.

• “The future is already here–it’s just not evenly distributed.” This quote by William Gibson appeared earlier in this resource. What does it mean to you? Give an example.

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