Rising Star at 21? Beware

Do you ever wonder about child prodigies who flame out, or your (former) colleagues who seemed incredibly gifted early in their careers, destined for stardom, but who inexplicably went down the all-but-irreversible road of disappointment after disappointment?  

Well, I have, and courtesy of Stanford Magazine we now have a theory to explain these mystifying shooting stars who start brilliantly streaking across the scene and end up disappearing altogether.

Specifically, in The Effort Effect, Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck elaborates on the initially counter-intuitive notion that it's precisely the brightest and most gifted who can be most prone to fall short in the longer run.   The Stanford Magazine piece is derived from Prof. Dweck's new book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, and its premise is this:

"Through more than three decades of systematic research, she has been figuring out answers to why some people achieve their potential while equally talented others don't—why some become Muhammad Ali and others Mike Tyson. The key, she found, isn't ability; it's whether you look at ability as something inherent that needs to be demonstrated or as something that can be developed."

She calls this the "fixed" vs. "growth" mindset.

Subscribers to the "fixed" school of thought believe that intelligence (including the all-important "emotional intelligence") is static more or less as of birth, whereas believers in the "growth" school think intelligence can be nurtured and developed.   This leads to a cascade of attitudinal differences:

• Fixed:
  • Desire to look smart
  • Fostering a tendency to avoid challenges
  • And/or give up easily in the face of obstacles
  • Since effort is fruitless or worse (implicating one as lacking innate talent)
  • Highly allergic to absorbing useful critical feedback, and
  • Threatened by the success of others
• Growth:
  • Desire to learn
  • Embracing challenges
  • Persistent in the face of setbacks
  • View effort as the path to mastery
  • Learn, readily, from constructive criticism
  • Find inspirational lessons in the success of others.

The bottom line?  The fixed/deterministic view of things can cause people to withdraw at every less-than-triumphant encounter with the world, whereas the growth/learning view can lead to greater emotional maturity and sense of mastery.  Here's a neat diagram compressing this. 

Great, you're saying, and while it might apply to raising your kids (see Dweck's sidebar on just that topic), where are we going with this in law firm land?

Consider this key precis of Dweck's hypothesis, and read it with an eye towards associate mentoring or junior-partner development:

"Common sense suggests that ability inspires self-confidence. And it does for a while—so long as the going is easy. But setbacks change everything. Dweck realized—and, with colleague Elaine Elliott soon demonstrated—that the difference lay in the kids' goals. “The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something,” Dweck says, and “learning goals” inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviors than “performance goals.”

"Students for whom performance is paramount want to look smart even if it means not learning a thing in the process. For them, each task is a challenge to their self-image, and each setback becomes a personal threat."

Have you seen the associate or young partner for whom "each setback becomes a personal threat?"  Yeah, I thought so.

The good news is that shifting from the "fixed" to the "growth" mindset can be learned.

Intellects are not static vessels, capable of holding {x} cubic centimeters of talent and insight and not a bit more: Intellects are muscles, which are strengthened by exertion.

It is emphatically not the case that talent can take you all the way, without sustained effort.   Instilling people with that ethic is actually a profound way to develop emotional maturity.  If I believed my capabilities were set in stone, or more precisely in neurons, dendrites and axons, as of a few decades ago, my ambition would be denatured, my curiosity stultified, and my aspirations brought rudely back to earth. 

It applies to Managing Partners as well:

"Leaders, too, can benefit from Dweck's work, says Robert Sternberg, PhD '75, Tufts University's dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. Sternberg, a past president of the American Psychological Association, says that excessive concern with looking smart keeps you from making bold, visionary moves. “If you're afraid of making mistakes, you'll never learn on the job, and your whole approach becomes defensive: ‘I have to make sure I don't screw up.'”

So go ahead: Dare to screw up.

If you don't know the following story about John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, you should.  Cisco is, among other things, a famously successfully acquisition machine:  When they set their sights on a company they want to take over, they almost invariably do so efficiently, effectively, and with near-immediate returns to the bottom line.   But not every time.

So when Chambers was asked recently why a particular acquisition had disappointed expectations, he replied that 5 out of 6 had surpassed expectations, the one in question being #6. 

But was he saying that in a defensive, self-congratulatory mode?  If you think so, you'll be disabused by the next words out of his lips:  "That means we're being too risk-averse.  Five out of six is too conservative; I aim for seven out of ten."

What are you aiming for?   And are you afraid to tackle challenges you're not positive you can conquer?