How to Apply Your Growth Mindset to Your Practice

As we continue to explore ways to strengthen your practice and synergize your life, we’re going to look at applying a growth mindset to your practice.

Carol Dweck, an American psychologist known for her work on mindset, defines a growth mindset as the belief that your most basic abilities can be developed with hard work and dedication. Brains and talent are the starting point. The love of learning and resilience is essential for on-going accomplishments.

Physicians seem to naturally have a growth mindset and certainly continual learning is required in medicine. The physicians we work with use a multitude of resources including learning from patient exams, tests, research, medical periodicals, conferences and peers. Learning is a natural part of medicine and life. Recent studies show that we can have a growth mindset in one part of lives and a fixed mindset in others. A fixed mindset is defined as believing that qualities are fixed traits and therefore cannot change.

For example, we have worked with clients whose passion for growth is revered by their peers. These same exceptional physicians have a fixed mindset when it comes to running their practice.

These stellar physicians are consistently improving their approach to diagnosing and treating their patients. They are always seeking better treatment methods and healthier outcomes but when it comes to changing how they manage and lead their practice, they will admit that not much as changed since they started their practice. Maybe they grew their staff or modified areas of their practice but more often than not these changes were one and done.

Moving from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset requires commitment and patience but when you apply a growth mindset to running your practice your outcomes will also be healthier, your staff and patients will be happier and frankly, so will you.

If you’d like to shift your practice mindset from fixed to growth, I can help. Please contact me at smays@impactpracticeconsultants.com