Progressfocused

Progress-focused principles and techniques are not only useful in individual conversations and team facilitation, but also in guiding organizational change. Here are some progress-focused principles that you as a manager can use in organizational change.

In this article I explain why the growth mindset is an important pillar of the progress-focused approach . Next, I describe five ways in which the growth mindset is relevant to health care professionals.

Carol Dweck's mindset theory is usually associated with individuals: do they see individual abilities and traits as malleable or not? But there is also such a thing as a mindset culture. A mindset culture reflects shared ideas in an organization about the malleability of capabilities. In a fixed mindset culture there is the belief that abilities cannot be developed. In a growth mindset culture, there is a belief that abilities can be developed through effort. Organizational mindsets can affect the thinking and acting of individuals in those organizations in important ways.

Frank Martela , a Finnish philosopher and psychologist, has written a book entitled A wonderful life. Insights on Finding a Meaningful Existence . In the book he addresses questions such as: "Is life about finding happiness?" and "What can the basis for meaning still be in a time when religion is less and less the self-evident framework?" He invites the reader to think differently about meaning and comes up with some simple ideas for experiencing meaning.

Pursuing your own happiness is something many find good and normal. The American Declaration of Independence states that every American has the right to pursue his or her happiness. But does pursuing your own happiness bring happiness? Titova & Sheldon (2021) investigated it and came to a surprising discovery.

The assessment of one's own knowledge and skills is an important skill. Unfortunately, it is not easy to accurately assess yourself. This is reflected, among other things, in the Dunning-Kruger effect (DKE). In this article I discuss a study by Rachel Jansen and her colleagues into two possible explanations for the DKE. I also explain why the DKE is so tricky and why we intuitively tend to think that especially others are vulnerable to it.

"I'm just stupid. Just a loser," said a 19 year old boy after he failed his final exam. A sad response. New research sheds some light into how such response may happen. 

Wisdom is something to pursue. Many people would like to be able to act wisely in complex situations. And for many people it is an attractive perspective to, as they get older, become wiser. But what  precisely do we mean when we talk about wisdom? May what we call wisdom merely be a reflection of our personal values? May what one person views as wise be something completely different from what the other views as wise? In this article I discuss research from Glück, et al. (2021) which gives some interesting answers to these questions.

In this article I describe new research by David Yeager and his colleagues into how mindsets about abilities and mindsets about stress can reinforce each other, in a positive and negative sense.