The Power of

Mindset
DELIVERED BY: NICK THOMAS
NOVEMBER 2023
Welcome and Thankyou
60-minute session
Slides provided post-session
Nick Thomas
• Background in Insurance Broking Sector. Sales and Sales
Leadership specialist
• Widely qualified coach and personal development specialist
• Coaching, training and consulting – Insurance M&A
Nick Thomas & Associates
• Up to the minute training solutions addressing the
challenges of the modern insurance professional
• Technical insurance; sales, business and soft skills;
customer service; management and leadership;
performance, resilience and wellbeing

CONFIDENTIAL 2
Session At the end of the session delegates will
Objectives • Have an insight into research on what drives expert
performance and the nature of talent.

‘Begin with the • Have an understanding of the difference between Fixed and
end in mind’ Growth Mindset and how they affect our success,
happiness, and resilience.
Stephen R.
Covey, The 7 • Understand how to adopt a growth mindset in your own
lives and how to develop and foster it in the lives of others.
Habits of Highly
Effective People’

CONFIDENTIAL 3
Talent and success
‘

• What is the nature of talent?

• What is the main driver for ‘success’?

CONFIDENTIAL 4
The nature of talent?
• ‘The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Dr Anders Ericsson, Professor of Psychology at Florida
Expert Performance’ 1993 State University
Internationally recognized as a leading authority on the
• Study of Violinists at Music Academy of West Berlin.
psychological nature of expertise and human
Three sets of students: performance
1. ‘Super talented’ – potential international soloists
2. Expected to play in world’s top orchestras
‘We deny that these differences [in skill level] are immutable,
3. Studying to become music teachers that is, due to innate talent…Instead we argue that the
differences between expert performers and normal adults
• No significant differences except by age 20 reflect a life-long persistence of deliberate effort to improve
performance’
1. Average 10,000 hours accumulated practice
Ericsson and colleagues
2. Circa 8,000 hours
3. Circa 4,000 hours
• NO Exceptions

CONFIDENTIAL 5
The nature of talent?
10,000 hour rule [and opportunity] ‘The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand
hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery
• Ericsson – professional and amateur pianists associated with being a world-class expert- in anything’.
‘In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction
• Amateurs – 2,000 hours by age 20 writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master
criminals and what have you, this number comes up’
• Professionals – 10,000 hours Neurologist Daniel Levitin in Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Outliers: The
Story of Success’
• Laszlo Polgar [and daughters]– educational
psychologist and early advocate of practice
While Leopold [Mozarts’s father] was only a so-so musician,
theory of expertise he was highly accomplished as a pedagogue. His
authoritative book on violin instruction,…remained
• Roger Barnsley – Canadian psychologist. influential for decades. So, from the earliest age Wolfgang
Canadian ice hockey age distribution was receiving heavy instruction from an expert teacher who
lived with him…
• Contradictions? Child Prodigies – Mozart,
Mozart’s first work regarded today as a masterpiece,…is his
Woods et al piano concerto number 9 composed when he was twenty-
one.
Geoff Colvin, journalist and author ‘Talent Is Overrated’

CONFIDENTIAL 6
The nature of talent?
Quantity AND Quality – deliberate and purposeful
practice
• ‘…the specialised learning used by top
performers to attain master status and the deep
concentration that is needed in each of those
ten thousand hours’ Matthew Syed Bounce: The
myth of talent and the power of practice
• ‘…by striving for a target just out of reach
[developing a new skill], but with a vivid
awareness of how the gap might be breached’
• The importance of Failure and instant Feedback
• Potential for high levels of repetition
• Once the skill is mastered, identify the next
target [just out of reach]

CONFIDENTIAL 7
The psychology of success?
The importance of failure…
I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost
almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the
game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and
over again in my life. And that is why I succeed
Michael Jordan

‘Try again. Fail again. Fail better’

Samuel Beckett

‘Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice.

What makes you better is how you react to it’
Mia Hamm

Success is going from failure to failure without losing your

enthusiasm
Winston Churchill

CONFIDENTIAL 8
The nature of talent?
Deliberate and purposeful practice in the The average professional athlete… spends
workplace? most of his time practicing and only a
small percentage—several hours a day, at
• Do we establish the skills where we need to most—actually competing. The typical
improve and the new skills to develop? Or just executive, by contrast, devotes almost no
attend the odd ad hoc training course? time to training and must perform on
demand ten, 12, 14 hours a day or more.
• Do we practice skills ‘just out of reach with a Jim Loehr, Performance Psychologist.
vivid understand of how the gap might be Author of ‘The Corporate Athlete’
breached’. Or do we forget about the training
and file it away ‘for the future’?
• Do we keep trying [high levels of repetition] and
failing until we breach the gap?
• Are we allowed to ‘fail’? How is failure framed?
• Do we get instant feedback? Mentoring,
Coaching, Ad hoc review meetings with
managers? Or a six month appraisal? How might we adjust our approach to use the
principles of ten-thousand-hour rule and
deliberate practice in our working lives?

CONFIDENTIAL 9
The psychology of success
Angela Duckworth Ph D, MacArthur Fellow and 2013 MacArthur Fellow. The “genius
grant” goes to individuals in the arts
Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania and sciences who display
extraordinary ingenuity and
• Skill x Effort = Achievement [Talent is how quickly your dedication to their work
skills improve when you invest effort]
• Extensive research across multiple fields of
endeavour – West Point Military Academy, National Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term
Spelling Bee, Rookie Teachers in tough goals.
Grit is having stamina.
neighbourhoods, Special Forces selection, Grit is sticking with your future day in day out.
Salespeople, Chicago public school students Not just for the week, not just for the month, but for
years. And working really hard to make that future a
• Best predictor of success = ‘Grit’ – passion [and reality.
direction] and perseverance for very long-term goals Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint’
• Grit unrelated or even inversely related to measures Dr Angela Duckworth
of talent

CONFIDENTIAL 10
Developing ‘Grit’ – Growth
Mindset
Our beliefs around the nature of talent can transform our
psychology and our lives
Experiment One – Three hundred and thirty students
• Questionnaire - beliefs on talent and intelligence
• Split into two groups: Fixed Mindset – believed intelligence
is fixed/Growth Mindset – believed intelligence could be
transformed through effort
• All students given a series of questions – eight fairly easy
and four very hard
Carol Dweck Ph D – Professor of Psychology,
• Both groups were of equal intelligence and motivation Stanford University. Widely regarded as one
• The results? of the world’s leading researchers in
personality, social psychology and
developmental psychology

CONFIDENTIAL 11
Developing ‘Grit’ – Growth
Mindset
FIXED MINDSET GROWTH MINDSET

The most striking thing …was how quickly they The didn’t focus on reasons for failure. In fact,
began to denigrate their abilities and blame their they didn’t even consider themselves to be failing.
.
intelligence for their failures…’I guess I am not very How did they perform? In line with their optimism,
smart’…’I’m no good at things like this’. Only a more than eighty percent maintained or improved
short while after the difficult problems began, they the quality of their strategies during difficult
lost faith in their intellect. problems. A full quarter of the group actually
Two thirds of them showed a clear deterioration in improved. They taught themselves new and more
their strategies, and more than half lapsed into sophisticated strategies for addressing the new
completely ineffective strategies. In short, the and more difficult problems. A few of them even
majority of students in this group abandoned or solved the problems that were supposedly beyond
became incapable of deploying effective strategies them…
in their repertoire Thus, even though they were no better than the
fixed mindset students on the original problems,
they ended up showing a much higher level of
performance

CONFIDENTIAL 12
Developing ‘Grit’ – Growth
Mindset
Experiment Two – first year students, University of Hong ‘In the growth mindset you don’t feel the need to
Kong. All classes at conducted in English but students convince yourself and others that you have a royal
arrive with differing language skills. flush when you’re secretly worried it’s a pair of tens.
• Identified group with poor English skills The hand you are dealt is just the starting point…
Although people may differ in every which way – in
• Questionnaire - to establish Fixed and Growth
their initial talents and aptitudes, interests or
Mindset groups temperaments – everyone can change and grow
• Then offered remedial English language course through application and experience’
• The results? Growth Mindset group showed high level Carol Dweck
of interest. Fixed Mindset group refused.
• Fixed Mindset group were ‘imperilling their chances
at university simply to insulate themselves from the
possibility of failure’ Syed – Bounce
• If you identify with success/talent/intelligence you will
shy away from situations that may contradict this
identity… How might a growth mindset help you build resilience?
‘adaptation, or the ability to “bounce back” or quickly
recover after adverse or stressful events’

CONFIDENTIAL 13
Growth and Fixed Mindset

CONFIDENTIAL 14
Growth and Fixed Mindset
‘Know it all’ vs ‘Learn it all’
‘the talent mindset…the deep-seated
‘Culture is something that needs to
belief that having better talent at all
adapt and change, and you’ve got to
levels is how you outperform your
be able to have a learning culture. The
competitors’
intuition I got was from observing what
‘Don’t be afraid to promote the stars
happens in schools. I read a book
without specifically relevant
called Mindset. In there there’s this
experience seemingly over their
very simple concept that Carol Dweck
heads’
talks about, which is if you take two
people, one of them is a learn-it-all
‘…by putting complete faith in talent, and the other one is a know-it-all, the
Enron did a fatal thing: it created a learn-it-all will always trump the know-
culture that worshipped talent, it-all in the long run, even if they start
thereby forcing its employees to look with less innate capability’
and act extraordinarily talented. Microsoft CEO - Satya Nadella
…it forced a fixed mindset…We know
that people with a fixed mindset do
not admit and correct their
deficiencies’
Carol Dweck

CONFIDENTIAL 15
Developing Growth Mindset
• Praise effort [and smart working] not talent
• Awareness of ‘Negativity Bias’ – breeds fixed
mindset
• Neuroplasticity and myelin – you can teach old
dogs new tricks
• Inspiring examples
• Create a no fear [of failure] culture – allow
people to ‘fail’ in a safe environment
• Ask empowering questions of yourself and
others
• The language you use and the example you set Examples?
– ‘can’t’ vs ‘not yet’… • How might you talk to/praise an employee
who has done a great piece of work to
promote growth mindset?
• …of empowering questions?

CONFIDENTIAL 16
Developing Growth Mindset
Replace fixed mindset language with growth mindset language

Fixed Language Growth Language

You have the

I’ve never been How can I get
You’re hopeless potential to
good at… better?
improve

That’s the way

We can’t get What did we
it’s always been Let’s try it out
this wrong learn?
done

CONFIDENTIAL 17
 Developing ‘Growth Mindset’
FIXED MINDSET GROWTH MINDSET
Believes that talent and Believe they can change
abilities are fixed and their skills through effort,
cannot really be changed and therefore strive to
and therefore limits the learn
amount of effort they Presenting Sales Excel skills
invest in developing skills
Negotiation Technical insurance skills

Mindset can be contextual

In what areas do you hold fixed mindset beliefs?
In what areas do you hold growth mindset beliefs?
Where have you moved from fixed to growth thinking? How? Performance = Potential – Interference [Gallwey]
Do we need to have a growth mindset in all contexts? What gets in your way?

CONFIDENTIAL 18
 Having attended this session you
Session • Have an insight into research on what drives expert

Objectives - performance and the nature of talent.

Revisit • Have an understanding of the difference between Fixed and

Growth Mindset and how they affect our success,
happiness, and resilience.

• Understand how to adopt a growth mindset in your own

lives and how to develop and foster it in the lives of others.

CONFIDENTIAL 19
Thank you! Questions?
Contact:
Email: nick@nickthomasassociates.co.uk

Website: www.nickthomasassociates.co.uk
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-
thomas-64046113/
Click here to listen to Nick’s latest podcast
LinkedIn Company: appearance on ‘HR Uprising’ talking about
https://www.linkedin.com/company/nick-thomas- workplace performance, resilience and health
associates/

‘Up to the minute training solutions addressing the

challenges of the modern insurance professional’

CONFIDENTIAL 20