Embracing a growth mindset (with Dr. Mary Murphy)

Culture matters. It matters in the way you shape it, in the way you make it real, in the way you embody it. It affects your performance and the performance of everyone around you.

JP’s guest this week, Dr. Mary Murphy, is a social psychologist at both Stanford University and Indiana University Bloomington, and a protégé of Carol Dweck. In her new book, Cultures of Growth, she shows us how to create and sustain a growth mindset in the culture of any organization.

Listen now to learn about the practical approaches we can use to transform work culture.

Subscribe now to JP's free monthly newsletter "Positive Leadership and You" on LinkedIn to transform your positive impact today: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/positive-leadership-you-6970390170017669121/

Transcript

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS:  I'm Jean-Philippe Courtois. This is Positive Leadership, the podcast that helps you grow as an individual, a leader, and ultimately as a global citizen. Organization culture involves behaviors, attitudes, values and rigid rules that influence employees’ behavior within an organization. It impacts your performance and that of everyone around you. Culture, in short, is a big deal. 

My guest today, Dr. Mary Murphy, is a social psychologist at both Stanford and Indiana University. In her new book, Cultures of Growth, she shows how to create and sustain a growth mindset in any organization’s culture. It is a must-read for business leaders, educators, coaches, and anyone who wants to improve the performance and satisfaction of the people in their team. It was such an honor and pleasure to have Mary on the show. This episode is packed with practical tips and tools to help you steer your teams and organization towards embodying a real growth mindset. 

First, I'd love to step back a bit in time and ask you about your background, the way you grew up. You were born, I understand, and raised in San Antonio, Texas. And what were the values that shaped you? What were the influences as well maybe of your parents, sometimes grandparents as well, and where does your interest in psychology come from? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: So I grew up bicultural in a working class family in San Antonio, as you say. My mom's family comes from Mexico and my dad's family is Irish and German, hence Mary Murphy. And I grew up the eldest of three kids. And I think that being the oldest, if anyone else can relate to being the oldest, there's a certain way of growing up. My family had high standards for the first kid and a lot of attention in that way. And I really grew up in a family of teachers. My mom was an elementary school teacher, my maternal grandmother, my maternal grandfather, my aunt. And so I kind of grew up in this family culture that was obsessed with learning. And as a little girl, I remember I would play school with my stuffed animals where I'd line them all up. I'd have a whiteboard in front of me and I would be there teaching them lessons from the summer workbook that we would get to take home. I was a real wild child. And I'd say, you know, those influences that really focused on learning and a love for that, really helped shape me over time. 

My interest in psychology I think came from growing up bicultural, noticing how we shift our behavior in different cultural contexts. When I'm around my Hispanic family there's a different way of acting and interacting with each other that's different from when I was with my dad's family. And I also had the experience of going to an all-girls Catholic high school. And I feel like there you really see the differences, right? Where you're surrounded just by women. And what that does, the kind of relaxed nature of that, that happens. And then when you're after school and suddenly the boys come into the place, you're suddenly acting differently. And so noticing how we shift that behavior, that was really, I think, the impetus for psychology. I never really thought of it as a serious discipline until I went to college and then locked into some psychology classes. And there it grew from that point. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Okay. So basically you were born to become a teacher, right?

DR. MARY MURPHY:  I think I was. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: And you were born not only to teach, but certainly how to learn, by the way. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That’s right. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Because I think there's always this interesting perspective between the art of teaching and the art of learning. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That’s right. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: We had a great episode on that topic with Sal Khan and of course his academy, where he's doing great work on that, on both sides of the equation, actually. We'll come back to that a bit later. So it's been almost, I think, 20 years, Mary, that Carol Dweck published her seminal book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, which coined the terms “growth mindset” and a “fixed mindset”. And bearing in mind some of our listeners may not be familiar with her work, in a fixed mindset, talent and intelligence are viewed as predetermined traits, while in the growth mindset, talent and intelligence can be nurtured, can grow. I must disclose that I read Carol Dweck's book in 2016, as I was asked to drive a major transformation of the global sales organization, Microsoft, to morph from a software company to become a cloud and AI first company. And at the time, we realized, globally and at the executive level of the company, that we need to evolve our culture to be less aggressive, less competitive internally, and more innovative, more customer-obsessed, and more growth-oriented externally. So this is the reason why, fundamentally, we embraced the concept of a growth mindset for all of our people, now about 220,000 people, and what it means for each one of us and for our company as a whole. So I'm really excited to have you today, Mary, to talk about all the work you've done to study across the world, in different types of organizations, the way you actually nurture the culture of growth. But we start with Carol Dweck's book, to what extent it has really transformed our idea of individual potential? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Well, JP, I can't think of another idea that has been more transformative when it comes to thinking about individual potential. I mean, this work, there have been so many studies, thousands of studies at this point, some with children, some with adults, in all different kinds of contexts. And what we see over and over again is that these mindsets predict almost everything about our motivation and our behavior, but especially in times of uncertainty and change, right? Everything is changing at the moment so rapidly, we can barely keep up with it. And that's when mindset is likely to have its strongest impact. So we know from decades of work that mindset shapes the extent to which we fear failure. So if we think that you either have it or you don't, you're in this fixed mindset kind of belief, you have to always show that you have the talent, the intelligence, the ability, the capabilities. And so you kind of worry about failure. You worry about mistakes. In fact, we see in the research that you hide mistakes. One of my favorite studies is with six-year-olds that Carol did early in her career. And she found that kids would, if you left an answer sheet to the questions that they were supposed to be asking out, if kids had been primed to move towards their fixed mindset, they were more likely to cheat. When the experimenter left the room, quote/unquote, "accidentally" left the answer sheet, right? Because they wanted to show that they were smart and capable and competent, and you have a lot of compassion for what that is. And I think that we see that in adults as well. We see the extent to which you're willing to exert effort. Because we believe that if you have to try hard, it means that maybe you don't have the natural skills or abilities that the fixed mindset says you need to have. And again, whether we relish or whether we shy away from challenges, all of these things really are fundamentally shaped by whether we are in our fixed or our growth mindset at any given point. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Yeah. And I love it. We'll come back to that later as well, Mary, when it comes to also this, not this concept, but actually this challenge that we ask to all of us, to ourselves, on if you need to work that hard, it means that probably you're not smart enough. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Yes. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: And I think that's a big inhibitor for many people. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: It's a huge barrier. It's a huge barrier. And it's one of the most popular triggers, the mindset triggers that move people toward their fixed mindset, is those high effort situations. When I'm having to master a new area or domain, I get a new job title, I get a new set of work that I have to now work on, and it doesn't necessarily come naturally to me. We see a lot of people will actually decline these kinds of opportunities, stretch assignments and others, because they're worried that if they have to really double down in terms of their effort, they're going to be seen as not having that natural talent and ability. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Yeah. We'll come back to the other observation you had during your research as well, the so-called triggers as well. Now, let's come back again to the work you've been doing with Carol Dweck, because she's often described as your mentor, basically. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Yes. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: In her book, she talks about our mindset continuum, again, that ranges from a fixed mindset where individuals can believe their abilities and intelligence are static and unchangeable, to a growth mindset where they believe these qualities can be developed through effort, learning, and persistence. In your work, you've expanded the concept from the person to the team, and all the way to a broad entire organization. So how did you come to the idea that mindset does not live exclusively within the individual, within ourselves? And how did Carol react to your observation, your concept about broadening out the idea of mindset to the broader world in many ways? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. That's right. Well, it started around 2004, 2005, Carol had moved from Columbia University to Stanford University where I was a PhD student. And what happens in the PhD program at Stanford, it's the number one psychology program in the country. So it's kind of a tough program to get into, high standards. And what happens every year is that the PhD students give a talk to their local faculty members in their area. And I was in one of these talks supporting one of my friends who was in his fourth year of the PhD, really speaking about his life's work in this presentation. And all of a sudden, in the middle of the presentation, without raising their hand, on the right hand side of the room, a professor just blurts out, "Well, it's clear the fatal flaw is XYZ." And we all kind of look at once and we say, "What's going on?” And then it's silent. And then on the left hand side, a professor shouts out, "No, the fatal flaw isn’t XYZ, it's ABC." And they start talking at each other. And I would say the right word is “talking at each other,” not listening, not kind of understanding, but fighting amongst themselves to see who's the smartest in the room, who could take down the student's idea the quickest, with the most fatal identity of the problem. And I saw what it was doing to my friend up there. He withdrew, he wasn't able to answer questions, he was stumbling, even though he was the expert on his own work. This is something he'd been working on for years. And I also was struck by what it did to him, not just in that moment, he was able to finally go ahead and finish the talk. But what happened to him over months, he was unwilling to go back and revise and touch that work again, because that experience had been so painful. 

So two weeks later, I'm in a different seminar, different set of faculty, and they're completely different in the way that they approach these student talks. They're still finding all of the issues and the problems with the work that's being done. But instead of actually competing on who can take down the ideas and find the fatal flaws, they're now competing on who can figure out the best solution to improve the work the most. And so they're saying things like, “Oh, the student should include this new measure or work with this different population.” And I saw the students, what were they doing, they are able to participate in the brainstorm, answer questions, and they left motivated to apply those ideas right away, because they had strategies from that conversation that they could apply right away. And who made the most progress over time in the program? It was the students in the culture of growth seminar, not the culture of genius, the fixed-minded seminar. 

So I was thinking about this for a while. And I wasn't that familiar with the idea of mindset, Carol had just arrived to Stanford, but I kept thinking back to this, and I said, these are two different ways of motivating people, right? These two different contexts. And one is a very prove and perform, you're only as good as your last performance, you're going to sink or swim. And the other is much more focused on learning and development. So I take this over to Carol, and I knock on her door. And I say, “Carol, I know everyone has been thinking about mindset sort of as a quality of our own minds, our individual mindset. What's your mindset, how does it affect you? What's my mindset,  how does it affect me? But has anyone ever thought about mindset as a quality of a group, of a team, of a whole organization, of a school or a classroom, and how that mindset culture might affect the people within it.” And then I told her the story of what I had observed. And she looked at me for a moment, she blinked a couple times, and in her Carol way was kind of quiet for a moment and then said, “You know, Mary, no, no one's ever thought of mindset that way, but it makes a lot of sense to me, and we should do it together.” And so that began 15 years of research that we have now done together to look at mindset culture and how it affects us. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: 15 years of research. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Before we move on, I just want to pick up on what Mary said there, because it really captures what I’ve seen in my own professional life. Ironically, cultures of genius produce less genius. When everyone is in “prove and perform” mode, people compete to show that they're the smartest one in the room and others just self-censor because they're worried they are not. And both of these behaviors are ultimately damaging when what you need is for people to be suggesting great, innovative and creative ideas. While people within strong cultures of genius are infighting and watching their backs, those in strong cultures of growth are getting their heads together. Cultures of growth look to how they can help people continually grow and develop, understanding that when this happens, they are more likely to innovate, use data and take informed risks to work cooperatively, and as a direct follow-on, to achieve better results. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: You know, a lot of times leaders will come to me and say, "I'm just not getting great ideas from my team members. Nobody is really suggesting anything innovative or creative or new." And then I say, well, what's the mindset culture we've set up here? Is it a safe environment to really voice new ideas and creative things, things that may...there might be mistakes along the way or things that might fail, right? If we have these senior folks always vying for the “smartest in the room” award, nobody's going to, like you say, suggest or provide even their best ideas because they're worried others are going to steal them, for example. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Absolutely. So, let's get back to your research work because I think it's really interesting to dig into it and to get some of the facts that you reveal of this work. Can you tell us more about the scope of your research projects? I think you did a lot. How much diversification did you study between the largest multinationals in the world, maybe startups, entrepreneurs, maybe even public services, schools? Can you tell us more about the way you've been studying that diversity and what did you find out across the diversity as well? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Yeah. So we have been looking at how these mindset cultures are created, how they are sustained and maintained, and then what we need to do to actually shift them. And so those three aspects are things that we have looked at, as you say, in very large multinational companies. We've worked with Shell. We've worked with many technology companies, it won't surprise you. Given the lead of Microsoft, all these tech companies are interested in mindset culture. We've also worked with hundreds of startup founders and early stage organizations, series A sort of seed organizations, and looking at how the early mindset of the founder is going to impact the way that they set up the organization, the initial culture that they set up, and then how that impacts who they bring on, how they build their organization, and how ultimately they're successful with regards to fundraising and their goals and market share ultimately of their organization. So we've studied those kinds of questions. And then in schools, we have looked at this everywhere from kindergarten through 12th grade, and then also in higher education. We've looked at how the mindset of college instructors, for example, shapes the practices that they engage in in their teaching, how that is perceived by students, and how that influences students' motivation, engagement, their sense of belonging, and ultimately their performance over time. And so we can measure these things. In a lot of organizations, what we'll do is we'll go in and we'll do a measurement across the organization, usually taking advantage of some pulse survey or other thing that organizations have. And then we'll create sort of a hot spot/bright spot analysis. We'll be able to see the places. You know, usually, especially in very large organizations, there might be an overarching mindset culture, but there's going to be many microcultures. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Many pockets of culture. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. Microcultures. You might have a very strong culture of genius, but in the R&D section of the company, that might be a very strong culture of growth where they're prototyping constantly, right, making mistakes all the time, learning from those mistakes rapidly, innovating, right? And so really understanding the hot and bright spots within an organization then help us say, okay, here's the DNA of where a culture of growth can thrive and what are the practices we can learn from that, and then apply them, maybe not wholesale, but certainly adopt them to other parts of the organization, right? A lot of times that is very much, much more interesting to companies to have the local DNA, and to see that these cultures of growth can thrive in our own environments here in the organization, than the Microsoft case study, for example, where people are saying, “Well, we're not Microsoft.” Right? And they can think of all the reasons why what worked there might not work here, right? And yet you show them that it is working in some pockets in their own organization and then how to grow it. So I do think that that has been very useful as we work to change culture. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Thank you. It's super insightful to see again the way, as you said, you can detect the nuances of your mindset and culture as an organization. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: And the way you can actually replicate some of the best practices and the way you can evolve gradually across an entire organization, which I know is a lot of work. So let's get into the core concept of the book, if you don't mind, Mary. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Sure.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Because in your wonderful book, Culture of Growth, you talk about how you assess whether a company is predominantly a culture of growth or genius, and how others can work out where the organization sits in the mindset continuum, with cultures of genius and cultures of growth being at either end of the spectrum. So can you ground us on the concept of culture of genius versus the culture of growth? And also then later on, the misconception, I think, that is very visible between the culture and the mindset, which I think are two very different animals. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Yes, yes, you're right about that. So you know, to get us all on the same page about these concepts, sometimes people…I always say it's the litmus test as to whether people have read the book, because genius sounds so great. Everyone wants to be a genius. And so when people say, "Oh, I love that culture of genius," I say, "Hmm, I'm not sure you've read that book." 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Reread it. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. That’s right. So what I mean when I call it a culture of genius, this is a term I coined in 2010 with one of our first papers on this area, where it really is a fixed mindset culture. It's focused primarily on star performers, and it has that fixed mindset idea. You either have it or you don't, talent, intelligence, ability. It's basically fixed, static. There's not much you can do about it. And so therefore, in these teams and organizations, even in families that have strong cultures of growth, or genius, they're going to basically focus on the stars in those contexts, believing that these people are inherently more capable due to some kind of superior intelligence or ability. And conversely, the culture of growth has that growth mindset as the core of its kind of belief and ideas. And it believes that if given the right supports, everyone can develop and contribute. And the reality is that just like with our own personal mindsets, it's not that we have one or the other, right, all the time. This is the irony of the way we've thought about fixed and growth mindset, is that nobody wants to have a fixed mindset, and everybody wants to have a growth mindset, and that we can't even talk about the fixed mindset. But the truth is that we all have both within us. And when it comes to organizations and teams, many times we see that teams and organizations are a mixture of a culture of genius and a culture of growth. And there are going to be different times when we are embodying with different practices more of that growth mindset idea, and sometimes more of that fixed mindset idea. So it exists on a continuum, just like our personal mindset exists on a continuum. 

I would say to your second question around some of the misconceptions, I would say the first one is that false dichotomy idea that you either have one or the other, and there's nothing you can do about it. The mindset culture continuum is a real thing and we have seen shifts. And it's really important for people to understand that because culture is not something that's ever complete or done. If we stop paying attention to culture, we will see a backsliding of that culture to what, say, the industry's culture, the dominant industry or the dominant society's culture might be. And so always thinking about how we can shift along that mindset culture continuum is really important. 

The second misconception I would say is that mindset is all in your mind. If you have a certain mindset, that's who you are. But what we know is clearly now after these 15 years of work, that our mindset is really greatly influenced by our environment and the people around us. 

And then finally, the third misconception is really that mindset is just all about effort. If we try hard, right, that's all we need to do. But what we have learned over time is that brute force effort, if we just keep banging our head against the wall over and over and over again, it's not the wall that breaks, right? It's going to be our head that explodes. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Heads. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: And so a true growth mindset and a true growth mindset culture is going to be one that really focuses on effective effort. Is the effort that we're putting in actually moving us towards our goal? Do we need to change and adapt strategies? Do we need to pivot, right? And being able to understand and learn along the way so that we're making those pivots sooner and so that we know that the effort that we're expending is actually moving us towards growth and development and towards our goals. And so in true cultures of growth, we see a lot of support for this kind of learning, these structures for learning, and then also a lot of strategies to help people be able to learn, grow, and develop. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Super clear, super clear, I think in terms of the core, again, concept. You know, something you said that really resonates well with me in culture, in my 40 years kind of professional experience now at Microsoft, I've seen a lot of changes, obviously, like any large company, but I would say you test your culture in a few different moments of your professional life, organizational life. One is when things don't go well at all, when you've got big failures, personal failure, collective failure, enterprise failure. And the way people, including, of course, leadership reacts to that and the way they behave in those moments. The words they use, the message they send, the way they get back to the entire teams on what does it mean and what accountability, whose accountability is that as well. 

Another experience I had as well for many years now is the way we try really hard every day to live our values, as we said. And you know, many companies have defined a set of core values. At least they sound great on a slide and sometimes on a poster on a hall, but it's so hard to actually have even a strong alignment on the meaning of the word, on value. Taking a couple of words here at Microsoft, respect, integrity, accountability. I can assure you that the discussion you can have with many of the people in that world could be so diverse in terms of the understanding. And then when you bring it into the context of what they do, this is, I think, when you really can observe the culture in action. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Absolutely. I think you're exactly right. It's in those moments of trial and in those moments of failure that you're going to see the strongest cues, for lack of a better word, to what the culture, the true culture is, and people are particularly going to be tuned to their leaders and to their managers to say, you know, what is it that we truly believe? What is it that we truly value here in the moment? 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: So now I'd like you to play like a consulting role with me, Mary, if you're okay with that. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Okay. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: No, because this Positive Leadership Podcast is also all about practical tips, tools that people, listeners can use. So let's play with two kind of roles and personas, right? My first role, I'm the manager of a team of 10 people. I'm excited about my job and our team charter, but I find it very hard to get my team to take risks, to innovate and accelerate our growth. What should I do differently, Mary, to change the behaviors and the norms of my team? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Hmm, very good question. Very good question. So JP leader, I would say it sounds counterintuitive, but I think one of the best ways to lean into our growth mindset as a leader and then with our team is to actually acknowledge and learn to work with our fixed mindset. So recognizing is there some barrier that is really triggering the fixed mindset and making it such that people are not willing to contribute new ideas or to think creatively or to brainstorm with each other, to be a little vulnerable in raising potential ideas, right? So recognizing that all of us, for all of us to embody our growth mindset, we also are going to embody our fixed mindset some of the time. And so what I say is, start to learn your own mindset triggers as a leader, and then start to voice over what they are for people when you find yourself in a fixed mindset triggering situation for yourself. Maybe your team is asked to take on an incredible challenge in a very short timeline and this is really triggering you to the fixed mindset. “We’ve got to be perfect. There's no room for mistakes,” right? This kind of belief. And just saying that, “I recognize that this is my default. And I really want us to push against that when it comes to this particular project. Let's try to occupy our growth mindset more here.”

The other thing that I have teams do, especially small teams, like a group of 10, is to go and take the mindset trigger assessment, and then to talk with each other as a team, given that you're going to be in interaction with each other over and over again, and working on many different projects, to really be able to understand and have the conversation around when different individuals are likely to be triggered to their fixed mindset. We know that, for example, praise and the success of others is a big mindset trigger. And so if I was the leader, if you're the leader of the group of 10, and you know that 3 or 4 of those individuals are really triggered when you praise another individual that's not them, right, it makes them feel that if that person's a star, maybe there's no room for me, you might praise people differently on the team, right? And so you can take behaviors and do things differently, knowing what the various mindset triggers are in the room around you. And that will help you create that micro-culture of growth within your team that's going to produce that innovation and risk-taking and better performance that we know is possible. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Yeah, I love it. I love it. It's great, great set of advice. I mean, in particular, I love what you said, "Celebrating others' success," meaning not just my success as an individual or as a team manager, but actually the success of other people. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: And in a way, you could contribute to their success, which is even better. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Making others successful. And in return, I think as they see that, I think, and I've seen that in action, actually, it's not just a concept in my mind, they will start playing the same way. They will start as well contributing to your success. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: To the success of the group. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Collaborative. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: So if they see the dynamic collaboratively, then it's going to really trigger a very interesting positive circle of innovation. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Yeah. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Now, let’s imagine that a startup company has grown tremendously, and I'm now the leader of a company, right, with 1,000 people. And I've got a team of teams, which is I'm leading basically 10 leaders and themselves a bunch of organizations. So what would you advise me to do as a leader of this much broader, larger organization? Beyond what you said, which I think makes a lot of sense, but being kind of a team of the teams, leader of leaders, is it kind of a different scale as well? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Absolutely, absolutely. But, you know, I do think it's a different scale. And I have worked with a lot of CEOs and their executive teams that then lead different functions within the business and different parts of an organization. And what I would say is that we usually actually start with a lot of self-reflection from these leaders around where they have seen themselves embody the fixed and growth mindset. What are the stories? You know, one of the most powerful cues around a culture in an organization are the stories that leaders tell about their own experience and their own struggles and their own journey. And it's very telling when leaders never speak about their own struggles and their own journey and that sort of thing. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: And their failures, yes. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. And so we talk about this and we sort of have the leaders themselves develop their own mindset story around where they saw themselves embodying the fixed mindset, how it held them back, and how they were able to shift. What were the strategies? Who are the people that really helped them shift towards their growth mindset? How did that actually help them in their careers over the course of their time to become leaders? Where do they see their own teams kind of defaulting to the fixed mindset? And as they start to have that kind of conversation, then what we do is we have those leaders start the process within their own verticals, within their own teams, and start to have the conversation with their leadership. And so then we start this conversation. It's important to have similar language so that when you have that shared language, then it's easier to point to some of the behaviors and some of the beliefs that we see kind of popping up. And then we look at processes. We look at the practices that are routine and ordinary in the way that we start meetings and the way we lead meetings and the way we learn, the way that we give projects and promotions and evaluation. So we look at these different aspects that are really important because they materially affect the people who are working in an organization. And that's another big place where we're going to see the mindset culture in action. And when people say, what is the true mindset culture of your team? Is it what we say? Is it the values that are written on the wall, as you say, or on the website? Or, is it how we actually treat each other on a day to day basis, what we say and do on the ground? And academically, there's a big controversy and sort of question as to which one is truly culture. I would argue it's mostly what matters on the ground, at least to workers. That's what they're going to be contending with on a day to day basis. And when you ask them what the mindset is, that's what they're going to refer to. We've seen that in the data over and over. So attending to those kinds of practices is really the work of leaders and helping to create this kind of mindset story across the team is essential. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: What Mary is saying makes a lot of sense. As leaders, we need to be purposeful about creating a growth mindset culture. And self-aware when we’re driving core management processes, like hiring people or praising others. Also, telling someone “good job, great work,” helps them feel good, which is great, but it doesn't tell them what they did well and what they could build on. It doesn't tell anyone else on the team why they could actually develop over time. So when you're giving praise, try and be specific. And consider whether you're praising just the outcome or the process, the how. Be mindful that you're highlighting and giving awards to people who improved the distance traveled, rather than just praising the people that they are at the very top of the heap. That is communicating whether we really focus a little bit more towards the culture of genius or the culture of growth. 

Now, I'd like you, Mary, to tell us what is the Cues Audit? You mentioned the cues a few times. This is actually a toolset you've been developing. Can you tell us more about the way it works and the kind of triggers as well that you've been picking to make an assessment of a team or organization? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: So we have been developing tools and using them in our research for the last 10 years or so, both at the individual level and then at the structural or group level. And so at the individual level, we have the mindset triggers, and that's something that individuals can take for themselves. They can also take it if they have a relationship, a close relationship with someone, a mentoring relationship, or you can take it thinking about your kids, right, thinking about their mindset triggers. And you can identify then what are these four different situations that we know from the literature kind of repeatedly move people between their fixed and their growth mindset on an individual basis. So that is the mindset triggers assessment. 

And then there is a Cues Audit. Because we know that these mindset cultures are really signaled through the situational cues and cultural artifacts that surround us, we can, like being a good sociologist or a social psychologist in my case, right, looking at the environment and seeing where we might be maybe even unintentionally communicating more of these fixed-minded beliefs, this culture of genius, in our everyday processes. So what does it look like in this Cues Audit? The Cues Audit, also an abbreviated version is available on the website for the book, and so people can take this in teams and leaders can take it. But it asks you to really look carefully at the environment, things like analyzing…you know, we have taken AI tools and scraped the websites and mission statements of the Fortune 1000. And then we look at datasets like Glassdoor and others to look at how the mindset culture that companies are externally communicating to society, to potential workers, to others, how that actually is related to people's experiences on the inside of the company. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: In reality, yeah.

DR. MARY MURPHY: So looking at that website and the mission statements, we look at job ads as one of the cues that's going to tell you early on --  if you are a potential employee looking for jobs, you can often tell in the job ads themselves, given certain language, whether this is more a culture of genius or a culture of growth. We also look at application and interview questions. Interview questions are very telling, right? That's one cue as to what matters here. Are we going to be asking questions about the challenges you encountered and the strategies that you used in the past to overcome them, knowing that that distance traveled is going to predict your distance going forward? Or are we just asking about the successes and the opportunities that you were able to bring into the organization? Not asking about the team that you developed, just you solely as an individual, right? The lone genius. And then looking at performance evaluation and promotion processes, what actually counts on the ground? What data are we collecting? Again, is it focused just on outcome? Is it also focused on process? We will also look at leaders’ messages and practices, team interactions, how we start and end meetings, how we discuss mistakes, what structures, if any, are in place for learning and for sharing that learning broadly across teams in an organization. And then finally, with leaders and managers, we'll do a Cues Audit to look at how they build learning processes into their strategic work that they're doing, how they actually support measured and informed risk-taking, how they give feedback, right? Those sorts of cues are the kinds of cues that matter to people on the ground and that are going to signal the organization and the teams’ microcultures and macrocultures of growth or genius. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Super helpful, Mary. Super helpful. And again, we’ll make sure we'll post your website on the podcast summary so our listeners can take that Cues Audit as well. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Sure. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: You know, one of the big drawbacks to having a culture of genius organization is negative impact on diversity, equity, and inclusion. This, I think, spurred you on to fund Equity Accelerator, which is a resource for companies and schools to help them shift their focus from addressing diversity from a culture of genius to a culture of growth organization. So can you explain the correlation you found, I think, with a culture of genius and lack or not enough diversity and retention as well in organizations? And what help do you offer companies and schools with your Equity Accelerator? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Great. Great question. So, this link between mindset, culture, and diversity and inclusion is something that we had been studying for probably five or six years now. And what we find over and over in organizations and companies, large and small, as well as in school settings, is that when we think about a culture of genius, we have a prototype in our society about who those geniuses are, right? If I were to put “genius” into a Google image search, and I was able to see what the images are, who do you think I would see, JP? 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Einstein. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Einstein. You’d see so many Einsteins. Einstein everywhere. You might also see whom? Do you know? 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Not sure who would be the second one. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Sometimes it's like Newton. Sometimes it's Steve Jobs. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Steve Jobs, yeah.

DR. MARY MURPHY: Sometimes it's even like Elon Musk occasionally comes up, right? 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Really? Okay. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: So, we have some of these prototypes, right? That's what these Google image kind of generators actually show is what is most closely associated with these ideas. And so these prototypes implicitly and subtly influence, in a culture of genius, who we are going to look for. In a culture of genius, you want to be surrounded by other geniuses. That's who you're going to look for for hiring. It's also who you're going to be looking for for promoting within an organization. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Promoting, yeah, yeah. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: And so what we see over and over is that those default culture prototypes of who the genius is, they tend to be white, they tend to be male, they tend to be of a certain educational and class background. And who does it leave out? It leaves out black people, Latino people, Muslim people, people with any other difference, women, right? People with disabilities. And so what we see in these organizations is that both on the recruiting side and on the retention side, because they hit ceilings in these organizations where they're no longer seen as the prototypical genius or the likely genius who they want to invest in, the organization wants to invest in and grow and develop, and so what we see is that these organizations tend to be much more homogenous. And the culture of growth, it doesn't have that genius prototype at the heart of it. Instead, what matters most in a culture of growth is who can learn the most, who can improve the most, who can actually rise to challenges and overcome them in the past. And frankly, what we have seen from history and others is that a lot of minoritized individuals, right, women, in some cases, in business settings, have had struggles. And so, in a culture of growth, you look at who has actually excelled when it comes to struggling and overcoming challenges. And those are the things that matter. And that's much less tied to a specific demographic in the way that genius is tied. And so, you see a much more diverse kind of environment, both in terms of recruiting people, retaining people, and promoting people within these organizations and within schools. Who gets the attention? Who gets the benefit of gifted and talented programs, right? These sorts of things really accrue and are shaped by these cultural prototypes. And that creates diversity or homogeneity in these environments. 

So, you're right, I created Equity Accelerator to really be able to think about how to apply a lot of this work in schools and in companies around the world. And Equity Accelerator is a focused research organization. We do three things. We do basic and applied research. We do tool development that takes all of this research and creates evidence-based tools, tests those tools with different real organizations and schools. And then we do technical assistance and consulting, where we will actually help people put in place these tools, measure change, and help support that change. And we've done this work in -- recently we just did 65 two- and four-year colleges in the State of Texas, believe it or not, where we really focused on helping these schools identify the places where they could shift some of their practices with regard to student success to create these cultures of growth. We also did a massive study with over 300 STEM Gateway course instructors across 6 colleges and universities with over 30,000 students, where we helped those instructors use some of these tools to create more cultures of growth in their classroom. And then we studied how that affected students' experiences, their sense of belonging, their trust, their motivation, their engagement, whether they came to class or not for college. And then also we looked at their performance at the end of the term. And we found that when instructors were engaged with our tools, they were able to increase the motivation and engagement of all of the students and the performance, but they also closed equity gaps among racial/ethnic/minority students, as well as women in these STEM classes, as well as first-generation students and low-income students. And so we see the impact of that in many contexts. We did a project with the OECD globally, looking at how teacher mindset and mindset practices of teachers shape test performance of students around the world. And in companies, we offer things like professional development, these measurement tools, and then bright spot/hot spot analysis to do this work. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: No, I love it. I think just listening to you, Mary, it seems to me we have an opportunity to rethink the Chief Diversity Officer job in a company. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Yes. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Maybe we should rename it as the Chief Culture of Growth Officer. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Culture, yes, I love that. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: No, because, I mean, what is not told about the diversity story in large organizations, and of course, many, many people work hard at that, is basically the embedded piece of culture and the way you are actually taking action on the culture. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Before you set quotas, before you say, oh, I'm going to do this and that process -- I'm not saying it's bad, you have to do that as well, probably -- but if you don't change your culture, there's no way you're going to make a dent into diversity and inclusion. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: So, let's continue to move forward. Another environmental mindset trigger you talk about in your book is evaluative situations. And I've had some great conversations myself and a lot of feedback with past guests. One of them, I'm sure you know well, Kim Cameron. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Mm, yes.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Who talked to me about the reflected best self-feedback, right? It's a wonderful episode, by the way, for our listeners who don't know Kim Cameron. In this model of feedback, the candidate and instructor collects and synthesizes feedback from people who've seen you at your very best in various fields of your life, both professionally and personally. And this method allows the person being evaluated to develop a sense of their personal best in order to increase their future potential. So I want to build on that, Mary, because you've been somehow a bit provocative about focusing too much on strengths. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: [LAUGHS]

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: You see me coming, right? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Yes. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS:  You said that the over-focus on strengths fails us. Can you elaborate on your position? More importantly, what a great critical feedback consists in? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Great. Great questions. You're hitting them all. So I would say strengths and strength finders is ubiquitous around the world. And I think my critique of it is that in a certain way of its implementation, which is that much of the time when we are talking about strength finders or taking our strength finders tests, what it shows us are the things that we are naturally good at, right? And then the advice that comes next, I think it's great to know what we actually are naturally good at and what we might need to actually grow or develop in, right? But what happens next, usually, when we deal with strength finders outcomes, is that people are told then, find the places that maximize your strengths, move towards your strengths, right? And we talk nothing about what we could do to grow or develop in other areas. And I think that that really, when you think about it, I can't think of a more clear culture of genius trigger, which says, do the thing that you're naturally good at and keep doing the thing you're naturally good at… 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: And ignore the rest. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Ignore everything else. And do everything you can to avoid all of the rest, right? And I think it can actually set us up for narrow boxes over time. You know, I see this also playing out in family dynamics, where in a multi-child family, there'll be one child who is very creative, one child who is quote, “good at school,” one child who is “very good at sports,” right? And we sort of think about these strengths of these children. And then we put them in more and more activities to build on those strengths more and more. And you know, when they come to the limit of their capability, or when they come to their limit of their interest, what are they left with? They haven't had practice growing or learning in a different area, right? Not being great at something. Michelle Obama tells a story about her two daughters and what she did for them when they were thinking about what kind of extracurricular activities to do. And she would say, “They got to choose one,” usually it was one that they were very good at, where they'd feel great and get all the positive praise, “And I got to choose one, as mom, and it was oftentimes something that I knew they might struggle with a little bit, because I knew that struggle, and that development would be good for them. And who knows, maybe they would find an interest that they didn't know that they had.” Right? So that's my issue with focusing too much on strengths. What do you think about that?

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Well, it's a very important area of personal learning I had for so many years, Mary. I would say I've been not shifting, but I've been a lot more focusing on helping people first building on their strengths. And I think that's a very important foundation to start with. But I would add, maybe, but also growing a few more strengths on the way. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: That's the way I would paint it. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. That's right. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: And you know, in the old kind of leadership model, I used to say – we used to say -- I mean, many companies, many leaders say, “Okay, you’ve got your strengths and you’ve got your areas of development or weaknesses,” you know, to say it publicly. And in a way we were spending a lot of time as well, maybe a lot more on the weaknesses, areas of development, which can be helpful. But if you overdo it as well, guess what? People fail their confidence, self-confidence in their strengths as well. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. That's right. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: It's kind of a delicate balance, right? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Absolutely. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: It's not binary, black and white. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: No, it is not. And in a true culture of growth, no one is going to have to really develop their weaknesses or the places that they really need to develop alone. They're going to have supports, they're going to have strategies, they're going to have feedback along the way. And you know, it's only in those real strong sink-or-swim cultures that doing the development work is sort of an individual endeavor that will likely undermine people's confidence and self-efficacy going forward. You're exactly right. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: So, Mary, I've got still a few more questions. Let's continue. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Yes. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: It's exciting. You also talk a lot about the power of storytelling to cultivate deeper bonds and connection within a team. So, can you talk us through those actionable tips that can create positive ripple effects in organizations? And can you share any examples when you've seen that in action, again, in terms of that storytelling, creating deeper bonds, connect with the team? How does it work, concretely speaking, for an organization? How do you make that working? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: So, I think that telling your own story of the places where, especially telling people's own journey in their career, their interests, how those changed over time, how the struggles that they had along the way, what are the strategies or the people that helped support them, that becomes really important. Because it also models that there's going to be an expectation that when people struggle, they're not alone, that they're going to have others that they can come to rely on. We also have seen storytelling really important when it comes to both the successes and the failures historically of the team or of the organization. So, telling the story, there could be some lore in the organization of this incredible outcome that we had, right? When we moved into cloud computing for the first time and we had this great success, right? And so, how do we tell that story? Is it just about the success or is it about some of the mistakes along the way, what we learned from them, how we garnered that learning and actually led to the ultimate outcome of success that has been emblematic of what we are capable of in the organization. So those kinds of things, telling also the stories of big failures. Because even though we don't want to speak of those failures often, I think people feel a little bit superstitious about speaking about failures, I think that it's incredibly important to tell those stories and to figure out what are the practices, what are the structures we put in place so that those kinds of failures are ones that we're not going to be repeating because we have the learning that we were able to wrest from that failure and be able to communicate that broadly, right? And then also noticing what are the typical ways we fail, right? There's probably some pattern to the ways that we fail in the organization and being able to speak of those and recognize them, give them a name, so that other teams can say, “Oh, we're falling into the old…”

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Trap.

DR. MARY MURPHY: “…pattern of this kind of problem here. Let's be sure that we catch it and move away from it,” right? So without that kind of language, it's very difficult for us to be able to learn and to not repeat the failures of the past. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: No, super clear. You know, Mary, in your book, I was a bit surprised, but I think I understand probably why you didn't talk much at all, actually, about the Generative AI revolution happening. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Yes. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: I think probably it's because you wrote it before ChatGPT then, right? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: I guess that's the case. But now that ChatGPT, Copilot from Microsoft, and other AI agents are available, I'd love to ask you the question, would you mind positioning the role of GenAI, if any, at the individual level or organizational level when it comes to nurturing a culture of growth? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Yes. Yes. So I have many thoughts on this now. And you're right. It did not exist when I wrote the book and when it had to go to press. But you know, I have been thinking about the role of Generative AI and how mindset intersects with it. I think at the individual level, growth mindset, we know, is essential for learning new things and to being open minded as to how something can assist with learning and development. What are the strategies that are going to be most successful to really improve our learning and take it the furthest it can go? So at the individual level, I would say that having a growth mindset and inspiring a growth mindset will help people learn how to effectively interact and collaborate with Generative AI. And that's really important as workers around the world are being asked and expected to be fluent in this new technology and to be able to harness it to better the work that they produce, right? So I think that's one thing, is having a growth mindset to really be able to meet the moment and the challenge of learning a new technology. 

I think a deeper intersection of mindset with Generative AI is when it comes to thinking about how those Generative AI platforms themselves will have a mindset culture baked into them. So, you know, in many apps and many platforms that have been created with Generative AI at the heart of it, they're oftentimes used either in schools as tutors or in the workplace as a mentor. And so the question is, are those tutors and mentors, are they giving feedback and support in a fixed mindset way, really only celebrating success and outcomes, not really giving a lot of praise or support or points, for example, when it comes to trying new strategies, asking different questions, really showing the growth and the learning that has happened over time, giving people rewards for that? And so thinking about the different mindset cultures that the Generative AI platforms themselves are embedding, and if they don't pay attention to that mindset culture, the default mindset culture is likely to be a culture of genius, because this is the context, this is the platform that has the answers. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: No, no. And again, people have to use it by themselves. That's always my really big encouragement to people as opposed just to read about it. But I would just point our listeners to the latest YouTube video that Sal Khan did with his son, I don't know if you saw it, where he was basically -- Sal was prompting, again, basically ChatGPT to be a very, I would say, attentive, but also very supportive tutor to his son. And he told him… And his son was working on a math problem, hypotenuse resolution, okay, what is that? How do you calculate that? And he told the AI tutor, “Don't solve the problem for my son. I want to give some nudges, some encouragements, but he's got to find the solution for himself.” And then you see the dialogue between the prompt of the AI tutor with his son, which was very interesting. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Absolutely.

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: So I think we might get there, based also on the way we're going to prompt, we're going to interact with that AI. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: That's right. And that shows too the importance of the prompter and their mindset, right? Because it really depends so highly, especially right now, on the prompting itself, right? Now later in different iterations, we might have this built in in such a way that it kind of defaults towards growth, but right now it really depends. And so if we come in with this fixed mindset, either get it right, get it wrong kind of area, we are going to be prompting in a way that's going to bring that out of the tool itself. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Yeah. So a couple more questions, Mary. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Sure. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: I'd like us to move to the world now. What I mean by that, you've worked with many organizations across the world, and I'm curious to understand how your research has factored in the cultural differences. As you may know, Erin Mayer, a professor at INSEAD, has developed the so-called Culture Map to help individuals and all of us understand and navigate cultural differences in the workplace. So according to you, which key differences have you witnessed between countries' cultures -- as you've done your Cues Audit, as an example -- to better understand the unique cultural triggers. And what would be your guidance again to a global leader listening to our podcast, or someone managing a bunch of countries from Asia to the U.S. to Africa to Europe, everything in the world -- how that leader should nurture a growth mindset at the global level, transcending the national boundaries? How does it work? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Yes, yes, absolutely. Well, we've seen this both in our work, our global work with the OECD and education, but then we've also seen it in the work Equity Accelerator has been doing around the world. And I will say that the dominant cultural values do really shape the mindset culture of those local offices, organizations, businesses. Let me give you a specific example. So we were working with a couple of different organizations in East Asia. And we came and we gave some talks around what mindset culture is to some of the top leaders in these organizations, and what it isn't. And then we worked through some workshops on feedback and other processes. And then I was having dinner one evening with a CEO from one of these organizations. And he said to me, "It sounds to me like growth mindset culture is really a culture of feedback, where on a regular and routine basis, you're getting feedback of what you're doing well, so you can build on those strengths, and what you're doing poorly, so you can adapt and pivot and try something new." 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Yeah, correct. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: And if you're not getting that feedback on a regular basis, right, if it becomes something that only happens quarterly or something that only happens annually, then it becomes laden with all this extra threat and tension, right? And people wonder and worry about it. It can move people right to their fixed mindset. So this has to be built in regularly. But he said, "Here in East Asia, we don't give each other feedback very often, because there is a face-saving honor system where we really want to give respect and deference to people who've been in the organization for a long time, especially people who are leaders in the organization, high in the hierarchy.” And so very few early and new employees will not say, "I think that we are doing something wrong here. I think we could improve and do something differently or better," because it would be taken as an offense. It would be inappropriate from a cultural context to sort of do that. So how do you actually build a growth mindset culture and a practice of regular feedback in a way where it might kind of butt up against, at least on the surface, some of these deeper cultural norms? 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: The national culture, right. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: And so we work together to sort of think through how that could be done. And of course, there are lots of ways that feedback is given in these Asian cultures. It just doesn't look like what it looks like in the West. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Exactly. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: And so then how do we build in that kind of growth and development and that psychological safety so that people feel that they are okay to raise these things? And in fact, the leaders request them. And by seeing that the leaders actually have an expectation for some feedback, some ideas, and open up that space, then it provides an opportunity for people who are lower in the hierarchy to provide good ideas and to be able to raise the flag when they think something is going wrong or that could be improved. So these are some of the ways that we've seen the global context really shaping the way that you do mindset culture locally in schools and in organizations. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: No, it makes a lot of sense to me as well, Mary. As I've been traveling the world for 35 years of my life, working across 110 countries, I can relate to that kind of culture of growth one country at a time, you cannot be confused about the world. 

Well, let me get into the last real few questions now. From what I've observed and heard from other business leaders and organizational psychologists for this podcast, Positive Leadership Podcast, it is clear that any significant shift or change in organization has to start with the senior leadership team. It's not enough, by the way, but it has to start there. When they demonstrate and model what is being called positive leadership, there's a positive ripple throughout the whole team. I often refer to the nine pillars of positive leadership, which are effectively nine lessons for leaders, and I've seen tremendous benefits to using this model of leadership. You start with you as an individual being self-aware, growing your self-confidence, managing your positive energy in yourself so that you can build with others, make them grow, and eventually have a positive impact in the world together. So given your research as a social psychologist, including this book, what would be your own definition of positive leadership and what is a positive leader for you, Mary, if you use those words? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: So good. So good. So good. Well, I think my view of positive leadership is really leading with others. Not leading others, but leading with others and really taking responsibility as a culture creator. I believe that we are all, regardless of our roles, culture creators, but specifically leaders, and the top leaders, are outsized culture creators. And so taking responsibility for the mindset culture we create and what we say and do, seeing and truly believing in the growth and potential in everyone that we serve, including our employees and also our clients and our collaborators, and even our competitors, thinking about them in this way. And then also understanding that a positive leader is someone who's going to take responsibility for their own learning, growth, and development, and that's going to seek critical feedback and act on it. I think someone who really gives praise in this constructive growth-minded way and gives people the tools and strategies that they need to fulfill their potential. So it's not just words, but it's actually actions and tools and strategies to help support people over time. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Super. So to me, one of the key, very last question now, to me, one of the key outcomes of a positive leader is to deliver success, in particular by making others successful. Back to the discussion we had before, right? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Yeah. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: So Mary, to wrap up our conversation, I'd like to ask you a pretty…I guess pretty hard and personal question: How do you define your own success in your own life, Mary? 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Mm, that is a big question. I would say I define success…I will say that I would never be an academic if I had to do academia and research alone. I have never published in the hundred, more than hundred articles and chapters I've written, I've never done anything completely on my own. I've always had a team of individuals. And I think that I measure my success in the teams that I've led, both in my academic life with undergraduate students, graduate students, research scientists, and then also in the professional world with Equity Accelerator. Success to me means really supporting other people. And what's helped me along the way is to build “people first” teams, where we really believe in each other's potential, and we're going to actively take measures every day to support each other's growth over time. That to me is success. And when I see people in my organization stepping up to challenges, when I see them pursuing growth opportunities, when I see them asking for new challenges, then that makes me feel like, wow, we've really created an environment here that I consider successful. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: Wonderful. Well, Mary, it’s been super insightful, the discussion together. And to get our listeners to get into the core substance of the culture of growth, we'll just summarize very briefly. I love the way you kind of frame the positive leadership, you've got to take responsibility for your own personal growth, number one. You need to be the culture creator. You need to lead with others, and you need to help them grow. With that, thank you so much, Mary, it's been a wonderful moment, and looking forward to your next steps, next books, next research, because I think we need to keep learning this culture of growth, for sure. 

DR. MARY MURPHY: Thank you, JP. This has been fantastic. Thank you for having me. 

JEAN-PHILIPPE COURTOIS: I'm Jean-Philippe Courtois. You've been listening to the Positive Leadership Podcast. If you've enjoyed the episode, then please do leave us a comment or a five-star rating or share it with many friends. Next episode, I will be talking to Dr. Caroline Leaf, creator of the Neurocycle method, about how to use your mind to change the brain and find mental peace. Make sure you subscribe so you can listen as soon as it comes out. Thanks so much for listening and goodbye.