How Culture Impacts Your Work, Your Workplace, Your Life

Just as you, personally, have a mindset, so does your culture. And you can change it for the better.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

How would you define organizational culture?

It certainly involves behaviors, attitudes, traditions, values, unwritten rules, and many other intangibles. But of this we may be certain: culture is not about warm and fuzzy stuff. Nor is it about singing Kumbaya around a campfire.

For good or ill, culture is a powerful influence in your organization. It affects your mental—and even physical—health. It impacts your performance and that of everyone around you.

Culture, in short, is a big deal.

Dr. Mary C. Murphy offers some excellent insights in her book CULTURES OF GROWTH: How the New Science of Mindset Can Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations.

Murphy, an award-winning social psychologist at Indiana University, offers a thoughtful reconsideration of individual and team success. She shows how to create and sustain a growth mindset in any organization’s culture.

Murphy studied under Stanford professor Carol Dweck who coined the terms “fixed” and “growth” mindset. In a “fixed” mindset, talent and intelligence are viewed as predetermined traits. In a “growth” mindset, talent and intelligence can be nurtured.

So, what does Murphy see as the keys to influencing business leaders to put more focus on mindset in the workplace?

“In my experience, many business leaders are motivated by the challenges they face in rapidly changing environments—from energy to technology and beyond,” she says. “The only broadly effective way to meet these challenges is to create Cultures of Growth.”

Murphy’s research shows that such cultures enable the kind of innovation, agility, resilience, measured risk-taking, and deep collaboration necessary to meet the world’s increasingly complex demands.

“We also know that Cultures of Growth maximize employee engagement and development. The combined effect is greater bottomline success than their fixed-mindset counterparts.”

How can you determine if your environment is fixed or growth oriented?

Murphy says that in a fixed mindset culture—she calls it a Culture of Genius—the focus is primarily on star performers, with the belief that these people are inherently more capable due to their superior intelligence or ability. Conversely, she says, the main belief in a Culture of Growth is that given the right supports, everyone can succeed. The reality, she believes, is that most cultures aren’t one or the other, but a mixture.

Wouldn’t an organization want to hire geniuses? Aren’t they the high performers?

“In a Culture of Genius, most of the focus is on a handful of geniuses who are counted on to make the biggest impact, much like a sports team that has a few standouts who carry the team,” Murphy says. “In a Culture of Growth, everyone has the potential to be a high performer. My research reveals that high performers actually perform better in Cultures of Growth. Why? These environments are both more rigorous and more supportive. They expect more, but they also provide the tools and resources necessary to learn and grow.”

As it turns out, Murphy says, even geniuses don’t fare well in Cultures of Genius. She says that in these environments, high performers are put on a pedestal, and that puts them in a fragile place where they’re afraid to fall. “We see this when we label schoolchildren as ‘gifted,’” she says. “They’re terrified of underperforming, so they play it safe or hide their mistakes.”

Murphy says there are three main points commonly misunderstood about mindset: