Carol Dweck and her colleagues became interested in students' attitudes about failure. They noticed that some students rebounded while other students seemed devastated by even the smallest setbacks. After studying the behavior of thousands of people, Dr. Dweck coined the terms fixed mindset and growth mindset to describe the underlying beliefs people have about learning and intelligence. Her research has important implications over talent development as well as over management and leadership.

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Implicit Theories and their potential implications over Recruitment
and Talent Development Practices and Policies
Implicit theories (Dweck 1995) can be an interesting and insightful way to define criteria for
recruitment, talent evaluation and identification of high-potentials within Corporate
organizations.
In Carole S. Dweck publication Mindsets, she explains that implicit theories are things we
believe to be true. They can be defined as an individual’s basic assumptions that provide a
framework to guide our goals, make choices and decisions (Dweck 2007).
Dweck started her research with children. She noticed that children reacted differently to
setback. She observed that there are children that facing a difficult test showed resilience. They
failed, and all they wanted after experiencing setback was to go back and try again. Other
children just gave up as soon as they noticed the test was too hard. Sometimes they gave up
without even trying. Dweck found that those who go back and face challenge as something
positive, as a learning opportunity, are those who can be defined as « incremental theorists ».
They believe that they can always improve their capabilities, thus that setback doesn’t define
their identity nor their potential. They believe in their ability to grow and improve.
According to Dweck there are mainly two types of implicit theorists – incremental theorists
(believe in their abilities to grow and improve) and entity theorists (believe in fixed traits). The
entity theorists believe that the traits are firmly established and consistent over time. Entity
theorists are confident in making assumptions from a tiny amount of behavior, since in their
view it will be always consistent and established over time. For entity theorists it’s all about
‘have’ and ‘have nots’ as Dweck explains. While incremental theorists believe that traits are
always varying over time. If traits are not carved in stone, it means that setback doesn’t define
who a person is. There is always place for improvement and for developing one’s capabilities.

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Furthermore, she showed that we tend to adapt to the environment and we respond to in order
to adapt. The environment can be more entity- or incremental driven. She showed that a slightly
different formulation in the way we give feedback to an accomplished task (just changing 6
words when giving feedback!) can make all the difference (Dweck & Mueller 1998). If we
praise intelligence, Dweck shows, we will foster an entity-theory environment and reaction.
Intelligence tends to be perceived as something that either you « have » or you « have not ». If
you fail and it was a matter of ‘intelligence’ it means that you are potentially not ‘intelligent
enough’. If you chose to praise effort (instead of intelligence), you will create an incremental
driven environment and a different reaction. What is impressive in her experiences is that
depending upon the feedback we give, we tend to create incremental- or entity theorists as well
as an entity- or incremental driven environment.
Dweck conceived a test that measures whether a person is more inclined towards entity- or
incremental theory. She proved over 40 years of research that this applies to children,
adolescents, students and professionals of all ages and strongly impacts their choices, behaviors
and judgments.
Entity and Incremental views
If we consider these findings within the corporate and business world we can induce that
different Human Resources and Talent Development policies and practices can foster either an
incremental- or entity driven environment and corporate culture.
Entity and incremental views of traits as we saw above, form an important framework for
understanding social judgments and biases, and in this case, they can be valuable in better
understanding different talent potential identification and assessment approaches as well as help
us having interesting insights into different company ‘cultures’.
How can implicit-theories give us insights into Company cultures? When we consider
organizations, we see that corporates are obsessed by identifying, assessing, hiring and retaining
outstanding employees, namely, in the terminology of the field, high-potential talent.
If we take a quick glimpse at history, we can refer to the work of Frederic Taylor at the
beginning of the twentieth century. Taylorist efficiency experts swept the world analyzing the
most mechanically efficient moves a worker’s body could make. The measure of human work,
was the machine. On the heels of Taylorism, as we mentioned already quoting Dweck, came
another standard of evaluation: IQ. The correct measure of excellence was the cognitive abilities

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of the human mind (Dweck 2006). Then, with the rise of Freudian and Jungian thinking, another
wave of scholars argued that in addition to IQ, personality was an ingredient in excellence. By
the 1960s, personality tests and typologies were part of the standard measurement of potential.
The problem was that many of the personality tests had been designed for completely different
reasons, such as diagnosing psychological disorders. They were poor predictors of how people
could perform in their jobs. McClelland (1973), McCall (1998) and a recent article by Silzer
and Church (2009) report a significant mind shift from short-term selection to long-term
prediction when it comes to identify, hire and retain talent in the past few years. Organization
became more and more interested in a prediction process that might predict 3 to 10 years ahead.
The prediction doesn’t want to match an individual to a specific position and responsibilities,
but rather to predict how much potential an individual has.
The question we can raise at this point is: what is high-potential talent within an entity-theory
organizational culture versus an incremental theory organizational culture? Does their high-
potential talent differ? If so, what are the differences?
There are organizations that privilege outstanding execution, while others have a business
model that is driven by innovation and creativity. When the business requires outstanding
execution, people don’t have the right to do mistakes.
When you privilege innovation and creativity you must admit the possibility of doing mistakes.
Companies that privilege creativity, need to think ‘out of the box’. In order to have innovative
ideas, you need testing and experimenting. The only way is by trial and error. Corporate that
privilege innovation knows that facing error is part of the game. Employees in these
organizations will be probably more « incremental theorists » than « entity theorists ». They
will face setback and know that their organization allows mistake for the sake of the business.
A company that provides technical services (data collection and data treatment for example)
won’t need very creative employees. They will need data properly collected and treated
according to well-defined processes. No mistakes allowed. Mistakes would mean the end of
client’s trust in their services and the end of the business. In this case the company will need
« good soldiers » that do the same tasks over and over again. Better, faster and with the
minimum amount of errors. If a company’s business is based on following the same patterns
repeatedly and be mostly performance focused, the fact of selecting fixed mindset employees
could represent thus a good strategy. To hire growth-mindset employees in a fixed-mindset
environment would be a mistake. The growth-mindset employee would perceive they are not

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learning, they would feel frustrated within months, because the validation and the ‘be good’
focus would not bring satisfaction (Dweck and Grand Halvorson 2003). On the contrary, if the
company’s business is a more entrepreneurial model that needs constant innovation and
creativity, daring new approaches and solutions, it’s important to hire and/or develop growth
mindset talent.
Mindsets & Corporates’ DNA
We saw that implicit theories concern individuals as much as organizations. If leaders and
human resources executives are conscious of this implicit framework, they will be able to make
appropriate choices and match their talented employees to their strategy and goals. They will
know what kind of potential to look for and make sure to foster the « right » environment
according to their needs (Bandura 1988).
Moreover, Dweck shows that individuals as well as organizations can change from fixed-
mindset (entity-theory) to growth-mindset (incremental-theory) and vice-versa. In the first case,
it will be necessary for an organization to think about changing from a judgment- and
validation-oriented approach to a more developmental approach. This is possible, but it requires
deep changes in policies, processes, identification- and selection models and tools. Leaders and
human resources executives are key players in the definition of the company culture as well as
the values they want to promote and deploy.
Imagine the case in which a company has identified a small number of ‘high-potential’
employees. They decide to inform them officially that they have been selected as « high-
potentials », without mentioning any other detail about how and when their potential will serve
in the future. They will be granted an ‘elite’ development program (Fernandez-Araoz & al.
2011), conceived only for them. From that moment onwards, they know that no mistakes are
allowed. They perceive that they will be judged on every single action they perform and might
lose their ‘status’ anytime (Groysberg & al. 2004). This is where, as Carole Dweck explains,
the judgmental environment produces the most abject liars, ready to reject responsibility and
put the errors and mistakes on someone else. Very simple questions about talent management
policies and practices can give interesting insights into a company’s culture and values as well
as into management and leadership practices. They can be used as a ‘shortcut’ to understand a
company’s DNA.

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Many companies for example have creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship as key-values.
However, if the leaders when giving feedback focus on outstanding execution and performance,
the values will be perceived as pure rhetoric. The gap between the “talk and the walk” will
corrode trust and engagement. The “talk” being the values, and the “walk” being the
management & leadership practices. Creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship imply taking
measured risk. Setback is part of the game, because that’s the only way to innovate and
experiment new solutions. If the leader when giving feedback focuses on outstanding execution,
he implies that mistakes are not allowed and will be punished. How can then the employees
engage according to the values being creative, innovative and entrepreneurs?
Coherence between the values and the words we chose to give feedback are key.

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C.S .Dweck (1999), Self-theories : their role in motivation personality and development, Philadelphia
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