• "Growth mindset" is the pop-science shorthand for what is more precisely named incremental theory.  This is the belief that human qualities such as intelligence, talent, and personality are malleable and developable through effort and experience. Its counterpart is entity theory ("fixed mindset"), which is the belief that those same qualities are stable traits that do not meaningfully change.
• Both fall under the broader category of what psychologists call implicit or lay theories.  These are deep, semi-conscious beliefs about how the world fundamentally works. They are cognitive frameworks through which people interpret effort, failure, feedback, and potential. Critically, (and in a beautifully human way) most individuals do not hold one belief to the complete exclusion of the other. Incremental and entity beliefs coexist, often varying by domain. In this regard, someone can hold an incremental view of athletic ability and an entity view of mathematical intelligence simultaneously (Burnette et al., 2013).
• The construct was developed and systematically studied over decades by Carol Dweck and colleagues. The mechanism of influence is well-established: your position on the incremental-entity continuum shapes the goals you set (learning goals versus performance goals). This means your persistence in the face of challenge, and your interpretation of failure are deciphered as either information or verdict.

• Incremental theory is not a workplace-specific construct. Its influence cuts across almost all domains of human development, judgment, and performance.
• Teachers who hold incremental beliefs about student intelligence respond differently to struggling students; they invest more, adjust instruction more, and frame poor performance as diagnostic rather than definitive. Jurors who hold entity beliefs about character are more likely to recommend harsher sentencing for offenders, seeing behavior as a reflection of fixed nature rather than circumstance. Managers with entity-leaning beliefs are less likely to invest development resources in employees who stumble early and are more likely to write off underperformers prematurely (Heslin & VandeWalle, 2008). In each of these cases, the belief shapes behavior and downstream outcomes in measurable ways.
• Key Takeaway: incremental theory is a lens, not a lever. We use it to shape interpretation and response and need to be mindful of this when building organizational interventions.

1. The strongest evidence for incremental theory effects comes from educational and developmental settings, not corporate environments. In these settings, incremental theory interventions sometimes lead to positive outcomes on behavior and performance, through mechanisms driving these effects, like challenge-seeking, persistence in the face of difficulty, learning goal orientation. However, the impact is very uneven, heavily reliant upon environmental conditions, and interventions may also cause harm. From this, we see two take-aways: 1) very little high-quality research has been done in organizational settings, and 2) the impact of incremental theory is heavily dependent on the environment in which it takes place (read more in the Boundary Conditions accordion below).
2. Manager mindset likely matters more than individual contributor mindset for team-level outcomes. Heslin & VandeWalle (2008) demonstrated that managers with more incremental beliefs engage in more developmental coaching, provide more accurate performance appraisals, and are more responsive to employee improvement over time. This finding suggests that if organizations have limited capacity to intervene, investing in manager-level belief change produces higher leverage than broad employee-facing programs.
3. Organizational culture moderates individual mindset effects. Murphy & Dweck (2010) showed that people working within a perceived "culture of genius,” one that signals entity-leaning beliefs through hiring practices, recognition systems, and leadership rhetoric, reported lower collaboration, lower risk-taking, and lower identification with the organization, regardless of their individual mindset.

The question organizations should be asking is not "does growth mindset work?" but "under what conditions does it create impact?" Based on the research, five conditions need to be substantially true for growth mindset interventions to produce meaningful performance impact.

Condition 1: The employee is sufficiently motivated to learn.

Condition 2: The employee has a baseline level of skill to build upon. 

Condition 3: The employee is frequently pushed beyond their current capabilities.

Condition 4: The employee has reasons to doubt that they can succeed.

Condition 5: The environment around the employee reinforces and supports their growth.

• If the conditions above describe your context, the research offers guidance. If they do not, the priority is redesigning the environment before attempting to change beliefs.
• For organizations where the conditions are substantially present, the most evidence-supported approach to shifting mindset is what Walton & Wilson (2018) call wise interventions. These are targeted and contextually embedded psychological nudges (not our ideal word choice!) that address specific unhelpful beliefs in the exact moment they are relevant. Wise interventions are distinguished by three features: 1) they are brief and low-cost; 2) they address the specific psychological meaning an individual attributes to a situation; and 3) they create loops where changed interpretation leads to changed behavior (which generates new evidence that reinforces the changed belief).
• The organizational levers with the most evidence behind them are these: train managers in incremental beliefs and developmental coaching practices, since manager mindset has greater leverage than employee mindset at the team level (Heslin & VandeWalle, 2008). Audit organizational systems like promotion criteria, performance evaluation language, and failure-response norms, for entity-signaling. Target incremental theory communication specifically at employees who are challenged, doubting, or early in a stretch assignment, rather than broadcasting it across the entire organization.
• Organizations serious about this should measure outcomes behaviorally, not attitudinally. For example, asking employees whether they agree they can grow is an attitudinal metric. Measuring whether challenge-seeking behavior, feedback utilization, and skill acquisition rates changed after an intervention is a behavior metric. The former tells you what people say while the latter tells you what actually changed.

• Burnette, J. L., O'Boyle, E. H., VanEpps, E. M., Pollack, J. M., & Finkel, E. J. (2013). Mind-sets matter: A meta-analytic review of implicit theories and self-regulation. Psychological Bulletin, 139(3), 655–701. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029531
• Heslin, P. A., & VandeWalle, D. (2008). Managers' implicit assumptions about personnel. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(3), 219–223. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00578.x
• Lacerenza, C. N., Reyes, D. L., Marlow, S. L., Joseph, D. L., & Salas, E. (2017). Leadership training design, delivery, and implementation: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(12), 1686–1718. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000241
• Macnamara, B. N., & Burgoyne, A. P. (2023). Do growth mindset interventions impact students' academic achievement? A systematic review and meta-analysis with recommendations for best practices. Psychological Bulletin, 149(3–4), 133–173. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000352
• Murphy, M. C., & Dweck, C. S. (2010). A culture of genius: How an organization's lay theory shapes people's cognition, affect, and behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(3), 283–296. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167209347380
• Paunesku, D., Walton, G. M., Romero, C., Smith, E. N., Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, C. S. (2015). Mind-set interventions are a scalable treatment for academic underachievement. Psychological Science, 26(6), 784–793. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615571017
• Walton, G. M., & Wilson, T. D. (2018). Wise interventions: Psychological remedies for social and personal problems. Psychological Review, 125(5), 617–655. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000115
• Yeager, D. S., & Walton, G. M. (2011). Social-psychological interventions in education: They're not magic. Review of Educational Research, 81(2), 267–301. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311405999
• Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, C. S. (2012). Mindsets that promote resilience: When students believe that personal characteristics can be developed. Educational Psychologist, 47(4), 302–314. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2012.722805
• Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., Murray, J. S., Crosnoe, R., Muller, C., … Dweck, C. S. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature, 573, 364–369. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y