#50: The Dark Side of Growth Mindset (With Stefanie Faye Frank)

In Part two of my interview with Stefanie Faye Frank, we explore the dark side of growth mindset and why it’s important to go beyond the superficial teaching of adaptability. We discuss some of the physiological clues that suggest whether a student in experiencing fight, flight or freeze and how to become more aware of our own body language in order to create a safe environment for our students. We discuss top down extremism, which is the belief that our success lies in our ability to control our own thoughts, rewrite our stories. While this can be a powerful model, it’s important to remember that someone’s adverse and traumatic experiences can make it extremely challenging to reframe their thinking. Therefore, thinking alone is not always enough to overcome adversity. We need to be advocates for creating better circumstances at home and within the classroom so that our students can be healthy, happy learners. We learned that when someone is in physiological distress or in a triggered stress response, they exhibit symptoms like alert or flat eyes, tension in their jaw, robotic voice (otherwise known as prosody) and that these micro signals can alert you before a child hits full meltdown or withdrawal mode. My hope is that we can be more aware of our children’s responses to events within our classrooms and allow students the space to regulate themselves when they feel triggered. About Stephanie: WHAT I DO I show leaders how to help their staff adopt flexible mindsets, become more willing to learn, experiment, and tap into their brain’s highest levels of creative problem-solving. I combine my award-winning research at NYU, and fieldwork at the NYU Institute for Prevention Science, Phelps Lab for Neuroscience Research, the Department of Defense, Albert Einstein College of Medicine with training from meditation masters from India, Africa and Vietnam, and over a decade of counseling, consulting and teaching people on how to maximize their brain’s creative powers. I use interactive strategies as metaphors for scientific principles to help leaders internalize the idea of how these insights work in their own life, so they can then apply it in their work, relationships and daily interactions. WHO IT'S FOR For people who want to see their staff and clients be more open to try new approaches to learning and experiment with new ways of asking questions, solving problems, dealing with failure, and how to interact with others in socially intelligent ways. Mindset Neuroscience activates change using this 4-phase framework: Organizational context first. Your organization's culture – including the beliefs and behaviors of leadership – have HUGE influences your employees' mindset, our attitudes, beliefs, and state. This is the starting point. The mindset of your employees fuels their emotional intelligence, relationship management skills, and perseverance Those ‘non-cognitive’ skills then drive their actions and behaviors Their behaviors drive performance – for themselves, their teams and the organization. http://stefaniefayefrank.com/about/ Her videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgBcrJABukg&t=134s