Success is not final, it is the mindset and the courage to continue that counts! The principle of success is driven by personality and the way human beings embrace their capabilities, skills, and failure. Determinism is a key factor which shapes how people treat losing and failing, as well as, how they prepare for their success. The Mindset by Dweck Carol is an encouraging story that sheds light to personal aspects of growth with the theme of encouraging the reader to develop growth mindsets and embrace personal development in various settings such as in leadership. On the other hand, the “ Extreme Ownership” is written by Willink Jocko and Lieff Babin on war leadership encounters with a core themes of loyalty, courage, determinism, and growth mindset. After reading the two texts, it is inevitable that developing to a good leader requires one to have a growth mindset which is a foundation of developing other leadership abilities.
Summary of the texts
The Chapter 1, “ The Mindset” by Carol Dweck focuses on distinguishing the concept of fixed and growth mindsets which are part of human growth. She distinguishes these two by reflecting on the concept so nurture and nature. For human beings to grow failures and continuing to attempt something are part of growth mindset. A person having this type of mindset sees growth and determinism in any situation or anything that they do. Therefore, such people try all their efforts to improve their success through hard work. However, fixed mindsets are seen as point of failures. Dweck points that individuals possessing fixed mindsets never growth since they are full of doubts related to their behaviors and skills – to an extent that they always tied to the notion that their skills can never be improved. Dweck uses an example of two children who were subjected with hard puzzle. The child with the growth mindset claimed that, “I love the challenge” while the one with the fixed mindset was demoralized pointing that, “I was hoping this would be informative” (Dweck 6). People with fixed mindsets cannot grow their capabilities or personalities unlike their counterparts with growth mindsets to entertain challenges in life.
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On the other hand, the provided excerpt, “The Mal;aab District, Ramadi, Iraq: Fog of War” by Willink and Leiff reflects more into making decisions under high pressure just like what the battlefield leaders are faced with the war in Iraq. Despite the extreme challenges that human beings face, like the US Navy Soldiers in the text, Jocko and Babin points that the leaders need and must accept that they are ultimately and truly responsible for everything. The forces in the war are seen to be faced by a hard time characterized by continued shootings and killings before sunrise to dawn, as well as, tension all over which makes their lives to have no meaning or hopes for tomorrow. The authors create a sympathizing mood for this story considering that the US forces are in a foreign country for war with the host country soldiers surrounding them with machine guns and bullets, ready to kill. Still, there is a theme of confusion brought by this excerpt. The speaker, who is a soldier in the battle, claimed that their fate lied on two instances – being killed by the Iraqi soldiers or being “accidentally killed or wounded by a friendly fire because someone had screwed up” (Willink and Leiff 22). As the authors finish, the speaker puts it that leadership is an art and a science with leadership style being the key to success in any type of position.
Synthesis of the texts
The two texts converge within the art of leadership and success. Dweck is more concerned with how human beings deny themselves with success just simply because of their fixed mindsets that make them rigid of developing or welcoming any risk in their ventures. People with growth mindsets are reflected to have the believes and liabilities which allows them to cultivate their efforts to explore their potentials. Using the example that Dweck uses for the two children and the hard puzzle, the theme of determinism is coming out clear. The child with the growth mindset is ready to take up the challenge, but the fixed-mindset kid has his hopes shuttered (Dweck 6). Similarly, with the US soldiers in war in Iraq, life appears to be inflexible with no hopes for winning the war because of the aggression of the Iraqi opponents who are constantly shooting. The speaker has a growth asset as he claims that during the war he learned “tactical avoidance of fratricide” and when he returned home took the initiative to go for training to avoid such a failure in the future in the event they were deployed for other combats (Willink and Leiff 23). The speaker here, just like the child in Dweck’s case who is ready to take the challenge, has a growth mindset and is seen to prepare for the future to avoid a potential failure which he learned through the mistakes of his team.
Additionally, another theme which is coming out is that growth mindset and determinism shapes good leaders or good leadership. Dweck points out that people differ based on their backgrounds, ways of learning, and training, however, growth mindset can be learned whole it can be influenced by nature – the inborn abilities based on one’s IQ. Through training people can shape their mindset and become good leaders. People who prove to have broad and open minds find it easy to learn, take challenges and this determines their abilities to take up leadership positions – due to high levels of determinism. That inner growth mindset helps an individual to answer questions like; “Will I succeed or fail? …Will I feel like a winner or a loser? (Dweck 6). It takes up a growth mindset individual to take up the success side unlike the fixed mindsets that deem to accept the loss.
Considering the case of Willink and Leiff, it can be pointed that the total responsibility for personal failure is quite hard to accept – while on the other side, when things go nuts it takes growth mindset people to have courage and humility. The speaker claims that, their organization of the sniper team was disorganized despite the expected encounters from all sides, but through his determination and the mindset to win, he was able to coordinate them to take the right positions (Willink and Leiff 24). As per Dweck fixed mindsets can be changed and give a room for personal growth – wining a war just like the SEAL soldiers needs the best growth mindset ever. A leader can have the best team, weapons, and the best execution strategy, but without a growth mindset is equivalent to a failure. Fixed mindsets are not the best options during times of war.
Personal Insights and Conclusion
I like the thoughts of these two excerpts because they are applicable in real life situation regarding how to prepare for success. Failing and losing are clearly separated in these two texts. We should not embrace failure as long as we learn our mistakes – this is just losing and this prepares our minds on what to reorganize ourselves to win in the future if we are faced by the same situations. As leaders we also need to be learners to embrace growth, learn from new challenges, and show humility. Nevertheless, there are no bad teams, leaders are the ones to blame and for a leader to have a growth mindset, they need to set high standards for their teams and enforce them. Still, the need to embrace the weak areas of the underperformers because loyalty for a team brings it to its vision.
Works Cited
Dweck, Carol. “Chapter 1: The Mindsets.” Mindset. Ballantine Books, 2006.
Willink, Jocko and Leiff Babin. Extreme Ownership: Howe US Navy SEALs Lead and Win. St. Martin’s Press, 2015. (pg. 17 – 31)
