Join Eveline Oehrlich and Eduardo Briceño, global keynote speaker, facilitator, and program provider, to discuss a framework for building a growth mindset culture.

Eduardo is a global keynote speaker, facilitator, and program provider who supports organizations in developing cultures of learning and high performance.  Prior to that, he was the CEO of Mindset Works, the pioneer in growth mindset development services, which he co-founded in 2007 with Stanford professor Carol Dweck, Lisa Blackwell, and others, and led for over a decade.

Eduardo’s TEDx talk on growth mindset and TED Talk on the Learning Zone and the Performance Zone have been viewed over eight million times. His book, The Performance Paradox: Turning the Power of Mindset into Action, will be published by Penguin Random House in September. He is a Pahara-Aspen Fellow, a member of the Aspen Institute’s Global Leadership Network, and an inductee in the Happiness Hall of Fame.

The Humans of DevOps Podcast is incredibly grateful to be voted one of the Best 25 DevOps Podcasts by Feedspot.

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Transcript

Narrator 00:02
You’re listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills, knowledge, ideas, and learning, or the skil framework.

Eduardo Briceño 00:16
This particular framework became really helpful for them to align with each other about how they wanted to foster a growth mindset culture, and what it addresses is the confusion that the way to improve is to work hard, that is simplistic and it gets us into trouble.

Eveline Oehrlich 00:34
Welcome to the humans of DevOps Podcast. I’m Evelyn knowlage, Chief Research Officer at DevOps Institute. I’m skipping the introduction today. So we get more time with a very special guest, who is a thought leader, author and very popular keynote speaker on developing cultures of learning and high performance. Up podcast title for today is exploring different zones. Stay tuned. And today we have with us and I have a drumroll. Eduardo bird Sanyo, who is a very, very popular keynote speaker as I mentioned. Hello, Eduardo.

Eduardo Briceño 01:12
Hello, Evelyn’s Great to see you. Great to be here.

Eveline Oehrlich 01:16
Likewise, very excited to have you on our podcast today. So let me quickly and I will read this in third person. So this will feel strange to you, Eduardo. So I’m going to just share with our audience a little bit on your bio. So Eduardo is a global keynote speaker, as I already mentioned, facilitator and program provider who supports organizations in developing cultures of learning and high performance. Prior to that, he was the CEO of mindset works, the pioneer in growth mindset development services, which he co founded in 2007, with Stanford professor Carol Dweck, Lisa Blackwell and others, and led for over a decade before that he was taking on investors with Credit Suisse venture capital arm, the sprout group and served on several for profit and nonprofit boards. It borders TED talks on growth mindset, and Ted Talk on learning zone and the performance zone have been viewed by over 8 million have been viewed over 8 million times. And I’m one of them. His book, the performance paradox, turning the power of mindset into action, will be published by Penguin Random House in September of this year. He is Behera Aspen fellow, a member of the Aspen Institute’s Global Leadership Network, and an inductee into happiness Hall of Fame. Eduardo grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, he holds a Bachelor degree in economics and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as an MBA and MA in education from Stanford University. Most importantly, he continues to enjoy lifelong learning every day. And that’s exactly while you why you are here, Eduardo, for our listeners to share your experience and how to actually do that. So welcome again to our podcast.

Eduardo Briceño 03:16
Thank you, Evelyn. Great to be here. I feel like we have kindred hearts. I look forward to the conversation.

Eveline Oehrlich 03:21
Yes, the first one. The first thing which I really want to know, of course, everything else is exciting, but happiness Hall of Fame. I did some research and check that out. You have to tell us about that. What? What is that?

Eduardo Briceño 03:36
Yeah, I didn’t know either. And it is actually one of the things I’m most proud of, because, to me, it symbolizes a lot of change that I have done in myself. I grew up being very unhappy, actually. And I have really transformed myself over a lot of years. And I lead a very happy life now with a lot of joy. And that’s, that’s involved a lot of change in myself a lot of work in myself. And so I was doing a keynote once and afterwards, a man came to me and he said he was the executive director of the happiness Hall of Fame. And I hadn’t heard of it either. But they had looked at my work and the impact that they felt that was having on people and how I was spreading joy. And they wanted to induct me into the happiness Hall thing so that you know that to me, was striking in in symbolizing how much of a change I had made myself.

Eveline Oehrlich 04:37
Wow. Fantastic. For our listeners, check it out. There are Eduardo is in great company out there. There are a whole range of folks you you got you listeners will all recognize. So that’s fantastic. Congratulations for being there. All right. So as I mentioned to you already, when we did a little bit Have a pre call. I’m a big fan of Professor Carol Dweck work, particularly the work around the growth mindset. But I don’t want to assume that everybody on listening here has actually read her book mindset or is familiar with. So why don’t you share with us a little bit about what a growth mindset is?

Eduardo Briceño 05:27
Sure. And I’m glad you’re asking that because it’s something that is really easily to get distorted. It is something that a lot of people haven’t heard about, like you said, but also a lot of people have, and a lot of people have read the book you just mentioned Mindset by Carol Dweck. It’s been a bestseller. But even for for people who learn about mindset and do work on mindset, and I’ll start there. We, when we ask people who think they’re familiar with growth mindset, what a growth mindset is, they often describe something different, like they might say, it’s, it means being open minded, or it means working hard or persevering. And a growth mindset is none of those things. A growth mindset is not something we do. It’s not a behavior. But it’s a belief about the nature of human beings is the belief that we can change the belief that our abilities or qualities are malleable, or we can develop them. And the reason so for example, if we think that some people are natural leaders and others aren’t, and that’s what determines whether somebody’s a good leader, that would be the opposite of a growth mindset is what we call a fixed mindset about leadership. Or if we think that some people are introverted, and others extroverted, and that’s fixed, those are things that don’t change, that would be a fixed mindset. Versus we can work to develop any of those dimensions we can we can work to become more introverted, right, like more mindful, more reflective, more more present more comfortable in solitude, and more extroverted, more, more more in a state of enjoyment when we’re with other people, and great at conversation and great at being funny, or whatever it is. So those that’s different from a fixed mindset. And a growth mindset is when we see ourselves as fixed, or when we see ourselves as able to change. And the reason that that’s important, is that what doctor mindset with Dr. Dweck research has shown and lots of other researchers as well now is that we will try to change the behaviors is really hard if we are in a fixed mindset. So if we think that we can’t change, then telling somebody, you know, to work hard, or to be open minded, or to try to experiment beyond the known that doesn’t tend to work if people are thinking that their abilities are fixed, or that other people’s abilities are fixed. And so we need to work on both changing our beliefs about the nature of ourselves and others, and changing our behaviors and habits. And those two things go hand in hand.

Eveline Oehrlich 08:06
Interesting. I love that. I wish this book I haven’t really checked, if that book is also in German. I have a few colleagues who potentially should read this, because we just had this conversation on these assumptions. And I felt that they had a very fixed mindset. So but I would love them to read it in German. I will check on that.

Eduardo Briceño 08:33
Later, too. I think you know, 17 languages, if I recall correctly, yes. I bet it is available in German and lots of other languages.

Eveline Oehrlich 08:41
I will do that research tonight and check with our favorite retailer, if that’s possible, right. So let me know I would like yeah, yes, absolutely. So how did you actually get into the space of developing cultures of learning?

Eduardo Briceño 08:56
Well, you know, the first time that I got into learning, I think was a time that we all got into learning, which is when we when I was really, really young. When I was a baby, when I was a young kid, I think all of us are passionate about learning them, right? If you look at a baby or young kid, they’re trying to get up or like crawl and like failing and trying again, and trying again and trying a different strategy. Or they might be really looking mesmerized at what we’re doing with our voice in making all these sounds that seem to you know, we seem to communicate with each other and they don’t understand what’s going on. And they’re so interested and trying to understand that eventually they come to understand language and they come to to understand what it is that we’re doing with our mouths. That’s incredible. And so, we have so many questions, right? kids ask so many questions, but then what happens is that we get to school and in school I think what tends to happen in school is tragic because schools haven’t, the goal of school hasn’t been to develop lifelong learners, right? It hasn’t been to ignite a fire for people to pursue whatever path they want to pursue, to experiment and discover, rather, is being to try to teach people some things that they might not be interested in at the time. And so we start associating learning with something that’s boring and tedious and like something that we do in school. And when we’re home, we do it only when we’re doing homework, and when we’re done with homework, then we’re done learning, right, and we go do something else. And so and so we learn in school, that learning sucks that learning is not relevant, it’s not useful. And and we also learn to perform all the time because so many things in school are graded with a letter or a number that we we we get the message that what we’re supposed to do on a daily basis is to do things well to do things we already know how to do to try to minimize mistakes. And so I like many people, I believe, I went from loving learning, to just trying to perform and to show that I’m good and to validate myself. And I ended up you know, after school, like there’s no more tests and almost grades, but the way that the best way that I could figure out to do well is to get a high paying job, right? So I I went and I work in the investment banking in New York City. And I know you, you you worked at Forrester Research where you were in that kind of similar world as well. Then I got into venture capital, and I was investing in technology companies in Silicon Valley. And after a few years of that, you know, it was it was interesting, but after a few years of that I realized I actually got physically sick. I was my I got a repetitive strain injury called myofascial pain syndrome, it was painful and difficult to use my hands to do simple things like brushing my teeth or open doors or driving. And I met people with my condition who had gotten so bad that they couldn’t use their hands for more than 10 minutes a day. So I, I ended up stretching for an hour and a half for every day for three years and getting treatment of all kinds. You know, I went to Washington DC for six weeks to get a particular treatment every day. So it was a big journey for me to heal. But one of the things that I learned was that I needed to, I couldn’t take my hands for granted. I couldn’t take my ability to do things for granted. And so I needed to find something that I was passionate about, and that I felt was making a difference in the world. And so I went to grad school to build that different path for myself. And over there. I met Carol Dweck. And I read her book and I, she’s my mentor. She’s been my mentor for since, you know, over 15 years, and her work just learning about her work, I realized how my fixed mindsets had gotten in the way of my goals. I was self sabotaging. I realized how I needed to change my thinking and my habits in order to really try things that I hadn’t done before and, and learn and develop myself. And I realized how a lot of people could benefit from those same insights that I was gaining from Dr. Dweck. So we partnered and co founded a company called mindset works. And I led it for over 15 years, my job became more and more public speaking. And that’s what I’m focused on 100% for for the last several years now. Wow.

Eveline Oehrlich 13:43
fits very well with, with my belief in how we want to lead our work in the DevOps Institute. Because, again, if you think about what we do, I’m sure you probably don’t know, but I’ll, I’ll share it with you and again with others. We’re trying to help. We’re not trying but we are we know we are helping our community members to learn. We call it upskilling or skill building, right. And we do this by developing content, we do trainings, we do certifications, we have events, and we encouraged and fostered a fairly tight community. We have over I think 90,000 or so fellow followers on LinkedIn. I just learned that today. And we hope we can make a difference for these individuals who want to learn and grow but it is challenging. And so when I went off to help us give get some insights in this learning and growth, that’s how I found you and I find your explanation on learning and performance zones extremely helpful. And I would love for you to share a bit more details with our community members to help them understand these different zones. So please do share with us. What are the zones Since you call them learning zones and performing zones, and what what must we know about them for our daily work?

Eduardo Briceño 15:08
Sure. So the learning zone and performance zone came from when I, at some point, my work, businesses started reaching out to me because they wanted to build a growth mindset culture. And in those workshops, in getting into the conversations and trying to help them build a growth, mindset culture, I tried different frameworks and different routes to the conversation. And this particular framework really resonated and became really helpful for them to generate insight and to align with each other about how they wanted to foster a growth mindset culture, and what the the the one that addresses is the the confusion that a lot of us have, that the way to improve is to work hard. That is too simplistic, and it gets us into trouble. So the reality is that there’s getting better at things or innovating is not just about working hard. Because there’s two different types of hard work, there’s hard work to get things done as best as we know how trying to minimize mistakes. That’s what we call the performance zone. But in order to improve, we have to actually work to go beyond the known and to ask questions and to experiment and to do things that may or may not work. That’s what we call the Learning Zone. And it is by engaging in the learning zone that we get better. So my book is called the performance paradox to performance paradox is the counterintuitive fact that if we perform all the time, we hinder our performance, we actually stop ourselves from performing even higher if all we’re doing is performing. And that’s that is a paradox, but it’s true. And so what we need to do in order to get better is to go beyond the known and to do things like when you talk about upskilling and skill building. Those are the things that happen with great performers, right. So if you look at a great athlete, for example, if they’re playing a championship final, they’re going to be focused on the things that they do best, and they’re trying to minimize mistakes and be if they have a weakness, they’re going to try to avoid that weakness in that match. That’s all for performance. And because the only goal during the match is to try to win the game. But what they do after the game is the learning zone right after the game, if they were having trouble with a particular move, they’re gonna go to their coach and say, Coach, I need to work on that particular move. And that’s a very different activity and area of attention than what we do during the match. Right, it’s actually completely different. And it is what they do in the learning zone that allows them to perform so well, in court in the performance only if they’re only playing games, then they get stuck, right, they don’t get better, in fact that the Williams sisters, which became the best in the world, Valium played any championships, any games. For years before they turned professional, they were just in the performance zone, sorry, in the Learning Zone. So the learning zone can be a pure learning zone, like taking a course, or you know, doing you know, reading is a pure learning zone activity. But we can also integrate these two zones so that we do them together so that as we’re getting things done, we’re doing things in a way that’s also going to lead to insight and to new skills and strategies and to getting better. And so it’s a by integrating these two zones. We we can get better while also doing all the things we need to do in our long to do list.

Narrator 18:43
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Eveline Oehrlich 19:28
So a quick side note for everybody listening in. There are some two fantastic TED talks from Eduardo one is called How to get better at things you care about. Check that out. The other one is the power of belief. So listeners go to the TED Talk, easy to find, and listen to it. Let’s come back to what you just said. And this is very specific to our, to our folks in IT, particularly the DevOps folks and others. We do a lot of, well, a lot If it’s a little bit of an exaggeration, we do something called a post mortem, right? Actually, it’s because it’s such a nasty word, we have renamed it to call the retrospective, because post mortem sounds like we’re killing something. But we don’t want to do that, we want to actually step back and look at what has happened. And so that, I think, is an excellent example of an integration of a learning zone and the performance zone. Would you agree with that?

Eduardo Briceño 20:28
Absolutely. Yeah. That’s a great way to integrate the Learn the learnings and the performance on the retrospective is a wonderful strategy. And it’s also kind of what you know, great performance, like athletes do, right? They perform. And then afterwards, they might watch a video and see, hey, let’s, let’s think about how that game went, and what can I learn? And what do I need to practice. So that’s the retrospective, in addition to a retrospective, think about doing because retrospective, also, can be called an after action review. That’s a term they use in the military. But and that’s great, that’s all wonderful. But also consider doing kind of mid action reviews, something that happens also kind of in the middle of projects, and as a habit, rather than only when things go wrong. When when people make a mistake, it’s just we can always get better, right? And so whether it is after projects, or after there’s an incident, which is wonderful to do think about also, how can you do this proactively and as a habit, so that you’re doing it all the time regularly. And so it is normalized is something that we all want to be doing on a regular basis, because we can all continue to improve.

Eveline Oehrlich 21:37
And, and it becomes part of our day. Now, that I guess is the challenge. Because, again, if I think of my times in it, I didn’t have a lot of time, it was very dynamic, very fast paced, I had lots of performing to do, right. And even so in, we encourage people to make mistakes and learn from that. At the same time, because I’m delivering outcomes and values and our lives deliver results. It is very difficult to actually combine those two and and and kind of integrate them. Do you have any additional tips for people? What What can our listeners do is just something would you say? Do this once a day or once a week or something like this? Because everybody is probably hungry, saying yeah, this sounds all great. This is very theoretical, but be in my shoes one day, write anything you would suggest?

Eduardo Briceño 22:32
Sure. So first, yeah, there’s there’s so strategies, I’ll share a couple. But first, I want to start by just recognizing the issue, which is that if we only stay only worried about getting the tasks done, then over time, we’re going to make to be to have a lot less time, right? If we want to create time and make more time both for learning and for performance, then we have to find ways to work smarter. And to get more work more done, like more important things done in less time. And the way to find that is to engage in the learning zone. So so we have to figure out a way to engage in the learning zone, so that we have more time, right so we can create time. And and so in general, one way to get started is to do something as like doesn’t take a lot of time is very, very quick. And that you can do frequently. So rather than try to say block two hours every Friday like which is becomes really hard. It’s better to just spend like five minutes a day doing something or even just one minute a day. Because what that that Prime’s a growth mindset and an interest. And then it is it is very frequent. So we start building a habit, and then it becomes easier to go from one minute to three minutes, and from five minutes to 10 minutes, or then even more. So just to change our thinking as we’re going about getting things done throughout the day. So we’re just paying more attention to the things that we can learn isn’t isn’t doesn’t really involve doing something differently. But it involves paying attention to the things that we can learn. In fact, there’s research that shows that for people measured people’s mindset, so they ask them things like, Do you believe that you can become smarter? And for the people who answered yes, I believe I can become smarter. They looked at people’s brains inside of a brain scan machine. And they while they were solving problems inside of the machine. And what they realized is that people who thought they could become smarter, so who had a growth mindset about intelligence, their brain was more active when they were getting information about what mistakes they made during the problems. And so they learn from those mistakes, and they were more effective in solving subsequent problems. So they became better problem solvers, because they paid more attention to our mistakes. And they pay more attention to mistakes because they thought they could become smarter. And so they weren’t spending any more time solving problems. They were all just solving problems. but some of them were paying attention to what they could learn and others weren’t. And that made all the difference. But some something that is very simple that anybody can do. And I think it’s really, really powerful is to build a habit to every morning remind ourselves of what it is that I’m working to improve. We’re like, what one thing am I working to get better at right now and, and review that every morning. And what that does is first, it makes sure that you’re always working at improving something, a that be that’s top of mind so that you’re thinking throughout the day and identifying opportunities to improve so that when something comes up, you’re like, oh, that’s relevant to what I’m interested in and you pay more attention to it right? And then it Prime’s a growth mindset, it Prime’s the reminder that we can always continue to improve and develop ourselves. And so it gets us to think differently throughout the day, every day. So that’s just one example of something simple that we can all do.

Eveline Oehrlich 25:57
Perfect, fantastic. I am going to make that for myself important. So let’s talk about quickly on the upcoming book, the performance paradox, turning the power of mindset into action. It’s releasing September 5 2023. Give us a few things, what to look out for what’s in that book, I already ordered it. So I’ll share with everybody else how to preorder it but give us a little bit of a like two minutes on, what can we find in it? Sure. And

Eduardo Briceño 26:30
thank you for pre ordering. And and yes, it’s available for preorder in any bookseller now. And yeah, I’ll describe a little bit the structure that sounds good, because it also gives people an idea of what kinds of things we can all work on in order to become better at learning and performing. So the book is has has three parts. The first one is driving individual growth, which is about individual growth and the foundational ideas. Part two is about overcoming the performance paradox in teams and organizations. So how do we create strong teams and organizations? And part three is from individual transformation to global impact? So how do we take everything we’re learning and apply it in the performance zone and apply it to change lives. So in part one, about individual growth, like Chapter One is about the performance paradox, which describes what the challenge is the problem. Chapter Two is the solution, which is about the two zones that we talked about the learning zone and the performance zone. Chapter Three is about integrating the two zones so that we do them together, right? So instead, it’s not about learning by doing because we don’t learn by doing, but it’s about learning while doing how do we change the way we do things in order to, to also improve? Chapter Four is about six essential learning strategies that we can all use. Chapter Five is about mistakes. And mistakes are interesting, because mistakes on one hand, we know that we can learn from mistakes, and on the other hand, mistakes, lower performance. And so Chapter Five is about getting more and more nuanced understanding of mistakes and getting clear about how can we elicit mistakes in a way that’s going to increase learning, but also increased performance as well. And when do we want to avoid mistakes. Chapter Six is about common misconceptions about learning and about growth mindset that gets in the way of growth. Chapter Seven is about a framework called the growth propeller, which is the five key elements that drive growth that any of us can work on in order to become stronger learners and performance. And those are our identity, our purpose, our beliefs, our habits, and our community. And so that’s part one of the book. Part two is about teams and organizations. So chapter eight is about visions of a strong learning organization with examples of very, very strong learning and performing organizations. Chapters nine and 10 are about teams, chapters, 11 and 12, are about how to lead for growth to leadership. And finally, the third, the final part of the book, chapter 13, is about the performance zone, what can we do in the performance zone in order to perform at our best, and chapter 14 is about how overcoming the paradox changes lives. So not only can we get to better destinations, and to improve and to increase our results, but in in overcoming the performance paradox, we also change the process, right what what the experience of life and work feels like? Because we find more joy, we find more happiness, we also experience less anxiety, less depression, and we build deeper relationships with each other because we become more curious. We’re more supportive of one another we learn about each other’s needs and perspectives. We can learn more from each other. And so we we change not only this nation, but also the process and the everyday life that we live.

Eveline Oehrlich 29:56
Beautiful. I cannot wait. I kind of wish it’s September. So I can’t have it. But then the year will be over. So we’ll we’ll look forward to it if anybody on the call or on this listening into it is easily preorder PL orderable add performance paradox.com Go there and, and preorder it. So we have come to the end, I have one more question for you. What do you do for fun? Well, you

Eduardo Briceño 30:25
know, I feel so grateful that from so many things, I mean, the first thing I do every morning is to express gratitude for so many things. But I find most of my days like really fun. And I’m I’m very privileged that way. But some of the things kind of outside of work because I love my work, and I have fun in my work. But some of the things I do outside of work is I’ve been playing more and more tennis with my wife we played yesterday and the prior day. And we’re really enjoying kind of being playful and challenging one another in the tennis court. I also travel a lot for work, and my wife does too. So we like traveling with each other and kind of when I when I’m in a place I take some time to either visit a museum or see somebody there that I haven’t seen in a long time as something that that I enjoy doing as well. But I love my work. I love how I’m I’m you know, in a way obsessed about it, and I like being obsessed about it. So I’m privileged to kind of have fun throughout the day, every day.

Eveline Oehrlich 31:28
I can feel that I can sense it through through the through the lines of communication with you. This has been absolutely wonderful. We have been talking to Eduardo percent. Your Thank you, Eduardo. This has been a very, very, very nice treat for our listeners and for myself. Thanks again for joining me today on humans of DevOps podcast.

Eduardo Briceño 31:49
Thank you, Evelyn. It’s great to speak with you.

Eveline Oehrlich 31:52
Humans of DevOps podcast is produced by DevOps Institute. Our audio production team includes Julia Papp and Brendan Leigh and Daniel Schultz Newman, shout out to my teammates who make this really great equate production. I’m humans of DevOps podcast executive producer Evelyn earlyish. If you would like to join us on a podcast, please contact us at humans of DevOps podcast at DevOps institute.com. And I said that this time without really tripping up so I remember literally talk to you soon.

Narrator 32:28
Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of DevOps podcast. Don’t forget to join our global community to get access to even more great resources like this. Until next time, remember, you are part of something bigger than yourself. You belong