Your workplace asks a lot out of you. It is no longer enough that you simply do your job well, you also need to constantly improve your skills to keep with new trends and competition while simultaneously being a model citizen and mentor to your coworkers. With limited time and energy to do it all, few would blame you for “accidentally” deleting those emails from your coworker asking for help in the midst of a busy week.
In a recent paper published in the Academy of Management Discoveries, my coauthors, Jessica Siegel Christian, Remy Jennings, and Klodiana Lanaj, and I argue that there’s a way to transform this dilemma (do I help my coworkers or focus on myself) into more of a “win-win”: adopting a work growth mindset –the belief that their personal and professional capabilities are malleable and can be developed at work. We suggest three ways for workers to do this:
Develop a work growth mindset.
While some jobs more naturally foster employee growth, our work suggests that there are opportunities to develop in virtually any job. Using a short writing intervention, we found that people could strengthen their work growth mindset by reflecting on the different ways in which their job allowed them to develop.
2. Look for ways to help that allow you to develop yourself.
Our results showed that holding a work growth mindset motivated workers to help others, but primarily when doing so also allowed themselves to grow. Workers should think about skills they want to develop and ways they might be able to practice those skills through helping. For example, an employee who wants to get better at public speaking could volunteer to help a coworker revise a presentation.
3. Embrace self-development as a reason to help others.
Most people want to help others for non-selfish reasons. Our studies showed that a work growth mindset sparked a variety of self- and other-oriented motivations, but that it was only the other-oriented motivations that actually motivated helping. Workers can feel comfortable that, while they may have initially noticed the helping opportunity as a way to grow themselves, it was their desire to help others that actually led them to assist.
By developing more of a growth mindset at work, our research shows that you will be more likely to see the “win-win” opportunities to help others and develop yourself. We also found that on days when workers embraced a work growth mindset and helped their coworkers, they felt they made a bigger impact at work, which spilled over into higher feelings of meaning in life. For those who want to help others but feel they don’t have the time, a work growth mindset may be a powerful tool to transform helping into a way to achieve both self and other-oriented goals.
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