The Ultimate Flex

Face it — you’re gonna fail, face criticism from your boss, get bested by a colleague, wrestle with a new technology. You will — and your team will, as well. What you do about workplace challenges makes or breaks your career.

This was the message delivered by Kelly McDonald to attendees of the Women’s Meat Industry Network luncheon at the Annual Meat conference in National Harbor, Md., in March.

“We are not these fixed people who are born a certain way, and then that's it,” the business and leadership consultant told the 500+ people in the audience. “The No. 1 belief of the growth mindset is that our abilities can change and improve over time.”

McDonald’s keynote, “Think Big! How the proven growth mindset can transform you,” illustrated how the principles discussed by Carol Dweck in her book, “Mindset: The new psychology of success,” applies to the meat industry. In a sector being rocked by social, economic, cultural and political crosswinds, the flexibility to believe the twists and turns represent lessons, not roadblocks, is vital.

“Our abilities, talents, and our very intelligence can improve over time,” McDonald said. “The connected behavior that we see in someone who has a growth mindset is that they embrace feedback as an opportunity to learn.” A negative review becomes a roadmap to performance improvement, raises and promotions. The learning curve of yet another new technology is rife with fresh opportunity.

And that high-profile project you were put in charge of, that went nowhere? Not a failure, McDonald said, just “not yet” a success.

“Steve Jobs was brutal to work for, but one of the things he did with his innovation team is, they would work for years on something that wouldn’t pan out. They would come to him, completely demoralized, and say ‘It just didn’t work the way I thought it was going to.’

“And he'd say, ‘Not yet. Keep going’,” McDonald said. “’Not yet’ is huge.”

In 2026, industriousness alone doesn’t translate into career success. A person with a growth mindset demonstrates resilience in times of failure, she said. They don’t just appreciate feedback — they seek it out as an opportunity to learn. Failures are seen as lessons, not as any kind of end point.

“How many of you have ever worked with somebody who the only way they're going to go out on a limb is if they're 99% certain that it's going to work? That's not a bad person, but they definitely don't have a growth mindset,” McDonald said. “The connected behavior that we see with someone who has a fixed mindset is they don’t actually ever challenge themselves. They avoid the tasks where success is not guaranteed.”

And in doing so, they don’t progress, professionally or personally.

The paradigm applies to organizations as well as individuals, McDonald pointed out.

“In ‘growth mindset’ organizations, employees say that they actually feel more supported, empowered and committed. They're in this welcoming environment where ‘success is not final and failure is not fatal’,” she said, quoting Winston Churchill.

“Whereas, in fixed mindset companies, employees report more gaming of the system,” because it feels like they are competing with each other in a zero-sum game, trying to get an edge. “That's really toxic,” she said.

In practice, McDonald laid out three ways to model a growth mindset in the workplace:

• By sharing personal stories of failure and growth
• By reframing challenges as opportunities
• And by using “not yet” language

“The growth mindset acts as a multiplier. If you have a CEO or if you're a leader of a team, all you have to do is start exhibiting ‘growth mindset’ behavior and that will trickle through your entire organization.”

McDonald underscored her message by telling the personal stories of a long list of phenomenally successful people who demonstrated a growth mindset: Walt Disney, J.K. Rowling, Michael Jordan, Vera Wang, and her favorite — Taylor Swift.

“Taylor Swift said, ‘Being fearless isn’t being 100% not fearful. It’s being terrified, but you jump anyway’,” McDonald said.

Explore your growth mindset further! Read more about Kelly here, and order one (or more) of her books from the website. Keep up with WMIN’s events and updates here. Order Carol Dweck’s book from Amazon here.