Eduardo Briceño is a keynote speaker, facilitator, and behavior change partner who guides many of the world’s leading companies in developing cultures of continuous improvement, innovation, and high performance. His TED talk, “How To Get Better At The Things You Care About,” and his TEDx talk, “The Power of Belief,” have been viewed more than ten million times. His book, The Performance Paradox: Turning the Power of Mindset into Action, won multiple awards. His work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Big Think, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Forbes, Inc., Quartz, and others.
Earlier in his career, Eduardo was the co-founder and CEO of Mindset Works, the pioneer in growth mindset development services, which he started with Stanford professor Carol Dweck and which he led for over a decade. Before that, he was a venture capital investor with the Sprout Group and served on several boards, both for-profit and non-profit. Before that, he was an investment banking analyst with Credit Suisse. 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.
1) In your book, you describe the performance paradox: the idea that constantly performing doesn’t necessarily improve performance. Since a growth mindset is a necessary but insufficient foundation for change, how can individuals and organizations who are caught in the ‘rip current’ of stagnant performance best identify the strategies and habits that will truly move them into growth (rather than just believing in it)?
A growth mindset is the belief that we can change, but the belief alone is not enough. We also need to know how to change and to develop the systems and habits that make change possible. Just as important, we need a reason to change. We need a purpose or a “why” that motivates us to put in the effort and engage in deliberate practice. It also helps when we feel we are part of a learning community, surrounded by people who are also working to improve and grow.
Many of us assume that in order to improve, we just need to work hard, do our best, and minimize mistakes. What we often miss is that there are really two distinct modes of working. One is the performance zone, where we focus on getting things done (as well as we know how). The other is the learning zone, where we try new things, experiment, and deliberately go beyond what we already know. We can alternate between these two zones or integrate them, but both are necessary for growth.
We can examine our structures and habits through this lens. For any meeting or practice, we can ask whether the goal is only to get things done or whether it also includes improving how we work. When we consciously design our systems to do both, to deliver results while generating insights and better strategies, we begin to weave the learning zone into the fabric of how we work and live.
Ideally, this shouldn’t depend on individual initiative alone. The biggest opportunities lie in designing systems that make it easy for everyone to engage in both performance and learning. For example, weekly agendas often focus entirely on performance topics. Simply adding a standing agenda item to share what we learned last week, address any questions we have, or discuss the experiments we’re running can shift the conversation. If mid-action and after-action reviews are built into project processes, everyone participates, not just those naturally inclined to reflect and improve.
When organizations fail to blend the performance and learning zones, people default to what they know, trying to minimize mistakes, which eventually leads to stagnation. The paradox is that when we focus too much on performance, performance actually suffers. Part of the reason is psychological: we have a present bias, overvaluing immediate results and undervaluing long-term improvement. Structural pressures amplify this. For example, public companies face constant pressure to deliver quarterly results, which shapes how leaders behave. Those norms get carried into other organizations, reinforcing a culture of short-term exploitation rather than long-term exploration.
To truly thrive, individuals and organizations must be mindful of both the present and the future. The most effective way to achieve today’s goals and sustain success over time is to deliberately combine the learning zone and the performance zone.
2) Evidence suggests real improvement comes from leaning into mistakes and even discomfort, because that’s where growth tends to live. For leaders who want to create this kind of culture, one where failing once in a while is safe, how can they go beyond just making it ‘safe to fail’ and actually help their teams build the skill of turning mistakes into lessons that improve the whole system (instead of just patching one issue or pointing fingers)?
It’s not just about forgiving mistakes. If we don’t experiment and take risks, we’re not doing our jobs. The point is not to create a culture where mistakes are tolerated, but rather one where smart experimentation is expected. Experimentation will inevitably produce errors, and we learn from those errors. The key is to be clear about the difference between high-stakes situations (situations where we just want to be in the performance zone, doing what we know works, and minimizing risk) and the times and spaces where we want to go beyond the known, by asking questions and experimenting.
Leaders need to be explicit about those distinctions and how they want the team to operate in each context. That takes a lot of communication. Leaders often under-communicate. We say something once and assume people heard it, understood it the way we do, and will remember it. The reality is that we need to communicate much more than we think, making it clear that learning is an integral part of what we do every day. As leaders, we must reinforce that growth and self-awareness, understanding our customers more deeply, and learning how to work better together are core to our mission. And we need habits and systems that make improvement a natural part of work: soliciting feedback, gathering customer insights, running projects in ways that surface lessons learned, and constantly refining how we collaborate.
The third piece is modeling. Leaders often engage in private learning (e.g., with a coach, at home, or in one-on-one conversations) rather than in public, where the entire team can observe it. Modeling means sharing openly: “Here’s what I’m trying to improve. I’d love your feedback. Here’s a mistake I made and what I learned from it.” When leaders model learning explicitly, they show the behavior they want others to practice. Otherwise, people just see them focusing on being right, and that sets the wrong tone.
Formal learning and development programs can be helpful, but what matters most is learning on the job, every day, in the context of the work we do together. And this should be championed by business leaders, not just the L&D department. In a fast-changing world, this is not a “nice-to-have.” It is a core part of how the organization succeeds.
Once we are learning, the question becomes how to spread that learning so everyone benefits. Successful companies create structures for this. Netflix, for example, had a principle of “whisper wins, shout mistakes.” When someone made an error or learned a valuable lesson, they were encouraged to share it with the whole company, along with the insight that came from it. LinkedIn added a section to their weekly top-100 leaders meeting specifically for sharing lessons learned from the prior week. These lessons often came from mistakes, and sharing them allowed others to benefit and adapt their own work. Netflix also encouraged “farming for dissent,” where someone with a new idea sought out critical feedback before jumping to action, looking for holes and blind spots to make the idea stronger. These kinds of practices make people smarter and help learning spread across the organization.
3) You’ve described growth as being powered by several interconnected forces: our sense of identity and purpose, the beliefs we hold, the habits we practice, and the communities we’re part of. For someone stepping into a new or challenging role, how can they intentionally cultivate these elements in tandem, so that progress in one area doesn’t unintentionally create blind spots in another? In other words, how can people build a growth path that feels both balanced and sustainable?
You are referring to the Growth Propeller, which is a tool for reflection, and it applies not only to learning behaviors but to any behaviors. Say I want to be a motivated and effective learner. That framework helps me reflect on the five components and examine what supports me in behaving the way I want to behave, and what might be getting in the way.
For example, community: Are the people around me motivated and effective learners? Do they value continuous growth as the default? Do they value feedback and learning from experiments? When I am with them, do they inspire me to act the way I want to act? My social networks have a huge influence on me, and I want to make sure they influence me in the direction I want to go.
Then there are habits: Have I built habits that drive proactive change and evolution? If I have a morning routine, does it help me remember what I want to improve today? Am I in the habit of soliciting feedback from different people, and do I actually do that frequently? Our beliefs influence these habits. If I hold the belief that receiving feedback is a sign of incompetence, that belief will make the habit of asking for feedback very hard to sustain. If my first reaction to feedback is defensiveness, that habit might be rooted in a belief that feedback is bad. In that case, the habit I might want to build is simply pausing and taking a deep breath when I get feedback so I can overcome my initial reaction and respond thoughtfully.
At the center of the Growth Propeller are identity and purpose. Do I see myself as a learner, as someone who is always evolving? Do I believe that ten years from now I will be a different person because I will have improved? And do I care about something enough that it drives me to put effort not just into getting things done, but also into improving myself and my understanding of the world? That sense of purpose is what fuels the work of growth.
If two of those areas feel significantly weaker than the others, that might be a signal to focus there first, because those areas may be what’s holding you back.
It’s also about creating balance. There needs to be harmony between performance and learning. We can over-index on either one. The goal is to create coherence between all these elements so they work well together. Carol Dweck has a 2017 paper where she talks about self-coherence as a fundamental human need. When we have cognitive dissonance, we feel out of harmony, and that makes growth harder.
The same applies to strengths and weaknesses. We can see them as fixed or as malleable. If we see them as fixed, it keeps us stuck. But if we see them as things we can change, we create the possibility of improvement. We can decide which strengths we want to build on and which weaknesses we want to work on. Maybe some weaknesses are fine to leave alone because they are not important or because someone else on the team can cover them. But if I am a really poor listener, for example, that is likely to hold me back in many areas. I might choose to work on it, but only if I can see it as something I can improve. That is the essence of a growth mindset.
4) Leaders often overestimate how well their message or impact is landing, and power dynamics can make it hard for people to be fully honest in return. Beyond just stating their values, how can leaders consistently model the kind of vulnerability and curiosity that fosters a true learning culture without risking their authority or competence in the eyes of their teams?
Sometimes leaders worry that showing vulnerability will undermine their authority or confidence. That often comes from a belief that asking for feedback or ideas is a sign of uncertainty; that, as a leader, they should already know what to do and be able to direct others. When we hold that belief, it becomes harder to truly tap the collective intelligence of the team.
The first step is for leaders to accept that success actually depends on inviting in other people’s thinking. When we incorporate perspectives from different vantage points, especially those closest to customers (as well as those working in other functions), we make better informed decisions. We also create a culture where people feel safe to experiment and take risks, which is what drives innovation. Once leaders are clear on this, they can communicate it explicitly and often. When we ask for feedback or ideas, it helps to remind the team why we are doing it. This is how we succeed. Clarity helps others see these behaviors as strengths.
Leaders also have to be careful about the messages they send and make the implicit explicit. For example, if a leader says something like, “We can do this,” people interpret that differently. Someone in a fixed mindset might think it means we already have what we need to succeed, which discourages questioning. Someone with a growth mindset might hear it as, “We’ll figure it out together.” Leaders can avoid this ambiguity by adding clarity: “We can do this, and part of how we’ll succeed is by experimenting and learning along the way.”
Finally, modeling is essential. However, it has to be done with an awareness of power dynamics. Early in my career, I thought leaders should simply do the behaviors they want to see in others. I later realized it is more nuanced. For example, if a leader wants their team to challenge ideas and disagree more, and the leader jumps in first with strong opinions, others may be less inclined to speak up. In these situations, effective leaders ask questions, hold back their own opinions until later, and encourage others to share. I call this asymmetrical modeling. You create space for others to practice the behaviors first, then you follow.
5) You have written about how top performance often comes from pairing clarity and preparation with strong routines that run almost on autopilot. For individuals or teams in roles that demand constant creativity and adaptability, how can they design these routines to free up mental bandwidth for innovation without slipping into complacency or getting stuck in habits that no longer serve them?
We want to create harmony in what our days and weeks look like, and in the cadence of our work. Great artists and creators often build intentional moments for divergent thinking and play. Some people enjoy taking long walks in nature. Salvador Dalí used to fall asleep holding an object so that when he drifted off, it would drop, make a noise, and wake him up. This allowed him to capture the imagery from his dreams and incorporate it into his work.
Others have their own rituals. I remember reading about a writer who always carried a set of figurines. No matter where he traveled, he would place them on the desk before he started writing, even in a hotel room. Albert Einstein would take breaks to play the violin, which helped him return to his work with new insights. These kinds of routines can get us into the right mental state for creativity.
In design thinking, there are structures for each stage of the process. There are established norms for engaging in divergent thinking, generating ideas, and making sense of them afterward. These structures are designed to create the conditions for the type of thinking we need at that moment.
Routine works the same way. Jean Monnet, one of the architects of the European Union, would begin each day with a long walk. That was his most effective way to problem-solve and generate creative ideas. Again, Einstein’s violin practice served a similar purpose, creating mental space for breakthroughs.
Teams can do this too. When working on a design thinking project, starting with empathy interviews is a routine that helps us learn, surface insights, and discover opportunities we might otherwise overlook. The goal is to be intentional about our habits and structures so that they generate the creativity, reflection, and problem-solving we desire, rather than just falling into patterns that keep us busy but uninspired.