Mindsets
The Renaissance Man(ager)
We began by considering the Renaissance Ideal, that “infinitely versatile ‘universal’ man, educated in all
branches of knowledge and capable of producing innovations in many of them.1 Looking to Leonardo
da Vinci as an exemplar of this ideal, we saw that he cultivated six key skillsets:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Deep expertise in an enabling field
Broad knowledge and interests
Acute powers of observation
Systems thinking
Inference by analogy
A systematic method for finding and testing ideas
Designing effective solutions to complex challenges requires cultivating and maintaining particular
mindsets. These are mental attitudes or inclinations to think, feel and act in particular ways. Leonardo
da Vinci cultivated unquenchable curiosity, a bias toward action, a willingness to experiment, a
tolerance of ambiguity, and a resistance to premature closure.
Let’s dig in and examine your own habitual mindsets, and how these might consciously or unconsciously
affect the way that you approach problem finding and problem solving.
Mindsets and Metacognition
Many things can influence our mindset at any given moment. Some are transient, like our mood or our
reaction to stimuli in our immediate environment: for example, the urgency of a particular task at hand
or group dynamics. Others are enduring predispositions. Some of these arise from our cumulative life
experiences. Others are, at least in part, inherited: twin studies have shown that a lot of personality
traits have a genetic component.
Regardless of whether they’re the result of heredity or life experience, being mindful of our enduring
predispositions is challenging. Because they’re so much a part of who we are, we’re often not aware of
them, or of their impact on our thought processes, emotions, decisions, and behaviors. Reflecting on
them takes a conscious effort.
Reflecting on our mindset is an act of metacognition – thinking about what we’re thinking and feeling,
about our beliefs and assumptions, about why we’re doing what we’re doing.
You’re engaging metacognitive skills whenever you ask yourself questions like, “what did I learn?”
“What am I struggling with?” “How am I feeling right now, and how is that affecting my decision
making?” “What am I assuming?” “How can I think differently about this challenge?” Metacognition is
necessary for critical and creative thinking.
1
Capra, F. (2007). The Science of Leonardo; Inside the Mind of the Genius of the Renaissance. New York:
Doubleday. Chapter 2. The first-known appearance of the term “Renaissance Man” was in 1906, according to the
Online Etymology Dictionary (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=Renaissance+man)
This note was prepared by Associate Professor James M. Olver. © 2015, Mason School of Business, the
College of William and Mary.
A lot (most?) of our day-to-day activities don’t involve much metacognition.2,3 That’s not necessarily a
bad thing: many of our daily activities are routine, and we’d be completely overwhelmed if we had to
ponder everything we do. Unfortunately, we are also prone to a huge array of cognitive biases that can
get in the way when we need metacognition to tackle novel, complex challenges. 4,5 For example,

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We unconsciously protect our self-esteem. We tend to take positive feedback at face value, but
discount, scrutinize, or explain away negative feedback, and take more responsibility for our
successes than our failures (“self-serving bias”).
When making choices, most people unconsciously avoid options with missing information, even
when the missing information isn’t important (the “ambiguity effect”). We’re focused on what
we don’t know rather than stepping back and asking whether that information matters. 6
We tend to seek out, focus on, interpret, and recall information in ways that fit our
preconceptions (“confirmation bias”).7
We tend to think an event is more likely when examples come easily to mind: this is known as
the “availability heuristic.”8 Experiencing a low probability event (or even talking about one) can
make us think it’s more probable.
We tend to anchor on one salient piece of information and ignore everything else.
We’re generally not conscious of these biases. In fact, most of us believe that we’re less biased than
other people (“bias blind spot”).
We can manage these biases – and the resulting mindsets – when we’re thinking about thinking. A
mindset is an inclination. If we’re mindful, we can choose to act as circumstances dictate rather than
simply following our predispositions.
Let’s take a deeper look at four particular mindsets that might affect your ability to effectively tackle
complex challenges. We’ll start with Carol Dweck’s notion of “fixed” versus “growth” mindset. We’ll
then consider two personality traits, Openness to Experience and Ambiguity Tolerance. Finally, we’ll
wrap up with preferred learning style: how you are most comfortable taking in and processing
experience.
2
Garner, R. and Alexander, P.A. (1989). Metacognition: answered and unanswered questions. Educational
Psychologist, 24(2). 143-158.
3
Glenberg, A.M., Wilkinson, A.C., and Epstein, W. (1982). The illusion of knowing: failure in the self-assessment of
comprehension. Memory and Cognition, 10. 597-602.
4
For an interesting review, see Barnes Jr, J. H. (1984). Cognitive biases and their impact on strategic planning.
Strategic Management Journal (pre-1986), 5(2), 129.
5
Wikipedia has a couple of really great entries on cognitive biases. One is a general description of cognitive biases
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias#Types). . Another is a list of biases that have been the subject of
research (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases). Behavioral economist Dan Ariely has written a
terrific and truly amusing book about his research into cognitive biases (Predictably Irrational. New York:
HarperCollins, 2008).
6
Baron, J. (2007). Thinking and deciding (4th Ed.). New York City: Cambridge University Press.
7
Oswald, Margit E.; Grosjean, Stefan (2004). "Confirmation Bias". In Pohl, Rüdiger F. Cognitive Illusions: A
Handbook on Fallacies and Biases in Thinking, Judgment and Memory. Hove, UK: Psychology Press. pp. 79–96
8
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive
psychology, 5(2), 207-232.
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“Fixed” versus “Growth” Mindset
Carol Dweck is a psychologist who has spent the last several decades trying to unravel why some people
characteristically avoid difficult challenges that pose a risk of failure, and why others embrace them. Dr.
Dweck’s work consistently supports a simple but profound explanation:
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
Some implicitly or explicitly believe that intelligence and ability are innate. Because of that,
“failing” is a personal indictment: it’s evidence that they are a failure, and there’s nothing they
can do about it. Dr. Dweck calls this a “fixed” mindset. If you’re operating from a fixed mindset,
you’re likely to avoid difficult challenges, and you’re likely to blame external factors for any
setbacks (the self-serving bias). Both of these are barriers to learning and improving.
Those who regularly challenge themselves and risk failure maintain a very different worldview:
they believe that their intelligence and ability are malleable, and that learning from failure is the
key to improving their intelligence and ability. “Failure” isn’t a statement about them as a
person: it’s how they learn and develop mastery. Dr. Dweck calls this a “growth” mindset.9
Her findings have some counterintuitive implications. For example, constantly telling your kids how
“smart” they are is a bad idea. Controlled experiments consistently show that praising someone for
being “smart” after they complete a simple task actually makes them less willing to subsequently take
on more difficult challenges. When instead, they are praised as “hard workers,” they are more likely to
jump at more difficult challenges.
A growth mindset not only helps us learn and improve: its tenets are actually a more accurate reflection
of reality. We now know that environmental factors can have a substantial impact on IQ, and that
various exercises can enhance measured fluid intelligence (problem-solving ability). IQ can go up or
down fairly dramatically during teenage years, with corresponding changes in brain structure
(neuroplasticity). Globally, performance on IQ tests has been rising for decades, with the biggest gains
typically in emerging nations. We also know that there are different types of intelligence that map to
different areas of the brain, and they don’t necessarily rise or fall together.10,11 All of this is evidence
that “intelligence” isn’t fixed. We are able to learn from experience and get “smarter,” but only if we
can face our experience honestly.
While a growth mindset is both reasonable and beneficial, most people struggle with maintaining one.
We say our goal is to learn, but in truth we’re generally motivated to protect our self-image. If that’s
the case, we’re really vulnerable to self-serving cognitive biases that stymie our ability to learn and
improve. And there’s a fairly good case to be made that the more successful we are, the more
vulnerable we are.
Harvard professor Chris Argyris argues that the behavior of many highly successful professionals is
implicitly governed by four values: (1) to remain in unilateral control, (2) to maximize winning and
minimize losing, (3) to suppress negative feelings, and (4) to define clear objectives and evaluate success
based on whether or not they’ve been achieved. Argyris spent 15 years studying high-powered
consultants, people who were highly educated, highly motivated, and enthusiastic about continuous
9
For a thorough review of this research (and a compelling read), see Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new
psychology of success. New York: Random House.
10
Nisbett, R.E. et.al. (2012). Intelligence: new findings and theoretical developments. American Psychologist
(F/M). 132-159.
11
Ramsden, S. et.al. (2011). Verbal and non-verbal intelligence changes in the teenage brain. Nature 475, 113-116.
Mindset of the Renaissance Manager
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improvement in their organizations. Ironically, most were unable to honestly critique their own
performance. Argyris believes that they had so rarely failed that they never learned to learn from it.12
Fixed mindsets can also pervade the culture of an organization, to devastating effect. Enron’s conviction
that that they had hired “the smartest guys in the room” promoted an uncritical and narcissistic culture
that viewed looking smart as more important than making good decisions. And it implicitly encouraged
managers to deny serious problems, even to themselves.13
Implications:
Trying new things and critically and honestly assessing the results equips us for what Argyris calls
“double-loop” learning, one particular form of metacognition. Simple problem solving involves “singleloop” learning: trying something different if what you’re doing isn’t working. “Double-loop” learning
occurs when you step back and question your fundamental assumptions about what you’re trying to
accomplish, and why.
Dr. Dweck’s experiments demonstrate conclusively that we can change our mindset from “fixed” to
“growth” through mindful practice. Even if your instinct is to avoid challenges that you might fail at, you
can consciously choose to pursue them anyway.
Shawn Boyer is the founder and Chairman of SnagAJob, and was National Small Business Person of the
Year in 2008. He’s also a W&M alumnus. Shawn chooses to turn the definition of “failure” on its ear.
Here’s how he puts it:
“An error is when you try something new, and it doesn’t work. Failure is when you don’t try
something because you’re afraid. Make errors all day: that’s how you learn. But don’t fail.”14
Personality Traits
Personality traits are enduring predispositions to think, feel and behave in particular ways. Since the
1990s, there’s been an emerging consensus that personality traits are organized around five broad,
universal factors. These “Big Five” personality traits have been labeled Openness to Experience,
Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism/Emotional Stability. Each has more
narrow “facets,” or specific manifestations. These are listed in the Appendix.
Twin studies suggest that all of the Big Five traits are largely if not entirely inherited.15 On the other
hand, longitudinal studies show that personalities evolve over time, and there’s some evidence that
environmental changes (e.g., maintaining a long-term, committed relationship) can have a significant
impact on how these traits manifest themselves over time.16
12
Argyris, C. (1991). Teaching smart people how to learn. Harvard Business Review, 69(3), 99-109.
Carol Dweck speaks about this in her book Mindset, as does best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell in “The Talent
Myth,” published in The New Yorker (2002, July 22) and available at
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-myth).
14
In a conversation with students in my Creative Problem Solving class, February 10, 2015.
15
See, for example, McCrae, R.R. (2004). Human nature and culture: a trait perspective. Journal of Research in
Personality, 38, 3-14.
16
Roberts, B. W., Wood, D., & Caspi, A. (2008). The development of personality traits in adulthood. Handbook of
personality: Theory and research, 3, 375-398.
13
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Because our personality traits generally change very gradually, we may be quite oblivious to them, and
thus, to their impact on our mindset in a given instance. It’s “just the way things are,” so it may not
occur to us to examine how these predispositions are affecting our thoughts, emotions, and choices.
We’ll look at 2 interrelated personality traits: the broad trait known as Openness to Experience, and a
related but more specific one, Ambiguity Tolerance. We’re focusing on these in particular because they
condition our innate response to novelty, ambiguity, and complexity, three characteristics of “wicked”
challenges.
Openness to Experience
Openness to Experience is just what it sounds like. People who score highly on Openness to Experience
tend to prefer variety, have active imaginations, exhibit intellectual curiosity, have aesthetic sensitivities,
and be attentive to feelings.17 Some studies suggest that Openness to Experience increases rather
dramatically during the teen years and then remains quite stable, perhaps declining in old age.18
Openness to Experience is systematically related to two scales on the popular Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator, Intuiting/Sensing and Perceiving/Judging. 19,20 Intuiting/Sensing deals with our information
preferences: a strong Sensing type prefers the facts and details, while a strong Intuiting type prefers
interpretation and the “big picture.” Openness corresponds to the Intuitive end of that scale.
Perceiving/Judging deals with our preference for making decisions. Strong Judging types need to get
things decided: strong Perceiving types prefer to stay open to new information and options, and this
corresponds to Openness.
Openness to Experience is positively correlated with divergent thinking, the ability to generate lots of
novel creative ideas, and to “absorption,” the propensity to become completely immersed in mental
imagery (especially fantasy). It’s negatively related to conformity, and positively related to appreciation
for and tolerance of others.21 “Open” people generally have a lower need for closure: the need for a
quick answer or decision.22 They tolerate ambiguity well, and tend to seek novelty.23,24,25
17
Wikipedia has a good entry on Openness to Experience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience
Roberts, B. W., & Mroczek, D. (2008). Personality trait change in adulthood. Current directions in psychological
science, 17(1), 31-35.
19
Furnham, A. (1996). The big five versus the big four: the relationship between the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI) and NEO-PI five factor model of personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 21(2), 303-307.
20
Busato, V. V., Prins, F. J., Elshout, J. J., & Hamaker, C. (1998). The relation between learning styles, the Big Five
personality traits and achievement motivation in higher education. Personality and individual differences, 26(1),
129-140.
21
Olver, J. and Mooradian, T. (2003). Personality traits and personal values: a conceptual and empirical integration.
Personality and Individual Differences, 35. 109-125.
22
Onraet, E., Van Hiel, A., Roets, A., & Cornelis, I. (2011). The closed mind: ‘Experience’ and ‘cognition’ aspects of
openness to experience and need for closure as psychological bases for right‐wing attitudes. European Journal of
Personality, 25(3), 184-197.
23
Furnham, A., & Marks, J. (2013). Tolerance of ambiguity: a review of the recent literature. Psychology, 4(09),
717.
24
Major, D. A., Turner, J. E., & Fletcher, T. D. (2006). Linking proactive personality and the Big Five to motivation to
learn and development activity. Journal of applied psychology, 91(4), 927.
25
De Fruyt, F.; Van De Wiele, L. & Van Heeringen, C. (2000). "Cloninger's Psychobiological Model of Temperament
and Character and the Five-Factor Model of Personality". Personality and Individual Differences 29 (3): 441–452.
18
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Leonardo da Vinci’s insatiable curiosity suggests that he was exceptionally high on Openness to
Experience. At first glance, this looks like an unalloyed blessing. He’s creative. He sees the “big
picture.” He accepts ambiguity and novelty. He doesn’t need premature closure and can defer
judgment if needed. All of these characteristics would support his inventiveness and his ability to
innovate. There is a potential downside to that low need for closure, though. As we noted at the
beginning of our class, da Vinci had a problem finishing things: his notebooks, the Mona Lisa, and many
of his other projects. There were always more stimuli to take in, and he continued to defer completion
of many of his most important works, leaving them unfinished at his death.
Implications:
Openness to Experience is an enduring predisposition, and when something is always part of who we
are, it can be invisible. If we’re not predisposed toward Openness to Experience, we may unconsciously
avoid novel, ambiguous, complex challenges that are important, and that we are fully equipped to
tackle. We may forego some of the biggest opportunities we face because we respond reflexively,
according to habit.
Conversely, if we’re really open, we may be so engaged in enjoying all of those novel stimuli and ideas
that we never get around to making decisions. We may be really gathering information and playing with
possibilities. We may be less comfortable taking a point of view or actually trying something to see what
happens. Like da Vinci, we may not finish important work in a timely manner.
There’s a big debate about the malleability of the Big Five personality traits, but even if we can’t change
them, we can manage how they influence us. Openness to Experience is a predisposition – a preference
– and like any other predisposition, we can choose whether to follow it or not… provided that we
recognize that it’s there.
Ambiguity Tolerance
Ambiguity tolerance is a more specific tendency, and refers to our characteristic response when we’re
missing information needed to understand a situation or phenomenon that confronts us. It’s
conceptually different from uncertainty tolerance - how we respond when we don’t know what will
happen in the future – but they tend to be correlated. Ambiguity tolerance is closely related to
Openness to Experience, risk tolerance, comfort with uncertainty, novelty seeking, and a low need for
closure – that need to make a judgment rather than continue to collect information. It’s also been
found to be positively related to entrepreneurial performance. Those with a high tolerance for
ambiguity are less likely to perceive constraints and more likely to believe in their own ability to
succeed. In one study, firms whose CEOs had high ambiguity tolerance had better financial and market
performance.26
Complex and novel challenges are inherently ambiguous: for some, that’s precisely what makes them
interesting and enjoyable. They make most people really uncomfortable. One of the cognitive biases
that we discussed earlier was the “ambiguity effect:” the tendency to avoid choices with missing
information.
26
For a comprehensive review of ambiguity tolerance studies, see Furnham, A., & Marks, J. (2013). Tolerance of
ambiguity: a review of the recent literature. Psychology, 4(9), 717 – 728.
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Implications:
Developing your ambiguity tolerance – or at least fighting through the ambiguity – is important. Clearcut challenges rarely afford opportunities, precisely because they are well understood by everyone. To
uncover new opportunities and novel responses to complex challenges, we must embrace the ambiguity
that we’re sure to encounter. Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that tolerance for ambiguity correlates
with an entrepreneurial mindset, innovativeness, and financial and market performance.27
There’s some evidence that you can develop a greater tolerance for ambiguity by choosing to put
yourself in ambiguous settings. 28 Ambiguity tolerance is positively correlated with age, probably
because life is full of ambiguity and we get used to it. Because the Design Thinking process requires that
we embrace ambiguity, cycling through the process is probably a good way to increase your ambiguity
tolerance.
What if rather than avoiding ambiguity, you embrace it? This can be a problem for people with a high
tolerance for ambiguity, particularly if they score highly on Openness to Experience. You may so enjoy
the messiness that you struggle to get enough closure to assimilate inputs and converge on possible
courses of action. Again, you need to be mindful of where you need to be in the problem
finding/problem solving process, and not just where you like to be.
Preferred Learning Style
Problem finding/problem solving is really an approach to learning: about the populations that we want
to help, about the nature of their problems and needs, about possible solutions, and about what
solutions are most promising. The way we learn isn’t the same in each of these areas.
David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) addresses these very different ways of learning.29 ELT
posits that we learn by perceiving and then processing inputs, and those inputs can be tangible
experiences or mental manipulations. We can perceive through concrete experience, or through
abstract conceptualization (imagining). We can process our perceptions through active
experimentation, or by thinking about them via reflective observation.
To Kolb, experiential learning can be thought of as a cycle of cognition and activity that moves from
diverging (reflecting on concrete experience from multiple – perhaps contradictory - perspectives) to
assimilating (abstracting a theory or insight into what’s going on from our reflections) to converging
(devising tests of our theory) to accommodating/executing (trying our ideas to get more experience to
interpret). Kolb’s notion of how we learn from experience corresponds pretty well to the “modes” in
our problem finding/problem solving model, as seen in Figure 1. 30
27
Ibid.
See, for example, Banning, K.C. (2003). The effect of the case method on tolerance for ambiguity. Journal of
Management Education 27(5), 556-566.
29
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
30
This is adapted from Beckman, S.L. and Barry, M. (2007). Innovation as a learning process: embedding design
thinking. California Management Review, 50(1), 25-56.
28
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There are a couple of important distinctions between the ELT cycle and our model. First, our CREATE
mode starts with diverging (ideation), then converging on the most promising ideas to prototype.
Second, the ELT cycle is conceived to move in one direction: diverging → assimilating → converging →
accommodating. In our model, you move between modes in any order, depending on what is needed.
Figure 1
In an ideal learning cycle, Kolb would have us “touch all the bases:” gathering experience, reflecting on
it, conceptualizing the implications, and taking action. In doing so, we’d engage diverging, assimilating,
converging and accommodating learning styles. The challenge is that most of us prefer particular styles
of learning, and are likely to gravitate to the problem finding/problem solving modes that correspond to
those preferences.
Personality traits – those enduring predispositions – can affect our learning style preferences. Kolb’s
framework has been tied to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Extraverts tend to prefer to
process experience via active experimentation, while introverts skew toward reflective observation.
Feeling types (those who tend to make decisions based on their impact on others) tend to look for
concrete experiences, while thinking types (those more inclined to decide based on impersonal facts)
generally lean toward abstract conceptualization.31
Learning style preferences have been found to correlate with educational specialization, career choices,
and other life experiences. Literature students have been found to lean toward diverging learning
styles; engineers, toward converging; business students, toward accommodating; and students in many
of the humanities, toward assimilating. 32 There’s probably a two-way cause and effect here: we may
gravitate toward fields that are typically taught in our preferred learning style. Conversely, continuous
exposure to the teaching styles that dominate those fields may reinforce a preferred learning style.
Perhaps that is why many people develop more “balanced” learning styles as they age. As they gain
31
There’s a fair chance that you’ve taken the MBTI at some point in your life. For more information on it, visit
http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/.
32
Kolb, A.Y and Kolb, D.A. (2005). The Kolb learning style inventory – version 3.1: 2005 technical specifications.
Downloaded from http://learningfromexperience.com/media/2010/08/tech_spec_lsi.pdf.
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more life experience, they are increasingly exposed to different learning styles that best suit the subject
matter. If they’re not resistant to learning as circumstances require, they get more comfortable with
different ways of learning.
Implications
When we’re dealing with complex and/or novel challenges, we need to be able to move fluidly between
diverging, assimilating, converging, and accommodating styles of learning. Suppose that you have a
strong preference for an accommodating style: you want to make a decision and get on with it. The
danger is that you may be tempted to act without an adequate understanding of the problem and/or
without really considering the range of options available to you. Conversely, if you have a diverging
learning style preference, you may have a hard time “getting off the dime” and working toward
solutions.
Once again, the good news is that we’re talking about preferred learning styles: you have a choice of
which style to engage in at any point in the problem finding/problem solving process. If you’re mindful
of what mode you need to be in, you can engage the most appropriate learning style. Research also
suggests that learning style preferences are shaped by experience: you can become more skilled at
employing any learning style with practice. If you want to be fluent in all modes of the problem
finding/problem solving process, perhaps the best strategy is to look for opportunities to spend time in
modes that require the learning styles you’re least comfortable with. Odds are that gaining experience
will make you more comfortable, and contribute toward a more balanced approach to learning.
Summary
We’ve looked at four mindsets that can have a big impact on your ability to effectively conceptualize
and tackle complex, novel challenges. Each mindset is a predisposition to think, feel, and act in
particular ways.
The first – fixed versus growth mindset – deals with our characteristic response to the possibility of
“failure.” Are we consciously or unconsciously ducking potentially great opportunities – or failing to
learn the right lessons from unfavorable results – because we’re implicitly equating experiencing a
failure with being a failure? There’s a good chance that the less we’ve experienced failure, the more
likely we are to court it, either by foregoing potentially great opportunities or failing to learn from
adversity. Remember Shawn Boyer: make mistakes all day, but don’t fail by not trying something
important that might not work.
The second two mindsets deal with enduring personality traits. How open (or closed) are we to new
experiences? What’s our natural reaction to ambiguity? These traits color our gut response to novelty
and complexity – the source of both wicked problems and wicked opportunities. Do we naturally
embrace novelty and complexity, or do we shy away from them?
It’s easy (and perhaps tempting) to label high Openness to Experience and high Ambiguity Tolerance as
“good,” and thus label ourselves accordingly. That’s as dangerous as labeling ourselves as being a failure
because we experienced one. Personality traits are, by definition, enduring. Can we change our
personality? Perhaps, but it’s not going to be fast. Can we change our characteristic responses to the
stimuli that challenge our Openness or Ambiguity Tolerance? Absolutely.
There’s another thing to remember: even if you think Openness and Ambiguity Tolerance are good
things, you can have too much of a good thing. As we’ve seen, one can go too far when it comes to
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reveling in novelty, complexity, and the ambiguity that results. If you’re always seeking more new
stimuli, like da Vinci, you may find that you struggle when the time comes to make a call and act.
That brings us to preferred learning style. Fixed/growth mindset colors our response to the possibility
that what we try won’t work. Openness to Experience and Ambiguity Tolerance color our response to
novelty and complexity. Strong learning style preferences can color how – and how well – we work
through the entire problem finding/problem solving process: observing novel, complex phenomena
(diverging), developing plausible interpretations (assimilating), devising possible courses of action
(diverging again), choosing options to experiment with (converging), and learning from the results
(accommodating). Understanding any strong preferences can help us be more mindful of what we do
with those preferences. Practicing our less preferred learning styles can shape and balance our learning
preferences and our proficiency.
Being mindful of our own mindsets is tricky enough: we also have to be mindful of the mindsets of the
people we interact with or run the risk of unnecessary interpersonal conflict. You’ve probably seen this
in teams, perhaps in your team for this class. Often, tensions arise because different team members are
coming at their challenges with different mindsets and don’t realize it.


One team member (who prefers diverging) feels that the team needs to get more data. Another
(who prefers accommodating) feels that the team just needs to make a decision.
A low Openness team member views their high Openness teammate as hopelessly unfocused,
while the latter views the former as insufferably stubborn and conventional.
In both cases, being mindful of one another’s “default mindsets” can help the team get past them, and
make better decisions without misattributions. You’ll dig a lot deeper into personality and team
dynamics when you get to Organizational Behavior.
Mindsets are Like Handedness
When I played basketball as a kid, my coaches made me do lay-up drills shooting with my less preferred
hand. My left-handed shots never got to feel as natural my right-handed ones, but they got a lot better,
and so did my scoring potential. Your “default” mindsets are a lot like your preferred hand. If you
consciously cultivate your inventory of mindsets that would be appropriate for the various tasks at hand,
your strength and skills will increase, and you’ll expand your arsenal of weapons to attack novel,
complex challenges.
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Appendix: Five Factor Model of Personality
The Five Factor Model posits that there are five basic universal traits that explain much of the variance
in the many different trait taxonomies that have been proposed over the years. They are also thought
to subsume many narrower, more specific traits, known as “facets” of the “Big Five.” These are the Big
Five, along with the more specific “facets” (more specific traits) associated with them:33
Extraversion
This label also shows up in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which there’s a fair chance that
you’ve taken at some point.
Facets: warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement-seeking, positive emotions.
Agreeableness
Facets: trust, compliance, altruism, straightforwardness, modesty, tender-mindedness
Conscientiousness
Facets: competence, order, dutifulness, achievement-striving, self-discipline, deliberation
Neuroticism/Emotional Stability
Facets: anxiety, hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness, vulnerability
Openness
Facets: fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas, values
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These particular labels are associated with one measurement instrument, the NEO PI-R survey. There are
others that use slightly different language. Source: Educational Testing Service.
Mindset of the Renaissance Manager
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