As I’ve gotten older, I have realized that my personal paradigm is one of a growth mindset (solidified through reading and digesting materials like Angela Duckworth’s work on the concept of “grit”). While this may just be a repackaged classic “fear of death,” it leads into pretty much everything for me. I like feeling that I am growing and getting better at something or taking advantage of the time I have.
I love soccer and snowboarding and yoga and other sports – and I love to do them and feel like I am improving or at least being challenged. I enjoy podcasts and audiobooks because I love learning. I like to be around people – and date people – who want to be better people. These people tend to express issues they have, as well as listen to you (better conflict resolutions). They tend to keep reading and listening to quality things (always learn from them and never run out of things to talk about). They tend to be active, and easy to create memories with. Their relationships are deeper. They like to do new things and try new things. They like adventurous foods and good music. These people are way easier to work with, for me.
And that is my lens for work, life, and play – I want to be around people that can challenge me, even if it’s not particularly enjoyable or easy in the moment. I like tasks that are gratifying, even if they’re not easy at the time. I like feeling like I’m working toward something better, whether it’s as part of a team, part of a relationship, or part of a project at work. The lens through which I view things is one of opportunity for growth and building skills and competencies, or for making my life better or my work more meaningful. I struggle with passive aggression or with people who are OK being negative or stagnant. I struggle when work seems to have no point or any direct result or impact. I struggle when I feel like I’m not learning and I’m just wasting time.
I’ve found this can be at odds with a strength-emphasizing mindset; with trying to grow, it can be easy to focus on things you NEED to improve or GROW IN and measure yourself by exclusively those metrics, i.e. sucking less at something. As I’ve learned about the growth and strength mindset though, and tried to apply that to life, it’s been more and more rewarding over time, but requires no small degree of intentionality.
As far as referencing Burrell and Morgan’s paradigm Matrix, I have to do some more thinking on it but I think I fall somewhere between the Functionalist and Interpretive Paradigms, perhaps utilizing both depending on the situation or stimulus. I do think humans are fundamentally irrational (as anyone familiar with social sciences or behavioral economics can tell you), but we also do display consistent(ish) traits that draw on our fundamental assumptions and senses of self.
Something that stuck out to me in Buckingham’s videos was that he talked about international and cultural differences in “leveraging strengths.” My undergrad minor was in Asian studies, and my senior thesis to this effect dealt with neurological and sociocultural differences between “Eastern” and “Western” countries. I’ve also since read “Battle hymn of the tiger mother,” work by Angela Duckworth, etc. that touches on what Buckingham mentioned – that even though we’re still terrible at it, the USA is actually far higher on focusing on strengths and ignoring weaknesses than other countries. People with an Asian cultural background, according to the research, are far more prone to focus on, and shore up, weaknesses to become good at everything; Americans tend to shy away from weaknesses (largely because we don’t like to admit we are bad at things – the classic “my greatest weakness is that I’m a perfectionist” comes to mind) and only deal with our strengths – or at least, more than East Asians. I remember this for my thesis in 2012, and was reminded of it by Buckingham. Of course, it’s way more complex than this, and has a wide variety of influences (the self esteem movement, the way we view parenting and success, the way we look at achievement, the way we find value in life and work, differences in views of people as malleable vs. character traits as fixed, etc. etc.), but it has always been interesting to me.
However, as Buckingham said, even though we may be “better” for whatever reason at focusing on strengths in the good ol’ USA, we still really suck at it.
Personally, I’m happy to embrace this mentality. Nobody really remembers you or values you for being “pretty good at everything.” They value you for what you are GREAT at doing. And that, with honesty and humility, is how you contribute to your own growth, the people around you, and whatever organization you find yourself a part of.