The Performance Paradox with Eduardo Briceño

In this interview about growth and development, author and growth mindset expert Eduardo Briceño shares how leaders, teams, and organizations can create a culture of growth, where experimentation and feedback are encouraged, and learning is integrated into the everyday. Integrating learning and performance is the central idea behind Eduardo’s book “The Performance Paradox.”

Eduardo shares why people in any profession should embrace the “Learning Zone” - a space where they can be deliberate about improvement - rather than constantly focusing on minimizing mistakes and peak performance. He talks about how leaders and coaches should create psychological safety so members of a team can experiment, and even fail, without negative repercussions. He makes the case that people should approach their work with two goals in mind - getting things done and improving. They can do that by proactively soliciting feedback, performing trial and error activities, and reflecting on mistakes. Eduardo gives advice for how leaders should handle mistakes and how they can best model being a learner. He shares how companies like Microsoft, General Mills, Skratch Labs, New York Life, and Bridgewater Associates have benefited from welcoming the “Learning Zone” and how CEOs like Satya Nadella and Ray Dalio have openly celebrated their own mistakes and learned from the feedback they received after those mistakes.

Eduardo Briceño is a global keynote speaker, facilitator, and guide supporting leaders cultivating growth mindset cultures. 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. For over a decade he was the CEO of Mindset Works, which he cofounded in 2007 with Stanford professor Carol Dweck, Lisa Blackwell, and others. Earlier, he served as a technology investor with Credit Suisse's venture capital arm the Sprout Group. Eduardo grew up in Caracas, Venezuela. He holds bachelor's degrees in economics and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as an MBA and M.A. in education from Stanford University. He was shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award in 2023.