Suppose your boss pulls you aside and tells you: “You don’t
have the right skills for the project.”
Then suppose a different situation, where your boss tells
you: “You don’t have the right skills for the project, yet” or “You don’t yet
have the connections to make this deal happen.”
The word yet makes all the difference in the world. In the
first example, you feel like a failure. In the examples with “yet,” you feel
like you may not be ready now, but you could be in the future.
Carol Dweck, the Stanford professor who’s researched the
idea of a “growth mindset,”elaborates:
By [using the word "yet"] we give people a time
perspective. It creates the idea of learning over time. It puts the other
person on that learning curve and says, “Well, maybe you’re not at the finish
line but you’re on that learning curve and let’s go further.” It’s such a
growth mindset word.