For fifteen years, "growth mindset" has lived on posters and mission statements, an idea most people nod at but don't always fully understand. In Proudly Unfinished, counselling psychologist Penni Cox takes it apart and rebuilds it into something a little more grounded.

Drawing on the research of Carol Dweck, Angela Duckworth and Mary Murphy, and on twenty years working at the edges of human experience, from a school hall in South Africa to the floor of a house in Liberia during an Ebola outbreak, Penni makes the case that growth isn't only a byproduct of strain but can arrive out of ease, safety and curiosity.

This is where Penni departs from the research. It isn't simply mindset or environment, she contends, but a ratio between the two, one that shifts as a person's own capacity to create safety for themselves matures.

Funny, moving and unmistakably her own, the talk moves from real storytelling to a reenactment of Monty Python's Black Knight insisting he's "fine" as he loses every limb, and lands on a simple truth: growth mindset is never just one or the other, it's a combination of one's internal game and the environment where your feet are planted. It's not as cut and dried as the poster makes it look, but it's far more freeing.

Audiences leave with a practical way of thinking about growth in themselves and their teams, a lighter relationship with the whole idea of "growing," and permission to stop performing and start living and leading.