Course Highlights
This growth mindset workshop for teams will:
- Examine the distinctions between a fixed and growth mindset and identify the nine specific benefits teams realize when they adopt a growth-oriented approach.
- Explain the science of neuroplasticity and the environmental and internal factors that shape how mindsets form and can be changed.
- Introduce the language, behaviors, and habits that characterize learning teams, and the patterns that learning teams deliberately avoid.
- Present three practical feedback frameworks, Quick Observations, LLC, and PPP, for giving and receiving input in ways that reinforce growth rather than triggering defensiveness.
- Work through case studies that apply the course’s tools to realistic team challenges.
- Close with twenty actionable ideas for sustaining a growth-oriented culture after the session ends.
Course Overview
Teams with a growth mindset do not perform better because they are more talented. They perform better because they have built a different relationship with effort, feedback, and failure. This half-day workshop gives teams the shared language, the behavioral frameworks, and the practical tools to build that relationship deliberately rather than hoping it develops on its own.
The session opens by establishing the difference between a fixed and growth mindset clearly, examining how each one shows up in team behavior and what each costs or produces at the group level. From there, the course addresses the science behind why mindsets can change, covering neuroplasticity and the environmental factors, including upbringing, life experience, role models, and the people around us, that shape how people think about their own potential and that of their teams.
The middle modules move from concept to practice. Participants will examine what learning teams actually do differently using a Start, Stop, Continue structure, work through the reasons people avoid giving and receiving feedback, and practice three feedback frameworks designed for workplace application. The case study module puts the tools to work on realistic team situations before the session closes with twenty specific ideas participants can implement immediately.
The following outline highlights some of the course’s key learning points. As part of your training program, we will modify content as needed to meet your business objectives. Upon request, we will provide you with a copy of the participant materials prior to the session(s).
Program Objectives
At this program’s conclusion, participants should be able to:
- Differentiate between fixed and growth mindsets and describe how each one affects team performance.
- Explain the benefits of adopting continuous learning for teams and organizations.
- Discuss neuroplasticity and the factors that influence how mindsets form and change.
- Use language and phrasing that promotes growth-oriented thinking.
- Apply three feedback frameworks to encourage learning and accountability.
- Identify behaviors that hinder or foster a learning culture.
- Develop strategies for maintaining momentum in continuous improvement efforts.
Workshop Modules
Two Views, One Choice: Understanding Fixed and Growth Mindsets
The session opens with three questions designed to surface a personal experience of persistence and growth before the frameworks are introduced. From that starting point, participants will examine the fixed mindset and the growth mindset as two distinct belief systems about how intelligence and ability work. A fixed mindset treats capability as predetermined and static, producing avoidance of challenges, fear of failure, defensive responses to feedback, and discomfort with others’ success. A growth mindset treats capability as expandable through effort, feedback, and persistence, producing resilience, openness to criticism, and the ability to draw motivation from others’ achievements rather than feeling threatened by them. The module then examines nine specific benefits that teams realize when they collectively adopt a growth orientation, including enhanced collaboration, increased innovation, greater resilience, higher engagement, continuous skill development, a more positive work culture, better adaptability to change, more effective conflict resolution, and distributed leadership across the team.
Rewriting the Code: How Learning Changes the Brain
A growth mindset is not something people are born with or without. It is developed through conditioning, environment, and practice, and the neuroscience behind that development is well established. This module introduces neuroplasticity, the brain’s capacity to form new neural pathways through experience and practice throughout a person’s life, and examines what that means practically for teams trying to shift their culture. Participants will examine the six factors that shape mindset over time: upbringing and the early messages received about effort versus talent, life experiences that either rewarded persistence or penalized failure, role models and authority figures who modeled growth-oriented behavior, core beliefs about intelligence and the nature of success, motivation and whether it comes from internal satisfaction or external validation, and the people currently in a person’s environment. The module closes with a look at the internal narratives that run in most people’s heads, distinguishing fixed tapes, including “I’m just not good at this” and “either you have it or you don’t,” from growth tapes that reframe struggle as progress and criticism as information. Participants will examine which tapes are running in their own heads and practice shifting the soundtrack.
Model Teams: Behaviors That Foster a Learning Culture
Understanding what a growth mindset is does not automatically produce one. This module examines what learning teams actually do differently from teams that merely endorse the idea. Using a Start, Stop, Continue structure across four behavioral areas, participants will work through what it means to walk the talk of a growth mindset by discussing successes and failures equally as learning opportunities, to focus on effort and process rather than only outcomes and results, to learn from setbacks through structured debrief rather than ignoring or glossing over failures, and to promote accountability and feedback as normal and valued rather than threatening. The module also examines four things learning teams deliberately avoid: resisting growth and change, focusing on fault rather than solutions, making excuses for lack of effort, and assuming major issues will resolve on their own. Participants will identify which of these behaviors are most present in their current team environment and decide specifically what to start, stop, and continue.
Feedback in Action: Tools for Giving and Receiving Input
Feedback is the mechanism through which growth mindset becomes operational, and most people are not good at giving it or receiving it. This module begins by examining eight reasons people avoid giving feedback, including fear of negative reactions, discomfort with conflict, lack of skill, and the institutional culture that treats feedback as unnecessary when things are going well enough. It then examines five reasons people resist or argue with feedback they receive, including the tendency to view it as personal criticism, to hear only the negative, and to respond with a fixed mindset that makes the feedback feel futile. From there, the module introduces three practical frameworks. Quick Observations are immediate, effort-focused acknowledgments that build the feedback habit and prime the relationship for more substantive input. LLC, Like, Like, Consider, is a balanced method that identifies two specific positives and one area for growth, structured to invite collaboration rather than deliver judgment. PPP, Positive, Problem, Plan, is a versatile framework that works peer-to-peer or supervisor-to-team-member, combining acknowledgment with a specific problem and a concrete plan. Participants will practice all three using realistic workplace scenarios before applying them in the accountability module.
Accountability in Practice: Holding the Team to Growth Goals
This module applies the frameworks introduced in the previous sessions to three realistic team situations. In the first case, a coworker’s fixed self-talk is undermining her own performance and affecting team morale. In the second, a team is comfortable with the status quo and resistant to any change, producing an environment where excuses flow freely and improvement is discouraged. In the third, a participant who normally operates from a growth mindset finds that stress and collective negativity pull them back into fixed thinking patterns they struggle to recognize in the moment. For each case, participants will determine what can be done, which frameworks apply, what roadblocks to anticipate, and what accountability looks like in practice rather than in principle. The discussion connects the feedback frameworks, the behavioral patterns from the Model Teams module, and the self-talk awareness from the Rewriting the Code module into a single integrated response.
Next Steps Forward: Building a Continuous Improvement Plan
The final module addresses the question that every workshop eventually faces: what happens after the energy of the session fades? Participants will work through twenty specific, actionable ideas for sustaining a growth-oriented culture, including embracing challenges as learning opportunities rather than avoiding them, using the word “yet” to reframe current limitations as future possibilities, replacing “failing” with “learning,” setting learning goals alongside performance goals, rewarding effort and process rather than only outcomes, and reflecting regularly on what is and is not working. Four quotations from Carol Dweck, Amy Morin, Pablo Picasso, and Liberty Hyde Bailey anchor the discussion in the broader conversation about persistence, effort, and the nature of growth. Each participant will leave with a personal commitment to one change they will make in the following week and one team behavior they will actively support.
Target Audience
This workshop is designed for groups that want to:
- Strengthen the team’s ability to embrace challenges and adapt to change.
- Foster a culture of accountability and learning through shared language and practical tools.
- Build a more collaborative, improvement-focused environment that holds under pressure.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who should attend this growth mindset workshop?
This course is designed for intact teams rather than individuals drawn from across an organization. The exercises, the feedback frameworks, and the case studies all work most effectively when participants share a work context and will continue working together after the session. Teams that attend together leave with a common vocabulary and a set of specific behavioral commitments that they can hold each other accountable to in the weeks that follow.
How is this different from other growth mindset training?
Most growth mindset training focuses on the individual. This course focuses on the team as a unit and examines what it takes to build a shared culture of learning rather than expecting individual mindset shifts to produce collective results. The feedback frameworks, the Start/Stop/Continue behavioral analysis, and the case studies are all designed for the team context rather than adapted from individual development content.
Does this course address the science behind growth mindset?
Yes. The neuroplasticity module explains the research basis for why mindsets are not fixed, how the brain forms new connections through practice and experience, and what that means practically for teams trying to change deeply ingrained patterns. The course does not treat growth mindset as a motivational concept. It treats it as a well-researched behavioral framework with a specific body of evidence behind it.
How much of the session is discussion versus skill practice?
Both run throughout the day. The mindset definitions, the neuroplasticity content, and the team benefits section involve structured discussion. The Start/Stop/Continue exercise, the feedback framework practice, and the case studies involve active application. The balance is intentional: participants need to understand the concepts clearly enough to apply them, and application is what makes the concepts usable after the session ends.
Can this course be customized for our team?
Yes. Before the session, we gather information about your team’s specific challenges, the nature of the work, and the cultural patterns most relevant to your situation. Teams dealing primarily with resistance to change may go deeper on the Model Teams module. Teams that struggle with feedback may spend more time on the three frameworks and the barriers to giving and receiving input. The case studies can be adjusted to reflect the team’s actual environment.
What do participants leave with?
Participants will leave with a clear framework for distinguishing fixed and growth mindset behaviors in themselves and each other, three feedback tools they have practiced during the session, a Start/Stop/Continue commitment specific to their team’s current patterns, twenty ideas for sustaining a growth culture, and one personal behavioral commitment for the following week.