Building Growth-Minded Teams

How Leaders Create Cultures Where Everyone Gets Better

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one." ~ Elbert Hubbard

What You'll Learn

• Why growth-minded cultures outperform talent-focused teams by 65% in supporting risk-taking and innovation

• The four hidden barriers that most leaders unknowingly create when trying to build growth mindset teams

• The TEAMS framework: five practical strategies to transform individual growth into collective intelligence

• How neuroscience reveals that growth-minded teams literally synchronize their brain activity for better performance

• Why leadership vulnerability is the key to unlocking team learning potential

Harvard Business Review research reveals that companies with growth-minded cultures are 47% more likely to see their employees as trustworthy, 49% more likely to see high levels of innovation, and 65% more likely to say their company supports risk-taking.

Yet most leaders struggle to move beyond individual growth mindset to building truly growth-minded teams.

The Hidden Barriers to Team Growth

Most leaders unknowingly create fixed-mindset cultures through well-intentioned practices:

• Performance reviews that judge rather than develop past performance instead of future growth opportunities

• Hiring for "culture fit" rather than learning orientation creates echo chambers that resist new thinking

• Rewarding individual stars over team learning sends the message that capability is distributed unequally

• Crisis management that reverts to control abandons growth practices when they're needed most

The TEAMS Framework for Growth Culture

Transform your team culture using this systematic approach:

T - Teach Learning Language

Replace "I don't know" with "I don't know yet." Replace "This is too hard" with "This will require new skills."

E - Establish Learning Rituals

Build regular practices: retrospectives focused on insights gained, "failure parties" that celebrate valuable mistakes, peer coaching sessions.

A - Assess for Growth Potential

In hiring, prioritize curiosity over credentials. In performance reviews, emphasize development over demonstration.

M - Model Vulnerability

Share your own learning challenges, ask for help publicly, and celebrate when you develop new capabilities.

S - Support Stretch Assignments

Deliberately assign projects that require new skills. Provide coaching but resist rescuing them from learning discomfort.

From Individual to Collective Intelligence

When teams operate from growth mindset, research shows their neural activity becomes coordinated, creating brain-to-brain coupling.* This allows teams to process information more efficiently and generate insights individual minds couldn't produce.

Fixed-mindset teams show fragmented neural activity as members focus on protecting individual positions rather than building collective understanding.

Practical Applications

Team Meetings: Start with "What did we learn since last time?" rather than "What did we accomplish?"

Project Debriefs: Focus 80% on insights gained and capabilities developed, 20% on what went wrong.

Goal Setting: Include learning objectives alongside performance objectives.

Recognition: Celebrate learning breakthroughs equally with performance achievements.

The Leadership Paradox

Building growth-minded teams requires leaders to model vulnerability. To demonstrate strength, leaders must show learning edges. To build confidence, they must admit uncertainty.

Consider Matt Condan's approach in Morton Grove School District 70. Rather than pretending to have all answers, he consistently models learning, shares growth areas, and creates systems where everyone's development contributes to collective success.

Your Challenge This Week

Implement one element of the TEAMS framework:

1. Choose one practice to pilot for one week

2. Model the behavior consistently

3. Notice the ripple effects on team dynamics

The Leader's Choice

Every interaction either reinforces fixed thinking or develops growth thinking. The most transformational leaders understand their job isn't to be the smartest person in the room—it's to create rooms where everyone gets smarter together.

Your team's next breakthrough isn't trapped in their current capabilities. It's waiting to be unlocked through collective commitment to continuous learning.

---

*Reinero, D. A., Dikker, S., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2021). Inter-brain synchrony in teams predicts collective performance. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 16(1-2), 43-57.