Week 5 - Business and Leadership - Feb 27-Mar 5

Successful business leaders typically possess a growth mindset. Rather than trying to prove they are better than others, they focus on trying to improve. Leaders with a fixed mindset believe that some people are superior and others are inferior and their companies are a reflection of their own superiority.

1. Do you think leaders are born rather than made, as in “a born leader?” Why?

2. Break up business/educational leadership into its separate parts—knowledge of the organization, management skills, negotiation skills, planning for the future, and any others you can think of. Are each of these traits "learnable" or not? What does this tell you about becoming a better leader?

Week 4 - The Mindset of a Champion - Feb 20-26

1. How are teaching and coaching similar? How can mindsets of athletes and students affect their performance on the field and in the classroom?

2. Is there a sport or activity you’ve always wanted to try but haven’t because you believe you would not be successful? What is the activity and how could you start to learn it?

3. Does your joy in competition come from competing your hardest or from winning? Do you take losses really hard? Why? What do losses say about you, your ability, or your image of yourself?

Week 3 - The Truth about Ability and Accomplishment - Feb 13-19

1. Discuss people you know (names not needed) who are brilliant or talented but not necessarily successful. Compare this to people who are not so brilliant or talented but who are highly successful. What traits are the difference makers?

2. Have you ever trusted someone’s negative evaluation of your ability or talent? Think about it now. How did they judge your potential?

3. How can your mindset about your students affect how you teach?

*Join the discussion by providing your thoughts in the comments box below and adding feedback to the thoughts of two other participants.

Week 2 - Inside the Mindsets - Feb 6-12

1. Everyone is born a learner—that is, with a growth mindset. Babies push themselves to do incredibly challenging tasks like learning to walk and talk, and they don’t give up but plow ahead. So what changes when these same children later stop following their natural desire to learn?

2. How do schools sometimes encourage fixed mindsets? List school structures, practices, or labels that foster fixed mindsets then identify ways to shift thinking towards a growth mindset using those same structures or practices.

3. Pages 28-29 discussed a teacher’s reaction to having to judge a student based on one score. Consider the ways in which educators make decisions based on fixed thinking. How could we use the same information in a growth mindset?

*Join the discussion by providing your thoughts in the comments box below and adding feedback to the thoughts of two other participants.