The Foundation programme
The mindset kit you have been working without.

Learning to catch the moments that matter.

People and teams learn to read their own operating system, build practices that steady the nervous system under pressure, and develop the metacognitive skills to choose a different move in the moments that matter.

Step 1: How to become your own mindset coach

These can be designed to fit the organisation’s needs.

Explore how to become your own mindset coach
Diagnostic / The starting point

Build Your Mindset Trigger Map

Fifteen minutes. Your report lands in your inbox, along with your eight fixed mindset trigger scores and a heatmap of the most active triggers.

Read about the Mindset Profiler

Every participant in the Foundation programme completes the Mindset Profiler™ first. The assessment takes 15 minutes online and includes 48 psychometric items across the eight validated trigger scales.

You receive a personal report by email on completion, with an explanation of your results, the situations most likely to trigger your fixed mindset, and an initial set of strategies matched to your profile. The report becomes your working document for the workshops that follow.

Co-developed with Professor Carol Dweck at Stanford University, validated with researchers at Indiana University and the University of Texas across more than 5,000 employees. Benchmarked against 90,000+ profiles across 500+ organisations in 40+ countries.

Workshop One / Recognition

Making Meaning

You leave the sessions with a working picture of how your mindset responds when there is discomfort, uncertainty, or high stakes.

The pattern you’ve been calling a personality flaw.

“Mindset is not an attitude. It is a meaning-making system.”

The conceptual ground of the workshop.
In the workshop

What we work through

  • Read your Profiler results with kind, curious self-inquiry.
  • Understand mindset as a meaning-making system, and what false growth mindset looks like.
  • Walk through the neuroscience of fixed mindset triggers.
  • Develop nervous system awareness with steadying practices.
After the workshop

What you take away

  • A working picture of how your mindset responds under pressure.
  • Your two or three most active triggers.
  • A personal fixed mindset trigger map.
  • A Practice Trio established for ongoing work.

You leave the session with:

  • A working picture of how your mindset responds when there is discomfort, uncertainty, or high stakes
  • Which two or three triggers are most active
  • What your nervous system does when they activate
  • A set of steadying practices you've tested yourself
  • Practice Trios established

Mindset is not an attitude. It is a meaning-making system shaped by experience and context that determines how you interpret challenges, setbacks, feedback, and other people’s success. We start with what a false growth mindset looks like, so you can recognise one and how your mindset works as a meaning-making system.

Read your Profiler results from the starting point of kind, curious self-inquiry, not as a list of defects. The output is a personal fixed mindset trigger map: the situations that tend to trigger your fixed mindset, the thoughts and emotions that show up, and the default actions you take.

Neuroscience. We walk through what happens when a fixed-mindset trigger is activated, how the salience network flags cues as urgent, how your nervous system feeds into your attention, and how it narrows to threat rather than nuance. The aim is to move from “I’m overreacting” to “my system is doing what it was trained to do, and I can learn other options.”

Develop nervous system awareness. Learn to label sensations, map your personal early warning signs, and test a small set of steadying practices to find what works for you.

Workshop Two / The pause

Waking Up

Learn to catch the moment between a fixed mindset trigger and the automatic response, and how to make a different choice.

The half‑second where you still had a choice.

“Rumination asks ‘Why am I like this?’ Self-inquiry asks ‘What can I try next?’”

The shift this workshop teaches.
In the workshop

What we work through

  • Tell rumination apart from self-inquiry.
  • Practise concrete, time-bound self-inquiry questions.
  • Practise self-compassionate language.
  • Build BEAT’s model for your most active triggers.
After the workshop

What you take away

  • The skill of catching trigger moments in real time.
  • BEAT maps for your most active triggers.
  • Microreflections to use in meetings, conversations, and daily moments.
  • The capacity to plan for known trigger situations.

You leave the session with:

  • The skill of catching the moment between a trigger and the automatic response
  • Self-inquiry and metacognitive skills to steer your thinking in real time
  • A short sequence of self-inquiry questions, concrete and time-bound
  • BEAT maps (beliefs, emotional representations, action tendencies) for your most active triggers
  • Microreflections you can apply to meetings, conversations, goals, and everyday moments

The difference between rumination and self inquiry is the difference between “Why am I like this?” and “What happened, what did I feel, and what can I try next?” This workshop teaches you to tell them apart and stay on the useful side.

Using your fixed mindset trigger map, you work through a short sequence of questions that stay concrete and time-bound. You practise self-compassionate language, not “I failed again” but rather “My feedback trigger was high here; I did what I usually do; now I can test one different step.”

BEAT and microreflections. You build BEAT’s model for your most active triggers, which maps your beliefs, emotional representations, and action tendencies, so you can learn to work with what is happening without diagnosing yourself. You build microreflections as a short, repeatable metacognitive loop you can apply to meetings, conversations, goals, and everyday moments. The skill is planning for known trigger situations, monitoring what happens, and adjusting. Learning how to treat difficult situations as something you can prepare for rather than a test you either pass or fail.

Workshop Three / Design + test

Experiment and Practice

Design and run experiments on your most active fixed mindset triggers, supported by three trigger clinics and a personal library of strategies you have tested.

Three things you said you’d try last time.

“One tested change in one recurring situation.”

The size and specificity of an experiment.
In the workshop

What we work through

  • Self-guided learning: podcasts, films, and a watch party guide for your Practice Trio.
  • Build an initial BEAT experiment map of your most active triggers.
  • Design small, specific experiments across three Trigger Clinics.
  • Debrief what happened and refine the next round.
After the workshop

What you take away

  • A personal library of strategies you have tested.
  • Updated BEAT maps for your most active triggers.
  • Strategy cards marked with what you’ve tried and what has worked.
  • A practice card tracking what’s next.

You leave the session with:

  • A personal library of strategies you have tested for yourself
  • Updated BEAT experiment maps for your most active triggers
  • Strategy cards marked with what you’ve tried and what has worked
  • A practice card tracking what’s next
  • An approach to behaviour change applicable to any situation

Self-guided learning. A series of podcasts, films, and a watch party guide for your Practice Trio. You learn about thought labelling as a regulation step, build an initial BEAT map of your most active triggers, and learn a process for reflection-in-action. The purpose is to prepare for the experiment design and to teach an approach applicable to any situation requiring behaviour change.

Trigger Clinic one. You bring your prototype BEAT experiment map and insights from the watch parties. Together, we design small experiments tied to your fixed mindset trigger. For example, your fixed mindset trigger is Comfort Zone. The old pattern is your heart racing, jaw stiffening, overplanning, delaying action. You run a new experiment: “When I notice that feeling in my chest and jaw, I will write down my current assumptions and ask one clarifying question in the next meeting.” The key is size and specificity. One tested change in one recurring situation.

Trigger Clinics two and three. Each clinic opens with what happened, what was learned, and what you are comfortable sharing. You refine your experiments, explore the strategy cards, and design the next round. You leave each clinic with an updated BEAT map, strategy cards marked with what you’ve tried, and a practice card tracking what’s next and what has worked.

Step 2: Mindset Team Lab

Individual change needs team change.

Start building mindset norms and practices

What the team designs together

A team workshop using aggregated Profiler data to surface shared fixed mindset trigger patterns and design collective practices and norms.

“My feedback trigger is up. I need a moment to regulate before we go on.”

The shared language teams develop together.
What the team designs together

What the team designs together

  • Collective experiments tied to shared trigger patterns.
  • Protocols for check-ins, listening channels, and growth conversations.
  • Shared language for naming triggers in real time.
  • Norms around feedback, error, and learning.
After the workshop

What the team receives

  • An aggregated team data report.
  • A workshop summary with actions, commitments, and a structure for making changes to ways of working.
Read the full Team Lab detail

The workshop uses aggregated Profiler data to show where the team is collectively vulnerable. Together, the team designs collective experiments and agrees on protocols for check-ins, listening channels, growth conversations, and handling challenging decisions, goals and deadlines.

Teams learn to downregulate together before and during demanding work rather than treating regulation as something each person does alone. Shared language develops, for example, “my feedback trigger is up,” or “I need a moment to regulate before we go on,” without judgement. Colleagues practise responses that support curiosity rather than shut things down: “Thanks for naming that. Do you want a moment, or would a clarifying question help?”

The team agrees on norms around feedback, error, and learning that support growth behaviours: nervous system language; curiosity about how to support a fixed mindset trigger moment; shared clarity on what personal responsibility and shared accountability mean; kind before candid feedback; and deep listening through listening channels and quiet ego.

The Mindset Team Lab
You can be the giraffe.

Supporting Step 1 and Step 2

Changing Behaviour

Practice Trios and Daily Practice

Practice Trios meet between every session. A Daily Practice of three-minute check-ins and a fifteen-minute weekly review. Where change actually happens.

Read the full detail

Practice Trios

Regulation is not solo work. Research on social baseline theory shows that the brain treats trusted others as part of its default model. When you feel support, your threat register drops. The programme builds co-regulation into every layer.

Practice Trios meet on a regular schedule between sessions. Three people holding each other accountable for tracking triggers, running experiments, and making sense of what they notice. The conversations are short and structured. Each person briefs the other two on their trigger, their experiment, and what they expect to happen. The Trio listens, helps interpret what happened, and supports the design of the next experiment. It is harder to abandon an experiment when two peers are expecting to hear how it went.

Self-compassion and curiosity become cultural, not just individual. The aim is a setting where it is acceptable to admit to feeling uncomfortable, to ask for a pause, and to treat fixed mindset triggers as shared work rather than a weakness.

Daily Practice

A Daily Practice built into the weeks between workshops, designed to be small enough to actually do. Three minutes in the morning, brief check-ins through the day, a short capture at the end. The work between sessions is where change happens.

A short written morning check-in takes about three minutes: one trigger to watch for today, a catch moment, and one growth intention. Brief signal check-ins throughout the day to notice what’s happening physically. An end-of-day capture records something learned, one trigger moment caught or missed, and one intention for tomorrow. This is a metacognitive minute.

A fifteen-minute weekly review connects the week’s data back to your specific triggers. This is shared in the Practice Trios based on what is comfortable to share; there is no expectation to share what is too personal.

Workshop Approaches

How it’s delivered

Delivery Options and What You Receive

Three delivery modes adapt to your organisation. Each participant receives a personal Profiler report, a practice guide, a podcast series, strategy cards, and a Practice Trio guide.

Read the full detail

The content and sequence stay the same. How it runs depends on the organisation’s size, structure, and goals.

Mode 01 / Facilitator-led

Workshop-led

A GMI facilitator delivers the programme as modular virtual sessions or intensive face-to-face days. Designed for intact teams, senior leaders, and organisations who want direct access to GMI’s facilitation expertise.

Available for: foundation workshops · team workshop · leadership programme

Mode 02 / Self‑directed

Self-directed with community

Films, podcasts, watch parties, Practice Trios, a guided dashboard, and a community of practice. Each person works through the programme at their own pace, with the watch parties and Trios providing the social learning that makes the work stick.

Available for: Become Your Own Mindset Coach · Team Lab

Mode 03 / Internal coach

Internal coach-led

A GMI-certified mindset coach guides Become Your Own Mindset Coach and the Team Lab, designed for self-directed learning. The coach completes the six-module Coaching Certification with ongoing GMI supervision.

Available for: foundation programme only

What every participant receives

  • Your personal Mindset Profiler™ report, in your inbox, with eight fixed mindset trigger scores and a heatmap showing which triggers are most active.
  • A practice guide for the weeks between sessions with embedded films, podcasts, and reflection prompts designed to keep the work moving without adding cognitive load.
  • A podcast series for between-session listening.
  • Strategy cards built across the trigger clinics, marked with what you’ve tried and what has worked.
  • A Practice Trio guide with structure for the conversations.
Start with the Profiler

Map your fixed mindset triggers before the programme begins.

The Mindset Profiler™ measures eight trigger dimensions. Fifteen minutes. Benchmarked against 90,000+ profiles across 500+ organisations in 40+ countries. Every participant in the Foundation programme completes the Profiler first.

Take the Mindset Profiler™ →
Foundation Programme | Growth Mindset Institute