10 Questions to Get Your Team Ready for a Successful Year
The start of a new year often comes with ambitious goals and resolutions. Yet research shows that 80% of resolutions fail by February. To break old patterns and create lasting habits, it’s crucial to shift your mindset, as individuals and as a team. At Traineroo, we believe in building teams that thrive on learning, collaboration, and growth. This article contains 10 powerful questions that will help you spark meaningful conversations and set your team up for long-term success.
Why Reflection and Micro-Goals Matter
Strategy and large goals can feel overwhelming. By breaking them down into micro-goals and celebrating progress along the way, you create trust and momentum. This is the foundation of discipline, accountability, and sustainable growth. Want to strengthen these skills in your organization? Explore our Leadership & Management Training to unlock the full potential of your team leaders.
Fixed Mindset Versus Growth Mindset
Think about whether your team has a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. If you find that your team has a predominantly fixed mindset, use the questions in this article to start a conversation and boost a mindset shift within your team!
How to facilitate this team dialogue:
- Share a brief introduction with the team. Why are we here?
- Hand-out a printed version and pens, then give the team members 15 minutes to answer the questions individually.
- Discuss the answers with the team (for large teams in sub groups of 3-8 people, bringing back conclusions to the plenary session).
1. What is working?
What is already going really well in the way we perform as a team? What makes you proud? In the learning process, start with focussing on the good stuff. Instead of talking about what you can do differently, celebrate the processes and way of working which is going well within the team.
2. What isn’t working?
What keeps us from being successful as a team? Which patterns do we have to break? Learning isn’t all about the outcome. Shift your focus from the destination to the journey. It’s actually more about the process, and by focusing on the journey you are able to gain a deeper understanding of the material, and gain interesting discoveries along the way. Those with a growth mindset live for the process, not the finish line. By the time you reach the end product, you will have learned tons more than if you had focused solely on getting it done.
3. How do we move forward?
What can we learn from our team performance in from the last year? What should we do differently as a team to become (even more) successful in the upcoming year? Prioritize learning. Placing learning as a necessity in your life and that of your team is important. This means devoting time to learning every day, whether it’s five minutes in the morning or giving your team space and time to read, experience and learn on the job.
4. What are our weaknesses as a team?
No one’s perfect, which means everyone and every team has weaknesses. A team with a fixed mindset doesn’t want to think about what their shortcomings may be. However, to shift to a growth mindset, it’s important to recognize and accept things that could be perceived as weaknesses. The main reason for this is because you can’t change if you don’t or won’t acknowledge that there is a problem.
5. How can we support one another for success?
Learning together as a team and improving together as a team is as important as it is to support each other in the (learning and developing) processes. Filling in each other’s’ ‘gaps’ and forming a cohesive team thereby boosting the teams’ growth mindset.
6. What do we (as a team) need to grow?
Know what your team needs to develop/learn. There are many different learning styles, and it’s important to know what motivates your team to learn- as individuals within and as a whole. It can take some time to understand these nuances, and develop learnings which trigger each individual within the team, but once this is fine-tuned, learning will be easier and more enjoyable for everyone.
7. What questions are you asking yourself?
Know what you need to learn and develop, it’s also important to know your own. Just as the nuances within your team members, you as an individual have specific learning needs and styles. Sometimes a fixed mindset has come from not fully understanding the best way for you to take in information, meaning if you’re not a person who enjoys sitting at a desk all day, then taking classes where you’re required to sit at a desk all day isn’t going to serve you. Do some research online as there are many different books and quizzes which can help you figure out what kind of learner you are.
8. What are you trying to defend?
Accept constructive criticism. A lot of people can’t handle criticism, and it’s a problem. Criticism is essential to growth, be it personal or in business. Think of constructive criticism as a necessary tool for learning. Sometimes when you have an area of weakness, it needs to be pointed out to you, so you can focus on it and improve. In some ways, you can think of constructive criticism as a gift.
9. What would it be like if...
What would it be like if you accepted the constructive criticism of your team, what would change? What would stay the same?Learning together as a team and improving together as a team is as important as it is to support each other in the (learning and developing) processes. Filling in each other’s’ ‘gaps’ and forming a cohesive team thereby boosting the teams’ growth mindset.
10. What would it mean to...
What would it mean to give up surviving to thrive? What do you need to do to thrive? Who would you be that you are not now? Never stop learning. Maintain a childlike curiosity about the world. Growth-minded people create new goals and new projects to immerse themselves in topics that interest them, and they never feel like they know it all. The same applies to your team. Learn and grow together, there are always ways, tools and techniques to become an even more efficient or effective team.
From Surviving to Thriving Together
True growth requires more than surviving deadlines and daily pressures. It means creating a culture of curiosity, feedback, and continuous learning. By embracing these questions, your team takes the first steps toward thriving together in the year ahead. Looking for practical tools to facilitate this journey? Our Team Building Programs are designed to strengthen collaboration, trust, and engagement in a hands-on way.
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Download Print Version
Come together as a team and discuss the answers to these questions. You can download the print version of the hand-out (PDF) to use during your team session.
