Growth Mindset: Turning Challenge into Insight
David Waters
David Waters is a business coach, psychotherapist, and corporate trainer with over fifteen years’ experience working with globally recognised organisations including Meta, NTT Data, Viacom, and the Southbank Centre. He has been a faculty member of The School of Life since 2010.
Drawing on a background in journalism and mental health, David brings a distinctive blend of insight, clarity, and emotional intelligence to his work. He has lived and worked in New York, Paris, and London, where he is now based. David writes on men and mental health for Mr Porter, The Beautiful Truth and newspapers including The New York Observer, The Guardian and the Telegraph.
David has a profound commitment to facilitating and supporting meaningful change in organizations, fostering psychological safety, and developing self-awareness for both individuals and teams. Alongside his professional practice, David is a passionate advocate for the arts and maintains a parallel creative life as a classical musician.
- Recording: Yes
- Language: English
- Duration: 45 min / 15 min
Session Summary
Inspired by the work of psychologist Carol Dweck, this practical and transformational talk explores growth mindset as a lived skill. David focuses on developing key competencies around effort, challenge, setbacks, feedback and learning from others. Through engaging reflection, real-world examples and simple experiential exercises, participants gain clear tools to reframe difficulty, respond more constructively to feedback and build their resilience. This talk offers immediately usable takeaways that support sustained personal and professional growth.
Interaction
During the expert session, David Waters engages the audience through methods like Q&A sessions, live demonstrations, and interactive exercises using the Mentimeter app.
Key Learnings
Detailed session description
Inspired by the work of psychologist Carol Dweck, this practical and transformational talk explores growth mindset as a lived skill. David focuses on developing key competencies around effort, challenge, setbacks, feedback and learning from others. Through engaging reflection, real-world examples and simple experiential exercises, participants gain clear tools to reframe difficulty, respond more constructively to feedback and build their resilience. This talk offers immediately usable takeaways that support sustained personal and professional growth.
Other Sessions by this Speaker
Change Management: Working Skillfully with the Inevitable
This practical and insightful talk draws on business psychology to explore how individuals experience and respond to change. David examines the dual nature of change as both exciting and disruptive, helping participants understand their own habitual reactions and assumptions. Through powerful examples and applied tools, this talk offers clear strategies for managing uncertainty with greater awareness and flexibility. Participants will learn useful insights and practical takeaways to navigate change more confidently, recognising it as an unavoidable and workable part of their working lives.
Resilience: Meeting Life’s Challenges with Strength and Perspective
This powerful and practical talk draws on Stoic philosophy and existential thinking to explore resilience as an emotional competency which can be learnt. David invites participants to rethink setbacks as opportunities for learning, growth and meaning, while acknowledging the inevitability of difficulties in work and life. Through powerful story telling and real-life examples attendees gain practical tools to strengthen emotional steadiness, perspective and agency. The session offers clear, usable takeaways to help participants face challenges with greater calm, self awareness and courage.
How to Build Trust in Teams: The Foundation of High Performance Success
Based on Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team, this practical and impactful talk explores trust as the cornerstone of high-functioning teams. David focuses on vulnerability, openness and psychological safety as essential conditions for collaboration and performance. With applied tools, participants learn how to model trust, address unspoken dynamics and reduce defensive behaviours. Attendees leave with clear insights and powerful, usable takeaways to build stronger relationships and create more resilient, effective relationships in their teams.
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