Knowing Your Leadership Mindset is Part of Being a Great Leader
A leadership mindset is a core set of personal values upon which the leader’s behaviors, reactions, decisions, and actions are based. A mindset creates behaviors and thinking patterns. In her global bestseller Mindset: The Psychology of Success, psychologist Carol Dweck depicted a fixed mindset as one containing the beliefs that talent and abilities are innate, permanent, and resistant to effort. On the other hand, a belief that effort, learning from failure, and perseverance can improve performance was labeled by Dweck as a growth mindset.
Leaders with a fixed mindset end up demotivating their team members, as their behaviors and thinking patterns end up breeding mistrust, stifling creativity, and creating a blame others culture. As a result, team members feel unappreciated by their leader and wind up with less commitment and higher disengagement. Naturally, a growth mindset enhances individual and team performance through encouragement, motivation, and turning errors into learning opportunities.
Your personal leadership mindset needs to be based on your beliefs and principles, how you view situations and people, your vision and the tenure range of that vision, and where you place your focus. Here are eight of my favorite quotations on leadership mindset, from my book Great Leadership Words of Wisdom, that are a good place to start your own reflection on the kind of leadership mindset you wish to employ:
Great Leadership Words of Wisdom
We lead by being human. We do not lead by being corporate, professional or institutional. Paul Hawken
The one who asks questions doesn’t lose his way. African Proverb
We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face. We must do that which we think we cannot. Eleanor Roosevelt
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. Stephen Hawking
Leadership is not a right; it’s a responsibility. John Maxwell
The man who does not value himself cannot value anything or anyone. Ayn Rand
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. John F. Kennedy
Know Thyself. Temple of Apollo
Much like having your own personal leadership philosophy, to become a great leader also requires the development of your own leadership mindset based on your own set of personal values and beliefs.
(You’ll find over 1000 quotations on great leadership from global business leaders, statesmen, athletes, coaches, sages, and philosophers in my recent book Great Leadership Words of Wisdom, available in paperback and Kindle formats at Amazon.)
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