To Be a Great Leader, You Need the Right Mindset

Authors: Ryan Gottfredson and Chris Reina

Mindsets are mental lenses that dictate what information you take in and use to make sense of and navigate the situations you encounter. Simply, mindsets drive what you do and why. For example, they explain why two different leaders might encounter the same situation (such as a disagreement with an employee) and process and respond to it very differently. One leader might see the situation as a threat that hinders their authority; another as an opportunity to learn and further develop. When leadership development efforts ignore mindsets, they ignore how leaders see and interpret problems and opportunities like this one.

You may wonder: If mindsets are so important, which ones should you and your team develop? We broadly scoured research across the social sciences to understand the various mindsets that individuals may possess. In doing so, we identified four distinct sets of mindsets that have been found to affect leaders’ ability to engage with others, navigate change more successfully, and perform in their roles more effectively.

Growth and fixed mindsets. A growth mindset is a belief that people, including oneself, can change their talents, abilities, and intelligence. Conversely, those with a fixed mindset do not believe that people can change their talents, abilities, and intelligence. Decades of research have found that those with a growth mindset are more mentally primed to approach and take on challenges, take advantage of feedback, adopt the most effective problem-solving strategies, provide developmental feedback to their employees, and be effortful and persistent in seeking to accomplish goals.

Learning and performance mindsets. A learning mindset involves being motivated toward increasing one’s competence and mastering something new. A performance mindset involves being motivated toward gaining favorable judgments (or avoiding negative judgments) about one’s competence. People with a learning mindset, compared to those with a performance mindset, are more mentally primed to increase their competence, engage in deep-level learning strategies, seek out feedback, and exert more of an effort. They are also persistent, adaptable, willing to cooperate, and tend to perform at a higher level.

Deliberative and implemental mindsets. People with a deliberative mindset have a heightened receptiveness to all kinds of information as a way to ensure that they think and act as optimally as possible. People with an implemental mindset, as the name suggests, are more focused on implementing decisions, which closes them off to new and different ideas and information. Comparing the two, people with deliberative mindsets tend to make better decisions because they are more impartial, more accurate, and less biased in their processing and decision-making.

Promotion and prevention mindsets. People with a promotion mindset are focused on winning and gains. They identify a specific purpose, goal, or destination and prioritize making progress toward it. People with a prevention mindset, however, are focused on avoiding losses and preventing problems at all costs. Research has found that those with a promotion mindset are more prone to positive thinking, more open to change, more likely to persist despite challenges and setbacks, and demonstrate higher levels of task performance and innovative behavior compared to people with a prevention mindset.

Once you have a better understanding of these mindsets, you can see which will work best to help you meet your goals, and tailor the feedback, development, and training programs you offer your team to unlock the most effective mindsets in you and your people. A great example of an organization that leveraged the power of mindsets in this way is Microsoft. From 2001 to 2014, Microsoft’s market capitalization and stock price largely stayed the same. But, in 2014, when Satya Nadella took over, he made it his mission to revamp the leadership and the culture at Microsoft. In his book, Hit Refresh, Nadella explains that mindsets—particularly growth mindsets—were his primary focus when revamping Microsoft. With this leadership, the company’s market capitalization and stock price has more than tripled.

This is just one example that shows that prioritizing mindset development—specifically by targeting growth, learning, deliberative, and promotion mindsets—can help leaders and organizations boost their growth and development. As you work to cultivate each mindset, your thinking, learning, and behaviors will naturally improve because you’re seeing and interpreting your situations more effectively.

RYAN GOTTFREDSON is a leadership and management professor at the Mihaylo College of Business and Economics at California State University-Fullerton. CHRIS REINA is a leadership and management professor in the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship and founder and executive director of the Institute for Transformative Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University.