Video production: Andrew Kennedy Lewis
Jacqueline Carter, co-author of “The Mind of the Leader” and international partner and North American director of the Potential Project, says meaningful leadership starts with changing how we manage and understand our minds.
Read the full transcript of Carter’s interview below:
We know right now that there’s a massive shift in terms of what used to be successful for leaders and what leaders of the future need. What it really takes – it’s a different mindset. I mean, we know that in terms of leadership education, it used to be about the strategy, it used to be about the vision, managing the numbers. All of those things are still critically important, but we know that today what’s even far more important is having an agile mind, having the ability to be able to create a sense of connectedness, helping people to feel happy at work, creating a sense of meaning and purpose. A guy or a gal that just drives the vision but doesn’t drive the engagement, doesn’t make people feel like they’re part of something bigger, is not going to be able to long-term be the successful leader today.
These skills, they used to be called the soft skills, but honestly, these are hard skills, and they start with a change in how we manage and understand our mind. That’s what I would say in terms of what is really critical for leaders today is to really start with your own mind, understand how you show up, how you want to show up, and sometimes, how to be able to make a shift so that you can show up in the way that’ll best enable your people and support your organization in the best way possible.
