Great Leaders
Think Differently

Key Success Indicators

According to the leaders we surveyed, they know they are successful in instilling a growth mindset when the people on their team embrace new ideas and creative thinking. For organizations aiming to innovate—and who isn’t?—fostering a growth mindset might just be the secret weapon. It’s what enables teams to learn from the past, adapt, and push forward. To stay competitive, discover new markets, or design fresh products and services, organizations need people who are willing to experiment, learn, and iterate. Leaders who value a growth mindset don’t just support innovation—they drive it.

An equally important indicator of success is when team members learn from setbacks and apply lessons to move forward. True resilience involves more than bouncing back; it requires using challenges as opportunities for growth. This approach transforms recovery into continuous progress, propelling individuals and organizations toward greater success. Fostering a growth mindset builds resilience that drives forward momentum, rather than merely returning to the status quo.

In an environment characterized by constant swirl-and-churn and significant external headwinds, is simply learning from challenges enough? There is an expectation that a growth mindset involves not only learning and doing things differently but also taking risks. However, only 8% of respondents cited increased thoughtful risk-taking as a sign of success. This notably low emphasis on risk-taking as a success metric warrants careful attention, especially since research consistently shows that underlying fear often influences leadership behaviors and organizational culture. Simply tackling immediate challenges without encouraging intelligent risks can lead to stagnation, resulting in missed opportunities for innovation, growth, and learning.

Obstacles

A growth mindset encourages individuals to focus on process over outcome and to embrace mistakes as opportunities to get better. While that sounds like a great idea, the reality is that leaders are evaluated on and expected to produce results. One third of the leaders we surveyed indicated that what prevents them from having a growth mindset is the fear of failure or making mistakes.  

As a leader, there’s an expectation that you will make the right decisions and be successful. The stakes are high, and leaders feel the weight of that burden. While the leaders we surveyed are willing to create opportunities for others to develop a growth mindset, what holds them back personally is the focus on being the one with the right answers instead demonstrating a willingness to be vulnerable, to potentially fail and learn.

Adopting a growth mindset requires leaders to embrace a learn-and-grow mentality, but this can be challenging due to the pervasive fear of appearing weak. Leaders often see mistakes as vulnerabilities, making it difficult to admit they don’t know an answer or foster open discussion without feeling exposed. The pressure to consistently get it right cultivates a “play it safe” mindset, which hampers their ability to model psychological safety and trust within their teams, especially when they themselves feel they’re not granted the same grace.

This fear is intensified by internal organizational factors, including complex structures, silos, and a culture of blame and perfectionism, as well as external pressures like geopolitical tensions, economic fluctuations, and rapid technological shifts, like AI. Heightened visibility and perceived transparency make mistakes more noticeable and enduring, leading leaders to adopt cautious, strategic approaches to risk. The result is a climate marked by risk aversion, self-doubt, and reluctance to communicate openly or take decisive action, thereby hindering innovation and authentic leadership.

Key Success Indicators

An inclusive mindset isn’t just a value. It needs to be felt, which can make it particularly hard to measure and fully identify. In our research, 28% of leaders identified a sense of belonging and psychological safety as the clearest evidence of inclusive leadership, underscoring the critical role leaders play in shaping environments where people feel safe, seen, and supported.  


But belonging isn’t just a feel-good sentiment. A strong sense of belonging significantly improves employee engagement. In addition, when employees feel a sense of belonging, it increases performance and productivity, reduces turnover, and improves well-being. Coupled with psychological safety, it provides fertile ground for increased collaboration and innovation. If these things are further paired with the freedom to speak up and engage in healthy debate, we see the distinguishing factors between great teams and those that are merely good.  

Notably, “decisions reflect input from a broad range of voices” was indicated as a key inclusive mindset success indicator by only 12% of leaders we surveyed. This reveals that, while leaders believe having healthy debates that reflect a variety of voices is critical, actually including the results of those conversations in their final decisions is less important than choosing a low-risk, safer option.


While fostering psychological safety and belonging are essential, they aren’t enough on their own. Leaders should not just actively seek out but also integrate diverse perspectives into their decisions. Without this, organizations will reinforce the status quo and miss valuable insights.

Obstacles

Leaders often hesitate to embrace the more challenging aspects of an inclusive mindset—not because they don’t see the value, but because the barriers are complex and deeply rooted. Whether it’s the fear of saying the wrong thing, the pressure to prioritize tasks over people, or cultural norms that discourage open dialogue, these challenges can quietly undermine inclusive intentions.

Because no single barrier stands out above the rest, the path forward isn’t clear, so it’s no wonder that leaders often struggle with where to begin. But as with any inclusive mindset, the starting point is self-reflection. Leaders should begin by increasing self-awareness and approaching others with curiosity—releasing judgment of both themselves and those around them. Inclusive conversations thrive not on fear or hidden agendas, but on genuine interest, empathy, and a willingness to understand another person’s lived experience, perspective, and ideas. Inclusive conversations can often feel risky or controversial since uncertainty about what can be said or whether the discussion should even occur may hold people back from fully engaging.  

Key Success Indicators

Leaders described true success as a culture where team members feel trusted and empowered and can take initiative and make decisions without waiting for permission. It’s a shift from control to confidence, where autonomy signals that agile movements are not just encouraged but embedded in everyday practice.

Agility flourishes in organizations that rely on distributed authority rather than top-down decision making. When decision making is delegated to those closest to the work, people with the most relevant insights can act swiftly and effectively. Minimizing bureaucracy and simplifying approvals empowers teams to act quickly, fostering greater efficiency and engagement, but they must be trusted and empowered to do so.

Agile mindset success also means being open to change, even if it comes late in an effort. Situations involving shifting market conditions, new information, or unexpected global events can require a sudden change in direction. Within organizations, changes to structures, roles, or technology often drive the need to adapt. To be truly agile, teams must be able to pivot quickly in response to new circumstances and recognize that more changes are likely to follow. Rather than being unsettled by these adjustments, agile teams expect them and are prepared to adapt as needed. When leaders see this readiness to adapt, they know that an agile mindset has taken root.

Obstacles

What holds many leaders back is a resistance to changing established ways of working and a fear of taking risks. The ability to pivot quickly and adapt with confidence is essential, yet leaders often find themselves constrained by rigid systems and structures that weren’t designed for speed or flexibility. While they recognize the need to be more adaptable, legacy processes and hierarchical norms can make it feel like the organization is working against them.  

But the obstacles don’t all come from the outside. Leaders themselves identified the fear of failure as the second biggest hindrance to an agile mindset, echoing the sentiment of fear that also holds them back from adopting a growth mindset. 

Key Success Indicators

Since we first published mindsets research, the concept of an enterprise mindset has emerged as a critical area of focus for organizations and leaders. Those we surveyed recognized that an enterprise mindset is vital for organizations seeking to drive the behaviors that allow the organization to thrive. Our survey respondents also identified that leaders adopting a “win as a team” mentality is a key indicator of success. What’s more, leaders actually demonstrated a bias for enterprise behaviors, specifically when decisions are made with the broader impact in mind, not just the local impact.

The enterprise mindset is crucial for breaking down silos, preventing duplicated efforts, and promoting strategic alignment—especially as remote and global work increases and cost pressures rise. Without this approach, organizations risk missing out on the value of integration.  

Obstacles

Leaders express a desire to focus on the bigger picture, but when faced with real-world pressures, individual and team-level success often takes precedence over broader, shared outcomes. Competing priorities and limited Leaders express a desire to focus on the bigger picture, but when faced with real-world pressures, individual and team-level success often takes precedence over broader, shared outcomes. Competing priorities and limited capacity to look beyond the immediate scope get in the way. Caught in the whirlwind of urgent tasks and persistent performance metrics, leaders may feel compelled to prioritize immediate deliverables over collaborative, long-term initiatives. Additionally, the pressure to showcase quick wins can inadvertently discourage risk-taking and cross-functional efforts, reinforcing a narrow focus on individual achievement. 

As is the case with the other mindsets, beneath these challenges lies an undercurrent of apprehension—while leaders may not explicitly voice it, there is a clear implication that some fear being judged as falling short in achieving personal success or meeting their individual goals. Ultimately, this anxiety about not fulfilling their own objectives can overshadow the broader enterprise mindset, creating a subtle barrier to thinking and acting collectively. 

Throughout our research, fear surfaced repeatedly—not always overtly, but undeniably—as a powerful undercurrent shaping leadership behavior and mindset adoption. When we looked at the top obstacles across critical leadership mindsets, fear emerged as a common theme.

Leaders are not prioritizing the most challenging yet necessary actions—like giving constructive feedback, taking risks, and addressing behaviors that exclude marginalized groups. These are the behaviors that truly advance inclusive, agile, and enterprise mindsets. While leaders may be learning and adapting, the research shows a reluctance to take bolder, more behaviorally demanding steps—the kind that disrupt the status quo and push boundaries in service of broader organizational and customer goals.

To help leaders overcome their fear of failure, organizations must create psychological safety: environments where leaders trust their senior teams and are trusted in return. When leaders feel safe to experiment, to speak up, and to explore new technologies, they are far more likely to act with courage, inclusion, and enterprise-minded boldness.

However, with this fear, we can also see a deeply-rooted silent courage. Leaders are absorbing anxiety to protect their teams, and they often lack the safety net they strive to provide. This raises critical questions: 

If we want leaders to model the mindsets that matter, we must start by addressing the emotional environment in which they operate. The mindset shifts we’re asking of leaders aren’t just about strategy or skill—they are deeply human. And leaders require safety, too.