Mindsets Shift Faster When the Room Shifts Too

A new article in Harvard Business Review gets something important right. In The Mindsets Leaders Need as AI Accelerates the Pace of Business, Jacqueline Carter, Robert Hoppe and Paula Kelley of Potential Project argue that what limits leaders today is not skill or technical knowledge. It is the inner qualities that shape how they respond to change and pressure.

Their research makes the case sharply. In Potential Project's 2026 Leadership Development Outlook, only 25% of talent leaders are confident their leaders can lead effectively in an AI-driven world, and only 32% believe their leaders can sustain performance at the level today's complexity requires.

The authors propose three shifts: from certainty to clarity, from expertise to exploration, and from emotional control to emotional insight. They offer a simple practice for making those shifts: pause, perceive, pivot and practice. It is thoughtful, useful work, and I agree with its central claim. The constraint is human.

But their own examples point to something the headline does not say out loud.

Where Mindsets Come From

Consider the global financial services company the authors describe. Its leaders need to create more tailored customer experiences, yet many of them believe that risk equals reprimand. Where did that belief come from? By the authors' own account, from years of succeeding in a highly regulated industry where caution and precision were rewarded.

The environment trained that mindset.

The same is true of emotional control. The authors note that many leaders have long associated emotional detachment with professionalism. That association did not appear on its own. It was learned in rooms that rewarded composure and quietly penalized anything that looked like vulnerability.

In my work, I call this the edit: the parts of themselves people learn to leave out in order to fit the room. Our research at GLLG found that 87% of managers report their individuality is suppressed at work. When that many people are editing themselves, the problem is not only inside each leader. It is in the environment they lead within.

The Car and the Road

The authors offer a memorable image. Trying to move at today's pace without addressing mindsets, they write, is like driving a car whose wheels are out of alignment. No matter how hard you steer, the vehicle keeps drifting back toward old paths.

I would extend the metaphor. Even a perfectly aligned car will drift if the road is still built for the old route. You can coach a leader to embrace exploration, but if the next missed target is still met with reprimand, the old mindset will return. Not because the leader failed, but because the room taught them to.

Jesus Mantas of IBM said it to me directly in one of my interviews: "So if you only address the individual, you are at best just only addressing half of the problem."

Measuring the Room

This is why the method I teach, Leadership in the Age of Personalization, works on both the individual and the environment. The five indicators are questions that measure behavior inside a room. Two of them speak directly to the mindset shifts HBR describes.

Who do you let them be? If leaders are only allowed to be the expert with the answer, exploration will always feel like a demotion.

How do you let them do it? If the only acceptable method is the one that never fails, smart risk taking will never take root.

Potential Project's own data shows what happens when the room changes. In their Human Leader research, only 12% of leaders rate themselves as highly skilled with emotions, and only 10% of employees agree. Yet employees of leaders with high emotional intelligence report 68% lower loneliness and say those leaders are 70% better at having courageous conversations. A leader's inner shift changes the room for everyone around them. The reverse is also true.

As I explored in Culture Is What You Tolerate, every behavior a leader permits sends a message about what really matters. And as I wrote in Stop Reading Personality Types. Read Levels of Suppression., what looks like personality is often a response to the environment.

Three Questions for Leaders

If you want the mindset shifts to last, start by asking three questions.

What did our environment teach our people to believe? Name the old lessons out loud.

What happens here to someone who explores and gets it wrong? The honest answer will tell you whether curiosity is safe.

Who do we let our leaders be when they are uncertain? If the answer is no one, they will keep pretending to be certain.

Mindsets can shift, as the authors rightly say. They shift faster, and they stay shifted, when the room shifts too. Conviction comes before confidence, and conviction grows in environments that let people be who they are.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.