“Leaders fail,” Paul explains, “by coming in saying, ‘Here’s the vision. Now you go execute what I see.’ That’s just wrong in our view of the world.” Continuing, he says, “Although leaders should provide a mission or context and point toward what is possible, what humble, good leaders also do is to help people see. When people see, they are able to

“We’re so convinced that how we think and feel about other people is caused by them,” he says, “by what they have or haven’t done, by how inconsiderate they have been to us or how judgmental, and so on. But a seventeen-year-old young woman taught me that this wasn’t true. I see people the way I see them because of me.”

They 1. see the needs, objectives, and challenges of others 2. adjust their efforts to be more helpful to others 3. measure and hold themselves accountable for the impact of their work on others Engaging in these three steps is a practical approach to implementing and sustaining an outward-mindset way of working.

When we interact with someone who is operating with an inward mindset, we may feel that he is failing to consider our views or opinions, and we can see that as an invitation to take offense or withdraw. If we do, we will give back to this person exactly what he is giving to us, and we will become embroiled in an inward-mindset struggle like the cre

From his separated stance, the Isolated Leader keeps leader-like opportunities, responsibilities, and benefits to himself. He does this not out of malice but as the logical extension of his worldview: leader-like things necessarily attach to the one who is the leader.

A related reason why people resist making the most important move is that they think an outward mindset will make them soft when hard behavior is required. But this is a misunderstanding.

A manager who wants her team to exhibit more of an outward mindset can lead that effort by building with them an implementation plan of consistent outward-mindset strategies and actions. For example, given that lateral awareness is a key indicator of mindset (as discussed in chapter 10), the team might decide to devote five minutes of every team me

Without realizing it, too many leaders assume that the role of leadership is to control. They espouse Plato’s “division of labor,” which, according to social thinker Hannah Arendt, has influenced government and military structures for thousands of years.

If they aren’t alive to and interested in the needs, objectives, and challenges of those they are doing things for, for whom are they really doing them?