McKinsey Classics | June 2024

How exceptional leaders lead

Imagine you’re an avid basketball player. Your rebounding could use some work, but your three-point game is stellar. Where to spend your time? If you’re like the pros, you won’t waste too much of it trying to perfect your weakness. Instead, you’ll focus on your strength—and ensure that you sink those threes every time. If you’re a business leader, the same lesson applies. Often, people spend great amounts of energy on their shortcomings—to unsatisfying results. But playing to your strengths and integrating them into your daily work can be much more inspiring for both you and your team.

While focusing on one’s strengths might seem obvious, doing so often requires a shift in mindset. This is a crucial step when adopting new behavior, and it’s one that leaders often neglect in favor of immediate action. But ignoring the attitudes and beliefs behind previous behavior all but ensures that the new behavior a person hopes to adopt won’t stick. Leaders who are in tune with the mindsets that dictate their actions are better equipped to guide their organizations toward effective behavioral change.

Finding your strength is one of five key exercises leaders can use to be more aware of their mindsets. To explore the other four—including the power of taking a pause and how to ask solution-focused questions—and to learn how to shift your own mindset in service of stronger, more purposeful leadership, read Johanne Lavoie’s 2014 McKinsey Quarterly classic, “Lead at your best.”

— Drew Holzfeind, editor, Chicago