Author: Katy Tuncer and the Horizon37 Leadership Coaching Team

Editor: Ilaria Pellegrini

You’re in charge of leading your innovation business to success. Let’s face it, the odds are against you. We’re living in an era of economic uncertainty (source) and funds are being careful with where they put their money. This is where you need to shape your own leadership mindset to keep your teams’ morale high, propel your business to success and keep all stakeholders happy. At Horizon37 we’ve helped 795+ scaleup founders reach success with 3 simple mindset shifts that transformed their results and proliferated them to their teams. Keep on reading to see how.

What Are Leadership Mindsets and How Do They Affect Your Chances of Success

There are countless ways of leading – ranging from directing and structuring, to encouraging and demonstrating. Whatever your specific style or approach, it only counts as Leadership when other people are getting the results, following your big picture purpose.

A Mindset is a way of thinking, a belief, an attitude, or a thought-habit – Katy Tuncer, Innovation Coach, Speaker and Horizon37 Founder

Creating and choosing effective mindsets to fit various situations will allow you to maximise your leadership performance. Many senior people spend years fixating on systems and techniques for leadership, with diminishing returns, before discovering how fast mindset coaching significantly impacts performance. The right mindsets can empower, focus, refresh, centre, embolden, calm or unleash your leadership.

Mighty Mindset 1 – Results: Point in the direction of results that matter to you

Having a clear purpose that motivates you is fundamental to achieving results that matter to you. Your purpose guides your leadership choices. Moreover, even if you are not conscious of your purpose, it still guides your leadership choices. 

So you need to find your purpose, right? Are you trying to discover what direction you should head in? Are you asking yourself: What is the right growth strategy for my business? Or: What is the right role for me? 

How about you stop trying to find your purpose and instead ask: What direction can I create and choose? Because maybe there is no single right answer to what your purpose is. 

This framing gives you agency and empowerment. You don’t need to wait to find things out and then react. As a leader, you achieve bigger results when you choose to believe that you create the future.

I create my own purpose and meaning, I’m not a prisoner of circumstance – David Gill, Director, Carbon13

Once you accept that you are the architect of your purpose, the challenge is to create it. Call it a manifesto, a vision, a direction, a goal, or a mission, this big picture purpose inspires you and guides you.  

When the going gets tough, my manifesto helps me remember why I got into this in the first place – Horizon37 Programme Participant

Mighty Mindset 2 – Self: Breathe your best self into life

How do you relate with yourself as a leader? Do you tend to choose an empowering self-identity that elicits your best performance? Does it change, depending on who you are with, and over time? 

Identity is within you, and self-assessed. You may sometimes project a different reputation but your identity will ultimately drive your short and long-term choices and behaviours.

How do you want to see yourself?  

Whether you choose just three words, create a mantra, or complete your entire My Leader Self template, get in the driving seat with how you relate to yourself. 

Thus, in every situation, and in the face of any external factor that arises to derail you, you can bring your unconscious self-identity to the conscious, and deliberately choose an empowering way you want to see yourself.

But what happens when external factors conspire against you – how do you reach the flow realm where you perform as your best self and stay there? Watch our Blog space in June, as we will be discussing the most common pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Mighty Mindset 3 – Others: Ignite others to follow

You have the power to control your behaviour and personal impact by the perspective you choose to take on other people. 

This doesn’t mean you need to lie to yourself about the “true” status or likely behaviour of the other person, and please do continue with the careful analysis you need to do to inform your negotiation and influence tactics… But do be careful with having this analysis control your mindset and so your behaviour. Citing the enemy and going on the warpath makes certain peaceful outcomes no longer accessible! Bowing to perceived superiority eclipses your outstanding contribution and puts you at risk of being dismissed as inferior. 

So instead, choose a new perspective of the other person that is true, authentic and empowers you. For example: they’re confidently bringing the best of themselves to the conversation. They’ve chosen to be with me and they’re looking forward to discovering what we can do. They have the ability to solve this big problem with me. 

Immediately before the interaction rehearse this framing and keep it firmly in mind. 

This work takes practice. Even during an interaction, you might be triggered and revert to your default perspective and all the behaviours that come with it. Tenacity is essential. 

Suddenly it’s all about collaboration and what we can achieve together – Horizon37 Programme Participant

Put It Into Practice: Design Your Leadership Mindset for Uncertain Times

Consider:

How Leadership Mindsets Help You Deliver Results in Uncertain Times

When uncertainty hits, the pressure to deliver doesn’t go away — it increases. Customers still expect progress. Teams still need direction. Boards still want results. Leaders who thrive in this environment don’t have all the answers, but they do have the mindset to keep going.

That’s where Mighty Mindsets come in. These leadership mindsets help you focus on what matters, rather than get lost in the noise. They turn firefighting into clear decision-making. They help you act with confidence, even when outcomes are hard to predict — and they keep your team aligned and energised.

In tough conditions, mindsets aren’t a nice-to-have. They’re what gets you through, and what moves you forward.

The interactive nature of the Mighty Mindsets workshop was so fantastic, so different to simply reading and understanding the material; actually being able to create the mindsets was quite an experience – Rob Adlard, Founder, CEO and Technical Director, Gravitilab Aerospace Services

Your Leadership Mindset Guides You and Your Team Through Uncertain Times

There you have it: this is how leadership mindsets affect your chances of success. The good news? You can choose a mindset that will benefit you and propel you towards success and positive business results that will make the business you’re leading successful, even and especially when the economic landscape is uncertain and outcomes are hard to predict. You can book a discovery call to explore strengthening mindsets within your team or join an individual or group leadership coaching programme.

This article is the summary of the Might Mindsets Manual. To dive deeper into this topic, you can order the Mighty Mindset manual here, or see the Mighty Mindsets Webinar recording below.

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About the Author: A serial entrepreneur and founder, Katy Tuncer has “been there, done that” in a vast array of senior leadership roles (in tech start-ups, McKinsey, the British Army, Met Police). With more than a decade of experience coaching senior executives, Katy brings perspective and insight to transform how leaders think, while working at pace. It’s all about results.