Today’s leaders are navigating constant change, rising uncertainty and a level of complexity that would have felt unthinkable a mere six years ago.

As the landscape has shifted, so has our understanding of what truly differentiates great leaders from merely competent ones. The truth is this, the biggest leadership differentiator is a mindset rather than a skillset. Our research with hundreds of leaders shows that the most effective leaders think differently.

The Four Mindsets That Define Leadership Success

Since 2019, GP Strategies’ leadership research has revealed that this shift in thinking shows up consistently across four core mindsets: growth, inclusive, agile and enterprise. These aren’t theoretical models or ideas on a slide, 98% of leaders we spoke to said these mindsets genuinely reflect what effective leadership requires today.

But here’s what has changed: the way these mindsets show up in practice looks very different from just a few years ago. The mindsets themselves remain stable, but the behaviors that express them have evolved in response to new pressures, new expectations and a new definition of success. Leaders are now drawing on these mindsets in more complex and psychologically demanding ways.

Today, each mindset carries a new edge:

• Growth mindset used to center on learning; today it’s about navigating structural barriers and resisting the pressure to appear certain.
• Inclusive mindset once focused on belonging; now it demands courage in socially and politically complex environments.
• Agile mindset was largely about speed; now it requires a deliberate rebalancing of control and trust.
• Enterprise mindset used to mean collaboration; now it involves managing anxiety and making business-first decisions under pressure.

These shifts are subtle but significant, and they’re reshaping what effective leadership looks like in the modern workplace.

Growth Mindset: The Foundation That Unlocks Everything

A growth mindset means seeing setbacks as something to learn from and treating challenges as chances to grow.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the growth mindset emerged as the top priority for modern leaders: 46% of respondents ranked it as the most critical mindset. It’s the mindset that enables all the others: without growth, agility becomes reckless, inclusion becomes performative and enterprise thinking becomes theoretical.

Yet there is some tension. While leaders value continuous improvement, there’s a significant gap in risk-taking behavior. Leaders feel the weight of expectation — they’re supposed to have the right answers and deliver results. And with that weight on their shoulders, it can be hard to show vulnerability or embrace the “win or learn” mindset that growth really requires.

Our research made one thing clear: a growth mindset displays a set of observable behaviors. And the barriers to those behaviors are often structural, not personal.

How L&D Can Help Leaders Embrace a Growth Mindset:

• Normalize “learning in public.” Build leadership programs in which leaders share mistakes, experiments and learning moments as part of the curriculum (not add-ons).
• Create structured reflection cycles. Tools like after‑action reviews, learning logs and project retros help leaders pause and extract learning rather than rush to “fix.”

Inclusive Mindset: Beyond Belonging to Bold Action

An inclusive mindset creates environments where everyone feels empowered, respected and valued.

The business case for inclusive leadership is compelling: when employees feel they belong, they show up differently. They’re more engaged, they perform better, they stick around longer and they bring more ideas to the table. Encouragingly, our research shows that leaders feel confident demonstrating the more visible aspects of inclusion, such as seeking diverse opinions and creating opportunities to leverage differences.

Where confidence drops is in the harder, more courageous dimensions of inclusive leadership. Unlike other mindsets where one or two obstacles dominate, the barriers to inclusive leadership are spread almost evenly across the board. When everything feels like a potential misstep, leaders hesitate. Not because they don’t care, but because they’re acutely aware of how easily their words or actions could be misinterpreted and the social or political consequences that might follow.

The insight here is subtle but important: inclusion requires courage, not just empathy.

Our research revealed that hesitation, however understandable, erodes trust. When what leaders say they value doesn’t align with what they actually do, teams notice. And that gap between words and actions leaves people questioning whether leadership truly means what it says.

How L&D Can Help Leaders Embrace an Inclusive Mindset:

• Teach leaders how to hold discomfort constructively. Techniques like empathetic questioning, slow-thinking strategies and curiosity-led dialogue help leaders stay present during tough moments.
• Make inclusion a leadership competency, not a moral challenge. Help leaders understand inclusion as a performance driver, not a political minefield.

Agile Mindset: Moving Fast With Purpose

An agile mindset is about purposeful momentum — the willingness to act without perfect information: to take a step, learn from it and adjust.

Agility, in practice, is the courage to move before you feel ready, and the trust to let others do the same.

Leaders overwhelmingly agree that agility is essential, yet many feel constrained by legacy systems, hierarchical approval chains and cultures that punish failure. Even leaders who want to work in agile ways often find themselves slowed by processes designed for predictability, not pace.

Our research shows that modern agility requires more than adapting quickly. It demands a fundamental shift in how leaders use control. Agile leadership shows up in behaviors like shortening decision cycles, empowering teams to act without constant sign-off, experimenting in small increments and treating feedback as a strategic asset rather than a critique. These leaders create environments where teams can move early, test assumptions and adjust in real time.

But agility also carries its own emotional weight. Leaders told us that moving without certainty triggers a fear of visible failure, a fear amplified by today’s heightened scrutiny and pressure to deliver. Without organizational systems that reward experimentation, protect psychological safety and distribute authority, even the most agile-minded leaders find themselves reverting to caution.

How L&D Can Help Leaders Embrace an Agile Mindset:

• Teach decision-making under uncertainty. Tools like rapid experimentation, hypothesis-based planning and minimal viable action help leaders move without perfect clarity.
• Train leaders in delegation and distributed authority. Agility grows when leaders learn to trust others to act.

Enterprise Mindset: Thinking Beyond Your Team

An enterprise mindset means making decisions that serve the long-term health of the whole organization, not just one team or function.

In 2019, this mindset needed explanation and encouragement. Today, however, leaders recognize it as an essential requirement for reducing duplication, improving alignment and enabling cross-functional collaboration.

Leaders who embody this mindset operate from a “win together” philosophy. They share resources, signpost risks early and make decisions with the broader system in mind.

But under pressure, even well-intentioned leaders narrow their focus. Stress pulls attention toward the immediate and the familiar. The enterprise mindset is often the first casualty of urgency.

What our research uncovered is that this regression is rarely about selfishness — it’s about unspoken anxiety. When leaders don’t feel safe acknowledging that anxiety, they revert to protective behaviors that undermine enterprise thinking.

Naming the fear is the first step toward interrupting the pattern.

How L&D Can Help Leaders Embrace an Enterprise Mindset:

• Use cross-functional cohort-based programs. This builds shared identity and reduces siloed thinking.
• Create business simulations that require enterprise-level decisions. Leaders experience the trade-offs of resource sharing, alignment and collaboration.

The Fear Factor: What’s Really Holding Leaders Back

Across all four mindsets, our research revealed a common influence over leaders’ behaviors: fear. Not dramatic fear, but a subtle, persistent, often unspoken fear, with each mindset carrying its own “fear signature.”

• Growth Mindset: fear of being wrong
• Agile Mindset: fear of failing publicly
• Inclusive Mindset: fear of mis-stepping socially or politically
• Enterprise Mindset: fear of sacrificing personal or team success

The realities of modern leadership amplify this fear because the work now happens under closer scrutiny, with fewer layers of support, constant pressure to perform and the added strain of keeping pace with rapid technological change. When the stakes feel this high, leaders aren’t rejecting the mindsets; they are pulling back from the boldest expressions of them, the ones that challenge norms, disrupt comfort or expose vulnerability.

And yet, that hesitation doesn’t tell the whole story. Beneath it sits a quieter form of courage: leaders are absorbing the anxiety around them so their teams don’t have to and are navigating complexity without the buffers they work hard to create for others.

This duality — fear and courage coexisting — is one of the most important insights from our research.

The Path Forward: Leading with Courage and Clarity

While fear will continue to signal the edges of leaders’ comfort zones, it also marks the frontier of possibility. The leaders who make the most of our mindsets aren’t fearless, they’re courageous. They notice the discomfort, examine it and step forward anyway.

Thriving leaders embrace ongoing growth and intentionally challenge old processes. They invite diverse perspectives, even when it creates friction. They spend less time focused on individual achievements and more time advocating for shared resources, collaboration and collective vision. They move fast, but also with purpose and thoughtfulness.

Leaders can only embody these mindsets, however, when their environment supports them. When organizations invest in psychological safety, trust and wellbeing, they unlock the conditions for courageous leadership. In a world defined by uncertainty, that partnership between leaders and their organizations becomes the true competitive advantage.

Dive Deeper Into the Research

Our full report, Great Leaders Think Differently: The Four Mindsets Shaping the Future of Work, explores:

• Detailed analysis of each mindset with specific success indicators
• Common obstacles leaders face and how to overcome them
• The interplay between mindsets and how they reinforce each other
• Insights from hundreds of leaders navigating today’s complex landscape
• Practical implications for leadership development

Check out the full report to discover what’s holding leaders back from adopting these critical mindsets — and what success really looks like in today’s transformed leadership landscape.