The Leadership Mindset Book Review
The single most important factor in the success or failure of a business is the mindset of its leadership. Even more than strategy or tactics, it's how leaders think that ultimately makes the difference. – Joe Calloway
As a business leadership and management consultant, Joe Calloway’s lengthy client list represents a wide range of businesses of all sizes. His mega-successful corporate clients include Coca Cola, Verizon, Delta Air Lines and American Express.
In addition to his stellar consulting work, Calloway has written some of the industry's best books about leadership and management, including:
- A Category of One: How Extraordinary Companies Transcend Commodity and Defy Comparison
- Be The Best at What Matters Most
- Magnetic: The Art of Attracting Business
- Indispensable: How to Become the Company That Your Customers Can’t Live Without
- Never By Chance: Aligning People and Strategy Through Intentional Leadership
- Work Like You’re Showing Off
- Keep It Simple
- The Leadership Mindset
The Leadership Mindset is Calloway’s most recent book. Although the page count is shorter than some of his previous work, this book is a thorough and succinct exploration of the qualities, the motivation and the intention behind great leadership. With each chapter Calloway describes leadership in terms of identifiable actions and outcomes that serve as evidence of a leader's mindset. For example:
- Leaders Lead with Intention
- Leaders Simplify the Complicated
- Leaders Create Clarity
- Leaders Create Focus
- Leaders Make It Easy
- Leaders Know What’s Going On – What’s Really Going On
- Leaders Take Action, Leaders Respond Quickly
- Leaders Create Value
- Leaders Repeat and Reinforce
If The Leadership Mindset had another subtitle, it would be How to Ask the Tough Questions. Calloway spends a significant amount of effort in this book posing questions for the reader that will both inspire and educate them—as well as prompt them to act in ways that will make them exceptional leaders. There are literally dozens of leadership questions throughout the book. Here are a few examples:
- Do I have clarity on the reasons and purpose behind every decision I make?
- Do I do a great job of simplifying the complicated for myself and for the team?
- What can we simplify with our values, mission, purpose, or goals?
- Are we completely intentional about our culture?
- Does everyone in our organization has absolute clarity about our purpose?
- Have I done an excellent job of expressing our purpose with clarity?
- Who are the people in the organization that can best help us create clarity?
- What are the areas in our business in which we need to make things easier?
- As the leader, do I keep the team focused on the customer experience?
- What are ten potential disruptors of our business?
- Do I intentionally choose my mindset?
In The Leadership Mindset, Calloway advises leaders to be aware that there are many things over which a leader has no control, but only you have total control over your mindset. You can make a conscious, intentional choice about how you think and define your role and responsibilities as a leader.
Calloway asserts that mindset is mostly about attitude. It’s about the way you approach and respond to the world around you. It’s all a choice. It’s a truism that you can’t always choose what happens, but you can always choose your response to what happens. You can choose your attitude. You can choose your mindset. Choose wisely. Choose with intention.
The Leadership Mindset is required reading for anyone in a leadership position looking for new thinking and fresh ideas on how to make your team, organization or company function at its highest potential. If you are looking for one of the best books about leadership and management, The Leadership Mindset definitely fits that category.
