The Future Leader

16How Well Are We Practicing These Mindsets Today?

The explorer, the chef, the servant, and the global citizen: from the perspectives of over 140 CEOs around the world, these are the four most essential mindsets that leaders of the future must have in order to be successful over the next decade and beyond. Success, by the way, doesn't just mean making more money; it also means having a positive impact and making the world a better place. It means being the lighthouse that guides others.

How many of these mindsets do you practice well on a regular basis? If you can master them and teach others to do the same, then you will be on your way to future-proofing yourself and truly becoming a great leader. But how well are we collectively practicing these mindsets in the corporate world today?

To answer this, we turn to the survey of almost 14,000 LinkedIn members around the world who self-identified as being employed full-time. Let's start very high level (Figure 16.1). Keep in mind that these numbers are totals, meaning that each column counts the responses of everyone who took the survey.

Most employees across all levels think they are doing a pretty good job of practicing these mindsets, with 69% scoring in the top two categories. Not bad. But when asked about their managers and senior executives, 57% of managers and 58% of senior executives were ranked in the bottom two categories. Perhaps the scariest number is that only 6% of managers and 9% of senior executives were ranked as ...