Leadership is a contact sport, not an intellectual exercise. After coaching executives, teams, and startup founders for years, I’ve observed that the most effective leaders share a critical trait: they’ve mastered the conversations they have with themselves.
I recently had the privilege of speaking with Carolyn Dewar, a senior partner at McKinsey who leads their CEO practice. Her research involved interviewing 200 of the highest-performing CEOs in the world over the past 25 years—leaders like Satya Nadella and Jamie Dimon. What surprised her most wasn’t their strategic brilliance or operational excellence, but their humility and curiosity.
These exceptional leaders understand that their jobs are too complex for one person to know everything. Command-and-control leadership simply doesn’t work anymore. Instead, they remain insatiably curious—reading widely, looking outside their industries, and constantly learning. This adaptability is what sustains their success over time.
The Power of Your “To Be” List
One concept that particularly resonated with me came from a former CEO of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. While everyone has a to-do list, high-performing leaders maintain an intentional “to be” list.
This CEO would print out his calendar and write one word next to each meeting describing how he needed to show up—not based on his feelings, but on what the organization needed from him in that moment:
- A town hall might require him to be “inspiring” regardless of fatigue
- A strategy session with a team that’s been stuck might need him to be “decisive”
- A difficult conversation might call for him to be “patient”
This simple hack recognizes that however you show up creates ripple effects throughout your organization. Why not be intentional about it?
The Self-Talk Connection
My new book explores how leadership self-talk impacts team performance. The conversations we have with ourselves directly affect how we show up for others. When leaders maintain negative internal dialogues, those thought patterns manifest in their behaviors, decisions, and ultimately, their results.
I’ve seen this play out countless times. A CEO who tells herself “I’m not good enough” approaches challenges defensively. A founder whose internal narrative is “I must control everything” micromanages his team into paralysis. These self-limiting beliefs don’t just harm the leader—they cascade throughout the organization.
Mastering Your Leadership Mindset
The most effective leaders I’ve worked with have developed practices to manage their self-talk:
- They recognize when negative thought patterns emerge
- They challenge assumptions that aren’t serving them
- They reframe challenges as opportunities for growth
- They maintain perspective during difficult situations
This internal work isn’t just “soft stuff” to outsource to HR. It’s fundamental to business performance. As Dewar noted, top CEOs spend significant time on culture, talent, and team dynamics because they see these elements as core to success.
Leading Through Uncertainty
In today’s environment, people are looking to leaders for calmness, guidance, and direction. Your team is feeling the uncertainty more acutely than you are. The last thing they need is a leader who throws up their hands saying, “I don’t know either.”
Even in a world of ambiguity, effective leaders find the signal in the noise and show a path forward. This requires managing your own anxiety and self-doubt first.
When I reflect on my decades of coaching, the leaders who thrive through turbulence are those who’ve done the internal work to master their mindsets. They’ve developed the capacity to continuously start over, to adapt, to remain curious—and it all begins with how they talk to themselves.
A Practice Worth Developing
I encourage you to experiment with your own “to be” list. Before your next important meeting or conversation, ask yourself: How do I need to show up right now? What does this situation call for? What mindset will serve my team best?
This simple practice can transform not just how you lead, but the results your organization achieves. Because in leadership, as in life, we become what we repeatedly think and do.
The leader of today may not be the leader we need tomorrow. But by mastering our self-talk, we can continuously evolve to meet whatever challenges lie ahead.
