We live in a VUCA world that demands to abandon traditional outdated management and leadership approaches which perceive leadership as decisive action and precise design with one and only objective: to satisfy the shareholders by making profit.

That’s not leadership; that’s playing the game.

Leadership is about people and human interaction. Therefore, being a leader and having an impact means to be able to assess and evaluate how you interact with people as individuals and understand what knowledge, values and capabilities you need in order to unleash their potential and create value for the stakeholders of the organization.

Of course, this doesn’t happen overnight. It requires an innate drive for learning and above all a growth mindset or in other words the ability to see possibilities instead of limitations, learning opportunities instead of failure, success of others as inspiration instead as competition.

From my experience, people with a growth mindset are a shakeup for many organizations, especially for those with an archaic culture. They are a breath of fresh air that challenges the organizational inertia. With their open and inclusive style they invite the employees to participate in the decision making process, to take initiatives, to make mistakes, and demonstrate their values and passion. They believe that collaboration, innovation and creativity can solve the systemic problems we are facing today. They want to change the status quo not with quick fixes but by stitching together different solutions and approaches.

For them leadership is reflective and adaptive. It is a continually learning process through which they commit to transform the organization with the pace and scale required in order to provide a positive social and environmental outcome. It is about leaving something lasting, whether is how you treated people or how you deal with a challenge.

The post COVID-19 era offers a lifetime opportunity for organizations to shake up their leadership culture and accelerate the pace of embracing leaders with growth mindset. Those that will procrastinate or continue to ignore this need will be hit the hardest in the years to come.