How Mental Toughness Distinguishes Great Leaders

They say the mirror never lies, but I might add a caveat—people can deceive themselves about what they see in their reflection. I take advantage of this analogy because after a setback or failure, the first task of business leaders is to face the facts.

Steve Jobs did it when he returned to Apple after losing a board fight and leaving the company. Elon Musk did it when one of his SpaceX launches failed. Mary Barra did it just days after becoming CEO of General Motors, when she was faced with the full scale of ignition switch failure which resulted in 124 deaths.

I call it mental toughness.

Harvard Business Review launched the CEO Genome Project to indicate that the characteristics of a good CEO do not necessarily correspond to the popular image of an impeccable leader. What these people have in common is the ability to be very objective in the face of setbacks. As a CEO, that is why I say that true mental toughness is the determination to face challenges objectively and the persistence to seek out solutions.

Denial is not an option

If the object in front of the mirror represents reality, the image in the mirror represents the subjective lens through which we perceive reality. So, mental toughness is primarily the ability to separate facts from the influences that distort what we see, reminiscent of unconscious biases, emotions, and negative self-talk.

Sometimes failure itself is subjective, and one person’s failure might be one other person’s disaster. But if we glance in the mirror, we discover some widely accepted examples of failure—reminiscent of failing to execute a marketing strategy, losing a key account, or failing to hit a sales goal after a product launch. Barra faced a public relations nightmare when she got here to work and was immediately forced to start a vehicle recall in 2014.

She knew denial was not an option. After an investigation led by a former U.S. attorney determined that employees were afraid to voice their safety concerns, Barra began to dismantle GM toxic culture of bureaucracy. This experience shows that every good leader will likely face failure at some point in their profession. But it is the way you deal with failure that defines your leadership, not the “failure” itself.

Assess what went mistaken

Jobs returned to Apple despite the humiliation of being fired from his own company. In the meantime, he founded the computer and software company NeXT, using $12 million of his own moneybut it never took off in the marketplace. A failure? He ended up selling NeXT to Apple for $429 million and coming back as CEO.

Jobs never let his emotions dictate what happens next. There are three basic steps leaders can take to be certain that “failure” doesn’t grow to be the final word:

• First, consider what happened. What was missed? What did you not achieve? Then accept the reality of failure, setback, or stumble.

• Understand Why happened. What are the missing pieces of the puzzle that caused the failure?

• Easier said than done – now the problem must be solved.

None of this is possible if a leader fails to separate facts from emotions, because fixing what led to failure is not about how people feel about what happened. It’s about summing up and taking motion.

Be open to different points of view

Sometimes, motion to deal with a failure have to be swift, decisive and measured. Barra wasted no time in transforming GM, even installing a hotline so employees can immediately voice concerns about vehicle safety. Other times, it could require an modern approach that challenges convention.

It all comes all the way down to the degree of correlation between the object and the image (how well one understands reality) — but this is where it could actually get tricky. An artist could appear to have a lower correlation because he or she is searching through the prism of his or her wealthy inner world. How we value this view depends on what we value first — accuracy or vision? Convention or pondering outside the box?

The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Harvard Business Review found that CEOs who equated setbacks with failure were 50 percent less more likely to grow. These are individuals who see the facts but see challenges as opportunities to vary their approach. Innovators and visionaries also have the ability to see beyond what is presented.

For example, Jobs’s preferences for minimalistic, user-friendly interfaces and a smaller feature set initially attracted skeptics but ultimately defined Apple’s iconic products. In other words, staying true to yourself while maintaining the ability to face facts objectively is the form of mental toughness that distinguishes leaders.

Mirror, mirror: Who is the smartest in the world?

Musk’s Falcon 9 Rocket exploded on the launch pad and took with it a payload, a communications satellite price nearly $200 million. He saw the problem, fixed the engineering errors, and continued. In fact, the “failure” allowed SpaceX to take more risk in the development process and lower your expenses in the long term. An excellent leader never turns away from the truth. Some embrace it.

The same yr that GM recalled greater than 30 million vehicles, the company set a sales record and its image was transformed internally and externally. As Barra said of the recall crisis, “I never want to put this behind me. I want to permanently etch this painful experience into our collective memory.” Now, This is mental toughness.

The mirror itself is just an optical system (imperfect) that helps us determine how we interpret reality. A mentally tough leader accepts the facts but then does whatever is crucial to create a recent reality in favor of his company.