The Mentally Strong Leader

August 1, 2024
Mautz offers a concise overview of best practices for confident, decisive, and effective business leadership. In his fourth book, the author, a former Procter & Gamble senior executive, distills his principles of "mental strength" into a concise how-to guide for personal development. Drawing on experience and research, Mautz defines mentally strong leaders as those who have "the ability to regulate their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors to achieve exceptional outcomes, despite circumstances." (He's careful to differentiate this concept from general mental health.) The author provides a bit of background in a brief introduction, then dives into detailing what mental strength is, what it isn't, its key traits, and why it matters, illustrating his points with brief stories. Mautz asks, "How mentally strong are you?" and presents a 50-question self-assessment to help readers identify existing strengths and areas for "leveling up." (The text helpfully correlates the assessment questions section by section to inform specific habit-building tools in later chapters.) Chapters are dedicated to six leadership habits, including Fortitude, Confidence, Boldness, Messaging, Decision-Making, and Goal-Focus. In turn, each of these comprises several sub-habits that are paired with corresponding tools. (For example, the tool for the confidence habit "Exude Executive Presence" is the "Integrated Aura model.") Each tool is explained in detail and includes an initial small step for getting started and a helpful tactic for bouncing back from the inevitable lapses. The final chapter features a "MAP (Mental Action Plan)" that guides readers toward maintaining a regular practice for building their own habits. Diagrams and charts illustrate many of the tools, and each chapter also includes a list of references. Templates for many of the suggested exercises and the MAP are available for download from the author's website, both singly and collected in a workbook format. The author's insights into what makes leaders and their teams effective are astute and well explained, and his recommendations are eminently sensible. While the book may not break new ground, it presents useful ideas--such as identifying limiting beliefs, cultivating self-acceptance as an antidote to perfectionism, paying attention to what's not being said, and reframing problems as challenges--accessibly and persuasively. The text is organized in a way that's easy for readers to follow and refer back to as needed. Mautz's prose style is crisp, direct, and down to earth, and his tone is consistently upbeat, empathetic, and encouraging: On procrastination, he writes, "Consider the pain of not completing the task. If there isn't any, by the way, consider eliminating the task...the next time you catch yourself slipping back into procrastination, give yourself a pat on the back--you noticed it! No small feat." The pithy advice on difficult conversations includes such nuggets as "Focus on the predicament, not the personality"; "The pain is temporary, the positive is permanent"; and "Am I just confusing 'difficult' with 'different'?" In today's fast-paced, constantly changing workplaces, "where adversity is becoming the norm more than ever, where the things that wear us down, professionally and personally, are in ever-increasing supply," this book is a welcome addition to the professional development tool kit for thoughtful and ambitious business leaders. A clearheaded guide to building the mental muscles needed to lead teams through adversity to success.

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