A leadership expert has advised leaders to focus on building a strong mindset if they want to succeed in 2026.
Drew Povey says winning leaders are the ones who can learn from difficult situations and don’t fear pressure.
“A lot of people think the winning mindset means relentless positivity or even toxic positivity,” says Drew, who works with organisations from the police to blue chip companies.
“People often talk about blind confidence but what success really comes down to is how leaders think, and it’s how they think before they act, particularly when things are getting messy.
“The difference between success and failure is the ability of a leader to think and approach things in the right way. That for me, is the mindset.
“Everyone gets very excited about strategy, and that is important. But if you’ve not got the right mindset, you’re not going to deliver on the strategy. And if you’ve not got the right culture, the strategy is a waste of time anyway.
“Most importantly, it’s the mindset they bring when the pressure is turned up and uncertainty enters the room. That’s when leaders need to make tough decisions.
“Winning leaders don’t avoid difficulty; they interpret it differently.”
Drew, founder of the Drew Povey Consultancy, continued: “The winning mindset is never about building motivation in a moment, it’s about building habits. The half time speech which turns the game around might be a great scene in a film, but it’s unrealistic.
“You need to be building psychological habits that are going to consistently drive performance, resilience, and ultimately, results and outcomes.”
Here Drew outlines his roadmap for developing a winning mindset:
Reframe pressure as information, not a threat
If there’s one thing I see great leaders do is they just don’t fear pressure, they have a way of interpreting it and using it to their advantage. They see those elements of stress as a form of feedback, not as some point of failure, and they’ll often use it to sharpen the focus of what they need to look at, rather than drain their energy.
People will fall one of two ways. It either gets them down and pulls them down and tires them out or it sharpens them up and it makes them better.
Our brains are naturally designed to treat pressure as a threat but your brain is always rewiring. Say something often enough and your brain will start to believe it.
If you have the right mindset to look at it, it’s reframed.
Separate your identify from outcomes
The best leaders in the world don’t let results define their worth. Too many leaders dine out on winning an award or securing a contract and that becomes who they are.
You are more than your job. I’m not ‘Drew the CEO’, I’m Drew and I happen to be a CEO and I do those things at different times.
But if you let outcomes define who you are then you let disappointments or failures become part of you which will knock your confidence.
Great leaders don’t ignore outcomes but if they don’t go the way they hoped, they learn quickly and don’t take failure personally.
But the most important ability is responsibility: Own your decisions, failures and successes but don’t make them who you are.
Focus on what you can control
In sport, you can’t control the referee. You can’t control the weather, the crowds, or travel to the game. In fact, most things you can’t control, so don’t obsess about them.
The elite performers in any arena obsess less about circumstances and more on behaviours.
Because where attention follows control, performance follows attention. So if you want to achieve that excellent performance, focus on what you can control.
Build confidence through evidence
A truly confident person isn’t loud. It’s not about being that big, extroverted type A personality. It’s something quite different.
Real confidence is built through preparation, through discipline and through being brilliant at the basics, doing those basics incredibly well, particularly when no one is watching.
Think about soldiers in a war zone or medics at an emergency. They all say that when they’re faced with what is unimaginable pressure for many of us their training kicks in and they ‘get on with it’, even if getting on with it is life or death.
Most of us thankfully don’t have to experience that sort of pressure, but the principle still applies.
We can all turn it on when the cameras are rolling, but it’s about what happens when no one is watching.
Stay curious when others get certain
A winning mindset resists rigid thinking at all costs. What I’ve seen the best leaders do, and the best mindsets do, is they’re constantly asking questions, and when the questions run out, they ask better questions.
They’re always challenging assumptions and they’re not afraid to play devil’s advocate.
Much like Einstein’s definition of insanity, your mind is like a parachute: it only works when it’s open.
Most business are under extreme pressure but you have to be able to stay open, stay curious and say ‘what about?’
Treat growth as a non-negotiable
When Lionel Messi said ‘It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success’ he encapsulated the work it takes to become the best.
Winning leaders don’t arrive. The best operators with the best mindsets they’re constantly reviewing, reflecting and recalibrating.
Success doesn’t just happen, it takes work and it takes mindset.
A winning mindset is never something that leaders switch on when it’s going well, it’s a framework they can rely on when things aren’t.
