Lead In: Mindsets to lead, live and work differently

By Cathy Burke

Leaders today face many challenges, and the old ways of working aren't sufficient anymore. Our teams are exhausted and stuck.

Mindsets are a powerful tool to help us overcome these obstacles and lead more effectively. Using them, however, has felt theoretical - until now.

Lead In is a practical and accessible guide to activa

• Language: English
• Publisher: Catherine Burke
• Release date: Mar 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9780645387919

Cathy Burke

Building on her two decades as a global leader with The Hunger Project, Cathy works with people and organisations to activate the mindsets and leadership needed to address 21st Century challenges. Cathy is also the author of Unlikely Leaders: Lessons in Leadership from the Village Classroom.

Book preview

Introduction

Leadership is an inside job

But I didn’t know that early on. Most people don't.

When I was new to work, it was all about the externals. Right from my first waitressing job, I worried about what others thought. ‘Is the customer happy with how I took their order? Do I look ok? Will they blame me for the food taking too long?’

When I moved into office work, I’d worry what my colleagues thought. ‘Do they think I’m incompetent? Should I say something, or will I sound stupid?’ Later on, when working for a senator, I would be in a meeting and wonder whether I’d upset my boss. ‘She’s looking annoyed,’ I’d worry. ‘Is she happy with me? Did I do that right?’

Even when I started at The Hunger Project, the international NGO in which I became a global leader, while I was outwardly confident, I still worried about what others thought of me and whether I was competent enough. I didn't want to let anyone down. Comments and feedback became gospel. For the first few years, I shaped my presence and reactions to fit what others thought and what was happening around me.

Leading this way unmoored me. In my naïvety and insecurity as a young and inexperienced CEO, I got too caught up in the throwaway comments of board members, or what business leaders thought of me, or how donors would react. Like a weathervane moving with the wind, I was ‘leading out’ – entirely reactive to whatever was happening externally.

This approach blunted my effectiveness. I was still passionate about the mission, but I was stuck. There was always another village to support and another partnership to hang my hopes on. I was like a dog chasing a car I could never catch, always questing outwards to find what I should do and who I should be. Leading out is exhausting and unsatisfying. Your attention is constantly on what’s outside your control – what others think, how you appear to them, or some shiny new thing on the horizon.

In leading out, more fortunate times can only happen with a change in your circumstances – not from anything you do. When you get a better team, or the market settles down – then you will be successful and less stressed.

Most of the world runs this way, which is why the antidote, to lead in, is so rare. To lead in brings the power and responsibility back to you, no matter what difficulties are happening around you. Instead of placing your energy and attention on what you can’t change, you use that energy to achieve your goals in ways that renew and ground you.

Leading in is the antithesis of unaware and ego-driven decision-making that stymies creativity, inclusion and breakthrough. It requires self-awareness – a fundamental skill that all great leaders learn. Such leaders question themselves, and their mindsets. They are curious: ‘What are my motivations? What’s most important here? What beliefs and assumptions do I hold about this?’

When we become aware of what’s happening within us, we are far more effective at moulding and shaping what happens around us.

I’ve written Lead In to ground and equip you to make the changes that matter in your life and your world. Making these requires authenticity and courage. It’s so much easier (initially) to play the same record over and over instead of finding your own groove. Yet when we become aware of what’s happening within us, we are far more effective at moulding and shaping what happens around us. This is the essence and magic of leading in.

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Bookstore shelves hold hundreds of books that insist we should be more or do more. ‘Live Your Best Life!’ ‘Sell Yourself!’ ‘Change the World!’ Of course, they sound amazing – full of stories of trailblazing CEOs, brilliant entrepreneurs and ordinary people transformed by life-changing practices.

These books tell us to ‘back yourself ’, ‘be vulnerable’ and ‘believe you can do it’. And while I love the idea of this, I’m never quite sure who they are talking to. I mean, I understand how Steve Jobs got to be so brilliant, but what about the average person? What about me? Whatever tips those books contain, it can be hard to know what to do with them.

That’s because none of this wisdom is fully available while we focus outwards. You can only access it by getting under your own limiting beliefs and unexamined assumptions. You might agree with great truths because they make complete sense, but applying them? The same old story you’ve always heard whispers ‘not you – you’re not smart enough, or confident enough, or born with the right skills’, and this trips you up in the cold light of day. Accessing great truths and wisdom without inner reflection and practice is like pouring water on sand and hoping a garden will grow. We keep searching outside for a solution that will fix our dissatisfaction on the inside. But we are looking in the wrong place.

I understand this dynamic, and I discovered for myself how working with mindsets is key to leading with grace and effectiveness. I stopped being reactive and diffusing my focus and energy. I came to know and heed my internal compass. Using mindsets to lead in increased my impact and my scope for joy.

But it wasn’t always that way.

We are more than our past

Any worthwhile achievements in my life have come from powerful mindset shifts that refocused me from looking outside for approval or guidance towards mindful, creative and courageous leadership. That wasn’t how it started.

I’m one of seven children from a family that struggled severely with finances and mental health. My father was unemployed for many years, so Mum did whatever she could to put food on the table. She made wantons for the local Chinese restaurant, worked the nightshift cleaning at a two-star hotel, bet on the horses, and typed the newsletter for the local Catholic Church. I grew up with the belief – and the lived proof – that life is unfair and money is hard to come by.

Mum also struggled with severe depression, and I hated it when the nuns at my school would ask with pity, ‘And how is your mother?’ Embarrassed and ashamed of the situation at home, I became an outsider, never quite fitting in. I didn’t want people to get close in case they saw our family hardship. To add to this, I was hospitalised with severe asthma up to a dozen times a year. By the time I left high school, I was a very prickly person indeed.

I explain this because the ideas we form in childhood linger into adulthood. They can become the mindsets and beliefs that determine our decisions and even our identities. We each have our version. I was the sick one, the poor one and the distant one.

In early adulthood, exposure to different ways of thinking about the world interrupted this perspective. For the first time, I started to think about why I did things I did and what I wanted to achieve. It began when I looked for ways to cure my asthma, and while I didn’t find that particular pot of gold, meditation and personal development programs helped me consider the role I played in my own life.

For the first time, I started to think about why I did things I did and what I wanted to achieve.

As my focus shifted away from outward excuses based on my childhood circumstances, I got the first inklings that I was not fated to live my life as it had always been. While I never heard the word ‘mindset’, it was the beginning of noticing and questioning old thought patterns and choosing new ways of being. This awakening had profound repercussions across so much of my life – including getting married (thirty plus years and still going strong!), becoming a parent, and eventually leading an organisation committed to ending hunger.

A leading mindset

The Hunger Project was my life-changing introduction to mindsets and their fundamental importance in accomplishing change. Typically, when we are mired in difficulties or facing hostile external conditions, we focus outwards, reacting to the situation and looking for ways to fix it. This might look like swinging into action – or anger – without thinking, when something unwanted happens to you. Or it might be telling yourself that things are too hard, that the circumstances are overwhelming, and giving up. Either way, you focus on the conditions and yourself relative to those conditions. Your power and agency are missing.

On the other hand, mindsets focus on what you can control. They are the ultimate tool for a lead in leader, and it was women and men in villages, overcoming decades of hunger and poverty, who showed me this.

I first became aware of The Hunger Project when working for a senator, who told me about its mission to end hunger. At the time, it seemed overwhelming. Could hunger even end? Weren’t there more than a billion people to feed?

I put it to one side, but after the birth of my first child, The Hunger Project’s bold mission to end hunger came into sharp focus for me. As I held my newborn daughter, it seemed inconceivable that any parent could lose their child through starvation or a preventable illness like diarrhoea or the common cold – just because of the place where they were born.

I became passionate about the organisation’s mission to empower people to end hunger, centring the hungry as the key players in all efforts. It spoke to me so powerfully – and still does.

The Hunger Project does not see hungry people as the problem – they are the solution. They are not an immovable mountain of need, waiting to be saved. Instead, they are hard-working, creative, courageous humans who do the lion’s share of the work in ending hunger. This perspective stirred my soul. It spoke to the power of human possibility, offering a completely different mindset on who gets to lead and what they need to succeed.

When my daughter was a few months old, I became a volunteer and a financial contributor. I educated myself on the issues and mobilised others to get involved. Trips to Ethiopia and India connected me further to the cause and seared the complexity and scale of hunger onto my soul. I was committed to doing whatever I could to bring this to an end.

Joining The Hunger Project staff in 1997 increased my engagement, and was my trial by fire as a leader. It upended my ‘small me’ view of myself. Me, lead? Even with my old stories and limiting mindsets, time and again, I found the courage to step into my power.

In no small part, this was due to the incredible breakthroughs people were having in their communities. They faced enormous obstacles and every possible reason to fail. In villages where women were not listened to, they refused to fall back; they kept moving forward and drove immense change. Despite the odds, these women succeeded. They became my greatest teachers.

Over time I built a beloved and successful organisation that contributed significantly to global programs and strategies to help end hunger. I’ve sat on village floors the world over and spoken at some of the most prestigious international forums. I mobilised significant financial and human resources toward the mission of ending hunger. Every step challenged one limiting belief and old story that I held after another. There was no tumultuous breakthrough for my leadership, just an endless series of moments where I chose and rechose to lead in.

The promise of this book

This book melds the possible and the practical, unpacking ways to change our scripts of who we think we are. I’ve written it to be actionable and useful. At every stage in life and business, we face obstacles and barriers to what we want to achieve. This might be in your career where you’re just not getting the results you want, or in your relationships that feel tired and strained. You might lead a team that is wrung out and exhausted, or you feel powerless at what is happening in the world. Instead of reacting and immediately focusing on fixes or blame, Lead In will be your guide to help you overcome and transform these barriers.

Chapters One, Two and Three unpack what leadership is and the role of mindsets. They explore how mindsets are foundational to work that inspires and impacts.

Chapter Four covers some default leading styles and makes the case that these are not who you are.

Chapter Five homes in on the ultimate lead in tool – the Leader’s mindset.

Chapter Six turns the spotlight on you and takes you through the Mindset Process – a four-part approach to identifying and changing mindsets that are holding you back. Get your pen and paper ready, you’ll be getting to work!

Chapter Seven examines one of the most widespread limiting mindsets that most people share. It’s not quite the mindset that rules them all – but almost!

And finally, in Chapter Eight, you’ll learn how to share the Mindset Process to develop more leaders in your life and your organisation who also lead in.

Lead In offers ideas around leadership and inclusion that are essential for tackling twenty-first-century challenges. I hope that this book will liberate more engaged and conscious leadership in all walks of life. Given the enormity of the issues at hand, reacting from fear and old patterns doesn’t cut it anymore. Second-guessing ourselves, not believing we are good enough, and ignoring the stress and tension in our organisations are all inhibitors to moving forward.

This book will help you identify and move on from old limiting stories and mindsets to a new way of leading, living and working that represents you at your most expansive. You will find a way to inhabit the world more freely. You will understand that you have more ability than you know and that the world is eager to meet you where you are. You will realise that you have what it takes to make your contribution.

One

Why Mindsets Matter

Challenging our beliefs

In early 1998 I attended a week-long meeting at The Hunger Project global headquarters in New York City. The organisation’s president, Joan Holmes, outlined a new strategy to put women at the centre of all its programs. It was ground-breaking stuff.¹

The United Nations’ Fourth World Conference On Women in 1995 had marked a turning point in the global agenda and alignment for gender equality. It spelled out clearly that ‘Women’s