The Mind Is Not Good for Leadership… Unless It Consults the Heart
Photo by Vlad Bagacian
A Shift in Perspective
Laurene Powell Jobs once said of Steve Jobs:
“One profound learning I took from him was that we don’t have to accept the world that we’re born into as something that is fixed and impermeable. When you zoom in, it’s just atoms, just like us. And they move all the time. And through energy and force of will and intention and focus, we can actually change it. Move it.”
What I took from this is simple: we are not born into one life—we are born into many. They happen either by design or by default, mostly by default, by happenstance. We have the ability to shape the lives we live—and to develop a style of courageous leadership—in life as in work. It is only constrained by our beliefs. Understanding this is the beginning.
As Napoleon Hill famously said in Think and Grow Rich:
“What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
That book has sold over 400 million copies, a testament to the timeless nature of the leadership mindset idea.
Conscious Leadership Before Its Time
Another forward thinker of that same era, Walter Russell—author, artist, and sculptor—took this idea into an entirely new realm.
At age 50, while painting, Russell entered a state of “out-of-body consciousness” that lasted 39 days. When he woke, his studio was covered in drawings, sketches, and paintings. He claimed to have accessed “the source of all knowledge,” and frantically wrote down pages of revelations blending philosophy, science, and spirituality.
Close to 500 of his intellectual peers dismissed him. But Nikola Tesla was so struck by Russell’s insights that he told him to lock them away for a thousand years, believing humanity wasn’t ready for such truths.
In The Universal One, Russell reflected on what he experienced:
Matter, as crystallized light, is shaped by thought.
The universe is fundamentally mental, not material.
Life and time are rhythmic cycles of expansion and contraction, not linear progress.
Health as the natural rhythm of the body, with disease as a disruption.
Death is not an end, but the release of light back to its source.
Though ignored in his lifetime, today Russell’s ideas echo many of the questions explored in conscious leadership, quantum physics, and studies of human potential. From “lunatic” to visionary, his work reminds us that true leadership, like culture, must be rooted in connectivity and expanded thinking.
Small Steps in Driving that Connectivity Toward Heart-Led Leadership
Can we bring this connectedness into the quality of our lives and leadership? While it feels like a leap, there are baby steps:
Recognize that our thinking is only constrained by us.
Question our judgments—progress starts within.
Pay attention to our impact; notice how it always bounces back.
Appreciate and grapple with our connectedness to everything.
Understand how much we think is real…isn’t.
Remember that decency is a profound model for success in business and life.
This is very counter to what is going on in the world today. True thinking—not the chatter in our head—is rare.
Leadership in Times of Turbulent Change
Our society appears to be at war with itself. What is the thinking, or lack thereof that brought us here? We are being drawn to a survival mentality, which really does not make much sense in terms of there is no scarcity, just inefficiency. Most people are repelled by violence and aspire to peace and stability. We do not lack solutions, the lack is more in leadership, more specifically courageous leadership. So I think it is fair to ask ourselves, “what are we doing?”
Brené Brown, known for her research on vulnerability, empathy, and leadership accountability, writes that the single biggest gap in leadership today is courage. Across industries, what holds leaders back is not skill or strategy—it’s the absence of courageous leadership.
That absence creates a vacuum where blame and shame become management styles. In today’s “supercycle of change,” leaders often act in panic. This is fear-driven leadership.
But productive leaders slow down, settle the ball, and respond strategically.
At its core, leadership decisions come down to two options:
The path of fear
The path of caring
Brown warns that fear may yield short-term wins, but it burns people out. Heart-led leadership requires courage and humanity. Vulnerability, empathy, and compassion enable teams to weather shifting priorities and setbacks.
Quick wins through fear erode trust. Lasting trust is built through caring.
Leading with Courage and Intention
As Steve Jobs said:
“When you zoom in, it is just atoms just like us and they move all the time…through energy and intention we can change it and move it.”
Pretty much the same thing Walter Russell said. But what Jobs didn’t say is that it takes courage to operate that way. He simply did it—with enormous courage.
Honor your goodness. We are steeped in it. Take the path of caring—it will reap rewards, but more importantly, it will bring peace and satisfaction.
This is a leadership growth mindset at its core: letting the mind embrace our connectedness to everything, knowing we are far bigger than we allow.
Can you even imagine what your life—and our lives—might look like if we embraced Walter Russell's experience?
Einstein summed our dilemma up this way:
“Physical concepts are the creation of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality, we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He can see the hands move and hear the ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious, he may form some picture of the mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes. But he will never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observation. He will never be able to compare his pictures with the real mechanism, and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison.”
Or, to put it simply:
“May the Force be with you!”
– Yoda
Cheers, blessings, and good hunting,
Fundamental of the Week #19: FIX PROBLEMS AT THE SOURCE
Address issues by discovering the root cause rather than only focusing on the symptoms or the consequences. Seek improvement by developing long-term solutions.
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