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136 PART 3: THE PERSONAL SIDE OF LEADERSHIP
a basketball team—without even realizing they are making decisions and acting
within the limited frame of their own mental model. 19
A recent study by Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychology professor at the Uni-
versity of Western Australia, Crawley, demonstrates the tremendous power men-
tal models can have on our thinking. Researchers showed more than 860 people
in Australia, Germany, and the United States a list of events associated with the
United States-led invasion of Iraq. Some were true, some were originally reported
as fact by the media but later retracted, and some were completely invented for
the study. After interepreting the results, reasearchers determined that people
tended to believe the “facts” that fi t with their mindset about the Iraqi war, even
if those facts were clearly not true. People who accepted as valid the offi cial U.S.

justification for the war continued to believe reports that cast the United States in
a good light and the Iraqi forces in a bad light, even if they knew the reports had
been retracted. Those who were suspicious of U.S. motives easily discounted the
misinformation. Lewandowsky says supporters of the war held fast to believing
what they originally heard, even though they knew it had been retracted, “because

it fits with their mental model, which people seek to retain whatever it takes.” This
is an important point: People tend to believe what they want to believe because
doing otherwise “would leave their world view a shambles.” 20
Despite the mental discomfort and sense of disarticulation it might cause,
leaders must allow their mental models to be challenged and even demolished.
Successful global leaders, for example, have learned to expand their thinking by
questioning assumptions about the “right” way to conduct business. They learn to
appreciate and respect other values and methods, yet also look for ways to push

beyond the limits of cultural assumptions and find opportunities to innovate. 21
Consider how acting based on limited assumptions hurt Swedish furniture maker
Ikea when it first entered the U.S. market. Leaders duplicated traditional Swedish

concepts such as no home delivery, a Swedish cafeteria, and beds made the way
they were in Sweden (which conformed to Swedish rather than U.S. standards).
They seemed almost blind to any other way to conduct business. The company’s
disappointing performance, however, quickly led leaders to reevaluate their ideas
and assumptions and consider how acting from a “Swedish mindset” was posing
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a barrier to success in foreign markets. Today, Ikea is a highly successful global
company because leaders were able to shift to a global mindset.
Becoming aware of assumptions and understanding how they infl uence emo-
tions and actions is the fi rst step toward being able to shift mental models and
see the world in new ways. Leaders can break free from outdated mental models.
They can recognize that what worked yesterday may not work today. Following
conventional wisdom about how to do things may be the surest route to failure.
Effective leaders learn to continually question their own beliefs, assumptions,
and perceptions in order to see things in unconventional ways and meet the chal-
lenge of the future head on. Leaders also encourage others to question the
23
status quo and look for new ideas. Getting others to shift their mental models is
perhaps even more difficult than changing one’s own, but leaders can use a variety

of techniques to bring about a shift in thinking, as described in the Leader’s
Bookshelf.

Developing a Leader’s Mind
How do leaders make the shift to a new mental model? The leader’s mind can be
developed beyond the non-leader’s in four critical areas: independent thinking,
open-mindedness, systems thinking, and personal mastery. Taken together, these