How Mental Toughness Sets Great Leaders Apart

They say the mirror never lies, but I would add a qualifier — people can lie to themselves about what they see in their reflection. I use this analogy because, after a setback or failure, the first task of business leaders is to face the facts.

Steve Jobs did it when he rejoined Apple after losing a boardroom battle and exiting the company. Elon Musk did it when one of his SpaceX launches failed. Mary Barra did it just days after taking over as General Motors CEO when she faced the full scale of an ignition-switch malfunction that had caused 124 deaths.

I call it mental toughness.

Harvard Business Review launched the CEO Genome Project to show that the qualities of a successful chief executive don’t necessarily correspond to the popular image of the faultless leader. What these people do have in common is the ability to be very matter-of-fact about setbacks. As a CEO myself, that’s why I say real mental toughness is the determination to face challenges objectively and persist in finding solutions.

Related: Why Every Leader Needs Mental Toughness

Denial is not an option

If the object in front of the mirror represents reality, the image in the mirror represents the subjective lens through which we perceive reality. So, mental toughness is the capacity, first of all, to separate facts from the influences distorting what we see, such as unconscious biases, emotions and negative self-talk.

Sometimes, failure itself is subjective, and one person’s setback can be another’s disaster. But if we look squarely in that mirror, we will find some commonly accepted examples of failure — such as not making your business plan, losing a key customer or missing your sales target after a product launch. Barra faced a public relations nightmare when she walked into the job and was immediately forced to start recalling vehicles back in 2014.

She knew denial was not an option. After launching an investigation headed by a former U.S. attorney, it was found that employees had been too afraid to voice their safety concerns, and Barra began dismantling GM’s toxic culture of bureaucracy. This experience shows that every good leader is likely to face failure at some point in their career. But it is how you deal with failure that defines your leadership, not “failure” itself.

Assess what went wrong

Jobs famously returned to Apple despite the indignity of being ousted from his own company. In between, he founded the computer and software company NeXT, using $12 million of his own money, but it never really took off in the market. Failure? He ended up selling NeXT to Apple for $429 million and rejoining as CEO.

Jobs never allowed his emotions to determine what would happen next. There are three basic steps leaders can take to ensure “failure” is not the final word:

• Firstly, work out what happened. What was missed? What didn’t you achieve? Then, accept the reality of the failure, setback or misstep.

• Understand why it happened. What are the missing pieces of the puzzle that caused the failure?

• This one is easy to say and hard to do — now fix the problem.

None of this is possible if the leader does not separate the facts from emotions, because fixing whatever led to the failure is not about how people feel about what happened. It’s about taking stock and taking action.

Related: How Steve Jobs Turned Setbacks Into Success

Be open to different views

Sometimes, the action to address a failure has to be fast, firm and deliberate. Barra wasted no time transforming GM and even installed a hotline for employees to express immediate vehicle safety concerns. Other times, an innovative approach that challenges convention may be required.

It all comes back to the degree of correlation between the object and the image (how well one grasps reality) — but here’s where it can get tricky. An artist may seem to have a lower correlation because they are looking through the lens of their rich inner world. How we value that view depends on what we are prioritizing — accuracy or vision? Convention or thinking outside the box?

The two do not have to be mutually exclusive. Harvard Business Review found that the CEOs who equated setbacks with failure had 50% less chance of thriving. These are people who see the facts but frame challenges as a chance to change their approach. Innovators and visionaries, too, are able to see beyond what is presented.

For instance, Jobs’ preference for minimalistic, user-friendly interfaces and a smaller features footprint drew out the skeptics at first, but it came to define Apple’s iconic products. In other words, staying true to yourself while maintaining the ability to face facts objectively is the kind of mental toughness that sets leaders apart.

Mirror, mirror: Who’s the brightest of them all?

Musk’s Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the launch pad and took with it the payload, a near $200 million communications satellite. He saw the problem, fixed the engineering flaws and kept going. In fact, the “failure” allowed SpaceX to take more risks in the development process and save money over the long run. A good leader never turns from the truth. Some embrace it.

The same year that GM recalled over 30 million vehicles, the company set record sales, and its image was transformed internally and externally. As Barra said of the recall crisis: “I never want to put this behind us. I want to put this painful experience permanently in our collective memories.” Now, that is mental toughness.

The mirror itself is just an optical system (an imperfect one at that) that helps us learn about how we interpret reality. The mentally tough leader accepts the facts but then does whatever it takes to create a new reality in favor of their company.

Related: Talent Is Overrated: Top 10 Habits Of Mentally Tough People