A mentally strong leader is one with the ability to regulate their emotions, thoughts and behaviors to achieve exceptional outcomes. They manage internally, so they can lead externally.

In such an exhausting, chaotic work world, with so much instability, fear and debilitating distraction, where inspiration can go missing, an important truth cuts through the smoke: Mental strength is the leadership superpower of our times.

I've spent 30 years studying what makes leaders — and people in general — mentally strong. I discovered in my research that they display their mental strength across six essential "tests of leadership" that most directly link to exceptional achievement. 

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Mentally strong leaders excel when it comes to: 

1. Fortitude

Fortitude requires determination and self-determination — intentionally managing your emotions, thoughts and behaviors to help you persevere. 

It's worth the effort, as developing fortitude gives you the courage to wade through tension rather than wilt.

Fortitude:

• Helps you reframe setbacks
• Helps you handle the "daily grind" 
• Fuels a problem-solving mindset
• Helps you thrive under pressure and perform in crisis
• Helps you effectively plan for and handle adversity
• Sparks a refusal to engage in victim mentality
• Feeds healthy debate
• Gives you the courage and wherewithal to have difficult conversations

2. Confidence

The link between confidence and achievement is undeniable. Self-critical emotions, thoughts and behaviors can evaporate your confidence, and the advantage it gives you, in the blink of an eye. 

Building and maintaining your confidence steers you, and others, through insecurity, toward the most capable self. 

Confidence:

• Gives you the self-assurance to embrace relevant criticism
• Helps you push past fear of failure, manage self-doubt and embrace healthy doubt
• Keeps you from making irrelevant comparisons and seeking approval
• Helps you stop negative self-talk and prevail over imposter syndrome
• Drives the belief that you're "enough," while fueling a disciplined approach to learning and improving
• Encourages your most optimistic self
• Helps you exude executive presence, further increasing others' confidence in your leadership

3. Boldness

Boldness requires the right frame of mind, focused on empowering versus limiting thoughts and beliefs. Developing boldness pays huge dividends as it fuels your fearlessness to push yourself and your team higher, harder, further, faster.

Boldness:

• Fuels big thinking
• Helps you shake up unhelpful stories teams fall into
• Spurs you to take smart risks
• Pushes you past uncertainty to embrace change
• Gives you the conviction to lead change

4. Messaging

As a leader, employees constantly take cues from you. What you say, how you behave and what you emote have a direct impact on how they view themselves and their work. 

From this position, you can send helpful or unhelpful messages in ways that are transformative for you and for everyone around you. 

Growing in this area helps you fuel motivation, energy and trust. More specifically, it:

• Helps you navigate negative emotions in the moment
• Prevents you from losing your temper, and helps you choose your words carefully
• Helps you avoid negativity traps (like pessimistic complainers and debilitating emotions)
• Encourages you to proactively fuel positivity
• Helps you be an active listener
• Drives you to show up with transparency and integrity
• Helps you set a balanced tone; demanding yet empathetic, with both calm and urgency, etc.
• Gives you the discipline to act consistently with your values, reinforcing your character

5. Decision-making

Emotion, bias and undisciplined thinking are all enemies of good decision-making. Self-regulation skills play a huge role in giving you the courage and conviction to be decisive and in improving your ability to make good decisions that propel you toward your goals.

In this area, self-regulation and mental strength:

• Raise awareness of your biases and bad habits, preventing them from negatively affecting decisions
• Help you develop a data-based, analytical approach to decision-making
• Help you set a clear decision-making process or structure
• Encourage you to explore a better third option
• Help you develop better predictive ability and greater decision confidence
• Feed your willingness to make tough, unpopular calls

6. Goal-focus

Wayward thoughts, emotions and actions distract you from the goal at hand. Intentionally regulating each here helps give you the discipline to focus on the most important things. 

Self-regulation and mental strength:

• Help you set powerful goals and visualize what it will take to achieve them
• Inspire you to establish a more thorough set of expectations
• Help you focus on what you can control
• Help you hold yourself and others accountable
• Guide you to build momentum with small victories
• Help you stop procrastination and perfectionism
• Help you adjust goals as needed along the way

Now, imagine excelling at all six of these leadership tests, fueled by your masterful self-regulation skills, muscled up by your mental strength. Think of the impact you'd have, the difference you'd make, the imprint you'd leave behind. 

Three decades into my research, I've come to believe that nothing returns a greater ROI than your commitment to becoming a mentally strong leader. And nothing amplifies your ability to produce exceptional results — even in the face of adversity — like mental strength.

Scott Mautz is a popular speaker, trainer, and LinkedIn Learning instructor. He's a former senior executive of Procter & Gamble, where he ran several of the company's largest multibillion-dollar businesses. He is the author of "The Mentally Strong Leader: Build the Habits to Productively Regulate Your Emotions, Thoughts, and Behaviors." Follow him on LinkedIn.

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Excerpt adapted from "The Mentally Strong Leader: Build the Habits to Productively Regulate Your Emotions, Thoughts, and Behaviors″ by Scott Mautz. Copyright © 2024. Reprinted with permission of Peakpoint Press. All rights reserved.