I decided to review this book because I’m doing a Leadership and Management course and wanted to explore the works of leading authors who also examine mindset. Joe Britto's The Six Attributes of a Leadership Mindset is a compelling and insightful exploration of what it takes to develop a leadership mindset. Britto, a psychological coach and management consultant, explores six essential attributes that form the core of effective leadership: flexibility of mind, mindfulness, resilience, genuine curiosity, creating leaders, and enterprise thinking.

One of the standout features of this book is its practical approach. Britto doesn’t just outline these attributes in theory; he provides real-life applications and exercises to help readers cultivate these traits within themselves. Engaging stories and humour make the content accessible and relatable, making connecting with the material and seeing its relevance in our lives easier.

Key Attributes and Insights:

• Flexibility of Mind

Britto emphasises the importance of being adaptable and open-minded, which are crucial traits for navigating the complexities of leadership. He presents scenarios and exercises to help leaders break free from rigid thinking patterns and embrace change.

• Mindfulness

The book delves into mindfulness as a way to stay present and focused. Britto explains how mindfulness can enhance decision-making and reduce stress, which is vital for effective leadership, as burnout in this position is the main cause of absences.

• Resilience

Resilience is highlighted as the ability to bounce back from setbacks. Through stories and practical challenges, Britto guides us in building resilience, a key component for sustaining leadership efforts over the long term.

• Genuine Curiosity

Encouraging leaders to maintain a sense of curiosity, Britto shows how asking questions and seeking to understand can drive innovation and foster a positive organisational culture.

• Creating Leaders

This attribute focuses on the development of others. Britto underscores the value of mentoring and nurturing potential in team members, ensuring that leadership is a shared and growing resource within an organisation.

• Enterprise Thinking

Finally, Britto discusses the importance of thinking beyond the immediate scope of one’s role to understand the broader organisational and environmental context. This big-picture thinking is essential for strategic leadership.

Practical Application and Style

The book has an easy-to-follow structure and practical relevance. Each chapter includes specific challenges and exercises to help internalise and practice the attributes. This hands-on approach ensures that the concepts are theoretical and can be implemented in everyday leadership practices.

Conclusion

Joe Britto’s The Six Attributes of a Leadership Mindset is essential for anyone looking to enhance their leadership capabilities. By combining theoretical insights with practical exercises, Britto provides a comprehensive guide to developing a robust leadership mindset. Whether you are an experienced leader or just starting your leadership journey, this book offers valuable tools and perspectives to help you grow and succeed. I found this book to be an insightful and easy guide which challenges you to self-reflect and question your approach and mindset as a leader. I have applied some of the concepts of mentoring in my organisation. This book allows you to think outside the box.  It is a great, easy read; you can pick the chapters you must work on without reading the entire book.

In writing The Six Attributes of a Leadership Mindset, Joe Britto has produced an easy-to-follow and ready-for-use personal and professional development map that will prove to be a valuable resource for leaders, managers, and HR practitioners. What I find inspiring about the book is that it does not advocate one particular approach to leadership but rather allows the reader to create their own path. Joe's ability to speak in simple yet powerful language, filling the scene with vivid stories and engaging characters, allows us to draw insight from each page. The book features neatly worked out challenges to help the reader practically apply each attribute, and, as Joe tells us, we are free to choose the attribute to focus on. The most appealing one for me is creating leaders - "A chance to help others become leaders" - and that is what I am starting to explore right away.

The Six Attributes of a Leadership Mindset is an engaging book of great relevance to anyone with responsibility for leading others. The six key attributes of leadership that Joe delves into will help any humane leader become even more effective. He makes it clear that while there aren't magic answers, there are plenty of ways in which we can all improve our leadership - and who doesn't want that?

I must admit that I am not a keen reader of books on leadership, yet I found myself totally immersed in The Six Attributes of a Leadership Mindset. Writing in a refreshingly humble, thoughtful, and humorous style, Joe gives due attention to what he calls the obvious and points out some subtle yet fundamental differences between various concepts - for example, being a leader versus demonstrating leadership, and the difference between establishing connections and developing collaboration. The book also touches on one element I found particularly interesting: the notion of world view and the ability of the leader to change it.

The book's content is not only grounded in solid research and the author's rich experience, but is also brought to life with inspiring stories and practical exercises. The special emphasis on the behaviours related to these attributes also further contributes to making The Six Attributes of a Leadership Mindset a very useful companion for leaders.

In The Six Attributes of a Leadership Mindset, Joe Britto provides an intriguing and exciting new dimension to the journey of leadership. The insight, clarity, and applied stories and challenges he shares offer an accessible foundation of opportunity to every reader - and his wonderfully structured, powerfully reasoned, and convincingly developed framework brings to life the attributes of a leadership mindset. Furthermore, Joe's message goes beyond the world of work and challenges us to refresh our mindset in order to get more from life in a refreshingly easy-to-follow flow.



The Six Attributes of a Leadership Mindset should be a compulsory handbook for all those in or aspiring to any leadership role.

As a dyed-in-the-wool believer in the importance, above all else, of mindset when it comes to leadership, the subject matter of The Six Attributes of a Leadership Mindset is something I can immediately relate to. From the moment I began reading the preface, I felt a connection with the frustrations sometimes felt by leaders and with the beliefs and convictions needed when seeking to bring about long-lasting change.

Joe has successfully pulled out six attributes of a leadership mindset that can be developed by first understanding what they really mean and then by practising their underlying behaviours. At first I asked myself, "Why these six in particular?" But as I read through the book, I quickly realized that it doesn't really matter whether there are six or sixty as long as we strive to understand, enhance, and practise at least some of them.

As someone who doesn't enjoy procedures, I appreciated the option to dip in and out of the chapters in whatever order took my fancy without having to work through them chronologically. It was comforting to know, however, that although the content of each chapter was different, the structure always followed the same pattern: a description of the attribute in question, an exploration of the underlying behaviours, and then a summary/reminder of the key points at the end. The use of examples, metaphors, and references to previous work made the book easy to read.

The Six Attributes of a Leadership Mindset is one of the few development books that will sit next to me on my desk and serve as a working reference and reminder of things to practise on a daily basis. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in enhancing their leadership mindset.