Mindset Is Everything: How to Lead When the Ground Is Shifting
Issue 2890 -June 29, 2026
In 2006, I happened to be in Italy when they won the soccer World Cup. I thought I was going to lose my life as the streets filled with revelers wildly hooting and hollering and hugging anyone in sight. That experience helped prepare me for the current World Cup fever.
Because we all love an underdog-to-victory story, tiny Cape Verde has captured more than its share of attention, mine included.
A tiny island nation of fewer than 600,000 people. Ranked 63rd in the world. Making its first-ever World Cup appearance. And this week, they became the smallest nation in history to reach the knockout stage — without winning a single game. Three draws against Spain, Uruguay, and Saudi Arabia. Three times they held on. Three times they refused to be beaten. Next they get to face the legendary Lionel Messi and Argentina and try to do it again.
Their coach said something that caught my imagination after the Uruguay match: "This is something we owe to other smaller national teams — teams that struggled to qualify for a world tournament."
That's sportsmanship, but it’s more too. That's a philosophy. That's a mindset.
The world is captivated by Cape Verde right now. And I think I know exactly why.
We Are All Living the Underdog Story Right Now
In a moment of historic volatility — rights being rolled back, institutions shaking, the future feeling uncertain in ways that are both new and deeply familiar — people are frightened. The ground is shifting. And when the ground shifts, the human brain is biologically programmed to react. It scans for danger. It contracts.
But here's what I've learned, and what I've built Take The Lead's leadership development on: biology is not destiny. Reaction is not the only option. And the single most powerful thing any of us can do right now, as leaders, parents, community members, human beings, is choose a proactive and optimistic mindset.
Not as toxic positivity. Not as denial. But as a radical act of agency in a moment that could convince us we have none.
Angel City Football Club’s Julie Uhrmann (center) accepting the Leading Company award at our Power Up conference in 2023.
The Operating System Underneath Everything
Mindset isn't just important — it's everything.
The skills any of us need will change over time. Technology is changing at the speed of AI. The world will keep demanding new skills and making us consider full out career pivots. But the mindset with which we approach any challenge will determine whether we rise to it.
Henry Ford put it like this: “Whether you think you can or you can't, you're likely right.”
What the Cape Verde team embodies — what every underdog story that captures our hearts embodies — is not superior resources. It's a refusal to accept the premise that the odds define the outcome. It's the decision, made consciously and repeatedly, to ask how we can instead of why we can’t.
In leadership programs at the heart of Take The Lead, we start with mindset — specifically, with deconstructing and redefining power. Because so much of what holds people back, especially women, is a culturally learned narrative about what power is: that it's scarce, that it's rooted in force, that it belongs to someone else.
We dismantle that story and replace it with a concept especially true in an economy based on brains not brawn: that power is generative, not limited. That it multiplies when shared. That you have far more of it than you've been led to believe.
That reframe is not a small thing. It’s responsibility to act. And it's the foundation of everything else you need to succeed in anything you undertake.
What to Do When the World Feels Impossible
So how do we actually do this — shift our mindset when fear, grief, and exhaustion are real and legitimate? Here is what I learned from leadership roles I’ve been fortunate to hold, not from the MBA I don’t have.
1. Reframe Despair as an Invitation to Lead When faced with fear or frustration, ask yourself: What role can I play to make a difference? Not what should someone else do — what is mine to do? Fear is energy. Leadership is what happens when you redirect it forward rather than let it spiral inward.
2. Focus on What You Can Control When everything feels overwhelming, narrow your aperture. Where can you take one immediate action? Small wins are the building blocks of momentum, and momentum is contagious. It inspires others to join. For the Cape Verde team, a draw was a win.
3. Move from Complaints and Analysis to Action-Orientation. Hand-wringing can feel cathartic. It rarely leads to change. Shift the dialogue with yourself, and in every room you're in by asking: What do we want to have happen? What is one thing we can do right now to move toward it? The question itself is an energizing reorientation.
4. Leverage the Power of Collective Action No one gets to the knockout stage alone. As Cape Verde's coach said: "This is something we owe to other smaller national teams." That sense of obligation to a larger community — that's what collective action looks like at its best. Collaboration amplifies impact. Join forces. Seek support. Give it in return. One collective resource the Cape Verde team used strategically was to recruit players from their own diaspora around the globe, people who already had an affinity to join them.
5. Celebrate Progress, and Stay on Mission Change happens incrementally — until it hits critical mass. It moves in steps and then in leaps. Cape Verde didn't make history in a day. They earned one draw, then another, then another — and suddenly they were making history. Recognize every step forward, no matter how small, and keep going. The inflection point only comes to those still moving when it arrives.
Why Not You? Why Not Now?
The same is true in boardrooms, in legislatures, in community organizations, in your own life. The world needs leaders right now who can stay centered in the maelstrom — who know their power TO and choose it instead of oppressive power over (I’ll step out and say that women are especially attuned to that approach), who refuse to be defined by the size of the opposition or the weight of the odds.
Mindset is the most important thing anyone can nurture. Not because it makes hard things easy, but because it makes impossible things possible.
To hghlight another sports story, you may recall that recently ultrarunner Rachel Entrekin ran 253 miles across Arizona — through desert, mountains, on just 19 minutes of total sleep over three days. She beat every runner in the field, men and women, and became the first woman ever to win the Cocodona 250 outright. When she hit a moment of doubt mid-race, she said she reframed it with this mindset question:
Why not try? Why not me? Why not now?
That question is available to all of us. Right now. In this moment.
Why not try?
Why not you?
Why not now?
Take The Lead's leadership development programs start where all leadership starts: with mindset. We're here to help.
GLORIA FELDT is the Co-founder and President of Take The Lead, a motivational speaker, and a global expert in women’s leadership development and DEI for individuals and companies that want to build gender balance. She is a bestselling author of five books, most recently Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good. Honored as Forbes 50 Over 50, and Former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she is a frequent media commentator. Learn more at www.gloriafeldt.com and www.taketheleadwomen.com. Find her @GloriaFeldt on all social media.