Why We Exist

Our mission at Mandala emerges from three realities:

First, the majority of today’s leaders are burnt-out. Leaders cannot effectively support others when they don't feel supported themselves. Just as airlines remind us to secure our own oxygen masks before helping others, leaders need the same reminder as they encounter, weekly, and often, daily, turbulence within teams.

Second, this is an existential problem for companies to solve. 65% of organizations fail because of people, not the product. Frontline managers are the critical leverage point for organizational success. We now have data that tells us 70% of team engagement is driven by our relationship with our immediate manager.

Third, traditional leadership development isn't effective. We believe this is partially driven by the lack of self-development. But surveys suggest that traditional models of leadership development don’t give people tangible tools, or a community that can help combat their isolation.

Enter: Resilient Leadership.

Our theory of change – or Resilient Leadership – asserts that the work of leadership begins within. Indeed, when leaders develop a better understanding of themselves, they're better equipped to comprehensively support their people. And when they better support their people, they're able to help their teams achieve their objectives.

If organizations are serious about building winning teams, then they must build resilient leaders.

The Evolution of Management

Consider that management, as we know it, emerged in the 18th century. The industrial revolution made leaders necessary because all of a sudden, people could work together to produce large scale output. It was during this epoch that we appreciated the importance of clarity. The best performing factories had little ambiguity in process. Everyone knew their roles, and held each other accountable.

This focus on clarity reached its zenith in the 1950s with Toyota's Production System (TPS). In resource-constrained post-war Japan, Taiichi Ohno developed "lean production," transforming how leaders thought about efficiency. But TPS went beyond eliminating waste – it created leaders who clearly analyze root causes through the "5 Whys," and ask clarifying questions through "Kaizen."

Over the course of the 19th, and certainly the 20th century, workforces started to become more and more knowledge-based. 1956 marked the first year in American history when there were more white-collar workers than blue-collar workers. And so, management evolved from simply valuing clarity to giving importance to connection. This epoch led to the power of adapting to each individual, the need to give feedback regularly, and the ROI of psychological safety.

Google's Project Aristotle in 2012 provided definitive proof of connection. After exhaustively studying team performance, they found that the secret wasn't perfect personality matches or ideal skill combinations – it was psychological safety. Organizations performed better when people felt safe to speak up, take risks, and be themselves.

Finally, the 2020's. The burnout emerging from the pandemic, the evolution of AI, and the accelerating rate of change in itself has led to high-stress cultures of today's workplaces. 54% of workers feel overworked and 76% of U.S. workers reporting mental health challenges. We believe that this time that we’re in, requires one final evolution: awareness.

Examples from elite athletic organizations demonstrate that leaders who successfully recognize their emotions, befriend their inner critic, and commit to learning, actually build better organizations Consider Steve Kerr, Head Coach of the Golden State Warriors since 2014. Kerr prioritizes emotional intelligence and resilience, understanding that leadership starts with self-awareness.

He recommends "The Inner Game of Tennis" to his players, focusing on managing internal dialogue, and has embedded mental wellness into the Warriors' culture through regular emotional check-ins and work-life balance initiatives. The results? Six NBA Finals appearances, four championships, and sustained excellence in one of sports' most pressure-cooker environments.

Resilient Leadership

Our approach to developing leaders pulls these three epochs together into three virtues, which we believe all leaders must embody to meet the needs of leadership today: awareness at the level of the self, connection at the level of people, and clarity at the level of the team.

Self

What we need most from ourselves is awareness. Seeking to better understand our emotions, our stories, and our growth-areas allow us to move into the role of leadership.

• Recognize Your Emotions — Given that 90-95% of our decisions are shaped by our emotions, leadership begins with understanding, and naming our emotions. Simply doing so helps us calm our nervous system, reclaim our composure, and leads to more effective decisions — not just for us, but for our teams. Our unrecognized anxiety can spread through an organization faster than any formal communication.
• Befriend Your Inner Critic — Some emotions, particularly those that question your self-worth, can be challenging. Nearly 71% of CEOs struggle with impostor syndrome. By transforming exhaustive self-doubt into healthier self-reflection, we model confidence, authenticity and trust. This process requires that we deepen our sense of purpose.
• Never Stop Learning —  Finally, the most effective leaders are forever students. They ask for feedback constantly, turn perceived mistakes into learning opportunities, and they are always finding case studies from life around them. When we model this growth-mindset, our teams feel empowered to take risks and innovate – and so do we.

People

What our people need most from us is connection. Learning how to meet the needs of each team member, building a culture of trust and safety, and giving feedback regularly is crucial to building a sense of connectedness between people.

• Adapt Your Approach — Every person on our team brings their own set of life experiences, and with that, unique motivators, strengths, and working styles. Learning how to adapt our management style to the needs of others helps each person thrive.
• Build Psychological Safety — Evidence is proving that the highest performing teams are built around trust, and the lowest performing teams are built around fear. And that's because fear shuts down our brain's ability to both reason or relate to others. All of this requires creating a culture of belonging and mutual trust.
• Give Feedback Regularly —  Most people want twice the amount of feedback that they're actually getting. If we can integrate a culture of feedback into weekly interactions, we build deeper trust with our teams. This doesn't just mean highlighting what's broken. It also means specifically celebrating their wins, and encouraging them to get in the habit of doing the same.

Team

Finally, what our teams need most from us is clarity. Understanding what success looks like, having a sense of mutual accountability, and appreciating the story that threads it all together, is key.

• Define Success Clearly —  Ambiguity can be draining. On the other hand, when people understand what "great" looks like, accept their role in building something great, they move faster and with more confidence. This requires getting aligned on what matters, and ruthlessly prioritizing.
• Establish Ownership Culture — When people feel accountable towards each other, and the team feels accountable as a singular unit, there's a sense of mutual ownership. This includes both publicly celebrating wins, and acknowledging areas for growth going forward. Continuous evolution and resilience at a team level is centered around creating shared responsibility for outcomes.
• Tell The Story —  Stories create clarity that data alone cannot achieve, helping teams understand not just what needs to be done but why it matters. By establishing a culture where stories are valued and shared, from the personal to the professional, you create a more meaningful, engaged, and resilient organization that can navigate uncertainty with a sense of purpose and direction.

This is how it all comes together. When we begin with managing ourselves, the returns naturally flow into our ability to manage the people, and the work ahead of us:

The Impact

To study whether or not Resilient Leadership is driving an impact, it's important to ask both the participants of our programming, and the executive sponsors of their programming.

But, from our lens, the ultimate indicator of successful leadership development is whether team members actually feel the difference. If team members experience positive change in their manager after applying new approaches, then we've made our mark

That's why we're excited about a recent Boston College white paper. The study evaluated Mandala's Resilient Leadership model and found that after completing the program, team members became 54% more likely to recommend their manager to others.

The observable behavior shifts in their teams came down to three trend-lines.

More Feedback:

• "They have improved their written communication skills and have actively sought feedback, even when it's tough."
• "Feels like they are more receptive to feedback and it feels safer to give feedback and ask questions as a result."
• "Gives more clear feedback and provides updates in a timely fashion. More clearly articulates the tasks of the team."

Deeper Connection:

• "I feel like my manager has gotten better at demonstrating empathy for difficult situations, and also has been clearer in communicating what his expectations from me are."
• "I feel that my manager is an advocate for us when it comes to challenges and changes that we want to see."
• "Better communication. [She] is showing the empathy that I always knew was there."

Higher Engagement:

• "Proactive engagement and setting up visibility and tools for our team."
• "Undertaking initiatives that provide helpful insights to competitors. More frequent engagement in team building."
• "He's also been more present and hands on with the rest of the team from what I've been able to see, and I think that's had a positive effect on folks' engagement."

This white paper represents the arrival of a new era in management thinking. We believe that organizational success — for the remainder of the 21st century — will increasingly depend on the resilience of its leaders.

Our mission, then, is to develop more of them. And we intend to do so through more organizational partnerships, direct-to-manager community building, and personalized AI coaching that supports leaders at every step of their journey.

My Ask

If you’ve made it this far, first and foremost — thank you for reading this. Second, my request is that you reflect back on the leaders that you’ve either had, or the leader that you currently are — and you write back to me.

• Does this framing fit your model of success?
• Is there anything we’re missing?
• What did you like about it?  
• And, do you know of any Resilient Leaders who might be open to being featured in an upcoming Forbes piece?

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