By Jass Malaney
Let me ask you something I ask nearly every executive who walks into my coaching session. Think of the best leader you have ever worked for. Not the smartest one, not the biggest title. The one you would follow again tomorrow.
What did that person actually do differently?
I'm Jass Malaney, and for more than 24 years I have coached mid-level to C-suite executives across the world. The leaders my clients describe with real admiration are rarely the most technically brilliant. They are the ones who stayed calm when everything was on fire, read the room when nobody else did, and made everyone around them better.
I call these people elevated leaders, who operate with an Elevated Mindset. And what sets them apart is not charisma or luck. It comes down to three traits you can name, observe, and build.
An elevated leader consistently shows three traits. First, a wide window of tolerance: the capacity to stay regulated and think clearly under pressure rather than snapping into fight, flight, or freeze. The term comes from psychiatrist Dr Dan Siegel. Second, a high degree of emotional intelligence: reading the room, naming emotions accurately, and repairing strained relationships fast. Third, value-creating mindsets: the growth, open, promotion, and outward mindsets that leadership researcher Ryan Gottfredson links to his most advanced leadership operating system, Mind 3.0. Competent leaders deliver results. Elevated leaders deliver results while staying steady, keeping people connected, and creating value beyond themselves. All three traits can be deliberately developed.
This article is for leaders who are already good at their jobs and quietly wondering what the next level looks like. You deliver. And yet you sense a gap between managing well and leading in a way that changes the people around you.
It is especially useful if you are stepping into a bigger role, inheriting a team that has been through turbulence, or preparing for a promotion where "technically excellent" is no longer enough.
Competence is the entry ticket. Nobody reaches the senior table without being able to run a P&L or manage a function. But competence is about doing the work well. Elevation is about who you are while you do it.
Here is the pattern I see in my coaching practice. Competent leaders perform well when conditions are good. Elevated leaders perform well when conditions are terrible. Competent leaders manage tasks. Elevated leaders manage energy, emotion, and meaning, starting with their own.
The business world has names for this. Jim Collins, in Good to Great, described Level 5 leaders as combining fierce professional will with deep personal humility. Liz Wiseman calls them Multipliers: leaders who amplify the intelligence of everyone around them. Alan Mulally turned around Ford by making it safe for executives to admit problems. Satya Nadella shifted Microsoft's culture by moving from know-it-alls to learn-it-alls.
Different names, same underlying traits. Here are the three that matter most, the ones at the heart of my Elevated Mindset framework.
The term "window of tolerance" comes from psychiatrist Dr Dan Siegel. It is the zone in which you can hold stress and still think clearly. Inside the window, you have your full intelligence. Outside it, you tip into fight, flight, or freeze.
A leader with a narrow window gets flooded easily. One hostile question in a board meeting, one nasty surprise in the numbers, and they turn defensive, sharp, or silent. A leader with a wide window holds the same pressure and stays present. They feel the stress. They just do not get hijacked by it.
I learned this early. In my corporate years at The World Bank, my boss gave me a nickname: Ms. Unflappable. On my 25th birthday he gave me a SWATCH watch, and the message behind the gift was clear. Whatever landed on my desk, however tense the meeting, I met it with a calm assurance that made everyone in the team know I could be trusted to stay steady and deliver. I did not have Siegel's language back then. But that is what he was rewarding: the capacity to hold pressure without passing it on.
And notice this: your window is not fixed. It narrows when your energy is depleted, which is why exhausted leaders snap at people they respect. I have written before about how low energy quietly leads to leadership burnout. You cannot have a wide window on an empty battery.
The second trait is a high degree of emotional intelligence. Not the poster-on-the-wall version. The working version, which shows up in three behaviours.
First, elevated leaders read the room. They notice when the energy drops after a decision, when a vocal team member goes quiet, when "fine" does not mean fine. Competent leaders read the report. Elevated leaders read the people around the report.
Second, they name emotions accurately, starting with their own. There is a real difference between "I'm fine" through clenched teeth and "I'm frustrated because we're relitigating a decision we already made." Naming an emotion reduces its grip and gives the team permission to be honest.
Third, and this is the one most leaders underestimate, they repair fast. Every leader damages relationships occasionally: an interruption, a dismissed idea, a curt message. Elevated leaders go back within a day or two and clean it up: "I cut you off yesterday and I shouldn't have. What were you going to say?" That repair, done consistently, builds more trust than never slipping at all.
The stakes are real. Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 report found only 20% of employees are engaged at work. The leaders who buck that trend are the ones whose people feel seen.
The third trait sits underneath the other two: the mindsets driving how you interpret everything that happens.
Leadership researcher Ryan Gottfredson describes leaders as running one of three internal operating systems. Mind 1.0 is self-protective: the world is a threat, so I play it safe. Mind 2.0 is self-advancing: the world is a competition, so I win, look good, and climb. Mind 3.0 is value-creating: my job is to lift the people and the organisation around me, even when it costs me something.
Most organisations are full of capable Mind 2.0 leaders. They deliver, but their leadership quietly orbits their own advancement, and their teams can feel it.
Gottfredson also identifies four Success Mindsets that mark the elevated operating systems: growth (abilities can be developed), open (I might be wrong, and I want to find out), promotion (I move towards goals rather than merely avoiding failure), and outward (other people are people with their own needs, not tools for my objectives).
Adult development research suggests only a small minority of leaders operate consistently from the most mature stage. That is sobering, but it is also an opportunity, because mindsets are trainable. Which brings me to the question my clients ask next.
| Trait | What it looks like in a meeting | How you build it |
|---|---|---|
| Wide window of tolerance | Stays calm and curious when challenged; the room settles because the leader is settled | Protect sleep and energy, pause before responding, debrief pressure moments honestly |
| High emotional intelligence | Notices who has gone quiet, names tension out loud, follows up personally after friction | Ask for direct feedback, name your own emotions in real time, repair fast |
| Value-creating mindsets | Asks "what does the business need?" before "how do I look?"; gives away credit | Surface your default mindset with a coach or thinking partner, practise the outward view daily |
Yes, and this is the most hopeful thing I can tell you. But understand what kind of development we are talking about.
Adult development researchers distinguish between horizontal and vertical development. Horizontal development adds skills and knowledge: a new certification, another framework. Useful, but it fills the cup you already have. Vertical development grows the cup itself. It changes how you make meaning and which operating system you run under pressure.
All three traits are vertical. You cannot widen your window of tolerance by reading about it. You widen it by meeting pressure differently, repeatedly, with honest reflection in between. You cannot adopt an outward mindset from a slide. You adopt it by catching yourself treating people as obstacles, and choosing again.
That is why this work goes faster with a thinking partner. In my executive leadership coaching, we use psychometric assessments and 360 degree feedback to show you your current default honestly, then build practices around live leadership moments. Nobody sees their own operating system from the inside.
I have watched driven, sceptical executives make this shift. It does not happen in a weekend. It does happen.
No. Temperament gives some people a head start, but all three traits are developable. The window of tolerance widens with practice and recovery, emotional intelligence improves with feedback, and Gottfredson’s research treats mindsets as trainable, not fixed. I have seen leaders in their fifties make genuine vertical shifts.
Longer than a workshop, shorter than you fear. Most of my clients notice real changes in how they handle pressure within 3 to 6 months of deliberate practice, and colleagues start commenting within 6 to 12 months. Vertical development is gradual, and it compounds.
No. Suppression pushes feelings down while they leak out sideways as sarcasm, coldness, or a blow-up later. A wide window means you feel the pressure and stay regulated anyway. My World Bank boss did not call me Ms. Unflappable because I felt nothing. He called me that because the pressure did not run me.
In Ryan Gottfredson’s model, a Mind 2.0 leader is self-advancing: results matter mainly because they serve the leader’s standing. A Mind 3.0 leader is value-creating: results matter because they serve the team, the organisation, and the mission. Both hit targets. Only one builds an organisation that outlasts them.
Yes. Honest conversation helps reveal the situation, followed with a 360 degree feedback, psychometric assessments such as Harrison or Hogan, and structured reflection on your last few high-pressure moments will give you a working picture. The key is external data. Almost every leader rates their own emotional intelligence more generously than their team does.
If this article named something you have been sensing about your own leadership, let’s talk about it. No pressure, just a conversation. Book a time on my calendar, email me at jass@jassmalaney.com, or message me on WhatsApp at +65 9199 4344.
