Why Great Leaders Don’t Just Build Strategy, They Build Perspective

By WOI+ Editorial Team

The Missing Leadership Muscle

We often talk about leadership in terms of decisiveness, influence, and vision. What’s less discussed, but just as critical, is the capacity to hold and evolve perspective. Not opinions. Not stances. Not rigid beliefs mistaken for clarity. But perspective: the disciplined ability to widen the lens, to stay present with complexity, and to read the moment with nuance.

Perspective is not inherited. Instead, it is developed and honed through friction, failure, and the intentional practice of paying attention.

Understanding Perspective in Leadership

In leadership, perspective is the capacity to perceive, interpret, and respond with discernment. It integrates emotional intelligence, systems awareness, and contextual depth. It’s not simply about having a unique opinion, it’s about cultivating the ability to see beyond the obvious, to recognize nuance, and to navigate ambiguity without collapsing it into certainty.

Perspective is shaped by:

• Lived experience
• Intellectual and emotional range
• Proximity to difference
• Awareness of power and identity
• Curiosity beyond one’s expertise

According to Psychological Science (Galinsky et al., 2006), power can actually inhibit perspective-taking, making it even more important for leaders to intentionally develop this muscle. Cultivated perspective is a form of vision, one that goes beyond foresight to include insight and hindsight.

Depth Over Speed

In today’s accelerated world, the pace of leadership decisions has increased. But the speed of response is not the same as the quality of perception. Research from Harvard Business School shows that when leaders prioritize reflection, decision-making improves dramatically in both accuracy and impact. A 2014 study by Di Stefano, Gino, Pisano, and Staats found that leaders who spent just 15 minutes reflecting at the end of the day performed 23 per cent better than those who did not.

Leaders who cultivate perspective are not reactive. They build the capacity to pause without disengaging. They read between the lines. They separate noise from signal.

One example: during the 2008 financial crisis, Anne Mulcahy, then CEO of Xerox, emphasized the importance of maintaining investments in innovation, resisting pressures to cut R&D spending. While implementing necessary cost-cutting measures, including layoffs and restructuring, she focused on long-term growth by investing in new technologies and expanding into emerging markets. This balanced approach helped preserve critical capabilities and positioned Xerox for future success.

Seeing Beyond the Obvious

Perspective enables a leader to resist false clarity. It prevents premature conclusions. It makes room for tension and holds space for contradiction. Perspective draws on lived experience, cognitive diversity, historical insight, and emotional intelligence. It allows for pattern recognition beyond the surface.

In systems thinking, this is known as “second-order observation” — the ability to observe not just the event but the context that produced it. Leaders who cultivate this muscle become more effective at anticipating risk, guiding transformation, and sustaining trust.

A second example: when Jacinda Ardern, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, responded to the Christchurch mosque shootings in 2019, she brought a rare form of perspective. Rather than relying on law-and-order rhetoric, she focused on empathy, inclusion, and the human toll. Her leadership didn’t just calm a nation, it reshaped the global conversation around compassionate power. The outcome wasn’t just crisis response. It was also cultural repair.

The Invisible Signals of Power

Power has a way of narrowing vision. The higher up one moves, the more likely it is to be surrounded by filtered information and insulated decision-making. A 2006 study published in Psychological Science revealed that individuals in positions of power tend to be less attuned to external cues and less likely to take other perspectives into account.

Leaders who resist this effect do so intentionally. They structure opportunities to be challenged. They seek out dissent. They stay in contact with multiple layers of their organization and community — not just for optics, but for insight.

How to Cultivate Perspective: Five Practices

1. Slow Down the Evaluation Loop

Resist the instinct to categorize situations too quickly. Practice describing what you’re seeing before assigning meaning. This strengthens observational precision and delays reactive assumptions.

2. Seek Lived Difference, Not Just Diverse Opinion

Surrounding yourself with people who think differently is one step. The next is proximity to people who experience the world differently. This fosters empathy, expands mental models, and keeps your perspective from defaulting to your own worldview.

3. Develop a Reflective Practice

Use journaling, voice notes, or walking meditation to process your week. Frame your reflections with questions like: “What didn’t I notice at first?” or “Where did I lead from habit rather than insight?”

4. Map Power and Identity

Be aware of how your role, identity, and authority shape what people show you. Power filters perception. Counter it by creating explicit space for dissent and truth-telling.

5. Study Outside Your Field

Cross-disciplinary reading sharpens perspective. The most perceptive leaders often study history, philosophy, biology, and art — not to become experts, but to stretch how they think. Research shows that exposure to unrelated fields increases creativity and innovation (Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 2009).

Leadership Begins in How You See

We often ask leaders what they believe or what they stand for. But the more foundational question might be: How do you see?

How do you take in complexity? How do you notice what others ignore? How do you remain receptive while holding responsibility?

Perspective may not be loud, but it is unmistakable. It shapes how power is held. It determines what becomes visible. It creates space for meaning where others see only motion.

And in a time when certainty is cheap and noise is constant, perspective is the rarest kind of leadership clarity we have.