Redrawing the Map: Why Expanding Perspective is Essential for Today’s Leaders

We all carry invisible maps in our minds - frameworks that guide how we navigate the world, interpret events and behaviours, and make decisions. These mental maps are largely drawn early, shaped by our cultural context, family dynamics, education, and the era we grow up in.

This week I came across a great question from Morgan Housel:

“Which of my current views would I disagree with if I were born in a different country or generation?”

As someone who’s spent around a decade and a half working with colleagues from nearly every country on the planet, I’ve definitely seen the vast difference our birthplace and culture have on our perspectives, behaviours, and assumptions.

I’ve been deeply impacted by, and grateful for, the way my views have been stretched and changed by encountering the diversity of perspectives that can exist around any given topic.

I was recently chatting with a colleague over dinner about the way we sometimes look back and wince a little at our old selves and the lack of understanding we brought to some of our early international trips - as well as recognising that we are still constantly learning today.

And then there are the generational assumptions. Occasionally during a meeting, I wonder what a room of 20-somethings discussing the same topic would be saying - what blind spots or flawed assumptions would they be able to see that a room of Millennials, Gen X’ers and Baby Boomers doesn’t?

The Lure of Certainty

People like certainty. We like feeling it, and we like our leaders to demonstrate it.

However, as we all know (intellectually at least) just because something is expressed with more certainty and clarity does not in any way mean it is more correct.

Wisdom is knowing that none of us have access to the whole map. And that, to extend the metaphor further, while some of us have a topographic map, others have road maps, weather maps, nautical maps, or political maps.

It is knowing there is so much more nuance and grey area than we might have realised in an earlier iteration of our mental map. Recognising that had we been born in Sri Lanka instead of Australia, or Finland instead of South Africa, or Guatemala instead of Azerbaijan, it is almost certain we would not hold all the same beliefs we do today.

Good leadership, then, is having a compass without thinking you have the only map. It is not dismissing all our own hard-earned experience, insights, and learning, but holding them always in tension with the fact that there may be other information or perspectives beyond those we’re currently aware of.

Why Perspective-Shifting Is a Key Leadership Skill

Creating space for a level of uncertainty, though, is uncomfortable. As author Maggie Jackson writes, “Uncertainty is not for the faint of heart.” She also goes on to point out, however, that -

“When the stakes are high, those who do not know gain the cognitive advantage.”

Allowing for uncertainty pushes us to think more expansively and creatively, and therefore creates more room for new insights, connections, and innovation.

Indeed, research has shown that cross-cultural experiences, specifically -

“increase both cognitive flexibility and depth and integrativeness of thought—the ability to make deep connections between disparate forms,”

according to Adam Galinsky, a professor at Columbia Business School.

In other words, it grows our neuroplasticity - something crucial for leaders - as it allows us to sharpen our thinking and problem-solving, make better decisions, and more effectively process our emotions.

Figuring stuff out, making good decisions, and managing our own self-regulation are all pretty vital skills for leaders.

In a world that increasingly demonstrates the characteristics of ‘VUCA’ - volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity - leaders simply cannot afford to operate from a single, rigid mental map.

The best leaders today are not those who have all the answers, but those who know how to listen well, learn fast, and update their maps as they go.

Cross-cultural humility, generational curiosity, and cognitive flexibility are no longer optional - they’re essential. The most future-fit leaders are map editors, not map defenders.

Being Open to Expanding Our Maps

So how do we adopt a leadership posture of holding our maps with humility and curiosity?

One of the most powerful things for me about working with a very diverse range of people has been the freedom that comes from realising that people I greatly respect from a range of different backgrounds see many things very differently than I do.

It helps enormously to recognise that two people can share core values that are similar or even the same and still think very differently about an issue, a cultural norm, or an approach. There is so much spaciousness in that. So much freedom to learn and explore our own perspective. Sometimes we may end up in the same place, but sometimes we may discover that something shifts considerably.

Maybe you don’t work with a culturally diverse community, but how can you seek out perspectives of people you can respect who see things differently than you do? We live in a world with easier access than ever to a vast array of thinkers – explore diversity of thought through books, podcasts, TED talks, or even diverse international news sources. Resist the algorithms’ relentless push to surround us with more of what we already agree with.

In addition, seek out the writers and thinkers of different eras on topics that seem to have calcified into certain positional camps today. Often I find there is more fluidity across generations and centuries when it comes to issues that might be polarised today.

The Kind of Leaders the World Needs

We don’t need leaders with perfect certainty. We need leaders with thoughtful humility - those willing to keep redrawing their mental maps as they encounter new data, new cultures, new insights, and new people.

This doesn’t mean we can’t recognise when we have enough information to make a decision and go forward even when we don’t know everything. But it does mean we are always open to adjusting our thinking as we learn more.

The work of leadership isn’t to pretend we’ve arrived or that we have, once and for all, figured it all out. It’s to keep walking with the compass in our hand, alert to the complexity and nuances we might have missed before.

Let’s always keep asking ourselves:

What part of our map might be due for an update?