Standing at the vast expanse of Heathrow Airport watching planes take off into the boundless sky, while recently waiting for my trip to begin, I was reminded of how perfectly aviation mirrors the journey of a leader.
Just as every successful flight requires careful planning, precise execution and adaptation to changing conditions, so too does building a thriving business.
The metaphor is striking: in business, as in flight, we’re constantly navigating toward destinations, managing resources and making critical decisions that determine our trajectory. But there’s one crucial difference – unlike an employee following someone else’s flight plan, as a business leader, you are the pilot. You determine the course, the altitude and the approach.
Rising Above the Clouds
In today’s business climate, it’s easy to get caught in turbulence. Economic forecasts can be gloomy, competition fierce and uncertainty constant. But, as a leadership coach, I’ve learned that success isn’t about avoiding clouds – it’s about having the mindset to rise above them.
An abundance mindset is your most powerful instrument. When you view the world through this lens, you see opportunities where others see obstacles. You recognise that resources, connections and possibilities are plentiful rather than scarce. This perspective shift doesn’t just feel good – it fundamentally changes how you operate.
Too many people approach challenges with a scarcity mindset. They worry about limited markets, tight budgets and fierce competition. Every setback feels permanent, every failure definitive. But when I see clients begin practicing abundance thinking, everything changes. They start seeing setbacks as temporary and failures as feedback.
Catching, Checking and Changing Your Mindset
The transformation begins with awareness. Like a pilot constantly monitoring instruments, we must check our thoughts. When you catch yourself thinking, ‘I don’t have enough time,’ ‘The market is too saturated,’ or ‘I can’t compete with bigger players,’ pause. These thoughts aren’t facts – they’re perceptions that create your reality. In short: We become what we think about, wanted or not.
Being on PAR – Present, Accountable, and Responsible – is essential for this mindset shift. No one else can transform your thinking; it’s a choice only you can make. Start by being conscious of your language. Rather than saying ‘less stress in my life’ (where your brain focuses on the word ‘stress’), try ‘more calm in my life’ (directing your brain toward ‘calm’). Our brains respond powerfully to the words we use, so choose what you want more of, not what you want less of.
Consider practising a good mental health routine in the morning and evening. Each morning, practice a quick ‘brain floss’ routine. Instead of dreading the day ahead, take two minutes to set an abundant intention. In the evening, reflect on three silver linings from your day, training your mind to seek out the positive even in challenging circumstances.
Creating Thrust and Momentum
Building an abundance mindset isn’t just about positive thinking – it’s about positive action. Like an aircraft generating thrust, abundant behaviours create momentum in your business.
I’ve encouraged my clients to spend at least two hours daily not avoiding problems but actively seeking opportunities. This might mean exploring new partnerships, reimagining services, or connecting with customers in deeper ways.
The Cognitive Triangle is a useful tool, when facing setbacks, to analyse the connection between our thoughts, feelings and behaviours. By working backward from our emotional reactions, we can create more thinking time between stimulus and response. The key question to ask: ‘Is this serving me?’. If holding onto old fears or beliefs isn’t serving our growth, we need to consciously let them go to make room for abundance.
Another practical approach is the ‘we’ll see’ principle from the Chinese Farmer story. When something seemingly negative happens, don’t catastrophise. Instead, maintain equilibrium, focusing on what you can control rather than overreacting to temporary conditions. As the farmer knew, today’s misfortune might be tomorrow’s blessing in disguise.
Elevating Your Team to Business Class
Perhaps the most powerful aspect of abundance thinking is how it transforms your team environment. Just as the difference between economy and business class lies in the attention to detail, service quality and overall experience, an abundance-oriented leader creates a premium environment for their team.
When I encourage clients to shift their leadership approach from scarcity (focused on limitations, tight control and fear of mistakes) to abundance (emphasising possibilities, empowerment and learning from missteps), the changes are remarkable. Team creativity flourishes, retention improves and collective resilience strengthens.
The Diamond model for running meetings, structuring each session to build from positive energy toward solutions, is another great tool. Every meeting begins with ‘what’s working well?’ before addressing challenges, creating a foundation of possibility rather than problem-fixation. This ‘silver linings top-and-tail approach’ transforms the entire dynamic of our team interactions.
For handling difficult conversations, the Drama Line tool is effective at keeping discussions ‘above the line’ in the realm of accountability rather than slipping into blame or victimhood. The EDIP tool (Explore, Discover, Inspire, Plan) has been equally valuable, training teams to look for ‘glimmers’ – small positive moments – that build into a culture of abundance. Remember, these are learned skills that improve with practice. We become the average of the people we spend most of our time with, so every interaction makes a difference and therefore counts.
Your Flight Plan
As you chart your course for the year ahead, consider this: in cloudy economic times, those who radiate brightness stand out even more brilliantly. Instead of being diminished by challenging conditions, you have the opportunity to shine as brightly as the north star, attracting clients, partners and opportunities precisely because you operate from a place of abundance when scarcity seems the easier default.
The flight path to success is ready. The question is: are you prepared to take the controls, set your course toward abundance and inspire your team to join you at higher altitudes? By the end of this year, how can you, your business and your team prove you really focused on the silver linings? Captain, your runway to success is ready – open those doors!
With a background in Psychology, Laura has designed and delivered culture change, communication and leadership training programmes for organisations since 2000. Laura has been fascinated in the topic of future-proofing careers due to rapid automation & AI changes. Her 2016 ‘The Robots Are Coming’ TEDx talk suggests we ‘wake up & smell the silicon’. She is passionate about sharing ideas that energise and support people to inspire them to create their future.
With today’s 40-year-olds likely to retire from a final job that has not yet been invented, and a four-year-old is likely to enter a job market in 2030 requiring a skillset beyond the scope of our current education system, Laura believes that the ability for an organisation’s workforce to handle the years ahead with emotional stability, mental resilience and a proactive customer-focused mindset will be key to retaining a competitive edge.