My five months at the FBI Academy were designed to train new agents like myself to be mentally tough, so we could land on our feet when confronted with the unknown. I entered the Academy believing proper training would give me the hard skills to bulldoze my way through obstacles and roadblocks. I had watched movies and TV shows where brute strength and ignorance powered heroes through tough situations.
I left the Academy, however, with a deep appreciation of how mental toughness involves developing soft skills to manage our emotions, thoughts, and behavior in ways that will ensure our success. It doesn’t require above-average intelligence or strict habits, nor is it a “battle-ready” attitude that rolls over anything in our way.
Mental toughness strengthens our mind to be innovative, persistent, and positive as we create strategies to meet challenges head-on.
FBI agents aren’t the only ones who need mental toughness to keep going when times get hard. Business leaders are confronted with debates over hybrid and remote work, evolving technology, competition, and strategic direction.
Are you mentally tough? Take this evidence-based, FREE Mental Toughness Assessment.
The real key to excellence is not an FBI agent’s ability to outrun an armed suspect or a business leader’s ability to read the market. It’s the mindset with which both approach their challenges.
Let’s take a closer look at how mental toughness can help business leaders make a greater impact:
1. Increase Resilience
Mentally tough leaders are resilient and view obstacles as challenges, not barriers. They adapt to their situation and embrace obstacles better than others because they lean into their circumstances.
The most common definition of resilience is “the ability to bounce back,” but to say we bounce back from adversity implies we ping-pong back and forth until we return to the person we were before. However, once we find ourselves on solid ground after experiencing a crisis, we know we are different. We have been through something significant, seen battle, and survived. We have the scars to prove it.
We don’t bounce back; we move through. We leave old thinking behind and learn something new. In short, we change so we can move through.
More than talent, education, and experience, resilience and the ability to move through setbacks determine who will succeed and who will fail. That is true in the classroom, in sports, and in the boardroom.
As a new FBI agent, the resilience I developed through mental toughness helped me be bold, take risks, and step into my comfort zone. I was scared to death of what I might face, but I knew that the way I overcame failure now would determine how I achieved success in the future.
Tip:
Jot down a past experience where you overcame an obstacle. What did you learn from that experience? How could you use those lessons to overcome the obstacle in front of you now?
2. Ramp Up Willpower
Mentally tough business leaders have the willpower to stay focused when facing complex and high-stakes decisions. Willpower is about self-control, which is essential for making sound decisions. It enables leaders to weigh options carefully and choose the best action, even under pressure.
Willpower fuels persistence, allowing leaders to push through difficult situations and maintain their commitment to long-term goals. They need to stay in the race, but we’ve been led to believe that willpower is limited, so we’re always on the lookout for signs of exhaustion or fatigue.
However, recent findings by Stanford researchers have shown that willpower is limited only if we believe it is. Willpower renews itself when we remain focused and energized. While talent and charisma will certainly move us up the ladder, they don’t enable us to make a significant impact on our industry. Grit, willpower, and determination are what will make that happen.
Tip:
Try meditation to improve your willpower. Neuroscientists have found that meditation leads to better focus and self-control. MRI scans show increased neural connections in brain regions responsible for impulse control.
3. Positive Thinking
Mentally tough business leaders are positive thinkers, not optimists. Optimists believe that everything will turn out in the end. Pessimists think everything will end up in a sinkhole. But positive thinkers don’t expect their circumstances to change. Instead, they change themselves to overcome their circumstances.
Robert W. Schrauf’s research on emotional vocabulary revealed a consistent pattern across cultures and age groups:
50% of words used to express emotions are negative
30% are positive
20% are neutral
It’s easy to blame our circumstances or environment, but they are not the root cause of our negativity. The culprit is our brain, which is wired to be negative. Humans have a negativity bias that kept our ancestors safe from saber-toothed tigers.
Unlike our ancestors, however, not everything new or different is considered a threat to our survival today. Since our brains constantly look for bad news, they fixate on negative events in our day.
FBI agents are not optimists who hope or expect an arrest to go according to plan. As an agent, I anticipated outcomes and prepared for the worst.
Tip:
- Notice your thoughts when you’re in a negative situation. What is your first reaction to new technologies, cybersecurity threats, economic uncertainty, or changing worker expectations?
- Challenge those thoughts. Are the things you’re telling yourself true? Is your reaction based on fear of the unknown? Lack of confidence in yourself? Or the potential that each challenge brings to the table? Look for the hidden opportunities in each case—you may have to look hard!
While there are many other elements of mental toughness, these aspects can help leaders better navigate challenges, make more effective decisions, and ultimately create a greater impact in their roles.
© 2026 LaRae Quy. All rights reserved.
Member of Forbes Business Council
Member of Harvard Business Review Advisory Council
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Are you mentally tough? Take this evidence-based, FREE Mental Toughness Assessment.
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Author of “Mental Toughness for Women Leaders: 52 Tips To Recognize and Utilize Your Greatest Strengths.”
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