December can be a strange old time for your leadership mindset. The calendar starts thinning, the pace slows, and the temptation to write 20 unrealistic resolutions calls to you like a January diet that promises more than it can deliver. It’s something we like to refer to as mindset drift, and it’s one of the reasons a leadership mindset audit is so valuable before we welcome the new year.

Because it gives you a moment to step back, clear the mental clutter, and choose how you want to head into 2026, rather than letting the past 12 months decide for you.

Now, enough of the scene-setting. Let’s get that leadership mindset audit underway, step by step.

Step One: Examine Your Assumptions

Every leader works from a set of internal assumptions that shape their performance. Some of these assumptions are helpful, while others limit progress and most certainly belong on the naughty list.

Across a busy year, you might form interpretations about team members, strategies, and even your own leadership capacity. Without realizing it, these beliefs can influence how you make decisions, how you respond to problems, and how much space you give yourself to be adaptive as a leader.

So, take a moment to reflect on the beliefs that shaped your biggest moments in 2025. Consider where they came from and ask whether they serve the leader you want to be.

If you find some uncomfortable answers from this soul-searching exercise, you’re on the road to leadership clarity. If not, you might not be reflecting honestly enough. Or you might just be that darn good – but we doubt it, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this article…

Step Two: Take Stock of Emotional Residue

Leaders carry more emotional residue than they care to admit, whether it’s an awkward board conversation from March or a moment of disappointment in October. These emotional remnants might not be conscious, but they can show up in how you speak to others, in your hesitation to act, or in how quickly you shift into problem-solving mode when you should be asking for help.

Leaders who ignore this emotional residue often misinterpret a negative way of thinking as necessary. They think they’re being instinctive, which has served them well up until this point, but it’s really anything but.

On the flipside, the leaders who aren’t afraid to acknowledge their emotions often gain a better headspace and can find themselves with a healthy dose of leadership growth underneath the Christmas tree.

What you don’t process emotionally will quietly shape how you lead, whether you intend it to or not, so be sure to tend to your inner world as carefully as you manage your external one.

Step Three: Review Your Reactions Under Pressure

They say pressure creates diamonds, but you aren’t a piece of coal, and we’ve found that pressure creates ineffective leaders.

Take the year gone by. Certain situations will have triggered your most instinctive responses, including some you weren’t proud of. We won’t give you examples, because we’re sure a few have already come to mind as you’re reading this. These reactions often make sense at the time, but they might be weakening your hand as a leader. They might even be a sign of leadership burnout.

Because the truth is, tired leaders respond to pressure with intensity when their teams need clarity. Your reactions under pressure are often the truest signal of your leadership health - ignore them and they’ll define you, but review them with intention in your mindset audit, and you can reshape them into the awareness that creates a different outcome next year.

Step Five: Understand Your Decisions

Decision-making is rarely 100% rational; instead, it is often shaped by internal narratives and past experiences, not all of them helpful. The real issue is what hasty, irrational decisions may be costing your team, organization, and yourself.

For example, a leadership mindset shaped by fear may result in cautious decisions, and a mindset shaped by overconfidence may produce fast but fragile answers. A mindset shaped by fatigue might prioritize efficiency over quality or coherence.

But don’t get us wrong, these aren’t inherent leadership traits that will bring you down. They’re simply patterns. And once they’ve been identified and named, they become much easier to handle. Because when you change the pattern behind your decisions, you change the direction your leadership is heading.

So ask yourself: when pressure hits, are you choosing your responses consciously, or simply repeating what feels familiar?

What a Leadership Mindset Audit Makes Possible

A mindset audit clears the lens before you look ahead. As a result, it helps you enter 2026 with the perspective you choose rather than the one you’ve accumulated.

This helps you stay lighter on your feet at the top, find the intentionality that’s evaded you recently, and reconnect with a sense of purpose before the bells ring at midnight on New Years Eve.  

All of this comes from creating a leadership mindset that’s aligned with who you want to be in the future, not from building new goals on old assumptions that don’t cut the mustard.

A Handy Tool to Reset Your Mindset

Your mindset audit becomes far more powerful when you put it down in writing. That’s where leadership journaling provides the structure and consistency to notice patterns with honesty rather than judgment. It also creates the space to slow your thinking, observe your reactions, and contemplate the experiences that form your decisions.

To begin your mindset audit, try reflecting on these questions:

• Which assumptions shaped my biggest decisions of 2025, and will I repeat them in 2026?
• What emotions or unfinished thoughts am I carrying into the new year?
• Where did my reactions reflect clarity, and where did they reflect pressure?
• What kind of mindset would I choose for 2026 if I were starting fresh?

And if you’d like more of this kind of thing, check out our 30 days of complimentary leadership journal prompts.

Find Out More

If you want more clarity on how your mindset influences your leadership, explore our articles on courage and identifying your leadership blind spots. Within these, you’ll find a different perspective on the internal habits and narratives that shape your leadership, whether you realize it or not.

And when you’re ready to delve deeper, explore our My Daily Leadership Assessments to pinpoint the patterns, pressure responses, and blind spots that will shape your leadership in 2026, so you know exactly what to strengthen, shift, and leave behind before the new year begins.