Thinking in ideals: focus on what you do want

Here is a question I have asked hundreds of leadership teams across industries and continents:

"If everything went exactly the way you hoped, if your team became everything it is capable of becoming, what would that actually look like?"

The most common response is silence.

Not because people don't care. But because somewhere along the way, most leaders were trained out of the habit of thinking in Ideals. Thinking in Ideals, we were told, is naive. Unrealistic. The job is to manage the gap between where you are and where you need to be, not to imagine some impossible perfect state.

I want to offer a different view. Grounded in cognitive science.

We Are Wired to Think in Ideals

The word teleological comes from the Greek telos, meaning end, goal, or purpose. It describes the orientation of human cognition toward goals rather than away from threats. Put simply: we are not only wired to move away from what we fear. We are wired to move toward what we picture.

Psychological research has consistently shown that humans think in images and are drawn toward the mental pictures they hold most vividly. This happens whether that picture is empowering or limiting. Whether it is conscious or unconscious. Whether the image is the outcome you want, or the one you're desperately trying to avoid.

If your dominant mental picture as a leader is "don't fail this quarter," your brain has a clear target: failure. Everything filters through that lens. Every conversation, every decision, every read of ambiguous data gets colored by the anxiety of avoiding the negative outcome.

But when you build a vivid, specific picture of the Ideal, what the team looks like when it is operating at its full potential, what the culture feels like when everyone is genuinely included, what success looks and sounds and feels like in practice, your brain has a different target. And your decisions start aligning toward it.

What Thinking in Ideals Looks Like in Leadership Practice

This is not motivational poster territory. This is applied cognitive science, and it has practical, structural implications for how leaders set direction and build culture.

"Look Like / Feel Like" Your Ideal

One of the most powerful exercises I facilitate in leadership workshops is what I call the Look Like/Feel Like exercise. I ask leaders to describe their Ideal team culture, not in values statements or policy language, but in behavioral, experiential terms.

What do you see when you walk into a room where this culture is working?

What do you hear in the conversations?

What does it feel like to be a new employee on your team in this Ideal state?

Specificity matters. "We want a culture of belonging" is a direction. "Every employee can point to a specific moment in the last 30 days when their perspective changed a decision" is a target the brain can navigate toward.

Focus on What You DO Want

The mind receives no picture from the word "don't." Tell a child don't touch the vase, and within two minutes they are reaching for it. Tell a leader don't lose this client, and their Reticular Activating System (RAS) starts scanning for evidence of losing. The frame of avoidance activates a different set of cognitive resources than the frame of attainment.

In culture work, this distinction is particularly important. "We want to reduce turnover among employees of color" is managing a problem. "We want a culture where every person, regardless of background, identity, or experience level, can see a clear path for advancement and has the relationships and resources to pursue it" is an Ideal worth moving toward.

Make It Shared

An Ideal that lives only in the leader's head cannot transform a culture. It has to be articulated, tested, and co-created with the people who will be living in it. The act of building the Ideal together, especially with voices that are often excluded from those conversations, is itself an act of culture transformation.

Every person on your team is capable of more than you are currently asking of them. The question is whether you have given them and yourself a clear, vivid picture of what more actually means.

Stop managing for the average. The average will always anchor you where you are.

Start leading toward the Ideal.

WANT TO GO DEEPER?

Thinking in Ideals is the central framework of IDEAL: From Overcoming to Becoming and the organizing principle behind the Potential Unleashed Leadership Workshop. Visit potential-unleashed.com to bring this work to your organization — or to book Jahmad for your next conference or leadership summit.

Watch Jahmad talk about thinking in ideals in the video below.