As the calendar flips to a new year, many of us set goals to improve our physical fitness – hitting the gym, building endurance, and becoming stronger. But have you considered giving your leadership muscles the same attention? Just as physical fitness strengthens your body, leadership growth requires focus, discipline, and the right strategies to achieve lasting results.
To help elevate your leadership game in 2025, we turned to four Ivey faculty members for their expert advice. Their insights offer a comprehensive roadmap to strengthen resilience, refine decision-making, and sustain personal well-being along the way.
This year, take your leadership to the next level. It’s time to get leadership fit – are you ready?
Prioritize happiness
Dusya Vera, Professor of Strategy and Executive Director of the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership, encourages leaders to prioritize happiness as part of their 2025 leadership journey.
"Research reveals powerful pathways to happiness, including personal accountability, letting go of judgment, practicing acceptance, being present, adopting empowering beliefs, and embracing gratitude," says Vera. "These principles align with 'leadership of the self' – understanding who we are and how it shapes our decisions."
Vera highlights that these pathways require cultivating habits intentionally. "For example, accountability means taking ownership of our beliefs, actions, and emotions, while humility fosters acceptance and gratitude," she explains.
Her advice for 2025: for happiness, look inward. She expands: "Rather than chasing happiness, choose one happiness habit to develop and lean into growth. Not only will you enhance your leadership effectiveness, but you’ll also unlock a deeper and more enduring sense of fulfillment."
Show up to the character gym every day
Mary Crossan, Professor of General Management and Strategy, emphasizes the importance of daily character development as a cornerstone of leadership growth.
"I wish I had understood earlier in my life the centrality of committing to a daily practice of character development," says Crossan. "It remains the most important commitment I will make for 2025, alongside my commitment to health and nutrition."
Going to the “character gym,” as Crossan describes it, involves focusing on one element of the leader character framework (Transcendence, Drive, Collaboration, Humanity, Humility, Integrity, Temperance, Justice, Accountability, and Courage, all connected through Judgment) and bringing it into intentional awareness regularly – starting with your morning coffee.
"Developing character starts with observing and identifying it, and then learning how to activate and exercise the behavior," she explains. "For example, when I am working on being open-minded, I use 'yes-and' practices from improvisation to cultivate that skill in a practical way."
For those looking to begin their journey, Crossan recommends starting with guided tools like her co-developed Virtuosity Character app or cultivating personalized practices that align with daily routines.
Incorporate a three-step routine
Lucas Monzani, Troost Professor in Leadership, shares his "leadership workout" – a practical three-step routine designed to help leaders thrive in 2025.
Step 1: Strength Routine
To build a strong foundation, Monzani emphasizes the importance of a strength routine that focuses on developing character in tandem with competency. Drawing on Ivey research, he highlights how this dual approach consistently drives positive outcomes for leaders, their teams, and their organizations.
Step 2: Cardio Routine
In this phase, Monzani recommends leaders to walk alongside their collaborators, actively listening with honest curiosity to their ideas, concerns, and inputs. "This practice not only enhances psychological safety, but fosters organizational learning, and generates innovative ideas," affirms Monzani.
Step 3: Cooldown Routine
Finally, Monzani advises leaders to prioritize their emotional and physical health by carving out time each day for mindfulness or centering practices. He says: "Even ten minutes a day can help leaders manage negative emotions and reduce burnout, fostering well-being and better decision-making."
As 2025 unfolds, it will undoubtedly offer its share of unique trials and opportunities. Yet, as Monzani emphasizes, embracing these transformative routines can empower leaders to navigate complexities with resilience, adapt with grace, and position both themselves and their organizations for lasting success.
Embrace embodied practices
Mazi Raz, Assistant Professor of Strategy, invites leaders to reimagine their growth journey in 2025 – not just as a mental or strategic endeavor, but as a deeply embodied experience. He champions the power of embodied practices: simple yet powerful routines that harness the body’s innate intelligence and full sensory suite to uncover and enhance new dimensions of leadership.
He says: "Our physical being is a source of understanding, learning, and relating to the world. By activating embodied practices, leaders can access deeper layers of awareness, enhancing their understanding, relationships, and ability to lead."
Unlike a traditional physical workout, these practices don’t require specialized equipment or facilities – just a willingness to intentionally explore and engage. To start, Raz recommends two exercises:
The attentional exercise: Start by observing your surroundings, whether it’s a scenic vista, a bustling boardroom, or your own workspace. Begin with immediate visual impressions, then gradually deepen your awareness to include sounds, scents, and bodily sensations. This layered attentiveness builds grounded situational awareness and connection.
The playful imagination exercise: Hold a common object, like a ball, and play with it. Then, re-imagine it as different objects – a delicate soap bubble, a heavy boulder, or even a bird. Let these re-imaginations influence how you hold and interact with the objects – common and habitual for the ball, gentle and tentative for the bubble, grounded and slow for the boulder, or free-flowing for the bird. Notice how these shifts reshape your movements, physical sensations, and spatial relationships.
“By intentionally exploring how your body senses and creates,” says Raz, “you’ll unlock a deeper understanding of yourself and your ways of being, knowing, and doing. It’s about leading not just with your mind, but with your whole self.”
