When a Prime Minister Shows Us What Real Leadership Looks Like

Image Credit: World Economic Forum/Ciaran McCrickard

If you’d like to listen to this instead, go here.

Mark Carney's recent speech at Davos was a masterclass in purposeful leadership.

While other leaders offered vague platitudes about global cooperation, Carney demonstrated the three practices that effective leaders consistently use to create meaningful change: See, Imagine, Do.

SEE: What Is

Carney began by naming reality with unflinching honesty. "Let me be direct," he said. "We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition."

No hedging. No diplomatic softening. Just clear-eyed truth-telling.

He used Václav Havel's greengrocer metaphor brilliantly: the shopkeeper who puts a sign in his window saying "Workers of the world unite" not because he believes it, but to avoid trouble. Havel called this "living within a lie."

Carney's point is that for decades, countries like Canada have placed their own signs in the window, pretending the rules-based international order worked as advertised. But that fiction no longer holds. "You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination."

This is what the See practice demands: relentlessly seeking to be accurate rather than right - seeing what is, not what we wish were true.

IMAGINE: What Could Be

Having named the harsh reality, Carney could have stopped there. Many leaders do. They see the problems clearly but offer no compelling alternative.

Not Carney.

"From the fracture, we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just," he said. He painted a vision of middle powers refusing to compete for favour from great powers and instead combining to create "a third path with impact."

His vision wasn't naive multilateralism or nostalgic. It was pragmatic and compelling: variable geometry coalitions, different combinations of nations tackling different challenges based on shared values and interests.

This reduces the imagination deficit. Rather than fixating on what might go wrong, he invited his audience to co-create something better.

DO: What It Takes

Here's where Carney shifted from inspiration to implementation.

"We are taking the sign out of the window," he said simply. Then he backed it up with specifics: tax cuts, removal of trade barriers, a trillion dollars in strategic investments, doubled defence spending, and 12 trade and security deals signed in six months.

This isn't busywork. It's deliberate, leveraged action towards a compelling vision. It reduces the 'unhurried deficit' - not through frantic activity but through focused, strategic moves.

"Nostalgia is not a strategy," Carney reminded us. True leadership requires doing what it takes, not lamenting what's been lost.

The Leadership Lesson

Carney's speech works because he embodies all three practices in sequence. He sees reality clearly, imagines a compelling alternative, then demonstrates tangible action towards that vision.

That's the pattern effective leaders follow. Not just one or two of these practices, but all three, consistently.

The question for you: which of these practices do you need to strengthen in our own leadership?

For a transcript of Mark Carney’s speech, go here.