Eli Lilly and Company

Zoey Powers leads state government affairs initiatives at the intersection of healthcare, public policy and business. Her work focuses on fostering collaboration across government, industry and community stakeholders while advancing thoughtful policy solutions.

Understanding before Persuading

Most people have never changed their minds because someone proved them wrong. Neither have I. Over the past fifteen years working across state government, healthcare, business and public service, I've become less interested in changing people's minds and more interested in understanding how minds change at all. That shift has changed the way I think about leadership, persuasion and even myself.

One experience in particular reinforced this perspective. While working on healthcare legislation, I noticed a legislator who served on the board of a hospital system and immediately assumed I understood his position. The financial relationship seemed like the obvious explanation. When we spoke, that assumption quickly fell apart. He spoke about the hospital's role in his community, the families it served, the jobs it provided and the security it represented in a rural district. Whether I agreed with his conclusions was not the point. His perspective was rooted in genuine conviction, not self-interest.

That conversation reminded me that facts alone rarely change minds. It is difficult to out-logic a value shaped by lived experience. What can change is our understanding of one another. The harder challenge is turning that same awareness inward by recognizing the stories we have accepted as truth before we even enter a conversation.

Questioning One's Own Assumptions

Neuroscience suggests the brain constantly interprets the world through patterns built from previous experience. Those shortcuts help us navigate everyday life, but they can also reinforce certainty until alternative perspectives become difficult to recognize. The challenge is not that our minds create these patterns. The challenge is forgetting they are interpretations rather than objective reality.

David McRaney, in How Minds Change, distinguishes between assimilating new information into existing beliefs and accommodating it by reshaping the belief itself. Real change rarely happens because someone presents a stronger argument. It happens when an experience, a conversation or a thoughtful question reveals something that no longer fits the story we have been telling ourselves.

Real change is not about winning an argument. It is about becoming willing to rethink the assumptions behind it.

Curiosity Is a Leadership Discipline

Developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik compares adult attention to a spotlight that quickly focuses on what seems relevant while filtering out everything else. Children, by contrast, experience attention more like a lantern, remaining open to possibilities adults have learned to ignore. I believe mindfulness is less about acquiring a new skill than recovering that broader awareness.

Mindfulness does not erase the neural pathways built over a lifetime. It simply reminds us they are pathways, not prisons.

Instead of searching for confirmation, we begin noticing surprise. Instead of asking how to defend what we already believe, we begin asking what we may not be seeing. That same curiosity can also be turned inward. The question becomes whether a belief is being defended because it is true or because it has quietly become part of identity.

Mindfulness does not erase the neural pathways built over a lifetime. It simply reminds us they are pathways, not prisons.

Choosing Curiosity over Certainty

I believe mindfulness matters for democracy and leadership alike. Institutions, civic organizations and political parties create accountability and shared purpose, but they were never meant to replace individual conscience. Their purpose is to organize people, not think for them.

The public servants I have admired most are not the ones who never changed their minds. They are the ones who remained curious after others became certain. They ask questions that encourage reflection rather than reaction. Their convictions are not fragile because they are not built on always being right. They are built on remaining teachable.

Leadership today is not simply about persuading others. It is about cultivating the discipline to notice when certainty has become louder than curiosity. Democracy does not depend on everyone agreeing. It depends on enough people remaining aware of the stories they tell themselves and willing to question them. I believe that willingness is where meaningful change begins.