In short
How leaders can manage change by imagining alternative futures (“Possible Selves”) rather than clinging to what they know.
Guest backgrounds
The transcript doesn’t name the guest, but the speaker is an author/researcher with a chapter titled “Possible Selves,” and discusses research on how people constrain themselves after “doors close.”
Key claims
People needlessly limit alternative futures when circumstances change; concrete strategies can “crack open” imagination. One technique is “moral elevation,” where witnessing extraordinary courage, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, resilience, or commitment can rewire the brain and shift leadership behavior.
Notable examples
Moral elevation examples include leaders’ courage, forgiving, resilience, and commitment to ill partners; business context suggests learning from other leaders’ unexpected, awe-inspiring ways of leading.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOManaging Change and Imagining Alternatives
0:04 to 1:20
Discover how to manage change by envisioning alternative futures.
“It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.”
The Power of Moral Elevation
1:20 to 2:17
Learn about moral elevation and its impact on leadership and personal growth.
“to us and may actually be newly available to us in our newly constrained environments.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:01This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+. so business experience suggests that we are not good at managing change and that's partly because we hold on to what we know but also because we're not good at imagining an alternative so what does your research tell you about how we come up with these alternate ways of thinking
0:44Maya Shankar:about ourselves and our potential yeah yeah it's interesting all of us have had the experience of life closing a bunch of doors, right? So we anticipated that the future would look one way, and then we get news that the future is not going to look that way. And what research shows is that we can actually needlessly constrain ourselves when it comes to alternative futures that we might live out. One of my chapters, which is called Possible Selves, distills concrete strategies that we can use to crack open our imagination about futures that are still available to us and may actually be newly available to us in our newly constrained environments.
1:25Maya Shankar:One of the techniques that I give people is called moral elevation. So moral elevation is the warm fuzzy feeling that we get in our chest when we witness someone else's extraordinary behaviors. It might be their courage or self-sacrifice or ability to forgive or resilience or commitment to their ill partners, whatever it is. Moral elevation doesn't just make us feel good about humanity. It can actually change our brains. It can rewire our brains. And I wonder in the business context, if you might not get a warm, fuzzy feeling in your chest, but looking to other businesses, other leaders, other managers for ways that they lead that, again, violate your understanding of what's necessary to lead or who are kind in ways that you are that you find so awe-inspiring or so unexpected that can shift us as leaders too.
From the publisher
Lead Through Change by Reimagining What's Possible
12 Feb 2026
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When change closes doors, we often shrink our sense of what’s still possible—without realizing it. On HBR IdeaCast, cognitive scientist @drmayashankar how expanding your “possible selves” (and even learning from other leaders) can help you reimagine your future and grow through change.
Listen to the full episode here: https://s.hbr.org/4rfZLBw
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