How The Nomad Life Builds Leadership
7 Skills to Enhance Your Career
I was recently invited to be a guest on the Mindquest Leadership Adventure podcast, a LinkedIn Live event, which focuses on supporting executives around the world with thought-provoking content and learning opportunities.
Join Kasia and me on Thursday, Dec. 4 at 12:30 pm EST for the LinkedIn event
With a nudge from Mindquest Leadership’s podcast host Kasia, I started thinking about how living a nomad life can enhance our leadership skills.
The Nomad Mindset
Being a nomad isn’t just a way of living, but a way of thinking. It’s a reflection of your priorities in both your personal and work life. Becoming a nomad is a public declaration about your values and how you approach the world.
Most importantly, even if you aren’t (yet!) a nomad, you can strengthen your leadership skills by adopting a nomad mindset. Even incorporating one or two of these nomadic perspectives offers additional tools to your overall approach to management.
7 Leadership Skills
Here are 7 ways the nomad mindset can enhance your leadership qualities.
✔️ Wider Perspective: By exposing ourselves to new places, people, and cultures, nomads develop not just a tolerance, but an appreciation for ideas, experiences, and approaches to life outside our daily frame of reference.
Leadership Skill #1: Welcome new ideas and novel thinking
✔️ Managing Uncertainty: Everything about the nomad life is unpredictable. Take the usual factors like weather and health that can throw life into a tail-spin, and extend these endless decisions about where to live, what to eat, and how to get around.
Leadership Skill #2: Embrace daily problem-solving
✔️ Continual Learning: As a nomad, most things are new most of the time. We’re constantly surrounded by new (to us) language, cultures, religions, and traditions. All this stimulus helps feed our brain and stretch neural pathways.
Leadership Skill #3: Become smarter by overcoming challenges
✔️ Balanced Approach: Few places are as work-obsessed as America and Northeast Asia. As nomads living in different regions, we’re forced to change our work rhythms. For instance, grocery stores may close at 6:00 pm, so we need to go grocery shopping during the day.
Leadership Skill #4: Quickly adapt to changes in routine and new surroundings
✔️ Increased Possibilities: A harbinger of nomad thinking is the ability to view endless possibilities. In our world, there are few boundaries or barriers, so our sight-line is limitless. How would you think about your career if it were limitless?
Leadership Skill #5: Open your thinking to all possibilities
✔️ Maximum Flexibility: Nomad travel schedules often dictate how and when we work. If we’re currently in SE Asia and work for an American company, we may start our work day at 8:00 pm. As a result, we learn to shift our schedule to reflect our new home bases.
Leadership Skill #6: Reprioritize how and when you work to match your environment
✔️ Self-Expression is Key: The most daunting attribute of being a nomad is the freedom to dictate our own lives. As nomads, we are forced to make a conscious choice on how and where to live. This freedom means digging deep to understand what is most important for us.
Leadership Skill #7: Clear insight into your own values
Nibble at the Nomad Life
Here are several ways you can try the nomad life without moving from your current situation.
Nibble 1: Travel with a group of nomads. You’ll not only get a fabulous adventure, but also learn first-hand how nomads think. Think of it as a rest + reset.
👉 Here are 3 upcoming nomad journeys:
Nibble 2: Go to a nomad event. Nomad events happen all year-round, from one-week festivals to month-long workations. Look at it as a leadership course in an exotic location.
👉 Here’s a calendar of all Nomad Life worldwide events in 2025-2026
Nibble 3: Read and follow nomads. Often, nomads write about their lives as they travel the world. These missives will reveal how nomads balance work and full-time travel, often providing a glimpse into how they continually overcome challenges.
👉 Here are 3 nomad travel writers I follow:
Jo writing The 50+ Nomad Club
Jada writing The Midlife Nomad
Chris writing Nomads 50+ Wander. Prosper. Thrive.
Taking What’s Useful
I realize that the nomad life isn’t for everyone. Not everyone dreams of living out of one suitcase and setting up home every other month.
But the lessons gained from being a nomad can benefit all of us. So check in on the nomad life and see if it offers insights on how to become a better leader. You just might be inspired to think more broadly about your career.
If you like this post, please leave a comment or share it with others. This will help more readers find my work. ❤️
Christened “Wander Woman” by National Geographic, Erin Michelson is a professional speaker and author of the Nomad Life™ series of curated trips and travel guides, including the #1-ranked “Explore the World with Nomads.”
Curious to learn more about Nomad Life? Get the guide “Explore the World with Nomads: 50 Practical Tips, Interviews & Insights.”
Love this Erin - your adaption of Nomad life skills to the executive suite is perfect. And who knows? Maybe you will inspire some of them to step out of their lane for a nibble so they can have a taste of Nomad life.
I'm signing up for the LI live event, but its middle of the night here in Fiji, so I'll watch the recording. I know you will rock this! 💪💙👍
I love these points Erin. The nomad life has been my most important education, not my degree. I will always be so grateful for my nomadic experiences during my 30s and 40s. Perspective is so important. Connecting with local people and learning from them is priceless.