things can’t shape our decisions

You don’t have to turn this into something. It doesn’t have to upset you. Things can’t shape our decisions by themselves.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Modern Library. 2003. P.81, Book 6, #52. Also see The Internet Classics Archive | The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (mit.edu)

practice these essential basics

Our [HBR Leader’s Handbook] research [interviews with over 40 successful leaders of large corporations, startups, and non-profits] pointed to six leadership skills where practice was particularly important. These are not mysterious and certainly aren’t new. However, the leaders we talked with emphasized that these fundamental skills really matter. Aspiring leaders should focus on practicing these essential basics:

1. Shape a vision that is exciting and challenging for your team (or division/unit/organization).
2. Translate that vision into a clear strategy about what actions to take, and what not to do.
3. Recruit, develop, and reward a team of great people to carry out the strategy.
4. Focus on measurable results.
5. Foster innovation and learning to sustain your team (or organization) and grow new leaders.
6. Lead yourself — know yourself, improve yourself, and manage the appropriate balance in your own life.

Ron Ashkenas and Brook Manville

"The 6 Fundamental Skills Every Leader Should Practice" Harvard Business Review. Oct. 24, 2018

to leave unsaid

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

Benjamin Franklin

The Art of Virtue: Ben Franklin's Formula for Successful Living. Skyhorse Publishing. 2012. 

dealing with valid anger

How… should [we] deal with… valid anger? I counsel a five-step process: (1) consciously acknowledge to yourself that you are angry; (2) restrain your immediate response; (3) locate the focus of your anger; (4) analyze your options; and (5) take constructive action. As we complete each step, we move toward making our anger productive.

Gary D. Chapman

Anger: Handling a Powerful Emotion in a Healthy Way.  Moody Publishers. 2007.

the most basic of all knowledge

A report from the National Center for Clinical Infant Programs makes the point that school success is not predicted by a child’s fund of facts or a precocious ability to read so much as by emotional and social measures: being self-assured and interested; knowing what kind of behavior is expected and how to rein in the impulse to misbehave; being able to wait, to follow directions, and to turn to teachers for help; and expressing needs while getting along with other children.

Almost all students who do poorly in school, says the report, lack one or more of these elements of emotional intelligence (regardless of whether they also have cognitive difficulties such as learning disabilities). The magnitude of the problem is not minor; in some states close to one in five children have to repeat first grade, and then as the years go on fall further behind their peers, becoming increasingly discouraged, resentful, and disruptive.

A child’s readiness for school depends on the most basic of all knowledge, how to learn. The report lists the seven key ingredients of this crucial capacity – all related to emotional intelligence:

1. Confidence. A sense of control and mastery of one’s body, behavior, and world; the child’s sense that he is more likely than not to succeed at what he undertakes, and that adults will be helpful.
2. Curiosity. The sense that finding out about things is positive and leads to pleasure.
3. Intentionality. The wish and capacity to have an impact, and to act upon that with persistence. This is related to a sense of competence, of being effective.
4. Self-control. The ability to modulate and control one’s own actions in age-appropriate ways; a sense of inner control.
5. Relatedness. The ability to engage with others based on the sense of being understood by and understanding others.
6. Capacity to communicate. The wish and ability to verbally exchange ideas, feelings, and concepts with others. This is related to a sense of trust in others and of pleasure in engaging with others, including adults.
7. Cooperativeness. The ability to balance one’s own needs with those of others in group activity.

Daniel Goleman

Emotional Intelligence. Random House LLC, 2006. 358 pages, p.193,194

emotional brilliance

If the test of social skill is the ability to calm distressing emotions in others, then handling someone at the peak of rage is perhaps the ultimate measure of mastery. The data on self-regulation of anger and emotional contagion suggest that one effective strategy might be to distract the angry person, empathize with his feelings and perspective, and then draw him into an alternative focus, one that attunes him with a more positive range of feeling – a kind of emotional judo.

Such refined skill in the fine art of emotional influence is perhaps best exemplified by the late Terry Dobson, who in the 1950s was one of the first Americans ever to study the martial art Aikido in Japan:

One afternoon he was riding home on a suburban Tokyo train when a huge, bellicose, very drunk and begrimed laborer got on. The man, staggering, began terrorizing the passengers, screaming curses, he took a swing at a woman holding a baby, sending her sprawling in the laps of an elderly couple, who then jumped up and joined a stampede to the other end of the car.

The drunk, taking a few other swings (and, in his rage, missing), grabbed the metal pole in the middle of the car with a roar and tried to tear it out of its socket. At that point Terry, who was in peak physical condition from daily eight hour Aikido workouts, felt called upon to intervene, lest someone get seriously hurt.

But he recalled the words of his teacher: “Aikido is the art of reconciliation. Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his connection with the universe. If you try to dominate people you are already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it.” Indeed, Terry had agreed upon beginning lessons with his teacher never to pick a fight, and to use his martial-arts skills only in defense.

Now, at last, he saw his chance to test his Aikido abilities in real life, in what was clearly a legitimate opportunity.

So, as all the other passengers sat frozen in their seats, Terry stood up, slowly and with deliberation. Seeing him, the drunk roared, “Aha! A foreigner! You need a lesson in Japanese manners!” and began gathering himself to take on Terry. But just as the drunk was on the verge of making his move, someone gave an ear-splitting, oddly joyous shout: “Hey!” The shout had the cheery tone of someone who has suddenly come upon a fond friend.

The drunk, surprised, spun around to see a tiny Japanese man, probably in his seventies, sitting there in a kimono. The old man beamed with delight at the drunk, and beckoned him over with a light wave of his hand and a lilting “C’mere.” The drunk strode over with a belligerent, “Why the hell should I talk to you?”

Meanwhile, Terry was ready to fell the drunk in a moment if he made the least violent move. “What’cha been drinking?” the old man asked, his eyes beaming at the drunken laborer. “I been drinking sake, and it’s none of your business,” the drunk bellowed. “Oh, that’s wonderful, absolutely wonderful,” the old man replied in a warm tone. “You see, I love sake, too.

Every night, me and my wife (she’s seventy-six, you know), we warm up a little bottle of sake and take it out into the garden, and we sit on an old wooden bench . . .” He continued on about the persimmon tree in his backyard, the fortunes of his garden, enjoying sake in the evening.

The drunk’s face began to soften as he listened to the old man; his fists unclenched. “Yeah … I love persimmons, too .. . ,” he said, his voice trailing off. “Yes,” the old man replied in a sprightly voice, “and I’m sure you have a wonderful wife.” “No,” said the laborer. “My wife died….” Sobbing, he launched into a sad tale of losing his wife, his home, his job, of being ashamed of himself.

Just then the train came to Terry’s stop, and as he was getting off he turned to hear the old man invite the drunk to join him and tell him all about it, and to see the drunk sprawl along the seat, his head in the old man’s lap.

This is emotional brilliance.

Daniel Goleman

Emotional Intelligence. Random House LLC, 2006. 358 pages, p.124-126