Understand the “Gretzky Factor”: Cultivate an instinct, a “touch”, call it what you will, that enables you to know both where the “puck” is now and where it will be soon.
This duality, making yourself better while teaching and developing others’ judgment capabilities, is the key to leadership that is both productive and principled.
The leaders I met, whatever walk of life they were from, whatever institutions they were presiding over, always referred back to the same failure something that happened to them that was personally difficult, even traumatic.
If knowing yourself and being yourself were as easy to do as to talk about, there wouldn’t be nearly so many people walking around in borrowed postures, spouting secondhand ideas, trying desperately to fit in rather than to stand out.
Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.
