Leadership

Everyone has important skills and likely unique skills, but they may not always be as confident in those skills as they should be. We need to challenge the notion that if you don't feel like a superhero, then you must not be the right person for the job. Being underestimated in that way often brings out the best in me. For me, it's not just about overcoming insecurity but leveraging it as a catalyst to ensure that I bring everything I have to the mission.

NASA Astronaut & Space Shuttle Mission Specialist

Mental resilience is supported by practice and preparation, but it also comes from knowing, deep down, that you're supposed to be where you are. Confidence in your purpose is crucial. By focusing on the next step, and then the one after that, while keeping the big picture in mind, you can effectively accomplish the mission.

NASA Astronaut & Space Shuttle Mission Specialist

How many CEOs or heads of government agencies have taken the trouble today to say, 'Who are my five most-thoughtful antagonists? How have I reached out to them, and what efforts do I have in place to create a listening community across those antagonists for when I really need it when the crisis hits?'

Managing in the age of outrage is not the same as managing outrage. Managing outrage is crisis management—you can turn it over to a part of the organization that's pro at it and then get on with your day. It's firefighting.

If you're managing that way in the age of outrage, basically you're saying your organization will be in constant firefighting mode. That's unsustainable. The organization will very quickly wither and die.

One of the best analogies I've heard in this scenario is that, just as you wouldn't want a surgeon to go from one operating theater to the next without having washed their hands, you don't want a manager to go from one context to the next without being in a position where they can actually do some good—or at least do no harm.

The idea that you will sit down with someone who's had 30 or 40 years of lived experience in a particular situation, and has been conditioned to analyze the world that way, and then somehow get them to change their mind in one sitting is implausible.

Because it's giving us information about how we're feeling and what we need to do about those feelings. When I'm looking at your facial expressions, I get signals—like either you're interested or you're bored. Either you want me to keep going or not. And that's data for me. Because if I notice a shift in the way you're engaging with me while I'm speaking, I could either use that information, or I could keep going and going and going, and then lose my audience.

Psychologist & Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

Have you ever read Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power? One of the laws is 'discover every man's thumbscrew,' which means that every person has something that matters deeply to them. I think you can approach this not from a negative perspective, but a positive one: to understand the 'good guys,' the 'bad guys,' and everyone in between. Why do they do what they do? As a journalist, the best way to uncover that is to listen—authentically.

Fox News Correspondent and International Reporter

Legendary artists are not one hit wonders. They have staying power, they've been there for years, decades, generations. Like Beyoncé. After we recorded 'If I Were A Boy', she sat down on the couch with me and was extremely loving, nice, and wanted to know about my family and how I feel about things.

Grammy-nominated music producer and songwriter behind major pop hits

To me, writing a song is like a ball game. You bounce the ball back and forth until someone doesn't want to play anymore. When you make music, you want to make someone feel something. So if you write in collaboration, you can have a good reality check if you can make each other feel something with every new word, every new melody.

Grammy-nominated music producer and songwriter behind major pop hits

a powerful call to action to think deeply about what lights you up—and a guide for how to build a life of meaning and purpose.

Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc

I see myself as someone who seeds ideas well, but others execute them far better. I learned this the hard way; if I'd continued running everything, neither business would have survived. So, my approach was simple: spend three years as a controlling megalomaniac, then completely let go.

I recall attending an annual event at the Albert Hall hosted by the Institute of Directors. The chairman, at 75, admitted he'd changed his mind—success, he concluded, truly lies in your ability to connect and resonate emotionally with people, thereby inspiring them to action.

I don't believe there's a universal formula for success—I can only share what worked for me, which was driven by enthusiasm for new ideas. What I value most in people is enthusiasm—not passion, which I find overused—but genuine enthusiasm to see opportunities and act upon them.

The power of routinization is that it allows you to spread a shared set of identity markers to a large population—and to do so very quickly. All you need is a handful of proselytizing leaders willing to travel from village to village, spreading the same ideas and behaviours, and you can soon create a vast tradition encompassing hundreds of communities.

Cognitive scientist studying ritual, religion, and social bonding mechanisms