5 Critical Mental Skills for Excellent Leadership
#1. Vicarious reflection
“I don’t read books, man, come on!” he snorted with dismissive pride.
He was a friend of mine and I’d made the mistake of bringing up in conversation the value I’d found in certain books and how a few of them had changed my entire life. I’d asked him if he had any books like that.
I felt bad for him as he’d never had that experience with reading. As the years went by, his aptitude for mastering his own little world told him there was no reason to seek that experience. He’d mastered his little world, after all, without the wisdom of others.
But as soon as he left his bubble, something happened.
He was flat-footed. Awkward. Ignorant. Inappropriate. Ineffective.
Now, a book won’t solve all this, but his general attitude that he had nothing to learn from anyone, in any form, left him a king in his own world, but a pawn in the real one.
It got me thinking of what one of the greatest leaders I’ve ever met, General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, said:
“If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you. Any commander who claims he is…
