Tim Cool

Leadership is about setting priorities and then exemplifying the behaviors that you want to see in other people.

Make the charitable assumption

49% technical skill and 51% emotional skill

Hire for these traits:

• Optimistic warmth (genuine kindness, thoughtfulness, and a sense that the glass is always at least half full)

• Intellectual Curiosity  (not just “smarts” but rather an insatiable curiosity to learn for the sake of learning)

• Work ethic (a natural tendency to do something as well as it can possibly be done)

• Empathy (an awareness of, care for, and connection to how others feel and how your actions make others feel)

• Self-awareness and integrity (an understanding of what makes you tick and a natural inclination to be accountable for doing the right thing with honesty and superb judgment)

Communicating has as much to do with context as it does content. That’s called setting the table. Understanding who needs to know what, when people need to know it, and why, and then presenting that information in an entirely comprehensible way is a sine qua non of great leadership. Clear, timely communication is the key to applying constant, gentle pressure.

Great storytelling connects employees to their work. It involves using concrete examples that reframe a moment by personifying human consequences. People’s feelings about their work are only partly about the work itself. They are equally, if not more so, about how they frame their work. Do they see what they’re doing as a mindless ritual? Do they see it as empty compliance? Or do they see it as sacred duty? If you change the frame you change the feeling. And nothing changes frames faster than a story.