Digging Deep for Determination

<p><em><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iaQVi6c_6SI/X2JLy9ZxWQI/AAAAAAABO7A/o60CDIZsbfQy0py9OsulLseIXi9aUrMMQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/Jacques%2BLouis%2BDavid%2B-%2BIntervention%2Bof%2Bthe%2BSabine%2BWomen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1200" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iaQVi6c_6SI/X2JLy9ZxWQI/AAAAAAABO7A/o60CDIZsbfQy0py9OsulLseIXi9aUrMMQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h480/Jacques%2BLouis%2BDavid%2B-%2BIntervention%2Bof%2Bthe%2BSabine%2BWomen.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intervention_of_the_Sabine_Women#/media/File:F0440_Louvre_JL_David_Sabines_INV3691_rwk.jpg" target="_blank">Intervention of the Sabine Women</a></em><span style="text-align: left;"> by Jacques-Louis David, 1799 (public domain - Wikipedia)</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></em></p><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense."</strong> </em></strong></em></div><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;"><em>— Winston Churchill, 1941</em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><br /></p><p>Life can throw a lot at you from time to time. So much that it can seem overwhelming, or that you're constantly moving from defeat to defeat.</p><p>How are you supposed to keep going in situations like this?</p><p>In the last two weeks of Timeless & Timely, we've covered <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/good-grief">grief</a> and its stages—how to work through it and help others; and <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/lifes-labor-lost">loss</a>, or more particularly job loss. Two themes that encapsulate what the year has delivered to many people thus far.</p><p>People are hurting. These may be your employees, former colleagues, friends, and family members. There are struggles happening around the world, both graphic and muted, whether we watch them unfold, turn a blind eye to them, or are simply unaware that they're happening.</p><p>Even in good times, life can be a struggle. There's no guarantee that everything goes your way. That's just how it works.</p><p><br /></p><h3><em>It matters less that you succeed, and more how you respond to challenges.<br /></em></h3><p><br /></p><p>Or, as the quote that is commonly misattributed to Winston Churchill goes, "Success is all about going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm."</p><p>Churchill should know: while he is highly regarded for leading Great Britain through World War II and standing up to Hitler, he suffered a series of defeats in the preceding 30 years, including overseeing the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign in the Great War and making economic decisions as Chancellor of the Exchequer that pushed England into a depression. This led to him taking some years off from government, but he continued to write and to speak, and he was made Prime Minister in 1940, when he was 66 years old.</p><p>Tides turned after the war, his party was voted out, and Churchill lost the Prime Ministership. After his leadership ensured victory. How's that for national gratitude? But he returned in 1951 to lead the country again as the Cold War took root. He was 77 years old.</p><p>It was at these critical times in history—in the midst of crises—that Churchill found his strength. He summoned his power of oratory to stir he fellow citizens to solidarity and action.<br /><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p style="text-align: center;"><em><strong>“Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces—to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What’s thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it—and makes it burn still higher.”</strong> </em></p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;"><em>— Marcus Aurelius, </em>Meditations</div><br /><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><br />For other leaders, the journey and the struggle is more personal than public. Take Harland, for example. He was born on a farm in Indiana and was only five years old when his father died. He dropped out of school at 14, took odd jobs as a farm hand but hated it. So he tried being a streetcar conductor. No luck there either.</p><p>When he was 16, he talked his way into the Army by lying about his age, but didn't make it past his one-year enlistment. So he went into blacksmithing. He failed at that too.</p><p>So on it was to the railroad, where he became a locomotive fireman. He actually enjoyed that, got married at 18, and on the day his wife told him she was pregnant, he got fired. He bopped around from job to job, studying law by correspondence course, selling insurance, selling tires, running a ferryboat…</p><p>Eventually he settled into running a gas station in 1930. Not glamorous work, but respectable enough. And steady—which is what his wife was looking for, particularly as he was in his forties. In 1937, he began cooking for weary travelers who happened upon his station on U.S. Route 25, eventually building a 140-seat café.</p><p>Just as things were turning Harland's way, the café was destroyed by fire in 1939. Undeterred, he rebuilt the café across the street and added a motel. But it was the addition of one critical thing that changed everything for him. He began cooking his pan-fried chicken in a pressure cooker, reducing the amount of oil needed and sealing in flavors and moisture.</p><p>Have you guessed where this is going yet? Not so fast: we're not done with his setbacks yet. </p><p>Meanwhile, his wife had taken his children and left him, and by 1947, they divorced. Fortunately, his mistress was running the café and business was booming. In fact, the reputation of this little roadside café was spreading, with Duncan Hines writing it up in his <em>Adventures in Good Eating</em> guide to restaurants. </p><p>But all that soon changed with the relocation of the U.S. Route 25: his properties were literally in the middle of U.S. 25E and U.S. 25W, but authorities created a new U.S. 25E one mile north, in order to allow better access to the road from the forthcoming Interstate 75. Which meant less traffic for the filling station and restaurant.</p><p>In 1952, Harland—Harland Sanders, that is—decided to take his secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices of his "Kentucky Fried Chicken" and franchise it. He didn't want to build additional Sanders Café locations; he franchised the recipe to an existing restaurant in Utah. As the highway construction completed in 1955, Colonel Sanders saw the writing on the wall: traffic dropped, and at 65, he was getting on in years. He closed the café and began collecting $105 a month in Social Security.</p><p>The old colonel wasn't done, though. What would have been retirement for most other people at that age was when he was just getting started. He got into the franchising business in earnest, making personal visits to every restaurant he wanted to sell his recipe to, often sleeping in the backseat of his car and personally cooking for restaurant owners and employees to sell his recipe.</p><p>When he was 74 years old, Sanders sold the corporation to investors and became the brand ambassador for $2 million. By the time he died in 1980 at the age of 90, Colonel Harland Sanders was worth over $1 billion.</p><p>Sanders and Churchill could each have thrown up his hands and walked away from things after being dealt such serious defeats. While we remember them both for extraordinary contributions to their respective fields, by the time they reached retirement age, they had a string of failures that would have left them otherwise obscure figures in history.</p><p>They knew they weren't done yet. At 65 and 66, respectively, they knew they had more to give. Observant, reflective, and courageous, they had a vision of what success looked like and would not let defeat deter them.</p><p>The Colonel and the Prime Minister applied their own unique styles and powers of persuasion—through cooking, writing and interlocution—to sell their ideas to groups that were otherwise predisposed to ignore them.</p><p>You might think that being in their sixties and seventies, their faculties were diminished, but the opposite was true. </p><p><em>Because</em> they suffered a lifetime of setbacks they had the powers of patience, empathy, insight, and wisdom to know that they had much more to offer.</p><p>They were determined that we should see that.</p><p>So, that project you fumbled, that job you lost, that relationship that went south: how are those looking to you now?</p><p>Dig deep. Your next success is just around the corner. This isn't even close to being your final act.</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /></div><h2 style="font-family: "Open Sans", serif, sans-serif; font-size: 22.4px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i>This originally appeared in the September 16 issue of the <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/" style="color: #280170; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Timeless & Timely</a> newsletter. Paying subscribers get this plus an additional essay with three timely links, three timeless stories and a recommended book and podcast each week. You can choose the option that suits you best:</i></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="320" scrolling="no" src="https://scottmonty.substack.com/embed" style="max-height: 450px; max-width: 100%;" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></div></h2>

Digging Deep for Determination

Intervention of the Sabine Women  by Jacques-Louis David, 1799 (public domain - Wikipedia) "Never give in, never give in, never, never,...

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Life's Labor, Lost

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RqSGN6Y641Q/X1jm9dA8RYI/AAAAAAABOzo/gau15XNzxsQR5_TLlFWwJxXidmChGN9ggCLcBGAsYHQ/s1589/Louis%2BLaguerre%2B-%2BAllegory%2Bof%2BIndustry%2Band%2BIdleness%2Bc-1693.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="924" data-original-width="1589" height="364" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RqSGN6Y641Q/X1jm9dA8RYI/AAAAAAABOzo/gau15XNzxsQR5_TLlFWwJxXidmChGN9ggCLcBGAsYHQ/w625-h364/Louis%2BLaguerre%2B-%2BAllegory%2Bof%2BIndustry%2Band%2BIdleness%2Bc-1693.jpg" width="625" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Allegory of Industry and Idleness</i> by Louis Laguerre, c. 1693 (public domain)</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>"Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness."</strong> </em></strong></em></div><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;"><em>—Herman Melville, 1849</em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><br />Do you have a job that you love?</p><p>If you do, count yourself lucky. These days, we might not have that luxury, as some people are thankful to have any job that helps them pay the bills during the pandemic.</p><p>Last week, you'll recall that <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/good-grief">we talked about </a><strong><a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/good-grief">grief</a></strong> and how we're all sharing a personal yet public feeling and grappling with ways to support each other. With so many people out of work lately, it's likely they're mourning a job loss and struggling to make sense of things.</p><p>Today, we'll look a some of the numbers related to employment, the nature of jobs in a changing environment, the dignity of work and purpose, and how we might look out for each other — as well as some information about the image above. In Friday's subscriber-only newsletter, we'll go deeper into purpose and link it to how we live our lives. You'll also get links to articles, long-reads, a book and podcast, and more. Be sure to <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/subscribe">subscribe to get it</a>.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{"url":"%%checkout_url%%","text":"Subscribe now","class":null}"><br /></p><p></p><p>Here in the United States, we just celebrated Labor Day — the unofficial end of summer, one last chance to put your toes in the sand, enjoy a lazy cookout, or just lay about before heading back to work or school.</p><p>For some people, there is no return to work. With unemployment currently at 8.4 percent (source: <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf">Bureau of Labor Statistics</a>), the country is still hurting. Still, it's better than where we were in April, at 14.7 percent unemployment (<a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2020/unemployment-rate-rises-to-record-high-14-point-7-percent-in-april-2020.htm#:~:text=Unemployment%20rate%20rises%20to%20record%20high%2014.7%20percent%20in%20April%202020&text=The%20unemployment%20rate%20in%20April,available%20back%20to%20January%201948">BLS</a>).</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h3-xQ00m8dw/X1iEp9cK1KI/AAAAAAABOzM/go2jaeyDhe8BXw1yEX9XAsykSKG_2YY-QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1160/chart.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1160" height="539" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h3-xQ00m8dw/X1iEp9cK1KI/AAAAAAABOzM/go2jaeyDhe8BXw1yEX9XAsykSKG_2YY-QCLcBGAsYHQ/w625-h539/chart.png" width="625" /></a></div><div><em><strong><br /></strong></em></div><div><div><hr /><br /></div><em><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong>“I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.”</strong> </em></div></em></div><div><em><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><em>— Arthur Conan Doyle, 1890</em></div></em></div><div><em><br /></em></div><div><hr /><br /></div><p>These tens of millions of people who are out of work have been, as manufacturers would put it, idled. Yes, this is a lamentable thing, but it gives us opportunities as well. From sourdough starters and projects around the house, to personal fitness and relationships we neglected, we can place our attention on things that we didn't have time for. Or perhaps that we fled from.</p><p>Sven Birkerts, editor of <em><a href="https://agnionline.bu.edu/">AGNI</a></em>, diffuses the negativity related to idleness:</p><blockquote><p>"Idleness has been branded the obverse of industry, a slap in the face to all healthy ambition. So-and-so is a layabout, a ne’er-do-well, an idler. But for all that, we have not made the word unbeautiful; there is a light at the core, to be remarked, gleaned from the righteous attributions of the anxiously busy…It is the soul’s first habitat, the original self ambushed—cross-sectioned—in its state of nature, before it has been stirred to make a plan, to direct itself toward something. We open our eyes in the morning and for an instant—more if we indulge ourselves—we are completely idle, ourselves. And then we launch toward purpose." ("<a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/lines-work/mother-possibility">The Mother of Possibility</a>," Lapham's Quarterly, 2011)</p></blockquote><p>More on purpose in a moment.<br /></p><p><br />This idea of idleness as an opportunity is encouraging and the most recent unemployment numbers are a step in the right direction, but the reality is the economy is still hurting.</p><p>More than that, <em>people</em> are hurting.</p><p>Have you noticed how we talk about the economy as if it's just made up of products and data? Trade deals, percentages, jobs, rising and falling with the tides of industry. But what about the human beings that make up these figures?</p><p>Those 500 jobs that had to be furloughed? Those are 500 families that now have to worry about their future. The 14.7 percent unemployed? Those are tens of millions of Americans that may not be able to make rent.</p><p>Lewis Lapham called it out in "<strong><a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/lines-work/servant-problem">The Servant Problem</a></strong>":</p><blockquote><p>"Purse-lipped and solemn, the commentators for the <em>Financial Times</em> and MSNBC mention the harm done to the country’s credit rating, deplore the trade and budget deficits, discuss the cutting back of pensions and public services. From the tone of the conversation, I can imagine myself at a lawn party somewhere in Fairfield County, Connecticut, listening to the lady in the flowered hat talk about the difficulty of finding decent help.</p><p>"The framing of the country’s unemployment trouble as an unfortunate metastasis of the servant problem should come as no surprise. The country is in the hands of an affluent oligarchy content with Voltaire’s reading of its rights."</p></blockquote><p>Lapham wrote that in 2011, but he may just as well have written it yesterday. The numbers in our economy show a move away from the servant class to the knowledge workers that's been creeping up on us for 40 years: over that time, the percentage of GDP that manufacturing accounted for <strong>fell from 21 percent to 11 percent</strong> as of last October — the lowest since 1947. (<a href="https://www.industryweek.com/the-economy/article/22028495/manufacturing-is-now-smallest-share-of-us-economy-in-72-years">Infoweek</a>)</p><p>The industry that makes up Wall Street—finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE)—alone accounted for a fifth of the total economy, making it the largest industry by contribution to GDP. That's <strong>a rise from 14 percent to 20 percent</strong>. (<a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/economy/spotlight/economics-insights-analysis-07-2019.html">Deloitte</a>)</p><p>We have become a society that relies less on hands and more on brains.</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>"I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes every man an opportunity to make a living." </strong></em></strong></em></div><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;"><em>— John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1941</em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><br /></p><p>It's impossible to separate the physical from the mental in our success as a species; indeed, one has relied on the other. Yuhal Noah Harari traced the development of our early neural networks in <em><a href="https://amzn.to/2w7ax6p">Sapiens</a></em>, noting how our tools eventually caught up with our intellect.</p><p>Despite our advance into the Information Age, we still require the outputs of physical labor. Our phones, our houses, our transportation, despite encroaching automation, still require human hands to touch them. We might be tethered to an assembly line or a keyboard, but our job is to serve a purpose, whether it's our own or someone else's.</p><p>This is a fundamental drive of human existence: to live for a purpose.</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>"An unemployed existence is a worse negation of life than death itself, because to live means to have something definite to do—a mission to fulfill—and in the measure in which we avoid setting our life to something, we make it empty. Human life, by its very nature, has to be dedicated to something."</strong> </em></strong></em></div><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;"><em>— José Ortega y Gasset, 1932</em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><br /></p><p>Simone Weil recognized the importance of purpose in work: that it links us to being <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/weil.html">part of something greater than ourselves</a>. Knowing that we're contributing to society in some tangible or meaningful way can help us deal with the hardships that may accompany our work. Fundamentally, if someone has a job, it imbues them with purpose and gives them that dignity that Rockefeller talked about.</p><p><br />Given the shift in numbers from manufacturing to FIRE jobs as stated above, combined with the pandemic, we're at a treacherous point in the development of work. The anthropologist David Graeber, who died last week, had a premonition of this when he wrote one of his landmark works in 2013: "<a href="https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/">On the Phenomenon of Bulls**t Jobs</a>": </p><blockquote><p>In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century's end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There's every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn't happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.</p><p>Why did Keynes' promised utopia—still being eagerly awaited in the '60s—never materialise? The standard line today is that he didn't figure in the massive increase in consumerism. Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we've collectively chosen the latter. This presents a nice morality tale, but even a moment's reflection shows it can't really be true. Yes, we have witnessed the creation of an endless variety of new jobs and industries since the '20s, but very few have anything to do with the production and distribution of sushi, iPhones, or fancy sneakers.</p><p>So what are these new jobs, precisely? A recent report comparing employment in the US between 1910 and 2000 gives us a clear picture (and I note, one pretty much exactly echoed in the UK). Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, ‘professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers’ tripled, growing ‘from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.’ In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away…</p><p>But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world's population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning of not even so much of the ‘service’ sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza delivery) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.</p><p>These are what I propose to call ‘bulls**t jobs’.</p><p>It's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen.</p></blockquote><p>And with the pandemic, nature is hitting the great reset button (particularly in the U.S.), where there are swathes of jobs that have been eliminated, possibly never to return. It's as if the virus is calling B.S. on what society has become, and is creating that oft-uttered "new normal" that has less to do with work habits than it does a bombed-out retail world.</p><p><br />On a recent visit to a mall to make a return, I walked by shuttered storefronts and restaurants, thinking of how many of the managers, servers and attendants were out of work as a result. When I arrived at the intended location, I found the store had closed without fanfare.</p><p>Those jobs were gone in part because of the already fragile retail industry, but also because of significant shifts in foot traffic, thanks to remote work. But it's not just those jobs: it's everything related to them — mechanics and gas station owners that see fewer cars as a result; daycare facilities that don't need to staff up, due to at-home parents; dry cleaners that see a drop in volume because we're all in Zoom-friendly outfits that we wash at home.</p><p>There's a vast underbelly of the economy that's linked to the jobs that Graber identified. It's a <strong><a href="https://marker.medium.com/remote-work-is-killing-the-hidden-trillion-dollar-office-economy-5800af06b007">hidden trillion-dollar office economy</a></strong>, and it makes me wonder whether those related jobs will ever return. What if they don't? What is our responsibility as a society?<br /><br /></p><p>Almost exactly 117 years ago, Theodore Roosevelt had ideas about society as he gave his "<a href="http://www.memorablequotations.com/SquareDeal.htm">A Square Deal</a>" speech to farmers at the New York State Agricultural Association, in Syracuse, New York (September 7, 1903). His words mirror the clarion call of a March essay on these pages ("<a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/individualism-has-no-place-in-a-pandemic-915">Individualism Has No Place in a Pandemic</a>"), striking at the heart of our duty to our fellow humans and respect for life, particularly in times of great challenge:</p><blockquote><p>The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us , and therefore in public life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all; in other words, whose endeavor it is not to represent any special class and promote merely that class's selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes and to work for their interests by working for our common country. We can keep our government on a sane and healthy basis, we can make and keep our social system what it should be, only on condition of judging each man, not as a member of a class, but on his worth as a man. It is an infamous thing in our American life, and fundamentally treacherous to our institutions, to apply to any man any test save that of his personal worth, or to draw between two sets of men any distinction save the distinction of conduct, the distinction that marks off those who do well and wisely from those who do ill and foolishly. There are good citizens and bad citizens in every class as in every locality, and the attitude of decent people toward great public and social questions should be determined, not by the accidental questions of employment or locality, but by those deep-set principles which represent the innermost souls of men.</p><p>In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole. Again and again in the republics of ancient Greece, in those of medieval Italy and medieval Flanders, this tendency was shown, and wherever the tendency became a habit it invariably and inevitably proved fatal to the state. In the final result, it mattered not one whit whether the movement was in favor of one class or of another…</p><p>It is not enough to be well-meaning and kindly, but weak; neither is it enough to be strong, unless morality and decency go hand in hand with strength. We must possess the qualities which make us do our duty in our homes and among our neighbors, and in addition we must possess the qualities which are indispensable to the make-up of every great and masterful nation — the qualities of courage and hardihood, of individual initiative and yet of power to combine for a common end, and above all, the resolute determination to permit no man and no set of men to sunder us one from the other by lines of caste or creed or section. We must act upon the motto of all for each and each for all. There must be ever present in our minds the fundamental truth that in a republic such as ours the only safety is to stand neither for nor against any man because he is rich or because he is poor, because he is engaged in one occupation or another, because he works with his brains or because he works with his hands. We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.</p></blockquote><p><br />We are still in precarious times. There's a pandemic afoot, a national election looming, and many people hurting. The path forward is unpaved and uncertain.</p><p>With leadership in the spirit of Roosevelt's, we'll find our courage and conviction and harness them to our brains, our hands, and our hearts.</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /></div><h2><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 400;"><i>This originally appeared in the September 9 issue of the <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/" style="color: #280170; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Timeless & Timely</a> newsletter. Paying subscribers get this plus an additional essay with three timely links, three timeless stories and a recommended book and podcast each week. You can choose the option that suits you best:</i></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 400; text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="320" scrolling="no" src="https://scottmonty.substack.com/embed" style="max-height: 450px; max-width: 100%;" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 400; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 400; text-align: left;"><br /></div></h2><h2 style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">One Last Thing</h2><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 400; text-align: left;"><p data-pm-context="[]">If you’re working remotely and you feel a sense of disconnect, a need to compare notes with other people, a place to address leadership skills that are unique to this environment, you’ll want to check out <strong><a href="https://remotely.global/what-we-do-services-membership/">Remotely</a></strong>, a new professional development network. It’s designed and run by people I’ve known and trusted for a decade and a half, and I’m on the Leadership Council.</p><p>I’m offering an exclusive <strong>50% discount</strong>—you won’t find a better deal anywhere else—for <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/subscribe">paid subscribers</a> of Timeless & Timely. If you want in, I’ll be sharing the details in Friday’s newsletter.</p><p><br /></p></div></div><br />

Life's Labor, Lost

Allegory of Industry and Idleness by Louis Laguerre, c. 1693 (public domain) "Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands...

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Good Grief

<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WKhg4_y2mWY/X1BmNYcDIZI/AAAAAAABOpM/nHgawzPUBwE22vJUCa1oEqFS6qdgKEMXgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/Jacques-Louis%2BDavid%2B-%2BApollo%2Band%2BArtemis%2BAttacking%2Bthe%2BChildren%2Bof%2BNiobe.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="794" data-original-width="1024" height="496" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WKhg4_y2mWY/X1BmNYcDIZI/AAAAAAABOpM/nHgawzPUBwE22vJUCa1oEqFS6qdgKEMXgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h496/Jacques-Louis%2BDavid%2B-%2BApollo%2Band%2BArtemis%2BAttacking%2Bthe%2BChildren%2Bof%2BNiobe.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niobe#/media/File:Niobe_JacquesLouisDavid_1772_Dallas_Museum_of_Art.jpg" target="_blank">Apollo and Artemis Attacking the Children of Niobe</a></i> by Jacques-Louis David, 1772 (public domain - Wikipedia)</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /><p></p><p></p><hr /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i><b>"Grief, loss, regret are not the end of the story. They are the middle of the story. Memory does not look backward, it looks forward." </b></i></div><div style="text-align: right;"><i>— Anne Michaels, 2020</i></div><br /><p></p><p></p><hr /><br /><p></p><p>I had some bad news over the weekend.</p><p>A friend of 25 years shared an update regarding an illness she's been battling—news that was startling and unsettling to read. In particular, I was struck by her ability to tackle the subject in a matter-of-fact way, without a plea for pity or intercession, nor with an attempt to side-step reality.</p><p>In a few short sentences, she was able to state the facts, anticipate our emotions, and share her grace and peace about the situation. It was truly one of the most remarkable notes about a pending end-of-life issue I've ever read.</p><p>It was shocking and difficult to absorb the message, but as I've reread it dozens of times, I find myself reassured and in some ways content with the gift she gave to her friends and family with  it. She left us reassured that she has led a full and happy life, that she is at peace with the prognosis.</p><p><br /></p><p>It reminded me of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's famous model for the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Clearly my friend is at the acceptance stage, which is strangely comforting at the same time it's sad.</p><p>If you are getting a sense of dichotomy in my descriptions above, it's no mistake. I'm conflicted about how I should feel; perhaps it's simply a matter of grief consisting of competing factors. Grief hits us at times when we're forced to square our hopes with reality. When we need to move forward despite feeling like we have a weight placed on our chest.</p><p>It's as if we're caught between two worlds, forever connected with a warm hug of the past that we knew at the same time we're thrust into the harsh and cold atmosphere of future.</p><p><br /></p><p>One of the most poignant examples of a historic or literary figure suffering grief is in The Iliad. In Book 18, when Achilles is told of the death of his mentor Patroclus, he screams so loudly that his mother hears him across the sea, he tears at his hair, ultimately falls into a deep depression and loses the will to live. He tries to trade his life for Patroclus', bargaining to bring his friend back, before finally accepting the reality.</p><p>It's a cycle of the human display of grief that goes back nearly 3,000 years.</p><p><br /></p><p>In a more modern era, when faced with digital reminders of friends and family members who have died, I can't even seem to get myself to plant my feet firmly in the present. It's with the greatest reluctance that I unfollow a deceased acquaintance's Twitter handle, or delete them from my friend list on Facebook. Their accounts are frozen in time, sometimes reminding me of the lively conversations or memories we shared together, and at other times acting like a growing scrapheap of digital rubble from forgotten temples to friendship.</p><p><br /></p><hr /><p><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><i><b>"We have created a technology that leaves no place for the dead. It is a realm of perpetual present, a realm of simulation, where the past is as fluid as the future." </b></i></div><div style="text-align: right;"><i>— Anne Michaels, 2020</i></div><br /><p></p><hr /><br /><p>I look at my contact list in my phone, wondering when it's okay to remove a grandparent—that address I visited so many times in my childhood, that phone number I once knew by heart, that postal code that heralded the arrival of a birthday card with a few dollars in it—does the act of clearing them from a digital address book mean I've relegated their memory to the trash bin of my heart?</p><p>My head tells me no, but it's difficult to consider such an act of digital finality as anything but that. It's not like the extra bits and bites of one entry are taking up vital space on the phone or in the cloud. We have traditions to honor our dead, from funeral masses to memorial services, burial in family crypts to the spreading of ashes in meaningful locations. But what's our process for grieving digitally? Do we even need one?</p><p><br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Pandemic Grief</h2><p>In the spring of 2020, we were all forced into a situation in which we had to mourn for the loss of the normal: we abandoned our offices, we stopped commuting, family events had to be postponed or canceled, and even funerals were put on hold or limited to parties of no more than ten.</p><p>In the essay "<a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/memory/mortal-soul-moral-soul" target="_blank">Mortal Soul, Moral Soul</a>," Anne Michaels wondered about this collective grief that we're now facing:</p><p></p><blockquote><i>"What does it mean when one's most private, most profound experience, the cataclysm that shapes one's life, is also the most intimate experience of thousands of others? What place can be found for our private grief when set against the losses of entire nations?"</i></blockquote><p></p><p><br /></p><p>There are those who have suffered the loss of friends and family members to this pandemic. In one degree or another, we've all lost something. As a parent, it's been difficult to watch our children deal with the new reality, being separated from classmates while doing virtual learning, hiding their disappointment of not having a graduation ceremony, and missing out on typical rites of passage of young teens. These are small losses next to the families and friends of the 185,000 or so Americans who were taken too early, including some children.</p><p>As a parent, I can't think of anything more devastating than the loss of your own child. We're supposed to grow old, making memories and leading fulfilling lives along the way. When a young and promising life is cut short, upsets the natural order of things.</p><p>When we're left behind as a parent, spouse, friend, or even fellow employee who avoided the furloughs and layoffs, it's not uncommon to experience a unique form of grief called survivor guilt, known to affect certain survivors of combat, epidemics, murder, natural disasters, rape, terrorism, and among the friends and family of those who have died by suicide.</p><p>The pandemic has unleashed not only a virus among your workforce, but aspects of grief as well Whether through depression, loneliness, anxiety, stress, or survivor guilt, it's more likely than not that members of your team may be dealing with grief.</p><p><br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">What To Do for a Grieving Colleague</h2><p>There is no question that grief is real, and has physical as well as mental impacts. You may be able to pick up on this from your team. Indeed, if you're doing regular video calls, you should be attuned to their demeanor, picking up on the nonverbal cues as best you can.</p><p>You don't need to be their therapist, but you do need to be there for them: Simply asking them, "Hey, how are you holding up?" is enough to let them know that you're sensitive to the current situation. Acknowledge it and allow them to have their feelings.</p><p>We've all got different scenarios and we each need to deal with our unique grief in our own way; not everyone processes things at the same pace or in the same manner. Iris Murdoch reminds us:  "<i>Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved</i>."</p><p>If you feel like this is beyond your ability to handle, let them know what resources are available to them, or offer to help them track down what they need.</p><p>If we come together in times of grief, we'll find that it unites us and brings us closer. Having a shared experience—particularly one that is typically private—might seem awkward at first, but it's a gift. A wonderful unifier.</p><p>Sharing grief and showing support for each other when we're down builds trust. It takes vulnerability on the part of those who are suffering, and empathy on the part of those who want to help. Think of those who reached out to you when you were at a low point, and how that made you feel.</p><p>And here we are at that dichotomy again: what was once intimate is now a shared experience, and what was pain and grief becomes joy and trust. What you might call “good” grief. And that’s not the end, either.</p><p>We’re still in the middle of the story.</p><p><br /></p><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><hr /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i>This originally appeared in the September 2 issue of the <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/" style="color: #280170; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Timeless & Timely</a> newsletter. Paying subscribers get this plus an additional essay with three timely links, three timeless stories and a recommended book and podcast each week. You can choose the option that suits you best:</i></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="320" scrolling="no" src="https://scottmonty.substack.com/embed" style="max-height: 450px; max-width: 100%;" width="480"></iframe></div><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>

Good Grief

Apollo and Artemis Attacking the Children of Niobe by Jacques-Louis David, 1772 (public domain - Wikipedia) "Grief, loss, regret are n...

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Things Not Seen

<p data-pm-context="[]"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-X9JQqX3KhtI/X0bYmx7EdzI/AAAAAAABOgI/aVsjakQlFiE89Ft2SMMFLwhltPw9jnkoACLcBGAsYHQ/s1162/Luca%2BGiordano%2B-%2BPsyche%2BServed%2Bby%2BInvisible%2BSpirits.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="950" data-original-width="1162" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-X9JQqX3KhtI/X0bYmx7EdzI/AAAAAAABOgI/aVsjakQlFiE89Ft2SMMFLwhltPw9jnkoACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Luca%2BGiordano%2B-%2BPsyche%2BServed%2Bby%2BInvisible%2BSpirits.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luca_Giordano_-_Psyche_Served_by_Invisible_Spirits_-_WGA09017.jpg" target="_blank">Psyche Served by Invisible Spirits</a></em><span style="text-align: left;"> by Luca Giordano, c. 1696 (public domain - Wikimedia Commons)</span></span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p data-pm-context="[]"><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong><br /></strong></em></strong></em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>"What is essential is invisible to the eye."</strong>  </em></strong></em></div><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;"><em>— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943</em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><br /></p><p>We're surrounded by the invisible every day — things both wondrous and terrifying, sometimes simultaneously. Consider all of the things that we can't see: atoms, air, viruses, time, space… I could go on, but those are already some heady issues.</p><p>Did you know only <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/">5 percent of the universe</a> is observable matter? That's a powerful reminder of this simple fact: just because something isn't observed, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.</p><p>Ancient astronomers inferred the existence of stars and planets without directly seeing them; they observed how other heavenly bodies moved around them. The absence of something can be just as meaningful as the presence of it.</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”</strong></em></strong></em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>“To the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.”</strong></em></strong></em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”</strong></em></strong></em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.</strong> </em></strong></em></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;"><em>— Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892</em></p><div><hr /></div><p><br />It's a matter of where we put our attention.</p><p>That Sherlock Holmes quote is from the story called "Silver Blaze," about a racehorse that went missing. Holmes knew that it was an inside job because the dog at the stable didn't react to whomever took the horse. It was his attention to the details — no one told him they heard a dog barking — that allowed him to make the conclusion he did.</p><p>In that same story, he found evidence of a candle that had been lit out in the pasture:</p><blockquote><p><em>“I cannot think how I came to overlook it,” said the Inspector, with an expression of annoyance.<br /><br />“It was invisible, buried in the mud. I only saw it because I was looking for it.”</em></p></blockquote><p></p><p><br />We see what we train ourselves to see. Our senses are heightened when we want to be aware of something; otherwise, it's easy to walk around oblivious to what's happening around us.</p><p>Take the concept of <strong>emotional intelligence</strong> (EQ). A significant part of EQ involves self-awareness, or being able to step back and take an objective look at your behavior, emotions, and reactions, and to learn from it. It takes reflection.</p><p>If you were asked to reflect on your values, could you do it? I dare say you could. But can you <em>see</em> your values—those things that are deeply held in your heart and mind?</p><p>Probably not, but the way you lead your team or live your life should be a natural expression of those values. The words you choose and the actions you take over the course of days, weeks and years paint a portrait of who you are and what you stand for.</p><p>Whether you're an executive or a parent, your actions alone aren't enough for people to understand your motives and values. You need to <em>talk</em> about the things you believe in and share with your team or your kids <em>why</em> you do what you do. It's only through bringing those invisible elements to the surface that we can better understand who we are.</p><div><hr /></div><p style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><br />“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”</strong> </em></p><p style="text-align: right;"><em>— Fred Rogers<br /><br /></em></p><div><hr /></div><p>At the same time, we can use our emotional intelligence to discern when we need to remain silent versus when we need to speak up. Two anecdotes related to this bring a smile to my face.</p><p>The first is from Art Mandirola, an elderly figure from my childhood. My parents were friends with Art and his wife Anne; they were of my grandparents' generation, and in many ways were like surrogate parents to my parents.</p><p>One Saturday afternoon following four o'clock mass (the favorite mass of the elderly set—gotta get to the restaurants early!), as we were standing and chatting with the Mandirolas, I put a question to Art.</p><p>As a preface, I should note that my mom has a habit of pronouncing certain words as contractions. She says p'lice (police), b'loons (balloons), and g'rage (garage). After a bit of good natured ribbing, I decided to let Art be our King Solomon. And boy, did he deliver.</p><blockquote><p>"Mr. Mandirola?" I asked. "Do you say "cement" or "c'ment"?<br />Without hesitating for even one instant, he replied, "I say concrete."</p></blockquote><p>It was the ultimate lesson in diplomacy: that it's possible to say volumes without saying much at all—in particular by avoiding hurting anyone's feelings.<br /><br /></p><p>The other anecdote is from Christopher Morley's introduction to the 1930 edition of <em>The Complete Sherlock Holmes</em>. [You may recall <strong><a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/the-gift">this essay</a></strong> about Morley's prefaces in a recent essay, titled “The Gift.”]</p><p>Morley wanted people to understand the values of the man who brought us Sherlock Holmes:</p><blockquote><p>"Doyle himself must have been a singularly lovable man. There is an anecdote in his <em>Memories and Adventures</em> that reveals very clearly the fine instinct of delicacy in his massive personality. He was visiting George Meredith in the latter's old age, and they were walking up a steep path to the little summer house Meredith used for writing. In Doyle's own words:</p><blockquote><p><em>'The nervous complaint from which he suffered caused him to fall down occasionally. As we walked up the narrow path I heard him fall behind me, but judged from the sound that it was a mere slither and could not have hurt him. Therefore I walked on as if I had heard nothing. He was a fiercely proud old man, and my instincts told me that his humiliation in being helped up would be far greater than any relief I could give him.'</em></p></blockquote><p>"I can think of no truer revelation of a gentleman than that."</p></blockquote><p></p><p><br /></p><p>The actions we don't take speak just as loudly as the ones we do take. But in order to make a decision as Doyle did, to preserve a man's dignity, it took empathy—something <strong><a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/looking-through-anothers-eyes">we've been talking about here recently</a></strong>.</p><p>This is a part of emotional intelligence as well: the ability not only to understand your own emotions, but to understand the feelings of people around you. It can be difficult when feelings aren't expressed, and even more difficult when you're <strong><a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/the-emptiness-of-indifference">indifferent</a></strong>.</p><p>That quote above from The Little Prince? It's a quote many people are familiar with. But they often don't use the entire quote. Here's the whole thing in context:</p><p><em></em></p><blockquote><em><strong>"Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."</strong></em></blockquote><p></p><p>With the heart.</p><p>That's how empathy and emotional intelligence work. We need to think and see with our heart as well as with our eyes and our mind.</p><p>If we're looking for the right things, we can see what others might not. Things about presidents like historian David McCullough wrote about in <em><strong><a href="https://amzn.to/32zuIFR">The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For</a></strong></em>.</p><blockquote><p><em>"It has to do with aspects of individual personality for which there are no ready measurements—the integrity of Washington, Lincoln's depth of soul…the charm of Kennedy at a press conference, or Ronald Reagan in front of a television camera in almost any circumstance."</em></p></blockquote><p>According to McCullough, Truman didn't see himself as the chief spokesman but as someone who had to make some of the most difficult and far-reaching decisions of any president. "If not brilliant or eloquent, he was courageous and principled. The <em>invisible something</em> he brought to the office was character." [Emphasis mine]</p><p>Sometimes, that's what we need from our leaders. A feeling that they're driven by something bigger than themselves and are in service to it and to others.</p><p>Many things we can't see are essential. That doesn't mean they're unable to be seen.</p><p>The question is where put your focus.</p><p></p><p><br /></p><div><hr /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i>This originally appeared in the August 26 issue of the <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/" style="color: #280170; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Timeless & Timely</a> newsletter. Paying subscribers get this and an additional essay with three timely links, three timeless stories and a recommended book and podcast each week. You can choose the option that suits you best:</i></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="320" scrolling="no" src="https://scottmonty.substack.com/embed" style="max-height: 450px; max-width: 100%;" width="480"></iframe></div>

Things Not Seen

Psyche Served by Invisible Spirits  by Luca Giordano, c. 1696 (public domain - Wikimedia Commons) "What is essential is invisible to th...

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Looking Through Another's Eyes

<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5KTx9wVu6x0/Xz1wh_My7rI/AAAAAAABOcY/IE-k8i9k_tYOcwwBIbnyN-C37EHIyO2NwCLcBGAsYHQ/s956/John%2BWilliam%2BWaterhouse%2B-%2BThe%2Bfavourites%2Bof%2Bthe%2BEmperor%2BHonorius%2B1883.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="551" data-original-width="956" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5KTx9wVu6x0/Xz1wh_My7rI/AAAAAAABOcY/IE-k8i9k_tYOcwwBIbnyN-C37EHIyO2NwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/John%2BWilliam%2BWaterhouse%2B-%2BThe%2Bfavourites%2Bof%2Bthe%2BEmperor%2BHonorius%2B1883.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em style="font-weight: 700; text-align: left;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Favourites_of_the_Emperor_Honorius">The Favorites of the Emperor Honorius</a></em><span style="font-weight: 700; text-align: left;"> by John William Waterhouse, 1883 (public domain - Wikipedia)</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table> <p></p><h6 data-pm-context="[]"><br /></h6><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eye for an instant?"</strong></em></strong></em></div><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;"><em>— Henry David Thoreau, 1854</em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p>Empathy seems to be in short supply these days. The ability to say "I see you and understand what you're going through," and the willingness to attempt think like others seems like a lost art.</p><p>Why do you suppose that is?</p><p>I have a theory myself, but before I share that with you, let's take a quick look at what empathy is how it's different from sympathy, and why it's a fundamental of good leadership.</p><p>The words empathy and sympathy both derive from the Greek root <em>pathos</em>, meaning "suffering" or "experience," and is a technique in rhetoric (along with <em>ethos</em> and <em>logos</em>) as a way of evoking emotion. The origin of sympathy goes back about 450 years, from the Latin <em>sympathīa</em>. Empathy came along in the early 1900s via psychology researchers and the Greek word <em>empátheia</em>, meaning "affection."</p><p><strong>Empathy</strong> is the ability to <em>experience</em> the feelings of another person. It goes beyond <strong>sympathy</strong>, which is caring and understanding for the suffering of others. Both words are used similarly and often interchangeably (incorrectly so).</p><p>As I was thinking about this, struggling to put into words what the difference is, an apt scenario presented itself. Upstairs, my six year-old daughter was running in the hallway when she tripped and hit her head. I immediately rushed to her side, showing her that I felt badly for her (sympathy). As I comforted her, I told her I knew how much it hurt, because I've hit my head before (empathy).</p><p>The feeling of sympathy arises when we recognize another person's suffering, as opposed to empathy, where the other person's pain or suffering is <em>felt</em>. You express sympathy but you share empathy.</p><p>Because of the shared feeling, empathy is deeper. That's not to say that sympathy can't be just as heartfelt. But empathy has the power to create a deeper and more meaningful connection, serving as a bridge for greater communication between individuals or between a leader and their team.<br /><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p style="text-align: center;"><em><strong>"Leadership is not so much about technique and methods as it is about opening the heart."</strong> </em></p><p style="text-align: right;"><em>— Lance Secretan, 1998</em></p><div><hr /></div><p><br />The ability to create a deeper relationship with people is an essential element of leadership. After all, leaders aren't creating <em>things</em>; they're managing <em>people</em>. They're helping create the next generation of leaders.</p><p>You've likely seen the command-and-control boss (spoiler alert: they're not leaders).</p><p>A boss thinks in terms of "<strong>me</strong>," while a leader thinks of "<strong>we</strong>."</p><p>A boss will <strong>take credit</strong> or <strong>blame</strong> others, while a leader will <strong>give credit</strong> and shoulder the blame.</p><p>A boss issues <strong>commands</strong>, while a leader <strong>asks</strong> and <strong>listens</strong>.</p><p>A boss depends on the <strong>authority</strong> of the job title, while a leader leans on the entire team and builds mutual <strong>accountability</strong> and <strong>trust</strong>.</p><p>If a leader is doing her job effectively, she's able to bring people along with her, leading from the front, rather than pushing from behind. This is not only done by rolling up your sleeves, but by demonstrating to your people that you understand their challenges because you've been in their position yourself.<br /><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>"If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words." </strong></em></strong></em></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;"><em>— Cicero, c. 60 B.C.</em></p><div><hr /></div><p><br />Empathy is a cornerstone of emotional intelligence, or EQ, which is the ability to identify, evaluate, control, and express emotions. It's not only for leaders, but good leaders are emotionally intelligent. They're self-aware, reflective, and understand how others feel.</p><p>The psychologist C. Daniel Batson has studied empathy and discerned <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-02253-001">eight distinct concepts</a> that are related to it:</p><ol><li><p>Knowing another’s thoughts and feelings;</p></li><li><p>Imagining another’s thoughts and feelings;</p></li><li><p>Adopting the posture of another;</p></li><li><p>Actually feeling as another does;</p></li><li><p>Imagining how one would feel or think in another’s place;</p></li><li><p>Feeling distress at another’s suffering;</p></li><li><p>Feeling for another’s suffering (sometimes called pity or compassion);</p></li><li><p>Projecting oneself into another’s situation.</p></li></ol><p>Each of those elements, if properly expressed, leads to deeper trust, better communication, and deeper relationships.</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>“Acquire the habit of attending carefully to what is being said by another, and of entering, so far as possible, into the mind of the speaker.”</strong> </em></strong></em></div><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;"><em>— Marcus Aurelius, c. 180</em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p>We often hear of companies that say they're "customer-centric." They go out of their way to convince us that they "put the customer at the center of everything [they] do." And yet, when dealing with such companies, how often have you run into a scenario where it's pretty clear that the customer is not at the center?</p><p>I've often seen a disconnect between executives and customers. This is one reason (once upon a time) I was excited about social media as a business intelligence tool: it allows executives, who might be otherwise outside of the typical customer interaction, to hear from the people who experience their products. It gives them a chance to <em>listen</em> with empathy.</p><p>It's human nature to be so engrossed in our own activities, our own points of view, that we simply march forward, intent on making ourselves heard rather than truly hearing and understanding what other people are going through.<br /><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><br />"If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own." </strong></em></p><p style="text-align: right;"><em>— Henry Ford</em></p><div><br /><hr /></div><p>Everyone you meet and interact with has a backstory. They have things going on in their lives that are complicated and unseen, things that color their disposition and interactions. How often are we aware of these?</p><p>The Cleveland Clinic brought this concept to life in <a href="https://youtu.be/cDDWvj_q-o8">a video about empathy</a>:</p><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cDDWvj_q-o8" width="560"></iframe></div><p>The theory I mentioned above, as to why we're at a low ebb in empathy? I think it's because of a rise in technology. Screens have put distance between us, making our avatars into stand-ins on the great stage of life, mouthing disembodied invectives and threats, as we become less personable on impersonal platforms.</p><p>Medicine is the perfect industry to illustrate what we need right now—a caring human touch, equally applied to everyone.</p><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>"Technological progress allows for innovation and better treatment—from antibiotics to bypass surgery—but good medicine continues to require, preferably in equal measure, psychological awareness, intuition, sensitivity, and empathy."</strong></em></strong></em></div><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;"><em>— Noga Arikha, 2009</em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p>As a society (at least here in America), we seem to be stuck on individualism and selfishness, rather than a feeling of collective good. The prevailing attitude is no longer <em>E pluribus unum</em>, but</p><p>"You're not the boss of me." It's what seems to drive the anti-maskers, who are <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/individualism-has-no-place-in-a-pandemic-915">determined to do what they want</a>, science and consequences to others be damned.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{"url":"https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/individualism-has-no-place-in-a-pandemic-915","text":"Individualism Has No Place in a Pandemic","class":null}"><br /></p><p>When we lose our ability to think of others first, we lose our humanity. Regardless of your religious inclination, Jesus had some sound advice when asked what the most important Commandment was. After paraphrasing the Torah and reminding people to first love their god, he followed up with a second one that he indicated was equally as important: "Love thy neighbor as thyself."</p><p>It shouldn't be that difficult.<br /><br /></p><p>The Democratic National Convention in the past two nights has focused on empathy and leadership. Touching and powerful videos have shown how Joe Biden has empathy for people he meets. His personal story involves losing a wife and 15 month-old daughter in a tragic automobile accident weeks after his first election to the Senate, and him continuing to go to work, befriending people on the train as he made his way between Delaware and Washington, insistent that he be home every night for his two young sons.</p><p>It should be no surprise then, to see an image of a memo that Vice President Biden shared with his staff regarding their commitment to their jobs versus to their families:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jCv5onbOtCo/Xz1w7dtqpQI/AAAAAAABOcg/0WzCfuh_gM0kt6DbwkfVhZua84_yLDLPgCLcBGAsYHQ/s710/Empathy.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="684" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jCv5onbOtCo/Xz1w7dtqpQI/AAAAAAABOcg/0WzCfuh_gM0kt6DbwkfVhZua84_yLDLPgCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Empathy.png" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>This is what an emotionally intelligent leader looks like.</p><p>Ultimately, empathy only goes so far; what we do with it is what makes leaders great. Give your people something tangible and actionable.</p><p>The first step, however, is a willingness to perform the miracle of looking through another's eye.<br /><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><br />"John Lewis said 'When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something.' That is the truest form of empathy: not just feeling, but doing; not just for ourselves or our kids, but for everyone, for all our kids." <br /><br /></strong></em></div><em><div style="text-align: right;"><em>— Michelle Obama, 2020<br /><br /></em></div></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><em><br /></em></p><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i>This originally appeared in the August 19 issue of the <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/" style="color: #280170; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Timeless & Timely</a> newsletter. What are you missing? To see this issue in its entirety, with entertaining and thoughtful links, recommendations, and more, <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/looking-through-anothers-eyes" style="color: #280170; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">please click here</a></i>. </div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;">Don't miss a single issue:</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="320" scrolling="no" src="https://scottmonty.substack.com/embed" style="max-height: 450px; max-width: 100%;" width="480"></iframe></div>

Looking Through Another's Eyes

The Favorites of the Emperor Honorius  by John William Waterhouse, 1883 (public domain - Wikipedia)   "Could a greater miracle take pla...

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Words Matter

<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Tv0gkh4amXo/XzQLiujMFnI/AAAAAAABOZA/PMJa3DHJQ-M9HxAy4OJwjClOUCASRFGCQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1255/Bookworm%2B-%2Bsq.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1253" data-original-width="1255" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Tv0gkh4amXo/XzQLiujMFnI/AAAAAAABOZA/PMJa3DHJQ-M9HxAy4OJwjClOUCASRFGCQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Bookworm%2B-%2Bsq.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em style="font-weight: 700; text-align: left;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bookworm_(painting)#/media/File:Carl_Spitzweg_021.jpg" target="_blank">The Bookworm</a></em><span style="font-weight: 700; text-align: left;"> by Carl Spitzweg, c. 1850 (public domain - Wikipedia)</span></span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>"When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before."</strong> </em></strong></em></div><div style="text-align: right;"><em><em>— Clifton Fadiman</em></em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p>Academics are still on my mind this week, after discussing <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/oh-the-humanities">the humanities</a> with you last week (and our <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/the-covid-scholar">childhood reveries versus adult realities</a> that was sent to paying subscribers).</p><p>This is more than an academic discussion (pun intended). <strong>Lifelong learning</strong> and <strong>curiosity</strong> are two of the hallmarks of great leaders―individuals who are constantly consuming information in a variety of formats, who then take what they've learned and weave it into a tapestry of other formats that complement their teams' styles.</p><p>But you may have noticed that the preferred medium of communication in the last few months has skewed toward video, as we sit in front of webcams and partake of meeting after meeting on Zoom. Video is powerful because it involves so many of our senses, but it's also the most exhausting precisely <em>because</em> it involves so many of our senses. <strong>Zoom fatigue</strong> is real―and it has <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/21314793/zoom-fatigue-video-chat-facebook-google-meet-microsoft-teams">a long history</a>.</p><p>Writing is still the most powerful medium that we have, and the best leaders are also good writers; arguably, communication is probably the most essential skill a leader can have. Everything else―strategic planning, hiring, creating a vision, motivating your team, and even financial planning―involves communication, which is simply defined as a process for exchanging information.</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><br />"What magnifies a voice is the force of mind and the power of expression, which is why Shakespeare’s plays still draw a crowd in Central Park, and why we find the present in the past, the past in the present, in voices that have survived the wreck of empires and the accidents of fortune."</strong> </em></div><em><div style="text-align: right;"><em>— Lewis H. Lapham, 2008</em></div><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><br /></p><p>Good communication makes all the difference in how your audience receives your information. Whether it's relayed in a story or a set of bullet points, leaders need to present their ideas in ways that inspire, motivate or emphasize, and you can't do that without spending time laying it all out in your mind. The historian David McCullough wrote, “<em>Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard</em>."</p><p>Perhaps this is why exhaustion is setting in from our video calls. Because just sitting down in front of a camera and talking doesn't require planning. Set up the shot, hit "Join Call" and start talking. Compare that to a planned video shoot, where you're blocking every shot and have a script to follow. A script? Why, that's writing!</p><p>So even for video (<em>good</em> video, that is), writing is necessary. It's also the secret to giving a good presentation―writing out what you plan to present helps frame the idea and the persuasiveness before they come flowing from your mouth.</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><br />"Vox audita perit, littera scripta manet." ("The spoken word vanishes; the written word remains.")</strong> </em></div><em><div style="text-align: right;"><em>― Latin proverb</em></div><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p>With live presentations, our interactions are ephemeral. They remain in our memories, but are inconveniently inaccessible. Think of all of the great actors of the past who were heaped with praise by critics: Edwin Booth, David Garrick, Richard Burbage and more. Yet there's no one alive who can convey what the experience was like, the nuances of the craft, or how it made them feel.</p><p>With video, thanks to YouTube, that second largest search engine on the internet, we have the ability to scan, search, and find material that is buried in our memory. But it can be hit or miss. The written word, not so much.</p><p>We have a record of great acting and great speeches from the last century that have been captured on film or audio, but there have been great speeches throughout history worthy of remembering. How do we know? They were written down. One of the reasons we still have the <em>Iliad</em> and the <em>Odyssey</em> with us today is because they transitioned from the oral tradition to the written record.</p><p>It's not enough to simply write things down; after all, we can still read the graffiti on the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Words and ideas will remain with us if we're appropriately inspired—that is, if they're crafted in a way to make us sit up and pay attention.</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><br />"There is nothing so intolerable as dull writing."</strong> </em></div><em><div style="text-align: right;"><em>― Charles Honce<br /><br /></em></div></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><br /></p><p>If you want to become a great leader, you first need to become a good writer. What's the secret to good writing? I'll share a secret about good writing with you. Yes, it's a matter of practicing your writing on a regular basis, but there's something more fundamental:</p><p>If you want to be a good <strong>writer</strong>, first you need to be a <strong>reader</strong>.</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>"The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book."</strong> </em></strong></em></div><div style="text-align: right;"><em><em>― Samuel Johnson, 1775</em></em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><br /></p><p>For me, the most intense and rewarding part of writing this newsletter isn't the writing. Nor is it the feedback (although I do appreciate hearing from you!). It's the research. I usually put five times the time and effort into reading and research that I do into the writing of my newsletter.</p><p>How are you preparing for what you write?</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."</strong> </em></strong></em></div><div style="text-align: right;"><em><em>― Rev. D.F. Potter, 1927</em></em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p>Certainly you should be educating yourself with analyst reports, memos, and industry news, but there are sources outside of your vertical that will give you <strong>inspiration </strong>and <strong>insights</strong> where you least expect them.</p><p>For example, I was recently reading Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "<a href="https://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=275">Morituri Salutamus</a>," a poem he composed for the 50th anniversary of Bowdoin College's class of 1825. [Incidentally, the title of the poem is taken from the old Latin phrase "<em>Nos morituri te salutamus</em>," translated as "We who are about to die salute you." This is the apocryphal phrase that gladiators uttered to the emperor before battle.]</p><p>In it, Longfellow laments the inexorable march of time, but indicates that we can use age to our advantage—for with age, we gain insights that are simply unachievable in youth. </p><blockquote><p><em>The scholar and the world!  The endless strife,<br />The discord in the harmonies of life!<br />The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,<br />And all the sweet serenity of books;<br />The market-place, the eager love of gain,<br />Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!</em></p><p><em>But why, you ask me, should this tale be told<br />To men grown old, or who are growing old?<br />It is too late!  Ah, nothing is too late<br />Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.<br />Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles<br />Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides<br />Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,<br />When each had numbered more than fourscore years,<br />And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,<br />Had but begun his ?Characters of Men.?<br />Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,<br />At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;<br />Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,<br />Completed Faust when eighty years were past.<br />These are indeed exceptions; but they show<br />How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow<br />Into the arctic regions of our lives.<br />Where little else than life itself survives.</em></p></blockquote><p>There are two points here for business leaders that are worth reflection. The first is that we ought to give more consideration to hiring older employees, who will have more experience and insight to apply to our business challenges, rather than relying on cheaper labor that will make mistakes that the more experienced workers could have avoided.</p><p>The bean-counters will push us to hire in ways that will immediately protect the bottom line, but in certain cases, these decisions will have longer-lasting impacts if we fall into the same traps we once did (see above: "we find the present in the past, the past in the present"). Concurrently, the median tenure of employees at companies is <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/tenure.pdf">4.2 years</a> (Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 2018), meaning that in addition to being prone to hiring workers with less work experience, we're victims to a shrinking institutional memory as well.</p><p>The second breadcrumb that Longfellow leaves us is to continue to read—and reread—long after we've left school. That Fadiman quote at the beginning of the essay is a reminder that what we get out of books is almost mathematical in its precision: as we grow, so does our understanding and interpretation of what we read.</p><p>In <strong><a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/states-war/gulf-time">the very first essay for </a></strong><em><strong><a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/states-war/gulf-time">Lapham's Quarterly</a></strong></em> in 2008, Lewis H. Lapham noted this phenomenon:</p><blockquote><p><em>"As a college student, I acquired the habit of reading with a pencil in my hand, and, in books that I’ve encountered more than once, I discover marginalia ten or forty years out of date, most of it amended or revised to match a change in attitude or plan."</em></p></blockquote><p>How much do our attitudes or plans change over time? Are we even willing to admit it?</p><p>This kind of flexibility speaks to our fallibility―something certain leaders seem to be afraid to admit. But those with emotional intelligence are naturally open to listening to others, taking in new information, and applying it to their decisions. With age, experience, and observance of our inevitable errors, we find how necessary reflection is.</p><p>Reflection can come in a variety of forms, whether it's through meditation, journaling, or even reading. But rarely (if ever) does it happen during a string of video calls.</p><p>Read more. You'll discover a world within you and around you taking on a whole new meaning ― and you can share it with those who matter to you.</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /><br /></div><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong>"When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 inches of ink and glue―you sell him a whole new life."</strong> </em></div><em><div style="text-align: right;"><em>― Christopher Morley<br /><br /></em></div></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><br /><div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i>This originally appeared in the August 12 issue of the <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/" style="color: #280170; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Timeless & Timely</a> newsletter. What are you missing? To see this issue in its entirety, with entertaining and thoughtful links, recommendations, and more, <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/words-matter" style="color: #280170; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">please click here</a></i>. </div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;">Don't miss a single issue:</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="320" scrolling="no" src="https://scottmonty.substack.com/embed" style="max-height: 450px; max-width: 100%;" width="480"></iframe></div></div>

Words Matter

  The Bookworm  by Carl Spitzweg, c. 1850 (public domain - Wikipedia) "When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than ...

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Oh, the Humanities

<h6 data-pm-context="[]"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ctYl3zqIJ9M/Xyp5f0tUysI/AAAAAAABOPo/Lrn2veefEiwzxTwcnBp94CMkhgM5BAMYgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1240/Pierre-Auguste%2BRenoir%2B-%2BReading%2B%2528La%2BLecture%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1240" height="529" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ctYl3zqIJ9M/Xyp5f0tUysI/AAAAAAABOPo/Lrn2veefEiwzxTwcnBp94CMkhgM5BAMYgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h529/Pierre-Auguste%2BRenoir%2B-%2BReading%2B%2528La%2BLecture%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em style="font-size: 10.72px; font-weight: 700; text-align: left;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pierre-Auguste_Renoir_-_Reading_(La_Lecture)_-_BF107_-_Barnes_Foundation.jpg" target="_blank">Reading (La Lecture)</a></em><span style="font-size: 10.72px; font-weight: 700; text-align: left;"> by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1891 (public domain - Wikimedia Commons)</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></h6><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”</strong></em><strong> </strong></strong></em></div><div style="text-align: right;"><em>— Will Durant, 1926</em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><br />There's so much happening in the news every day, it's difficult to keep up. It feels as if we're caught in a current and are fighting it with every swipe of the phone, swimming against a digital riptide while powered only with thumbs to propel us through the water.<br /><br /> It's exhausting.<br /><br /> There's a temptation to undertake a digital detox, but sometimes, it's just not an option. Leaders are expected to make sense of it all—to parse through all of the facts flying at them, and to do so, they need to put the pieces together using <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/too-much-information.html">perception and imagination to create insights and informed decisions</a>.<br /><br /> Perception, imagination and insights come from years of experience on the job, but they also come from being widely read and learning how to think critically. These are attributes that are a consequence of an education in the humanities.<br /><br /> In the age of the rise of STEM education, philosophizing about the humanities might seem a counterintuitive. As with all of my essays, I have a point—one that will be explained by way of some of the great thinkers of the past (and present).</p><h3><br /></h3><h2 style="text-align: left;"><b>A Virginia Vision</b></h2><p>When Thomas Jefferson envisioned the University of Virginia in 1818, he set out with some guiding principles in his <em><a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/ways-learning/thomas-jefferson-opens-school">Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia</a></em>. He stressed ideals bound by <a href="https://www.scottmonty.com/2020/06/honor-and-duty.html">honor and duty</a>, of enlightenment, and the greater good.<br /><br /> These included:</p><ul><li><p>To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business.</p></li><li><p>To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts, and accounts in writing.</p></li><li><p>To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties.</p></li><li><p>To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either.</p></li><li><p>And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.</p></li></ul><p>He went on to prescribe various branches of higher education, such as government and civics, agriculture, mathematics, manufacturing, the arts, and more. In summing up, Jefferson advocated that education should advance "the prosperity, the power, and the happiness of a nation."</p><p>If you read the full excerpt of the Report, there's a subtle shift from those ideals related to morals and enlightenment and those that are more practical in nature. As a classically-educated man of his time, he understood the importance of the care and feeding of the mind, but it was no less important that the care and feeding of one's own family—something that results from "transaction of his own business" and with any luck, ends in "prosperity."</p><p>As America developed from an awkward agrarian youth to a full adult of the Industrial Age, the caretakers of education evolved from the bookish types to industrialists and men of a practical nature, who knew how to measure output and productivity. And before we knew it, higher education became not only practical, but essential for upward mobility.</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong>"Students don’t go to school to acquire the wisdom of Solomon. They go to school to acquire a cash value and improve their lot, to pick up the keys to the kingdom stocked with the treasures to be found in a BMW showroom or an Arizona golf resort."</strong> </em></div><em><div style="text-align: right;"><em>— Lewis H. Lapham, 2008</em></div></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><br />That's not to say that business and education are separate concepts; they sail on the same ocean that is the almighty dollar. Indeed, <a href="https://www.profgalloway.com/post-corona-higher-ed-part-deux">the business of higher education is struggling</a>, as the tempest of COVID-19 is rocking already precarious ecosystem, ready to dash its ships upon the shoals.</p><p>When students venture into the "real world," as it's so often called from the halls of the academy, they often leave behind what they've gained from university settings. Degrees in hand after a sunny spring commencement ceremony, they accept job offers and plunge headlong into a new environment, eagerly learning a trade—a trade, odds are, that their liberal arts institutions or humanities degrees have not prepared them.</p><p>Or have they?<br /></p><p><br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><strong>Dust Off Your Shakespeare</strong></h2><p>At first blush, Plato doesn't seem to be of much use in computer programming; Hannibal may have crossed the Alps on elephants, but he can't navigate an algorithm for an autonomous vehicle; and Abraham Lincoln thought that the world would little note nor long remember what he said, but can he help write ad copy?</p><p>Ralph Waldo Emerson bridged the theoretical and the practical in "<a href="http://digitalemerson.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/text/the-american-scholar">The American Scholar</a>," a speech he gave to Harvard's Phi Beta Kappa in 1837, in which he discerned the difference between the "Man Thinking" and the bookworm:</p><blockquote><p>"<em>Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books…Hence the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution</em>."</p></blockquote><p>He of course meant not that these are two separate states of being (humans are almost never entirely one thing or another—we're complex that way), but that if we apply what we've come to learn on the printed page to our own experiences, we can create new and better opportunities for ourselves. </p><p>In fact, Emerson plainly stated the interplay between our work lives and our education: "When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read become luminous with manifold allusion."<br /><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong>"Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last."</strong> </em></div><em><div style="text-align: right;"><em>— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1911</em></div></em><p></p><p><em><br /></em></p><div><hr /></div><h3><strong><br /></strong></h3><h2 style="text-align: left;"><strong>The Spacious Country of the Mind</strong></h2><p>As I select a topic to write about each week (my labor and invention), I find myself inspired as I read various sources—books, articles, newsletters, etc. Current events are filtered through this topical lens, and everything takes more meaning.<br /><br /> I've made no secret that one of my regular resources is <em><a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/">Lapham's Quarterly</a></em>, a publication that in each issue captures a wealth of history and knowledge, which Will and Ariel Durant called "a celestial city, a spacious country of the mind, wherein a thousand saints, statesmen, inventors, scientists, poets, artists, musicians, lovers, and philosophers still live and speak, teach and carve and sing." (<em><strong><a href="https://amzn.to/3ia4OiR">The Lessons of History</a></strong></em>)<br /></p><p>But what can such figures of the past teach us about digital communications, leadership in the age of a COVID-19, or the security concerns of an enterprise SaaS purchase? What good are history, literature and philosophy when engineers are trying to complete their code?<br /></p><p>Just over a decade ago, Lewis Lapham noted that he regularly came across academic journals and alumni magazines with "articles that might as well be entitled '<a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/ways-learning/playing-fire">What In God's Name Are the Humanities, and Why Are They of Any Use to Us Here in the Bright Blue Technological Wonder of the Twenty-First Century?</a>'"<br /><br /> Technology has advanced well beyond its capabilities in Mr. Lapham's observation in 2008. But the need for humanities has not. Since then, we've seen the fine-tuning of artificial intelligence, the creation of the gig economy, and the rise of Facebook's power. As a result, we've seen unconscious built-in biases in A.I., a feudal class system made up of taxi-driving serfs, and a global communications platform that puts the very idea of democracy at risk led by a CEO who has all the power of a dictator.<br /><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p><em><br /></em></p><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><em><em><strong>"Like the sorcerer's apprentice, our technologists produce continuously improved means toward increasingly ill-defined ends; we have acquired a great many new weapons and information systems, but we don't know at what or at whom to point the digital enhancements." </strong></em></em></div><div style="text-align: right;"><em><em>— Lewis H. Lapham, 2008</em></em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><br /></p><p>When you develop a business primarily through the lens of engineering, algorithms and technology, and fail to properly account for human behavior as discernible by historic events and trends, this is what happens.<br /><br /> Enjoy those computer science degrees while you have them, Mark Cuban says. Because with the rise of A.I., the ability to program will be quickly assumed by machines. Longer term, <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/29/18644652/mark-cuban-ai-computer-science-coding-liberal-arts-kara-swisher-steve-case-decode-podcast-interview">creativity, collaboration, and communication skills will be more valued</a> because these are things that are bound by emotions and empathy. He even thinks that in 10 years, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/02/20/mark-cuban-philosophy-degree-will-be-worth-more-than-computer-science.html?__twitter_impression=true">a philosophy degree will be worth more than a computer science degree</a>.</p><p>The humanities give us an opportunity to apply perspective and ethics to the field of technology. To not only game out the potential scenarios, but to ask and answer the hows and whys before those scenarios even exist.<br /></p><p>Voltaire once asked, "Is there any one so wise as to learn by the experience of others?" While no one has lived exactly as any one of us will, we can turn to the stories from those statesmen, inventors, scientists, poets, artists, musicians, lovers, and philosophers from history and go from bookworms to Humans Thinking.<br /><br /> Our heritage is the key to our humanity.</p><p><br /></p><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-2361544305652948199" itemprop="" style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div><hr /><br /></div><div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;"><i>This originally appeared in the August 5 issue of the <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/" style="color: #280170; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Timeless & Timely</a> newsletter. What are you missing? To see this issue in its entirety, with entertaining and thoughtful links, recommendations, and more, <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/oh-the-humanities" style="color: #280170; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">please click here</a></i>. </div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; text-align: center;">Don't miss a single issue:</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="320" scrolling="no" src="https://scottmonty.substack.com/embed" style="max-height: 450px; max-width: 100%;" width="480"></iframe></div></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div></div><p><span class="datex show" face="" style="background-color: #2e2e2e; color: white; display: block; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; left: 15px; padding: 3px 0px; position: absolute; text-align: center; top: 0px; transition: all 0.4s ease-in-out 0s; z-index: 0;"><strong style="display: block; font-size: 21px; padding: 0px 2px;">29</strong><span style="display: block; font-size: 9px; height: 12px; line-height: 12px; padding: 0px 2px;">Jul</span><small style="display: block; font-size: 9px; height: 12px; line-height: 12px; padding: 0px 2px;">2020</small></span></p><div class="post-footer" style="background-color: #fafafa; border-top: 1px solid rgb(211, 211, 211); color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px -10px -10px; padding: 8px;"><div class="post-footer-line post-footer-line-1"><div class="post-author vcard" style="margin: 0px;">Posted by <span class="fn"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/17710406470860389078" rel="author" style="color: #280170; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;" title="author profile">Scott Monty</a></span></div></div></div>

Oh, the Humanities

Reading (La Lecture)  by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1891 (public domain - Wikimedia Commons) “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organize...

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Ignorance, Incompetence and Impostors

<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IfUXp1QzHRA/XyGsAk_rUTI/AAAAAAABOH4/KwTMFeu4bOMvH1xXQOnf0WhwEwqgs2U9QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1010/Andries%2BCornelis%2BLens%2B-%2BHercules%2BProtects%2BPainting%2Bfrom%2BIgnorance%2Band%2BEnvy.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Painting from 1763 of Hercules protecting painting from Ignorance and Envy" border="0" data-original-height="794" data-original-width="1010" height="504" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IfUXp1QzHRA/XyGsAk_rUTI/AAAAAAABOH4/KwTMFeu4bOMvH1xXQOnf0WhwEwqgs2U9QCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h504/Andries%2BCornelis%2BLens%2B-%2BHercules%2BProtects%2BPainting%2Bfrom%2BIgnorance%2Band%2BEnvy.jpg" title="Andres Cornelis Lens: Hercules Protects Painting from Ignorance and Envy" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andries_Cornelis_Lens_-_Hercules_Protects_Painting_from_Ignorance_and_Envy_-_WGA12673.jpg">Hercules Protects Painting from Ignorance and Envy</a></em></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>"[I]gnorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."</strong> </em></strong></em></div><div style="text-align: right;"><em><em>— Charles Darwin, 1871</em></em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><br /></p><p>If you were granted the opportunity to choose between two states of being, which would you prefer: being stupid but not realizing it, or being intelligent but not believing it?</p><p>Ignorance itself isn't something to be ashamed of. We're all ignorant in certain areas. When combined with a lack of self-awareness though, it could mean the difference between being harmless and dangerous.</p><p>Humility isn't dishonorable either. Or perhaps you wouldn't consider not believing your own intelligence to be defined as humility; maybe you prefer the phrase <em>de rigueur</em>: impostor syndrome.</p><p>Given the choice between these two states of being, which would you choose?</p><p>"Ignorance is bliss," as the saying goes, but that only applies to the ignorant―those on one side of the equation. What about those whom are the victims of ignorance, whether it's hapless or willful? The principled among us would feel responsibility for any damage our actions cause others. The ignorant? Not so much. I'm not sure I could live with such a state of being.<br /><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>"The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world, the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."</strong> </em></strong></em></div><div style="text-align: right;"><em><em>– Bertrand Russell, 1933</em></em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><br /></p><p>In <em><a href="https://amzn.to/39DnKDv">Mortals and Others</a></em>, the philosopher Bertrand Russell included a scathing essay titled "<a href="https://russell-j.com/0583TS.HTM">The Triumph of Stupidity</a>," written in 1933. It was aimed at Germany, but could just as well apply to America today. In addition to this misplaced sense of confidence, he also points out that along the way, there's a moral failing as well: "<em>if intelligence is to be effective, it will have to be combined with a moral fervour which it usually possessed in the past but now usually lacks</em>."</p><p>Amid the COVID-19 response, we've seen a moral failing in scientific leaders who have missed opportunities to speak up when political leadership says misguided or ignorant things (e.g., "light inside the body" and "disinfectant"). The willful and hapless ignorance of these leaders resulted in cases and deaths that outstrip the rest of the world. Conflicting messages and uncertainty, combined with many Americans' desire to get back to normalcy and lack of self-discipline, combined with their skepticism of scientific experts have given us <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/america-land-pathetic/613747/">an America that is woefully ignorant of its decline</a>.</p><p>This might be summed up most succinctly in a quote from Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who said on June 30, 2020, in a pandemic hearing regarding the role of public health in the reopening of schools: "<em>We shouldn't presume that a group of experts somehow knows what's best for everyone.</em>"<br /></p><h3><strong><br /></strong></h3><h2 style="text-align: left;"><strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Dunning-Kruger Effect on a National Scale</span></strong></h2><p>The Dunning-Kruger effect, named for social psychologists David Dunning (University of Michigan) and Justin Kruger (New York University's Stern School of Business), states that people of average abilities tend to overestimate their competence, while those of above average abilities tend not to realize how proficient they are. That is, <strong>confidence does not align with competence</strong>. It's illustrated in this graph:</p><div style="height: 0px; padding-bottom: min(75.9677%, 471px); text-align: center; width: 100%;"><a class="image-link image2 image2-471-620" href="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F156e7d64-46be-4a2d-b39a-e0de455bb2ea_620x471.jpeg" style="height: 0px; padding-bottom: min(75.9677%, 471px); width: 100%;" target="_blank"><img alt="Image for post" data-attrs="{"src":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/156e7d64-46be-4a2d-b39a-e0de455bb2ea_620x471.jpeg","height":471,"width":620,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"Image for post","title":null,"type":null,"href":null}" src="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F156e7d64-46be-4a2d-b39a-e0de455bb2ea_620x471.jpeg" style="max-height: 471px; max-width: 620px;" /></a></div><p><a href="https://medium.com/discourse/the-dunning-kruger-effect-explains-why-society-is-so-screwed-up-1432aca90aa8">The loudest voices tend to have the most confidence but little competence</a>. In the animal kingdom, the ape or the lion expresses domination by virtue of a roar, but their sounds are backed up by ability. The weaker animal who tries to dominate by voice can receive his comeuppance with a drubbing if his physical abilities don't match his vocal abilities.</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>"What a king must suffer! For he knows, deep down in his heart, that he is a poor, cheap, wormy thing like the rest of us, a sarcasm, the Creator's prime miscarriage in inventions, the moral inferior of all the animals… the superior of them all in one gift only, and that one not up to his estimation of it — intellect."</strong> </em></strong></em></div><div style="text-align: right;"><em><em>— Mark Twain, 1906</em></em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p><br /></p><p>With humans? Not so much. We often see leaders <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR3f95BGIiA">asserting their primacy of knowledge in a wide variety of subjects</a>. It's impossible for anyone to master many topics; this is why the best leaders assemble teams that contain subject matter experts, and then rely on them for advice and counsel. Leaders and experts know that there are limits to what they know; if they're presented with something outside of their sphere of knowledge, they're not afraid to say “I don’t know.”</p><p>Add to this the concept of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/role-cognitive-dissonance-pandemic/614074/">cognitive dissonance</a>, and it complicates matters further. The minute we make any decision we begin to justify the wisdom of our choice and find reasons to dismiss  alternatives.</p><p>You've probably encountered your fair share of leaders in business who don't seem to have the skills to match their positions. This was first captured as an idea by Dr. Laurence Peter in his 1969 satire <em><a href="https://amzn.to/336T8Ji">The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong</a></em>. Stated simply, the Peter Principle is this: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."</p><p>It's based on the idea that employees will continue to receive promotions until they ultimately land in a position that's above their skill set. We often reward individual performers for success that has nothing to do with the positions they'll be placed in next. That is, we might see a proficient analyst or marketer, and based on the successes they've generated, put them in leadership positions.</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /></div><p><em><strong><br /></strong></em></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><em><strong>"I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among the men the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement."</strong> </em></strong></em></div><div style="text-align: right;"><em><em>— Charles M. Schwab, 1897</em></em></div><em><br /></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p>Leadership requires a different set of skills than positions of individual performance. It's one thing to hone a deep level of expertise in a specific area; it's quite another to handle the functions of management and leadership. Suddenly, you're no longer responsible for the output—you're responsible for your people.</p><p><br /></p><p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">Impostor</span></strong></h2><p>Have you ever found yourself in the midst of a project, a speech, or strategic planning and thought, "I shouldn't be here. I don't have the skills or the ability to do this, even though people think I do."? If so, you've experienced an aspect of impostor syndrome.</p><p>Despite astonishing accomplishments, some people still feel a nagging sense of self-doubt and severe inadequacy. They might even feel like frauds.<br /><br /></p><div><hr /><br /></div><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><em>“<strong>Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius."</strong> </em></div><em><div style="text-align: right;"><em>– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1914<br /><br /></em></div></em><p></p><div><hr /></div><p>Even though many people struggle with impostor syndrome, I see two upsides to this. The first is it's evidence of self-reflection. Good leaders have a high degree of emotional intelligence (EQ), and one aspect of EQ is self-awareness. You can't have self-awareness without reflection. So, even though impostor syndrome brings self-doubt, you can be sure that those who struggle with it are not suffering from ignorance.</p><p>The second point is a corollary to the first: Intelligence looks in the mirror and sees ignorance. Ignorance looks in the mirror and sees intelligence. The only people who don't suffer from impostor syndrome are actual impostors. Remember that.<br /></p><p><br /></p><h1 style="text-align: left;"><strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">What's a Leader to Do?</span></strong></h1><p>As we try to bridge the gap between ignorance and competence, and to provide ourselves and others with well-reasoned rationales, there are a few steps we can take to minimize detrimental behavior.</p><p><strong>Don’t assume everyone knows what you know</strong>. Even if there are certain topics that come easy to you, take the time to bring everyone along on the journey. Overcommunicate without being patronizing.</p><p><strong>Make it okay for people to ask questions</strong>. No castigating or belittling: we are all on different stages of our journeys, whether it's in a career or in life.</p><p><strong>Failure is an option</strong>. We don't want to celebrate incompetence, but we should acknowledge it, free of stigma, and encourage learning from mistakes. To ignore it or punish it outright only gives people reasons to hide failures.</p><p><strong>Set time aside for reflection</strong>. Self-assessment is an always-on effort. We learn by honestly assessing our words and actions with others. Encourage self-reflection in your team as well.</p><p><strong>Find your inspiration</strong>. Look to others you admire and try to understand their journey to success. Yours may not be identical, but you can learn from them.</p><p>And don’t forget Hanlon's razor:  "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."</p><p><br /></p><p>So have you decided whether you'd rather be stupid without realizing it, or intelligent but doubtful of it?</p><p>It's not an easy choice—and of course it's a false one because these are not absolutes. But given the choice between the two, the latter at least provides a path toward enlightenment.</p><p>And a path forward is all we can ask.</p><p><br /></p><div><hr /><br /></div><div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i>This originally appeared in the July 29 issue of the <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/" style="color: #280170; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Timeless & Timely</a> newsletter. What are you missing? To see this issue in its entirety, with entertaining and thoughtful links, recommendations, and more, <a href="https://scottmonty.substack.com/p/ignorance-incompetence-and-impostors" style="color: #280170; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">please click here</a></i>. </div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;">Don't miss a single issue:</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="320" scrolling="no" src="https://scottmonty.substack.com/embed" style="max-height: 450px; max-width: 100%;" width="480"></iframe></div></div></div>

Ignorance, Incompetence and Impostors

Hercules Protects Painting from Ignorance and Envy "[I]gnorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." — Charles...

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