Idea 95: Calm judgement
Reason and calm judgement, the qualities especially belonging to a leader.
Tacitus, senator and historian of the Roman Empire
As a leader, you need to remain calm at all times. By calmness here I mean not exhibiting visible tension or excitement when such reactions might well be expected in the circumstances. As Rudyard Kipling put it:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
Cool, calm and collected: these words are often bracketed together as a phrase. They suggest that a leader’s mental resources are completely intact in the face of difficulty. Calm stresses a quiet approach to a problem, devoid of hysterical actions or utterances, while collected emphasizes the application of practical reason to the solution of the problem.
To be free from agitation of any sort in the face of danger or provocation, to be able to concentrate the mind, eliminating distractions, especially in moments of crisis: these are indeed qualities essential in any leader of stature.
As the seventeenth-century French writer Voltaire said of John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, he possessed ‘that calm courage in the midst of tumult, that serenity of soul in danger, which the English call a cool head’.
Case study: Coolness in action
General Robert E. Lee was perhaps the finest military leader in the American Civil War. At the outset both sides sought him as their Commander-in-Chief, but Lee’s loyalty to his native state of Virginia drew him into the camp of the Confederacy. By skilful generalship and good leadership he waged a remarkably successful war against the North. But at the three-day battle of Gettysburg any hope of victory for the South virtually disappeared. The decisive point in the battle came when an attack led by one of Lee’s subordinates, General Pickett, failed. An eyewitness was present when news of this disaster reached Lee:
His face did not show the slightest disappointment, care or annoyance, and he addressed every soldier he met with a few words of encouragement – ‘All will come right in the end, we’ll talk it over afterwards.’ And to a Brigade Commander speaking angrily of the heavy losses of his men: ‘Never mind, General, all this has been my fault. It is I who have lost this fight, and you must help me out of it the best way you can.’