Sixteen Commandments for Human Leadership

“1) In your interactions, make your colleagues feel at ease. Dedicate the necessary time to them and not just scraps. Make sure to listen to what they have to say. Don’t give them the impression that you are on edge. Never make them feel 'small.' The most comfortable chair in your office should be reserved for them. 2) Make clear decisions and let your colleagues help you, they will believe in the choices they have contributed to. Learn to work together. If you do not understand the needs of those who follow you, you are done for: you interrupt the flow and are not cooperative. There should never be separation. 3) Involve colleagues in changes and details (success is a series of details lined up), and discuss them before implementation with those concerned. 4) Communicate favorable appreciation to workers, praise them publicly, communicate unfavorable ones privately when necessary. In the latter case, do not limit yourself to criticism, but indicate what should be done in the future to help learn. 5) Your interventions should always be timely: 'Too late' is as dangerous as 'Too soon.' 6) Act on causes rather than behavior. 7) Consider problems in their general aspect, allow employees some margin of tolerance. Think of yourselves as painters, not whitewashers. 8) Always be human. If you have a good relationship with people, you bring home a good result. If you argue, you bring nothing. 9) Do not ask for the impossible. 10) Serenely admit your mistakes, it will help you not to repeat them. And try to forgive some mistakes. 11) Care about what your colleagues think of you. 12) Do not pretend to be everything to your collaborators, in that case you would end up being nothing. 13) Beware of those who flatter you, in the long run they are more counterproductive than those who contradict you. And surround yourself with smiling people, they bring more luck. Man speaks from the head and the guts: when he speaks from the guts, do not listen too much and neither should you blame him. One must understand the weaknesses of man. 14) Always give what you owe and remember that often it is not a question of how much, but of how and when. 15) Never make decisions under the influence of anger, haste, disappointment, worry, but leave them for when your judgment can be more serene. 16) Remember that a good leader can make a normal man feel like a giant, but a bad leader can turn a giant into a dwarf. 17) If you do not believe in these principles, give up being a leader.”

“"When necessary, he knew how to raise his hand and apologize if nervousness had led him astray in an unusual way. Say that in meetings he had to raise his voice for his role, in the car he would tell me: 'Call that gentleman' and he would apologize. He justified his anxieties like this: 'When I have an inspiration, I want to see it realized in real time, and if someone plays politics or makes agreements and creates dela”