The Art of Leadership

Chapter 4. Act Last, Read the Room, and Taste the Soup

The consistent quiet is my favorite attribute of a holiday break. My various Slacks are quiet, the house is quiet, and while it takes three days of quiet to get there, eventually my head is quiet.

Quiet enables reflection. I replay the critical parts of my recent life, and rather than living them, I observe them…from a distance. This often allows me to find the lessons rather than react to the situation.

On a recent long vacation, I found three lessons during my reflection on recent events at work. They are lessons I wish I’d learned a long time ago, and at their centers, they are all about the quiet.

Act Last

In poker, a full table is 10 players, and the betting starts to the left of the button, which is a round plastic thing to indicate the dealer. The button sits in front of one player and rotates clockwise with each subsequent hand, indicating the last player to bet. This is the prime position because you get to see how every other player at the table is going to play this hand. You have the most information with which to make a betting decision.

Oddly, at work, you will find yourself in precisely the same situation. You’ll be sitting in a meeting where folks are going around the table and giving their opinion about some important topic—and for a great many situations, when it’s your turn to offer your opinion, the savvy move is to pass.

Information builds context, and context is what forms the setting for an idea so ...