Don’t grab hurtful comments and pull them close to you by rereading them and ruminating on them. Don’t play with them by rehearsing your badass comeback. And whatever you do, don’t pull hatefulness close to your heart.

Stephen Covey’s sage advice still stands: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

It turns out that trust is in fact earned in the smallest of moments. It is earned not through heroic deeds, or even highly visible actions, but through paying attention, listening, and gestures of genuine care and connection.

In the past, jobs were about muscles, now they’re about brains, but in the future they’ll be about the heart.1 —MINOUCHE SHAFIK, director, London School of Economics

Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.

Harriet Lerner teaches, to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard.

Daring leaders must care for and be connected to the people they lead. The data made clear that care and connection are irreducible requirements for wholehearted, productive relationships between leaders and team members.

the neuroscience researcher John Cacioppo when I was writing Braving the Wilderness. He dedicated his career to understanding loneliness, belonging, and connection, and he makes the argument that we don’t derive strength from our rugged individualism, but rather from our collective ability to plan, communicate, and work together. Our neural,

Self-awareness and self-love matter. Who we are is how we lead. So often we think of courage as an inherent trait; however, it is less about who people are, and more about how they behave and show up in difficult situations.