People want to follow someone who is driven by his or her future truth. It’s the reason we’re enamored with visionaries. As long as the person speaking has 100 percent conviction, he or she will get others fired up.

On balance, we should always choose hope over fear. We may be wrong, but at least hope is productive (and there are worse things in life than disappointment).

Acutely aware of his own emotional needs, Lincoln had chosen exactly the right time to review the troops, for his conversations with Grant and his interactions with the soldiers sustained and inspired him during the troubling days ahead. “Having hope,” writes Daniel Goleman in his study of emotional intelligence, “means that one will not give in to