Rulers
Photograph by Peter Eastway
1. Not all rulers are leaders. Many leaders are not rulers.
True leaders tend to exhibit six key behaviors:
Competence: They have expertise and capability in their field.
Realism: They accept, acknowledge and deal with facts, hard data and the reality of situations.
Integrity: They engender trust. They are transparent in their dealings.
Empathy: They care about others including institutions and not just themselves.
Vulnerability: They acknowledge mistakes and surround themselves with expertise they can lean on or who can speak truth to them.
Inspiration: They realize people choose with their hearts and justify what they do with numbers. They move people to see beyond the challenges of today to a better tomorrow.
Leaders may not have titles, employees or zones of control but they are likely to have respect, followers and zones of influence.
Rulers often have leadership qualities but sometimes they do not.
Some come to rule not through the talent and disciplined behaviors of leadership, but primarily though some combination of power brokering, fear mongering, ignorance peddling, or inheritance.
If you strip away the trappings of power, the ability to punish, the pomp and circumstance of an office, an institution or a company from a person, can they continue to influence, motivate and make an impact?
Leaders tend to fear they are not good enough to the challenges at hand and work to build scaffolding teams around them and work to improve.
Rulers tend to fear that they will lose power and often turn to intimidation to offset and distract from their internal hollowness which are chasms echoing with insecurity.
These people who believe their flatulence has the aroma of Chanel 5 should not be feared but pitied. When you have to deal with them realize they have been given a life sentence of being chained to their own shards of internal cacti and seeping vileness !
Photograph by Peter Eastway
2. We all have different rulers with which we take measure of ourselves and others.
We all have different measures and definitions of success.
Money. Fame. Power. Family. Creativity. Expertise. Connections. Peace. Charity…
We evaluate ourselves and others according to these different benchmarks.
It is important to understand what drives us and what drives other people.
This allows for different people to find common areas of motivation and therefore co-operation.
Not understanding the internal rulers that we gauge and measure ourselves with or the rulers of others often leads to conflict.
As important is how we are to be measured by others.
Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago has stated if you understand someone's incentives, you can do a pretty good job of predicting their behavior.
Three simple questions one should ask in order to enhance partnerships, relationships, teamwork and understanding of other people.
a) How do you define success?
b) How are you being measured/evaluated?
If you are a parent, you may be able to influence definitions of success. If you are a boss, you may be able to influence measurement and evaluation metrics.
In most cases it is really difficult to convince people that their measures might be wrong.
You either align with, come to understand, accept or try to work with them.
Or help them come to some form of self-understanding and realization through stories and emotion. It is unlikely that facts or figures or demeaning and making fun of them will work.
Photograph by Peter Eastway
3. Many people we admire and believe ‘rule” have broken rules while many who break rules do not deserve to rule.
Many of the people we admire have tended to break rules and question the status quo.
Galileo questioned whether the earth was at the center of the Universe. Picasso invented new forms like Cubism that collapsed and re-expressed the rules. Steve Jobs asked us to “Think Different”. Elon Musk does not follow rules.
The key with these rule breakers is that they were or are builders creating things that transformed and positively impacted the world of science, art, business and technology. They did not tear down society or other people but rather got the world to see, think and feel differently.
They were about breaking rules in ways that empower, that open new horizons and drive growth.
These are rule breakers that one needs to support, defend, and protect. They put themselves at risk. They aim for a mutual greatness. A greatness of fame, wealth or something for themselves and also for a broader society.
In these cases, we say “X Rules!”
Then there are those who put a sock in their mouth to be different, fling dung at traditions and generally focus on building walls, shock value and demonization.
In these cases, we wonder what has got wrong with them.
Many of these rabble rousers think low and ignite emotions.
Increasing friction creates heat and is not cool in an interdependent and connected world.
They could learn from Simon Peres the late President of Israel who said: “Think Higher. Feel Deeper”
Photograph by Peter Eastway
4.Some “rules” that have stood the test of time and are worth considering:
In the end one realizes that all the advice on health, wealth, career, and life can be distilled down to a few “rules”:
a) Health: Sleep enough. Move more. Ingest in a balanced and moderate way (and these days wear masks!)
b) Money: Spend less than you earn. Reduce expenses so you do not price yourself out of your dreams. Diversify assets. Invest for the long term by buying and holding and leveraging the power of compounding.
c) Career: Find purpose. Celebrate connections. Be patient. Seek growth.
d) Life: Understand that life brings with it loss. Learn continuously. Be grateful. Be true to your word. Love more.
The challenge then is in the doing.
In the living, rather than reading and discussing, the imagined life.
Photograph by Peter Eastway
5. There are hidden rules that govern us which we may not yet fully understand.
There is a possibility that genetics and the rules of natural selection combined with modern algorithms that colonize our minds make us fret, covet and rage in ways that leave us no real control.
Some believe we may be in a matrix. Or in a video game controlled by higher beings.
That everything is a simulation.
Everything is determined by evolution. By machines. By math.
Or maybe not.
As T.E. Lawrence said “nothing is written”
For instance how to explain beauty?
In “How beauty is making scientists rethink evolution” Ferris Jabr interrogates a deterministic rule-based reality and ends with….
If there is a universal truth about beauty — some concise and elegant concept that encompasses every variety of charm and grace in existence — we do not yet understand enough about nature to articulate it. What we call beauty is not simply one thing or another, neither wholly purposeful nor entirely random, neither merely a property nor a feeling. Beauty is a dialogue between perceiver and perceived. Beauty is the world’s answer to the audacity of a flower. It is the way a bee spills across the lip of a yawning buttercup; it is the care with which a satin bowerbird selects a hibiscus bloom; it is the impulse to recreate water lilies with oil and canvas; it is the need to place roses on a grave.