Implications to Leaders
continued from Part 2
According to James Thurber, “of The Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun; to lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over tongue the prospect of bitter confrontation still to come, to savour to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back-in many ways, is it a feast fit for a king? The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you”. [Pretty long quote, isn’t it?]. This is anger management, implications for leaders.
What Zidane failed to understand like many CEOs, Managers, Governors, and Presidents is that you can’t control other men’s acts, but you can control your mental reaction to their acts, and that is what counts most to you.
VIRTUE
Zidane didn’t know much about VIRTUE especially as expressed by Chinese Confucius. Perhaps he wasn’t a student of either Virtue or Confucius. He would have contacted me! Confucius, a great religious founder said,
“To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are GRAVITY, GENEROSITY OF SOUL, SINCERITY, EARNESTNESS, and KINDNESS”
He wasn’t generous to one who ridiculed him – let me say insulted him. He wasn’t kind. He wasn’t considerate of the world respect already accorded and about to be accorded to him AS BEST PLAYER OF THE WC 2006 TOURNAMENT AND BY EXTENSION WORLD BEST PLAYER 2006. He goofed like many CEOs, managers, Presidents, etc do today.
“WISDOM, COMPASSION, and COURAGE are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men,” says Confucius, and … “If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand”.
This actually was what happens to one who cannot manage ANGER. Zidane knows many things about soccer skills [has capacity] even now but then didn’t know much about the spirit of winning [character]. He didn’t know the 90/10 rule: “You are 90% of how you react to what happened to you and not 10% of what happened to you”. It is not what happens to you, but how you react to it.
My PRESCRIPTION
When you become so angry that you don’t know what to do, it will be safer to do nothing. Remember, anger is one letter [d] short of the word “danger”.
See;
A. Zidane was a portrait of all CEO, Managers, Administrators, Chairmen, Governors, Traditional Rulers, Captains, Teachers, Presidents, Family/Village Heads, and You as a leader.
B. Zidane was a portrait of many leaders who don’t know that;
- leaders take insults from the led, and insults don’t kill, what kills is smoking. To Managers who refused to upgrade to leaders, it can be the opposite.
- leaders don’t make provocative statements because leaders’ words are taken as laws and hence subject to interpretations.
- leaders are also managers who should manage diversity.
- leaders don’t kill or threaten to kill one or a part/section of the led (imagine Captain Zidane headbutting a player who had been running for over 80minutes – “na kill”. No provocation justifies termination of life), otherwise, the leader is no longer a leader, since it is the presence of those people that define leaders as leaders. That’s why the red card (quit) was and will always be necessary.
IMPLICATIONS TO LEADERS
Leaders, manage your Anger, Fame, and Popularity! It’s an aberration for leaders to talk/act anyhow. Leaders don’t have the freedom to talk or act anyhow. This is because they are supposed to be models. God, the ultimate absolute leader says in Proverbs 16:32 KJV
“He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city”.
Today, in our case study, Zinedan Zidane is a model to leaders; a frontline international coach par excellence. He had left this plane of anger for long.
Challenge on this Emotional Intelligence,
