By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to cool off when tempers get hot. Reading time: 2:14

You trade insults with a rival in the heat of battle. You’re mad as hell. And then all’s well.

Fiction, you say? Not to the most effective leaders who may lose their tempers at times but never lose their thermostats. They can lower the temperature before they explode in a blaze of MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY.

Consider President Harry S. Truman and union leader Al Whitney during the 1946 Congressional campaign. They traded barbs. Their blistering vocal bombs fueled lots of hurt feelings and negative press attention.

Two months later they found themselves face-to-face in a scheduled meeting at The White House. The union boss was clearly nervous. After all, he had derided the President of the United States as “nothing but a ribbon clerk” during the heated congressional campaign.

Historians tell us when the two met, Truman greeted the union leader warmly. “It’s good to see you, Al. You look wonderful.” And the President established his leadership and set the tone for the rest of the meeting. “Let’s not waste time discussing the past,” Truman posited. “Let’s just agree we both received bad advice.”

Truman’s sharpened sense of emotional intelligence helped him stay in command and in control of the situation. The most effective leaders don’t drag their baggage around as if it were a weighty leg iron. Or use their name-calling as so many arrows shot in the heart.

They know what Daniel Webster observed that true eloquence stems from within a man’s integrity of heart and soul more than from the conviction in his voice.

No matter how loud he or she speaks. Or how mad he or she gets.

Today’s ImproveMINT

Maintain your poise to keep your leadership thinking in mint condition.

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