General Colin L. Powell

'It can be done' should not metamorphose into a blindly can-do approach, which leaves you running into brick walls. I try to be an optimist, but I try not to be stupid.

A life is about events; it’s about challenges met and overcome—or not; it’s about successes and failures. But more than all of these put together, it’s about how we touch and are touched by the people we meet. It’s all about the people. I hope that comes through clearly in the pages you have just read. The people in my life have made me what I am.

Always try to get over failure quickly. Learn from it. Study how you contributed to it. If you are responsible for it, own up to it. Through others may have greater responsibility for it than you do, don’t look for that as an escape hatch. Once you have analyzed what went wrong and what you did wrong, internalize the lessons and then move on. As always, drive through life looking through the front windshield and not the rearview mirror. ... Learn and move on.

After it was all over, I was reminded of one of my favorite classical maxims, sometimes attributed to Thucydides: ‘Of all the manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most.’

In my own experience, a deep breath is always a good first reaction to a first report. Try to let the potato cool a bit before you pick it up.

At the end of the sermon, the priest looked over the congregation and with a smile on his face quietly concluded: 'Always show more kindness than seems necessary, because the person receiving it needs it more than you will ever know.'

All followers need to feel they belong to a team, a tribe, a band. Leaders are leaders because they pass on the generations of experience they have amassed. They give purpose to the team, give it structure, hold it to standards, nurse and nurture the team, slap it upside the head, as needed, and above all give the followers someone to look up to.

If you take pay, earn it. Always do your best. Even when no one else is looking, you always are. Don’t disappoint yourself.

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers who can cut through the argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.