Washington’s Lessons: Control Your Weaknesses

DEVELOPING our strengths, which represent our capacities, is where we should lead from. But as Washington understood, we must deal with and manage our weaknesses or they may undo any gains we derive from our strengths.

Washington’s success, in part, came from knowing his weaknesses and controlling them. Washington had a bad temper. His awareness of it allowed him to choose to end it quickly and repair any damage it had done. He did not act on his emotions, but waited until his mind was clear.

Richard Brookhiser wrote, “There was a norm for a leader’s behavior, a range within which he should act, and when Washington felt he had been tugged away from it, he would tug himself back.

This quality caused even those who had been on the receiving end of his temper to remember him well. They did so because as Brookhiser put it, “he had earned their admiration over the long haul by keeping his eye on the task at hand, resisting the distraction of losing his temper” and “because he had spared them much of his anger, and leavened it, when he had not, with impartiality and consideration.”

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Of Related Interest:
  Lincoln's Lessons
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