Robert Iger Quotes

Ask the questions you need to ask, admit without apology what you don’t understand, and do the work to learn what you need to learn as quickly as you can.

True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.

Optimism. One of the most important qualities of a good leader is optimism, a pragmatic enthusiasm for what can be achieved. Even in the face of difficult choices and less than ideal outcomes, an optimistic leader does not yield to pessimism. Simply put, people are not motivated or energized by pessimists.

If leaders don’t articulate their priorities clearly, then the people around them don’t know what their own priorities should be. Time and energy and capital get wasted.

The path to innovation begins with curiosity

Innovate or die, and there’s no innovation if you operate out of fear of the new or untested.

Don’t be in the business of playing it safe. Be in the business of creating possibilities for greatness.

Empathy is a prerequisite to the sound management of creativity, and respect is critical.

And I tend to approach bad news as a problem that can be worked through and solved, something I have control over rather than something happening to me.

If you approach and engage people with respect and empathy, the seemingly impossible can become real.

Don’t start negatively, and don’t start small. People will often focus on little details as a way of masking a lack of any clear, coherent, big thoughts. If you start petty, you seem petty.

Managing your own time and respecting others’ time is one of the most vital things to do as a manager,

Chronic indecision is not only inefficient and counterproductive, but it is deeply corrosive to morale.

At its essence, good leadership isn’t about being indispensable; it’s about helping others be prepared to possibly step into your shoes—giving them access to your own decision making, identifying the skills they need to develop and helping them improve, and, as I’ve had to do, sometimes being honest with them about why they’re not ready for the next step up.

If you don't innovate, You die

If something doesn't feel right to you, then it's probably not right for you

PEOPLE SOMETIMES SHY AWAY from taking big swings because they assess the odds and build a case against trying something before they even take the first step. One of the things I’ve always instinctively felt—and something that was greatly reinforced working for people like Roone and Michael—is that long shots aren’t usually as long as they seem.

When hiring, try to surround yourself with people who are good in addition to being good at what they do. Genuine decency—an instinct for fairness and openness and mutual respect—is a rarer commodity in business than it should be, and you should look for it in the people you hire and nurture it in the people who work for you.

shokunin, which is “the endless pursuit of perfection for some greater good.

You have to hear out other people’s problems and help find solutions. It’s all part of being a great manager.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.

Don't be in the business of playing it safe. Be in the business of creating possibilities of greatness

If you're in the business of making something, be in the business of making something great

Fear of failure destroys creativity.

A few solid pros are more powerful than dozens of cons,” Steve said. “So what should we do next?” Another lesson: Steve was great at weighing all sides of an issue and not allowing negatives to drown out positives, particularly for things he wanted to accomplish. It was a powerful quality of his.

Tom and Dan were the perfect bosses in this regard. They would talk about valuing ability more than experience, and they believed in putting people in roles that required more of them than they knew they had in them. It wasn’t that experience wasn’t important, but they “bet on brains,” as they put it, and trusted that things would work out if they put talented people in positions where they could grow, even if they were in unfamiliar territory.

You have to ask the questions you need to ask, admit without apology what you don’t understand, and do the work to learn what you need to learn as quickly as you can. There’s nothing less confidence-inspiring than a person faking a knowledge they don’t possess. True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.

I learned from them that genuine decency and professional competitiveness weren't mutually exclusive. In fact, true integrity, a sense of knowing who you are and being guided by your own clear sense of right and wrong is a kind of secret weapon. They trusted in their own instincts. They treated people with respect. And over time, the company came to represent the values they live by.

No one could have handled the stress that Michael was under perfectly, but optimism in a leader, especially in challenging times, is so vital. Pessimism leads to paranoia, which leads to defensiveness, which leads to risk aversion.

Maybe this is the case for many of us: No matter who we become or what we accomplish, we still feel that we’re essentially the kid we were at some simpler time long ago. Somehow that’s the trick of leadership, too, I think, to hold on to that awareness of yourself even as the world tells you how powerful and important you are. The moment you start to believe it all too much, the moment you look yourself in the mirror and see a title emblazoned on your forehead, you’ve lost your way. That may be the hardest but also the most necessary lesson to keep in mind, that wherever you are along the path, you’re the same person you’ve always been.

A few solid pros are more powerful than dozens of cons,” Steve said.

PEOPLE SOMETIMES SHY AWAY from taking big swings because they assess the odds and build a case against trying something before they even take the first step.

I talk a lot about "the relentless pursuit of perfection." In practice, this can mean a lot of things, and it's hard to define. It's a mindset, more than a specific set of rules. It's not about perfectionism at all costs. It's about creating an environment in which people refuse to accept mediocrity. It's about pushing back against the urge to say that "good enough" is good enough.

No matter who we become or what we accomplish, we still feel that we’re essentially the kid we were at some simpler time long ago.

You have to ask the questions you need to ask, admit without apology what you don’t understand, and do the work to learn what you need to learn as quickly as you can.

You can't let ambition get too far ahead of opportunity.

In short, we needed to view technology as more of an opportunity than a threat, and we had to do so with commitment, enthusiasm, and a sense of urgency.

Life is an adventure. If you don't choose the adventurous path, then you are not really living.

It’s all wrong,” he said. “There’s no excitement. No tension.” A team of people worked through the night to execute all of his changes in time to get it on the air. He was right, of course. His storytelling instincts were as sharp as ever. But it was such a stressful way to kick things off, and a reminder of how one person’s unwillingness to give a timely response can cause so much unnecessary strain and inefficiency.

optimism in a leader, especially in challenging times, is so vital. Pessimism leads to paranoia, which leads to defensiveness, which leads to risk aversion. Optimism sets a different machine in motion. Especially in difficult moments, the people you lead need to feel confident in your ability to focus on what matters, and not to operate from a place of defensiveness and self-preservation. This isn’t about saying things are good when they’re not, and it’s not about conveying some innate faith that “things will work out.” It’s about believing you and the people around you can steer toward the best outcome, and not communicating the feeling that all is lost if things don’t break your way. The tone you set as a leader has an enormous effect on the people around you. No one wants to follow a pessimist.

It’s so simple that you might think it doesn’t warrant mentioning, but it’s surprisingly rare: Be decent to people. Treat everyone with fairness and empathy. This doesn’t mean that you lower your expectations or convey the message that mistakes don’t matter. It means that you create an environment where people know you’ll hear them out, that you’re emotionally consistent and fair-minded, and that they’ll be

Be decent to people. Treat everyone with fairness and empathy. This doesn't mean that you lower your expectations or convey the message that mistakes don't matter. It means that you create an environment where people know you'll hear them out, that you're emotionally consistent and fair-minded, and that they'll be given chances for honest mistakes.

No one could have handled the stress that Michael was under perfectly, but optimism in a leader, especially in challenging times, is so vital. Pessimism leads to paranoia, which leads to defensiveness, which leads to risk aversion. Optimism sets a different machine in motion. Especially in difficult moments, the people you lead need to feel confident in your ability to focus on what matters, and not to operate from a place of defensiveness and self-preservation. This isn’t about saying things are good when they’re not, and it’s not about conveying some innate faith that “things will work out.” It’s about believing you and the people around you can steer toward the best outcome, and not communicating the feeling that all is lost if things don’t break your way. The tone you set as a leader has an enormous effect on the people around you. No one wants to follow a pessimist. —

It’s a delicate thing, finding the balance between demanding that your people perform and not instilling a fear of failure in them.

ROBERT IGER. Succeeded Eisner as Disney CEO in 2005. JONATHAN “JONY” IVE. Chief designer at Apple, became Jobs’s partner and confidant. ABDULFATTAH “JOHN” JANDALI. Syrian-born graduate student in Wisconsin who became biological father of Jobs and Mona Simpson, later a food and beverage manager at the Boomtown casino near Reno. CLARA HAGOPIAN JOBS. Daughter of Armenian

Managing creativity is an art, not a science. When giving notes, be mindful of how much of themselves the person you’re speaking to has poured into the project and how much is at stake for them.

As much as this process was a test of my ideas, it was also a test of my temperament, and I couldn’t let the negativity being expressed by people who knew little about me affect the way I felt about myself.

These are the ten principles that stikes me as necessary to True Leadership: Optimism, Courage, Focus, Decisiveness, Curiosity, Fairness, Thoughtfulness, Authenticity, The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection, and Integrity.

ROBERT IGER. Succeeded Eisner as Disney CEO in 2005. JONATHAN “JONY” IVE. Chief designer at Apple, became Jobs’s partner and confidant. ABDULFATTAH “JOHN” JANDALI. Syrian-born graduate student in Wisconsin who became biological father of Jobs and Mona Simpson, later a food and beverage manager at the Boomtown casino near Reno. CLARA HAGOPIAN JOBS. Daughter of Armenian immigrants, married Paul Jobs in 1946; they adopted Steve soon after his birth in 1955. ERIN JOBS. Middle child of Laurene Powell and

The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection. This doesn’t mean perfectionism at all costs, but it does mean a refusal to accept mediocrity or make excuses for something being “good enough.” If you believe that something can be made better, put in the effort to do it.

Of all the lessons I learned in that first year running prime time, the need to be comfortable with failure was the most profound. Not with lack of effort but with the unavoidable truth that if you want innovation - and you should, always - you need to give permission to fail.

Optimism sets a different machine in motion. Especially in difficult moments, the people you lead need to feel confident in your ability to focus on what matters, and not to operate from a place of defensiveness and self-preservation. This isn’t about saying things are good when they’re not, and it’s not about conveying some innate faith that “things will work out.” It’s about believing you and the people around you can steer toward the best outcome, and not communicating the feeling that all is lost if things don’t break your way. The tone you set as a leader has an enormous effect on the people around you. No one wants to follow a pessimist.

A little respect goes a long way, and the absence of it is often very costly. Over the next few years, as we made the major acquisitions that redefined and revitalized the company, this simple, seemingly trite idea was as important as all of the data-crunching in the world: If you approach and engage people with respect and empathy, the seemingly impossible can become real.

My former boss Dan Burke once handed me a note that said: “Avoid getting into the business of manufacturing trombone oil. You may become the greatest trombone-oil manufacturer in the world, but in the end, the world only consumes a few quarts of trombone oil a year!” He was telling me not to invest in small projects that would sap my and the company’s resources and not give much back.

It’s not, at least as I have internalized it, about perfectionism at all costs (something Roone wasn’t especially concerned about). Instead, it’s about creating an environment in which you refuse to accept mediocrity. You instinctively push back against the urge to say There’s not enough time, or I don’t have the energy, or This requires a difficult conversation I don’t want to have, or any of the many other ways we can convince ourselves that “good enough” is good enough.

You have to convey your priorities clearly and repeatedly. If you don't articulate your priorities clearly, then the people around you don't know what their own should be. Time and energy and capital get wasted. You can do a lot for the morale of the people around you (and therefore the people around them) just by taking the guess work out of their day-to-day life. A lot of work is complex and requires intense amounts of focus and energy, but this kind of messaging is fairly simple This is where we want to be. This is how we're going to get there.

Managing creative processes starts with the understanding that it’s not a science—everything is subjective; there is often no right or wrong. The passion it takes to create something is powerful, and most creators are understandably sensitive when their vision or execution is questioned. I try to keep this in mind whenever I engage with someone on the creative side of our business. When I am asked to provide insights and offer critiques, I’m exceedingly mindful of how much the creators have poured themselves into the project and how much is at stake for them.

When I look back on that time now, I think of it as a hard-earned lesson about the importance of tenacity and perseverance, but also about the need to steer clear of anger and anxiety over things you can’t control. I can’t overstate how important it is to keep blows to the ego, real as they often are, from occupying too big a place in your mind and sapping too much of your energy. It’s easy to be optimistic when everyone is telling you you’re great. It’s much harder, and much more necessary, when your sense of yourself is being challenged, and in such a public way.

I phoned Tom and said we had to air Twin Peaks. By that point, there was already a tremendous buzz in and outside of Hollywood that we were doing this. There was even an article on the front page of The Wall Street Journal about this buttoned-up guy at ABC who was taking huge creative risks. Suddenly I was getting calls from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. I visited Steven on the set of Hook, which he was directing at the time, and George at his Skywalker Ranch. They were both interested in talking about what they might do for ABC. That notion, that directors of that caliber would be interested in making television shows, was unheard of until we started making Twin Peaks.

Twitter was a potentially powerful platform for us, but I couldn’t get past the challenges that would come with it. The challenges and controversies were almost too much to list, but they included how to manage hate speech, and making fraught decisions regarding freedom of speech, what to do about fake accounts algorithmically spewing out political “messaging” to influence elections, and the general rage and lack of civility that was sometimes evident on the platform. Those would become our problems. They were so unlike any we’d encountered, and I felt they would be corrosive to the Disney brand. On the Sunday after the board had just given me the go-ahead to pursue the acquisition of Twitter, I sent a note to all of the members telling them I had “cold feet,” and explaining my reasoning for withdrawing. Then I called Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, who was also a member of the Disney board. Jack was stunned, but very polite. I wished Jack luck, and I hung up feeling relieved.

As a leader, you should want those around you to be eager to rise up and take on more responsibility, as long as dreaming about the job they want doesn’t distract them from the job they have. You can’t let ambition get too far ahead of opportunity. I’ve seen a lot of people who had their sights set on a particular job or project, but the opportunity to actually get that thing was so slim. Their focus on the small thing in the distance became a problem. They grew impatient with where they were. They didn’t tend enough to the responsibilities they did have, because they were longing so much for something else, and so their ambition became counterproductive. It’s important to know how to find the balance—do the job you have well; be patient; look for opportunities to pitch in and expand and grow; and make yourself one of the people, through attitude and energy and focus, that your bosses feel they have to turn to when an opportunity arises. Conversely, if you’re a boss, these are the people to nurture—not the ones who are clamoring for promotions and complaining about not being utilized enough but the ones who are proving themselves to be indispensable day in and day out.

There’s no good playbook for how to fire someone, though I have my own internal set of rules. You have to do it in person, not over the phone and certainly not by email or text. You have to look the person in the eye. You can’t use anyone else as an excuse. This is you making a decision about them—not them as a person but the way they have performed in their job—and they need and deserve to know that it’s coming from you. You can’t make small talk once you bring someone in for that conversation. I normally say something along the lines of: “I’ve asked you to come in here for a difficult reason.” And then I try to be as direct about the issue as possible, explaining clearly and concisely what wasn’t working and why I didn’t think it was going to change. I emphasize that it was a tough decision to make, and that I understand that it’s much harder on them. There’s a kind of euphemistic corporate language that is often deployed in those situations, and it has always struck me as offensive. There’s no way for the conversation not to be painful, but at least it can be honest, and in being honest there is at least a chance for the person on the receiving end to understand why it’s happening and eventually move on, even if they walk out of the room angry as hell.

and if I had a strength, it was my ability to urge creative people to do their best work and take chances, while also helping them rebound from failure. It’s always a collective effort, but my years running Entertainment gave me a new appreciation for what it takes to get a group of talented people to produce at the highest level.

That’s true, and it’s significant. In your work, in your life, you’ll be more respected and trusted by the people around you if you honestly own up to your mistakes. It’s impossible not to make them; but it is possible to acknowledge them, learn from them, and set an example that it’s okay to get things wrong sometimes. What’s not okay is to undermine others by lying about something or covering your own ass first.

How do we deploy technology as a powerful new tool for growth instead of falling victim to its disruption and destruction?

This morning we all woke up to a tweet by Roseanne Barr, in which she referred to Valerie Jarrett as a product of the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes. We found this comment, no matter what its context was, to be intolerable and deplorable, and we made the decision to cancel Roseanne’s show. I don’t mean to stand on a high horse, but as a company, we have always tried to do what we felt was right, no matter what the politics or the commerce. In other words, demanding quality and integrity from all of our people and of all of our products is paramount, and there is no room for second chances, or for tolerance when it comes to an overt transgression that discredits the company in any way.

I loved the documentary so much that I showed excerpts of it to 250 executives at a Disney retreat. I wanted them to understand better, through the example of Jiro, what I meant when I talked about “the relentless pursuit of perfection.” This is what it looks like to take immense personal pride in the work you create, and to have both the instinct toward perfection and the work ethic to follow through on that instinct. —

In my early days, I thought there was only one lesson in this story, the obvious one about the importance of taking responsibility when you screw up. That’s true, and it’s significant. In your work, in your life, you’ll be more respected and trusted by the people around you if you honestly own up to your mistakes. It’s impossible not to make them; but it is possible to acknowledge them, learn from them, and set an example that it’s okay to get things wrong sometimes. What’s not okay is to undermine others by lying about something or covering your own ass first.

I learned from them that genuine decency and professional competitiveness weren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, true integrity—a sense of knowing who you are and being guided by your own clear sense of right and wrong—is a kind of secret weapon. They trusted in their own instincts, they treated people with respect, and over time the company came to represent the values they lived by.

wanted to move up and learn and do more, and I wasn’t going to forgo any chance to do that, but I also wanted to prove to myself that I was capable of doing things that I was unfamiliar with.

You have a job. They’re expecting you to turn this business around. Your inexperience can’t be an excuse for failure. So what do you do in a situation like that? The first rule is not to fake anything. You have to be humble, and you can’t pretend to be someone you’re not or to know something you don’t. You’re also in a position of leadership, though, so you can’t let humility prevent you from leading. It’s a fine line, and something I preach today. You have to ask the questions you need to ask, admit without apology what you don’t understand, and do the work to learn what you need to learn as quickly as you can. There’s nothing less confidence-inspiring than a person faking a knowledge they don’t possess. True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.

Every time a question came up about what had gone wrong at Disney over the past years, what mistakes Michael made, and why they should think I’m any different, my response could simply and honestly be: “I can’t do anything about the past. We can talk about lessons learned, and we can make sure we apply those lessons going forward. But we don’t get any do-overs. You want to know where I’m going to take this company, not where it’s been. Here’s my plan.

You can do a lot for the morale of the people around you (and therefore the people around them) just by taking the guesswork out of their day-to-day life. A CEO must provide the company and its senior team with a road map. A lot of work is complex and requires intense amounts of focus and energy, but this kind of messaging is fairly simple: This is where we want to be. This is how we’re going to get there. Once those things are laid out simply, so many decisions become easier to make, and the overall anxiety of an entire organization is lowered.

It’s so easy to get caught up in rumor mills, to worry about this person’s perception of you or that person’s, what someone might say or write about you. It’s easy to become defensive and petty and to want to lash out when you feel you’re being unfairly misrepresented. I didn’t believe I deserved this job; I didn’t think I was entitled to it, but I did believe I was right for it. Part of proving that was remaining steady in the face of so much publicly expressed doubt.

There was one board member, Gary Wilson, who not only didn’t think I should get the job, but clearly thought he could further his own agenda by baiting me and attempting to humiliate me in our meetings. I had to consistently remind myself that Gary Wilson wasn’t my problem. As much as this process was a test of my ideas, it was also a test of my temperament, and I couldn’t let the negativity being expressed by people who knew little about me affect the way I felt about myself.

The succession process was the first time in my career that I had to face that level of anxiety head on. It was impossible to completely filter out the chatter about me or to not be hurt by very public conversations about how ill-suited I was for the job. But I learned, through strong self-discipline and love from my family, that I had to recognize it for what it was—that it had no bearing on who I was—and put it in its proper place. I could control what I did and how I comported myself. Everything else was beyond my control. I didn’t maintain that perspective every moment, but to the extent that I was able to, it kept the anxiety from having too strong a hold. —

It would be a big story and would take a difficult emotional toll on the community there. The bond you form in high-stress moments like this, when you’re sharing information that you can’t discuss with anyone else, is a powerful one. In every emergency I’ve encountered as CEO, I’ve been grateful for the competence and cool heads and humanity of the team around me.

but I tend not to feel much anxiety when things go awry. And I tend to approach bad news as a problem that can be worked through and solved, something I have control over rather than something happening to me.

Take responsibility when you screw up. In work, in life, you’ll be more respected and trusted by the people around you if you own up to your mistakes. It’s impossible to avoid them; but it is possible to acknowledge them, learn from them, and set an example that it’s okay to get things wrong sometimes.

they believed in putting people in roles that required more of them than they knew they had in them. It wasn’t that experience wasn’t important, but they “bet on brains,” as they put it, and trusted that things would work out if they put talented people in positions where they could grow, even if they were in unfamiliar territory.

You’re also in a position of leadership, though, so you can’t let humility prevent you from leading.

If you’re in the business of making something, be in the business of making something great.

As a leader, you should want those around you to be eager to rise up and take on more responsibility, as long as dreaming about the job they want doesn’t distract them from the job they have. You can’t let ambition get too far ahead of opportunity. I’ve seen a lot of people who had their sights set on a particular job or project, but the opportunity to actually get that thing was so slim.

diversity of opinion balanced with the need to make and implement decisions. Chronic indecision is not only inefficient and counterproductive, but it is deeply corrosive to morale. Curiosity. A deep and abiding curiosity enables the discovery of new people, places, and ideas, as well as an awareness and an understanding of the marketplace and its changing dynamics. The path to innovation begins with curiosity. Fairness. Strong leadership embodies the fair and decent treatment of people. Empathy is essential, as is accessibility. People committing honest mistakes deserve second chances, and judging people too harshly generates fear and anxiety, which discourage communication and innovation. Nothing is worse to an organization than a culture of fear. Thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness is one of the most underrated elements of good leadership. It is the process of gaining knowledge, so an opinion rendered or decision made is more credible and more likely to be correct. It’s simply about taking the time to develop informed opinions. Authenticity. Be genuine. Be honest. Don’t fake anything. Truth and authenticity breed respect and trust.

Priorities are the few things that you’re going to spend a lot of time and a lot of capital on. Not only do you undermine their significance by having too many, but nobody is going to remember them all. “You’re going to seem unfocused,” he said. “You only get three. I can’t tell you what those three should be. We don’t have to figure that out today. You never have to tell me what they are if you don’t want to. But you only get three.

at Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena” speech, which has long been an inspiration: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,

I watched a documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, about a master sushi chef from Tokyo named Jiro Ono, whose restaurant has three Michelin stars and is one of the most sought-after reservations in the world. In the film, he’s in his late eighties and still trying to perfect his art. He is described by some as being the living embodiment of the Japanese word shokunin, which is “the endless pursuit of perfection for some greater good.” I

Most deals are personal. This is even more true if you’re negotiating with someone over something he or she has created. You have to know what you want out of any deal, but to get there you also need be aware of what’s at stake for the other person.

It should be about the future, not the past

but they included how to manage hate speech, and making fraught decisions regarding freedom of speech, what to do about fake accounts algorithmically spewing out political “messaging” to influence

Life's an adventure & If you don't chose adventure path, then you're not living

Nothing is worse to an organisation than a culture of fear

Nothing is worse to an organisation than culture of fear

sé educado con la gente. Trata a todo el mundo con equidad y comprensión. Esto no significa que rebajes tu nivel de exigencia o transmitas el mensaje de que los errores no importan. Significa que creas un clima en el que los demás saben que los escucharás, que eres una persona coherente y justa y que tendrán una segunda oportunidad si han cometido un fallo inocente. (Si no confiesan sus errores, culpan a los demás o el fallo es el resultado de un comportamiento poco ético, eso ya es otra historia, algo que no debe consentirse.)

If you’re in the business of making things, be in the business of making things great.

Leaders must encourage a diversity of opinion balanced with the need to make and implement decisions.

It’s perhaps not the most responsible advice in a book like this to say that leaders should just go out there and trust their gut, because it might be interpreted as endorsing impulsivity over thoughtfulness, gambling rather than careful study. As with everything, the key is awareness, taking it all in and weighing every factor—your own motivations, what the people you trust are saying, what careful study and analysis tell you, and then what analysis can’t tell you.

The worst thing you can do when entering into a negotiation is to suggest or promise something because you know the other person wants to hear it, only to have to reverse course later. You have to be clear about where you stand from the beginning.

the endless pursuit of perfection for some greater good.

el optimismo en un líder, sobre todo en tiempos difíciles, es absolutamente vital. El pesimismo provoca paranoia, que produce una actitud defensiva y, a su vez, aversión al riesgo. El optimismo, en cambio, pone en marcha una maquinaria distinta. En particular en los momentos difíciles, las personas a las que lideras deben sentir confianza en tu capacidad para centrarte en lo que importa, y no para actuar a la defensiva y por afán de conservación. No se trata de decir que las cosas son buenas cuando no lo son, ni de transmitir una fe innata en que «todo saldrá bien». Se trata de creer que tú y las personas que te rodean podéis encauzar la situación para obtener el mejor resultado posible, y no de transmitir la sensación de que todo está perdido si las cosas no salen a tu manera. La pauta que marcas como líder tiene un efecto enorme en las personas que te rodean. Nadie quiere seguir a un pesimista.