Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking promotes profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.
—LAO-TZU
On March 7, 2009, General Caslen was sitting in a meeting with the senior US forces commander General Ray Odierno and the director of a key oil refinery in northern Iraq, in Baiji, Salah ad Din province. Baiji was not far from Balad, where Lieutenant Colonel Dave Hodne was dealing with the dilapidated tomato-paste factory and shared many of the same radical-versus-moderate-Sunni issues Balad was experiencing. The oil refinery was a key facility in the area because it provided a steady source of energy for the fragile community and economy. But its ability to operate was contingent on its ability to remain secure. If it failed to operate, it would be a source of discontent between the population and the central government, and it would show the failure of US efforts to build a secure and stable economy and government, an outcome critical in winning the support of the Iraqi population.
While sitting in the meeting, Caslen’s aide passed him a note informing him that one of his infantry platoons was in a fight in the town of Samarra, which was about a twenty-minute helicopter flight from his current location. The report noted that a soldier was gravely wounded. Knowing that Dan Hyde was a platoon leader in Samarra, Caslen’s heart jumped into his throat, thinking that possibly the injured man was him. Caslen asked his aide to keep him informed of the situation and to obtain the name of the injured soldier, while secretly praying for Dan and his troops.
Caslen knew Dan Hyde well from Caslen’s previous assignment as commandant of cadets at West Point. The commandant, a brigadier general position, is subordinate to the superintendent (a job Caslen would have later on) and is responsible for cadet military, character, and athletic development at West Point. As commandant, Caslen would regularly engage with the cadet leaders, and they frequently sought his advice and guidance. In Caslen’s first summer as commandant, Cadet Hyde was the senior cadet in charge of new-cadet training. During the spring of his junior year, Hyde had competed against all other cadets in his class to be the senior cadet commander that summer. During the academic year, Dan was the leader of his regiment, commanding more than eleven hundred cadets. Caslen came to know all of the senior cadets and was particularly impressed with Dan. He had impeccable values with unsurpassed competence and energy. An intellectual and physical paragon, he excelled at every task within the cadet program. Graduating near the top of his class, he could have chosen any Army specialty in which to serve as an officer and elected to serve in the infantry, regarded as the Army’s “tip of the spear.” Following graduation from West Point and from the Infantry Basic Officer Leader Course, Hyde reported to the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division in Hawaii, his first choice for assignment. With the war raging, it didn’t matter what division he chose because everyone would rotate through Iraq or Afghanistan.
Dan graduated high school in Modesto, California, in 2003, just two years after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States. As with many of his peers, he was deeply moved by the events of 9/11 and chose to attend West Point from the many civilian and other military academy options he had. He did so knowing that when he graduated, he would find himself in the crucible of ground combat. You have to wonder where you find such incredible men and women who, despite so many options available to them, choose to place themselves in harm’s way for the benefit of their nation.
Caslen left his commandant position in April 2008 to become the commander of the Twenty-Fifth “Tropic Lightning” Division in Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. The division deployed to northern Iraq in November 2008. Dan Hyde, by now a member of that division, was also a part of that deployment.
Once in Iraq, Caslen made a point to stay in contact with and encourage the former cadets he had known as commandant, including Dan Hyde. Caslen recalls visiting Hyde while touring the battlefield and awarding him the Combat Infantry Badge. Caslen encouraged Hyde and told him to stay safe.
Dan was assigned to the town of Samarra, the location of the holy Shi‘ite Al-Askari Mosque. Built in 944, the mosque is one of the most important Shia shrines in the world and was the target of an earlier attack by the Sunni radical leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which destroyed the mosque and created a violent sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia sects. Dan found himself in the middle of this conflict.
While on patrol on March 7, 2009, Dan’s vehicle was attacked by an insurgent who threw a grenade that created a copper spall that penetrated Dan’s armor-plated door. After receiving the initial report of the attack, the staff kept Caslen updated on the progress of the fight. Despite his hopes and prayers, the next report revealed that the injured soldier was Lieutenant Dan Hyde. Tragically, despite great efforts to keep him alive, Hyde passed away.
As soon as possible, Caslen flew to where Dan was and asked to be alone with him for a few moments. It was one of the hardest moments of Caslen’s life. But he held Dan and told him how much he loved him and cared for him, and how sorry he was for what had happened. Caslen’s pain and sorrow brought him even closer to Dan and his family and to the other men and women in his command. Times like that cement the importance of character traits of love, compassion, caring, commitment, and loyalty.
When the division returned from deployment, the families were present to welcome their soldiers home. The ceremonies included the families of those soldiers who had been killed during the deployment. This was no doubt tough for them, being present while seeing other families welcome their loved ones home. But the division wanted them to know they were still part of the family, and that the division would be there for them for whatever support was needed.
Dan Hyde’s mom and dad flew out for the ceremonies, and Caslen spent time with them. They were incredibly brave and courageous to be there. Caslen and the other soldiers expressed their love for Dan and the family and assured them that the division would forever be indebted for Dan’s sacrifice.
Caslen continues to stay in touch with Dan’s parents to this day. He spoke at Dan’s high school, telling the students what an incredible man, leader, and officer Dan was. Caslen visited Dan in his final resting place in Modesto. Although it was hard, it gave Caslen closure and comfort to be with Dan again, while offering comfort to Dan’s family and friends. West Point honored Dan by naming one of its summer training events after him. The entire West Point class of 2019 was called Task Force Hyde, and Dan’s father spoke to them when they completed their training.
Dan and the many others who have sacrificed for their country should never be forgotten. Dan was an incredibly talented and gifted officer with tremendous potential. We will never know why he was taken from us, but his story is important, and it remains inspiring to the generations of leaders who will follow. Since Dan’s death, Caslen has worn a bracelet bearing his name and the date he was killed. Many do the same for other fallen soldiers. This is strength of the heart. This is the compassion and love felt for Dan and his family, even years after his passing. We never want to forget Dan Hyde and what he sacrificed in defense of his nation.
As a division commander, Caslen was responsible for planning and executing a vital wartime mission and leading and caring for the welfare of twenty-three thousand soldiers. In a large corporation or other civilian organization, a lieutenant would be equivalent to an entry-level management position. Scores of lieutenants were under Caslen’s command, and he could be excused if he did not take time to engage with Hyde and his family. After all, Caslen had a war to fight. But he did take the time, and the impact on Hyde’s family and the other soldiers in the division was immeasurable. Here you can see the link between strengths of the heart and leadership. A genuine caring for Hyde, his family, and his fellow soldiers show how strengths of the heart make a technically proficient leader into a transformative leader who is trusted and respected by his subordinates.
Strengths of the heart are vital in all domains of life. Strengths of the gut and the head help us in many ways, but these strengths of the heart enable us to be a trusted leader, friend, parent, or teammate. Capacity to love, kindness, forgiveness, and gratitude matter for everyone. These strengths transcend culture, context, and time and represent what it means to be human.
Effective leaders understand this. Think about different places you have worked. You can probably recall examples of leaders who possessed strengths of the heart and overtly demonstrated this understanding—and leaders who did not. Effective leaders demonstrate these character strengths in a variety of ways. Many are simple actions. Sending birthday cards to employees, arranging social activities so that members of the work group can share experiences outside the workplace, or showing a genuine interest in employees’ families or personal interests all contribute to a high-functioning work environment. Formally recognizing achievements is another way to demonstrate caring and concern for others in the workplace. When you think about that “boss from hell,” you probably aren’t thinking about his or her technical competence. Rather, you probably are reacting to a leader or a supervisor who lacked these strengths of the heart. This type of leader is selfish and only cares about your technical job performance and demonstrates no concern about you as an individual.
St. Louis Cardinals manager Mike Shildt gets it. Although he did not play professional baseball, he rose through the ranks of the St. Louis Cardinals farm system and managed winning teams at every level. An outsider might think that a better choice for manager would be someone with extensive experience playing baseball at the major league level. After all, they would have both the experience and the street cred to manage a team. But baseball is filled with examples of great players who did not excel as managers. Home-run king Barry Bonds is not a manager. Babe Ruth wanted to manage but never did. So why did the Cardinals hire Shildt as the new manager midway through the 2018 season?
It is because Shildt’s genuine caring and love for his players allow them to coalesce into a cohesive team and to work together to achieve excellence on and off the field. Shildt is beloved by many of the current Cardinals, who gush about his pregame “ball talk” meetings and his mantra of “I’m not here to judge you, I’m here to love you.”1 Shildt was recognized for his leadership when he was named National League Manager of the Year following the 2019 season.
Shildt’s case is a great example of the power of character strengths of the heart in leadership. He no doubt has considerable technical expertise in baseball, but the difference maker is his ability to connect with players and create a cohesive team. Interestingly, in baseball the on-field leader is called a manager, not head coach as is common in football or basketball. Baseball managers employ a host of technical experts such as hitting and pitching instructors who work daily with players to improve skills or correct bad habits. The manager’s job includes technical expertise, but much more. Shildt and other successful baseball managers succeed in no small way due to heart-based character strengths. Again, we encourage you to think of situations in your own life where these strengths are critical in individual or group success.
The Values-in-Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) includes several character strengths from the six moral virtues that may be thought of as strengths of the heart. These strengths have in common a positive focus on others and a genuine concern for their well-being. These strengths are capacity to love, kindness, forgiveness, and gratitude. Alone and in combination with other character strengths, they are important to how individuals interact with and relate to others, and how leaders inspire others to attain organizational goals.
Capacity to love. Psychologists make a distinction between passionate love and companionate love. When you experience passionate love, you know it! It includes an overwhelming preoccupation with another person, typically in the early stages of romantic relationships. Think about your first experiences with romantic love, and you will have an idea of what passionate love means. Companionate love, on the other hand, is a more enduring and stable form of love. It is characterized by a lasting and strong positive emotional bond for others but lacks the emotional intensity of passionate love. The love of a parent for a child, or vice versa, is a good example.
Another and important sort of love is not as well recognized by psychological science. This is the love that leaders have for their subordinates, and teammates have for each other. General Caslen’s caring for Dan Hyde and Cardinal manager Shildt’s feelings for his players are not uncommon and represent an essential ingredient to effective leadership and team performance. This is a powerful type of companionate love.
A tragic event near Springfield, Missouri, provides a profound example of this type of love. During the night of September 7, 2018, Deputy Aaron Roberts of the Greene County Sheriff’s Office responded to a call for service in a remote corner of the county. After completing the call, Deputy Roberts continued his patrol duties. On this stormy night it had been raining hard for several hours. Shortly after radioing headquarters that he was back in service, Deputy Roberts called again and told the dispatcher that his patrol car had been swept off a low-water crossing and into rushing water. Despite repeated attempts to recontact him, there was no further word from Deputy Roberts. After an intense search, Deputy Roberts was found deceased in his patrol car, having drowned after being swept away by the swift water.
Deputy Roberts’s death was a shock to his fellow officers and the entire community. The Sheriff’s Office and other local law enforcement agencies rallied to support Deputy Roberts’s wife, Kim, and their family. The outpouring of love from the community was significant. But the actions of Greene County sheriff Jim Arnott and his deputies over the months that followed showed the deepest form of companionate love. Sheriff Arnott helped Kim clean out her garage in the days following her husband’s untimely death. He noticed a 1995 Mitsubishi Eclipse sitting on blocks in the garage. Kim said this car was what had caught her attention when she first met Aaron. But something about Aaron also caught her eye. “I ended up calling my best friend that night and telling her that I was going to marry him. The joke was I married him for his car. I dated him for his car, I know that.”
Recognizing the importance of the car to Kim, Arnott asked her if he could rebuild the car and restore it to running order. With the help of other deputies and members of the local community, on March 19, 2019, Sheriff Arnott presented the restored car to Kim. It cost more than $7,000 and hundreds of hours of labor to restore, but the car was now in mint condition. Kim was deeply touched and told a reporter for the local newspaper, “There were so many hands on this car it just blows my mind. My mind can’t even wrap around how many people helped on this.”2
This expression of love impacted others in addition to Kim. By overtly showing their love and concern for Deputy Roberts and Kim, everyone who contributed to the restoration also benefited. “I think it’s a proud moment and I’m proud of my community—that’s the big thing,” Arnott said.
All forms of love are important to the good life and represent a character trait that enables us to derive meaning and purpose in life. If you are high in this trait, you will have close positive relationships with others, and your feelings of love for them will be reciprocated. What is your score for capacity to love from the VIA-IS? Peterson and Seligman give several examples of capacity to love.3 Individuals high in this trait will answer yes to the questions of whether there is someone with whom they
Kindness. To tout kindness as a character trait that is central to optimal human functioning seems like stating the obvious. Scouts are inculcated with the idea of the “good turn,” which says they should do good deeds or favors for others daily.4 Growing up, we are told to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”5
But understanding that kindness is a positive trait of the heart is one thing, and being kind is another. Bullying is rampant among schoolchildren. On social media people demean and demonize those who disagree with their own political or social views. Politicians feed these views to energize their political base. Simply put, the world seems full of hate and anger, and all too often it spills out into hateful speech and violence. Strangers call a woman names because she wears a burka. A terrorist kills people in response to his or her ideologically based hatred of people with a different faith or political view. A radio talk show hosts denies that twenty children were murdered by a deranged gunman in Newtown, Connecticut, and thousands believe him, adding to the pain of those who lost a child or loved one there. Members of a Christian church picket the funerals of fallen soldiers, screaming insults at their families and loved ones. It goes on and on.
You can’t be blamed if, in the face of the constant barrage of stories about people behaving in markedly unkind ways toward others, you conclude that kindness has eroded in today’s society. But in concluding this, you are succumbing to what psychologists call the availability heuristic, a common decision-making failure. The availability heuristic occurs when you make a decision or reach a conclusion—in this case that kindness is a lost art—based on information that is most easily retrieved from memory. For example, many older Americans fear home invasions or other forms of violence. This is because when an elderly person is attacked in his or her home or elsewhere, the media frequently make it a headline story. In truth, young males are and have always been the most common victims (and perpetrators) of violent crime. But because of the “if it bleeds, it leads” approach of news media, older people come to believe they are more vulnerable than they actually are.
The availability heuristic contributes to our perceptions about kindness in similar ways. Kind acts rarely make the news. But with a bit of reflection, many instances of kind acts will likely come to mind. Following a snowstorm, a woman with a snowblower clears the driveways of her elderly neighbors without being asked and without expectation of compensation. One student helps another understand a calculus problem. A work group organizes meals for the family of a coworker who just had a baby. These daily acts of kindness just don’t make the news.
Volunteerism represents another form of kindness. Many small towns are protected by volunteer fire departments. A quarter of all Americans volunteer, averaging fifty hours per year in donated time and effort. Organizations such as Meals on Wheels could not achieve their mission without volunteers. Following a natural disaster, people stand in lines to donate blood to the Red Cross. The economic impact of volunteering is substantial, reaching $184 billion a year in the United States alone.6
Psychologists report that kindness is just as good, or better, for the person doing the good deed as for its recipient. Those who do kind acts may enjoy better emotional and physical health than nonvolunteers. Although not extensively studied scientifically, anecdotes and cultural traditions as expressed in religious writings and secular literature abound with the notion that deliberately doing kind acts may transform and improve a person’s personality and well-being. Richard McKinney provides an example. Once a hateful white supremacist who plotted to bomb a mosque, he decided one day to visit his next-door neighbor, who was Muslim, and confront him with all that McKinney thought was evil and wrong with Islam. But the neighbor kindly listened, and over time McKinney lost his hatred, converted to Islam, and is now an imam at a local mosque, where he teaches others the message of peace and kindness.7
The Jewish custom of tikkun olam represents another ancient recognition of the importance of kindness as a component of civil society. Tikkun olam is the concept of behaving in a constructive, pro-social manner. It means engaging in acts that promote the welfare of others. Tikkun olam is a complex concept but at its heart is an expression of basic human kindness coupled with the understanding that practicing it makes the world a better place.
Yale professor Nicholas Christakis considers kindness a central human trait. In his recent book, Blueprint, he uses evolutionary biology to argue that kindness is a form of altruism that enables large groups of people to work cooperatively.8 The soldier who sacrifices his life so that others may live represents a dramatic example of altruism. Army staff sergeant Travis Atkins did this on June 1, 2007, when he tackled an enemy insurgent wearing a suicide vest. The bomb exploded, killing Atkins, but his actions saved the lives of three fellow soldiers.9
The mundane acts of day-to-day kindness promote successful group life. Humans, according to Christakis, are genetically wired for such selfless behavior. We are not alone in this. Jane Goodall observed similar behaviors in her studies of chimpanzees. Wild rats will even work to free other rats that are caged.10
We argue that kindness is not a lost art. Rather, it continues to be a central strength of the heart and promotes positive social relationships as well as builds your own sense of well-being and self-worth.
Forgiveness. On March 15, 2019, during Friday Prayer, a gunman attacked the Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand. Within minutes, fifty people were killed and another fifty were wounded, some severely. The suspect in the shootings was Brenton Harrison Tarrant, a twenty-eight-year-old Australian. Motivated by ethnic hatred, Tarrant had planned such an attack for years. A gun-club member, he purchased his weapons legally. Australia has restrictive gun laws requiring a clean criminal record and a justification for possessing a weapon. None of the weapons used were “military-style” assault rifles.
One can only imagine the pain and suffering of surviving loved ones. But not everyone responded to this brutal and hateful act with a demand for vengeance. Instead, Farid Ahmed, whose wife, Husna, was among the fifty people killed, called for forgiveness. At a service held in Christchurch to commemorate those who died in the attacks, Ahmed said, “I don’t want to have a heart that is boiling like a volcano. A volcano has anger, fury, rage. It doesn’t have peace. It has hatred. It burns itself within, and also it burns the surroundings. I don’t want to have a heart like this.”11
Ahmed’s response to this unthinkable act represents the heart strength of forgiveness. The virtue of forgiveness is fundamental across time, culture, and religious and philosophical thought. Peterson and Seligman point out that forgiveness is a formal part of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.12 Ahmed’s Islamic faith instructed him that Tarrant was his brother, and although he had to be held responsible for his hideous act, he had to be forgiven. Christians learn in their Lord’s Prayer to “forgive our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Forgiveness may range from the dramatic, such as in Ahmed’s case, to more mundane forgiveness for the daily transgressions we all experience.
History provides many other examples of forgiveness. Imprisoned under apartheid in South Africa from 1962 to 1990, Nelson Mandela rose to become the first black president of the country. For many of us, the pain and anger of imprisonment and subjugation would be overwhelming. But Mandela rose above these feelings to become the greatest unifying force in his country’s history. His name is synonymous worldwide with forgiveness. Cultural anthropologist Janice Harper writes, “If a man tortured and imprisoned for nearly three decades could find in himself forgiveness, what lessons might we take from him on how to respond to acts of aggression and cruelty in our ordinary lives? Ought we forgive those who are not sorry for their cruelty and the pain and suffering it produced?”13
Psychologists find that forgiveness diminishes negative emotions such as anger, hostility, depression, and anxiety.14 This makes sense. Hatred requires a lot of energy and detracts from positive engagement. Adaptive people learn to channel negative emotions into socially constructive ones. After the February 14, 2018, shooting that took the lives of seventeen students and staff at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, many survivors helped establish a movement to prevent future mass murders. This included a student-led demonstration on March 24, 2018, called the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., and 880 other locations, that called for a reexamination of gun laws in the United States.
Turn again to your VIA-IS scores and reflect on where forgiveness lies in your hierarchy of strengths. If it is among your top five or six strengths, good! If it is lower than you prefer, think about small ways that you may routinely practice forgiveness. Thankfully, most of us will not share Farid Ahmed’s experience, but all of us must deal with the transgressions of daily life. Practicing forgiveness for small transgressions may help you build the capacity to forgive larger ones.
Gratitude. One of the most powerful strengths of the heart is the capacity to give and receive thanks in life. The greatest thing about gratitude is that practicing it may bring greater positive benefits for you than it does for the recipient of thanks. Positive psychologists recommend a simple exercise—called the gratitude visit—to reduce negative feelings, such as depression, while simultaneously increasing positive ones, such as happiness and life satisfaction.15 With gratitude, it may indeed be better to give than to receive.
Receiving gratitude is good, too. Teachers know the good feeling and sense of reward that follows receiving a genuine compliment from a student. This may be a word of thanks or encouragement or a more systematic expression.
Dr. Matthews experienced this recently. For more than a year, he had mentored a cadet who had been arrested for driving while intoxicated. Matthews had come to know this cadet a year earlier and they had mutual trust, so the cadet naturally turned to Matthews as a mentor. While violations of the code of conduct of this serious nature often result in separation from the academy, this cadet had a good track record at West Point and, aside from this incident, showed great potential as an Army officer. So instead of being expelled, he was placed in a formal and rigorous mentorship program. His graduation and commissioning were delayed for a year and were contingent upon his successful completion of this program.
Over the next year, this cadet admitted to himself that he was an alcoholic and not only enrolled in substance-abuse counseling but also established a cadet-run support group to help other cadets struggling with substance abuse. Matthews and the cadet met frequently to discuss self-understanding, social relationships, academic success, and what it means to be an Army officer. After successfully completing the mentorship program the cadet graduated with the West Point class of 2019 and received his Army commission as a second lieutenant.
A few days before the cadet’s graduation, Dr. Matthews received the following note from his young protégé:
I wanted to personally thank you for your mentorship over the past three years. I never thought I would meet someone as caring, brilliant, and understanding as you. Although I made a mistake, a serious one, you went to bat for me and helped me continually after that. You believed in me when no one else did and for that I am extraordinarily grateful. You showed me more respect than anyone at West Point when I was at my lowest. You also continued to mentor me following my poor decision into my fifth year at West Point. While I am certain I am lucky to be where I am today, it would not be possible without the help, motivation, and inspiration from you. As I continue on to my next duty station, I wanted to formally thank you for all you have done for me over the past three years. I hope to see you again soon, but I know you will be one of the people I will always remember at West Point for all of the positive experiences and learning I received from you. Thank you again, sir, for all you are. It has truly been an honor and a privilege working with you.
Experiencing adversity and deprivations may cause you to be more grateful for the good things in life. For example, among Army combat leaders at the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, gratitude (along with capacity to love) increased substantially following their combat experiences. The captains had led soldiers in ground combat. Some had experienced the death of comrades. All of them had endured difficult conditions and long periods of isolation from their families. Upon return from their combat deployments, they were more appreciative of their families and a safe home and for the other elements of day-to-day life.16
Gratitude may be found in everyday circumstances. Check your gratitude score and, as with forgiveness, think about ways you can overtly express your gratitude to others. Whether it is thanking a former teacher for his or her impact on your life, or simply thanking your spouse for a kind deed he or she did that day, doing so will boost your mood.
Strengths of the heart matter a great deal in day-to-day living. Taking time to show and receive love, to be kind to and forgiving of others, and to express gratitude vastly improves the quality of everyday life. These ordinary expressions of the strengths of the heart are the foundation of social relationships, and in return we feel valued and that we, ourselves, indeed matter.
Strengths of the heart may seem more poignant and impactful in times of adversity. Soldiers rally around a wounded or lost comrade, or law enforcement officers support the family of a fallen officer. Those who lead others in such in extremis situations must possess strengths of the heart to be trusted and must be trusted by their subordinates, peers, and supervisors to be effective.
Henry V knew something about strengths of the heart. King of England from 1413 to 1422, Henry reigned at a critical period during the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, a war waged from 1337 to 1453 over the right to rule France. On October 25, a day that the Christian community honors Saint Crispin (martyred in 286), in 1415, Henry faced the French Army in a fight known as the Battle of Agincourt. Tremendously outnumbered, the English soldiers were nervous and fearful of the pending battle.
Recognizing the degraded morale, Henry delivered his famous Saint Crispin speech, motivating his soldiers, who would go on to defeat the French and enjoy the ensuing victory. In William Shakespeare’s play Henry V, written 180 years after the battle, this speech appears in act 4. In Shakespeare’s version, the speech contains a phrase that relates to military combatants today and illustrates the camaraderie, love, loyalty, and commitment between warriors who share the hardships of war. Also known as the “Band of Brothers” speech, it continues to resonate with today’s soldiers who experience similar challenges, failures, and successes in the crucible of combat.
Imagine seeing your king in the miserable conditions of combat, sharing the same hardships and dangers you experience. You would do everything within your power to never let him down. The Band of Brothers speech resonates timelessly with soldiers, particularly the phrase “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers, for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.”
Although armies in the fifteenth century consisted principally of male warriors, today’s gender-integrated forces find both men and women experiencing these challenges together. So, although the term band of brothers was applicable to an all-male force, today’s military will more commonly use the term band of brothers and sisters, which portrays the composition of today’s battlefields. Whichever version is used, it accurately captures the strength of the heart and the loyalty and bonds that exist among these men and women.
This concept of a band of brothers and sisters may be found in other situations where groups of individuals come together to overcome challenges and adversity. USA Today writer Monica Rhor describes a group of school-aged African immigrants residing in Houston, Texas. Freed from the horrendous conditions of refugee camps in Africa, these young immigrants face new challenges in the United States. Learning a new language and a new culture, struggling to succeed in school, being the target of bullying and racial taunts, and doing so in an era of palpable anti-immigrant prejudice was their new normal.17
Enter Charles Rotramel, the head of reVision, a nonprofit that works with youths in the Houston area who become involved with the juvenile justice system. Sensing a need for these young immigrants to be part of something larger than themselves, something that would impart a sense of meaning and purpose to their lives, he formed a soccer team called reVision FC and recruited these kids to form the team. In the team’s locker room is a large sign with a single word—FAMILY. A band of brothers was born. The team members look out for each other, on and off the pitch. If a member struggles with a personal issue or money problems, his teammates step up. “They are like my brothers,” one player says. “When I don’t have something, they give it to me. When they don’t have, I give it to them.”18
Another soccer team that exemplifies this team bond is the US Women’s National Team. The champions of the Women’s World Cup embody the idea of sisterhood in achievement. To win a World Cup takes more than raw athletic talent and motivation. Success hinges on cohesion. Team cocaptain Megan Rapinoe says, “Everyone always talks about with a team that you want camaraderie, but we really do have a tight team. Whoever needs to be leaned on, the whole team is comfortable leaning on that person.” Adds teammate Kelley O’Hara, “It’s refreshing to be part of a group where, what we show on the field, having each other’s backing and taking care of each other and winning for each other, is really felt off the field as well.”19
From the loyalty of this brotherhood and sisterhood, you will find love, passion, and the commitment to never, ever leave your brother or sister in a fight without fully committing yourself to stand by him or her, shoulder to shoulder, even if it means that you will die in doing so. This character trait is born from shared hardships but creates a commitment to your teammate that is perhaps stronger than a commitment you would ever have with your own blood brother or sister.
Psychologists have not much studied ways to enhance strengths of the heart. But one theory seems especially relevant to nurturing these strengths, and this theory has implications for improving daily interactions and leadership. Psychologist Carl Rogers’s theory of human development was based on years of therapy he conducted with individuals suffering from psychological and emotional distress. His insights into the strengths of the heart provide guidance on how you may better develop these capacities in yourself and others.
Rogers believed that human adjustment is developed during childhood. His most important concept was that of unconditional positive regard. Parents should love their children without what he called conditions of worth. Consider two different children, each raised in a different family. Both children misbehaved at times, as all children will do, and as they matured, they sometimes struggled to succeed in school. One set of parents, although they would say they loved their child, imposed conditions of worth upon her. When the child behaved and was successful, these parents showered her with love and attention. But when she fell short, they became cold and distant. The parents of the second child consistently and genuinely expressed unconditional love for their child. When the child fell short, these parents corrected the behavior and offered strategies to improve his behavior. They made a distinction between the undesirable behavior or action, which needed to be corrected, and their love for their child, which was unconditional. Rogers observed that children who developed under conditions of worth were often anxious, depressed, and otherwise poorly adjusted as adults.
You can take Rogers’s ideas and apply them to your own social interactions to sharpen your strengths of the heart. In your interactions with family or others, keep the distinction between conditions of worth and unconditional positive regard in mind. As a leader, when a subordinate fails at a task, focus on helping him or her do better the next time. Don’t automatically label the offender a bad person. By practicing unconditional positive regard, you can strengthen social relationships and still be an effective spouse, teammate, or leader.
Most people have strengths of the heart, but some are not good at expressing them. People vary a great deal with how comfortable they are in expressing their feelings. One can both give and receive love without talking a great deal about it. Parents who make sacrifices to provide for their children are expressing love, even without continually verbalizing it. The same goes for adults who care for their aging parent. Actions matter a great deal. We suggest that you think of ways that either through actions or words enable you to regularly and intentionally express love, kindness, forgiveness, and gratitude. Make it a habit to do this. But be genuine in your words and actions. Spouses who verbalize love but act in hurtful ways toward each other are not truly showing these character strengths. Focus on those who matter in your life, and regularly think of ways to express these strengths of the heart through words and deeds. As with the gratitude letter, you will benefit more than those who receive your positive feelings and actions.