Figure 4.2 Axis of leadership challenge
Source: LEWIS Rise Academy
Stress in one quadrant of the model is balanced by full and opposite application on the other. So, for instance, if the organization is going through a period of intensely challenging, long work hours developing a new product with a lot of challenges, this might be placed on the Logical/Physical quadrant. A Spiritual/Emotional balancing item for this challenge might be a social event such as a family day or night out with the team. The loss of a major client might be a Spiritual/Emotional challenge which could be met by a Logical/Physical response, for instance additional intensive training. A logical challenge such as a set of professional exams might be balanced with something emotional, eg time with family or watching a favourite sports team.
This balance model is important in that it recognizes that overemphasis of one area – typically the logical axis – is, of itself, destabilizing to the overall balance. Of course, the world of logic dominates leadership challenges. We live in a world of rules and regulations which also logically delineates spheres of activity and behaviour. Perhaps the rise in emotional reaction is the equal and opposite effect of this?
Why (the f**k) is everyone so angry?
The 20th century killed more people more violently in more countries than any previous century. Whether the 21st century is an angrier place than any other century is therefore debatable. What is clear, though, is that we can hear and see it more than ever. Social media are full of it. We see it in schools with online bullying. We see it at sports stadiums, on airlines and in hospitals. In the UK, physical assaults on NHS staff rose from 67,864 in 2014/15 to 70,555 in 2015/16.4 We see it in bars and cars. In California, drivers even started to aim their cars at construction workers widening the highway because they were angry about delays.5 We see it in political debate. The more atomized we become, the more frustrated we become with ‘the other’. It is so much easier to be angry and violent towards those with whom we feel we have no connection. Atomization and anger are also reflexive.
QUICK TIP Leaders must make sure their team knows each other. It’s easier to be angry with people you don’t know. The more of a social unit it is, the more effective it becomes. They should take time to introduce people and get them working together. Ignorance and fear are the real provenance of anger.
What’s making people angry could be any one of many things – fear, stress, powerlessness, frustration, pain, exhaustion, trying to get attention or just a bad habit they’ve got into. Let’s not forget also that some people like being angry and will pay money for the pleasure (see New York City’s Wrecking Club later). What we do know is that it’s getting worse.
How bad is the problem?
The British Association of Anger Management6 (yes, there is such a thing) says almost a third of people have a friend or family member with trouble controlling their anger. More than one in four people say they worry about how angry they feel. A fifth of people say they have ended relationships when angry. The majority agree that people are getting angrier. Almost half of us regularly lose our temper at work and confess to ‘office rage’. A third of all NHS nurses have been attacked at work. The majority of absences from work are caused by stress. A third of British people are not on speaking terms with their neighbours. There were 10,854 air rage7 incidents reported by airlines worldwide in 2016, up from 9,316 incidents in 2014. The UK has the second-worst road rage in the world after South Africa.8 More than 80 per cent of drivers say they have been involved in road rage incidents. Twenty-five per cent have committed an act of road rage themselves. Seventy-one per cent of internet users admit to having suffered internet rage. Fifty per cent of us have reacted to computer problems by hitting our PC, hurling parts of it around and or abusing colleagues. More than a third of the UK population are losing sleep from anxiety.9
According to an Esquire/NBC News Survey published in January 2016, half of all Americans were angrier than they had been the previous year.10 If we look at this more closely, women report a greater rise in anger than men. The #metoo and #timesup movements are examples of this trend. Could it also be that women empathize more than men about the treatment of others? To answer, we need to look at what anger represents. It could be the response of someone who has high expectations which have not been met. It could be the behaviour of someone who is stressed. We’ve already established in Chapter 1 that people are under greater stress. When we interrupt people constantly we prevent them from concentrating on the task in hand. The anger could also be about a set of perceived injustices, such as income inequality, gender unfairness, sexual harassment or racism.
The leadership opportunity
Leaders across the political spectrum are defined by the way they handle anger and conflict. Nelson Mandela,11 Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King turned non-violent protest into a major part of their campaigns. The latter said: ‘Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.’12
Effective leaders can harness anger and use it productively. It is a leadership opportunity. The worst situation any leader can ever face is when they are met by universal apathy. When people are angry, at least they are sufficiently emotionally involved to demonstrate their feelings. The leader’s job is to make sure this is done productively and positively. If it goes unchecked, anger leads to hatred. It is the leader’s job to recognize this and lead people away from hatred either by example or through conversation. The leader must have a narrative of better times. You can’t lead with pessimism.
The first thing to realize is that the anger is really nothing new. The scale is now greater because technology has removed the filter. This is where we need to be careful not to confuse communication with conversation. It is harder to have a prolonged angry conversation.
A new commercial opportunity, too?
Believe it or not, the anger phenomenon is now so widespread that it attracts entrepreneurs.13 In 2017, 1,500 people paid to break crockery, electronics and furniture in two reinforced rooms in a basement in Manhattan called the Wrecking Club.14 Here, you can buy 30 minutes of mayhem (music is optional) where you can wreck pretty much whatever they have there. It takes 15 minutes to put on all the safety gear. Anyone can take part, from the age of 12.
It’s not the first rage-based enterprise. The Anger Room opened in Dallas in 2008 to allow clients to batter effigies of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The Rage Room, which first opened in Toronto in 2015, now has licensees in Budapest, Singapore, Australia and Britain. Anger is becoming big business. Perhaps commercializing anger helps legitimize it?
Mainstream media make us angry
To some extent, the level of anger is a learnt process. The influence of mainstream media has had an effect, says Edward Wasserman, Knight Professor in Journalism Ethics at Washington and Lee University. He says that it sets a bad example. ‘Unfortunately, mainstream media have made a fortune teaching people the wrong ways to talk to each other, offering up Jerry Springer, Crossfire, Bill O’Reilly. People understandably conclude rage is the political vernacular, that this is how public ideas are talked about. It isn’t.’15
Social media make us angry, too
Social media have changed behaviour because they confer the authority to communicate without responsibility and often without identity, too. Wherever people can hide their identity, they can behave irresponsibly and, in many cases, with no fear of punishment. Godwin’s Law is an illustration of this. It states that the longer an online argument, the greater the likelihood that one of the participants will liken the other to a Nazi. Funnily, another is the Exclamation Law. This states that the more exclamation marks an online comment has, the more mentally unbalanced the writer is. More internet rules later.
The propensity to shout online is known as disinhibition. Most of what people say, when unidentified, they would not dream of doing if their name were attached. It’s a common form of bullying which is surprisingly widespread. It’s partly this aggression that drives traffic and click-thru rates. Many Daily Mail readers from all over the world actively participate in shouting in the comments section of stories. Could this be a reason why it is the most popular online newspaper in the world?16
This environment has terrible consequences for online bullying. This is not just confined to children. In the UK in June 2016, Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by a constituent who had gathered information online. Hundreds more are subjected to death and rape threats daily. The impunity with which this happens is worth examining because it’s not just MPs who are subject to it. Increasingly, most leaders will have to contend with online criticism, which often appears worse than it is because of its anonymous source.
Internet psychologist John Suler17 has written about six characteristics of the internet which lead to radical changes in online behaviour:
- Anonymity
Online people feel they can’t be identified in the same way they can when they’re in public. Ironically, though, some people are far less anonymous online than offline. Because of the online disinhibition effect, some share too much on their social networking profiles, sometimes even things they wouldn’t admit to their closest friends.
- Invisibility
When others know they can’t be seen online, they don’t have to worry about their facial expressions. This can allow people to open up about things that they can’t discuss face-to-face. Online support groups rely on this openness to allow members to discuss their deepest hopes and fears. This is one of the potentially positive aspects of the online disinhibition effect, as long as users protect their privacy and identity.
- Stop/start communication
Face-to-face, people’s reactions can be seen immediately. Online there are no such restrictions: because of online synchronicity it’s possible to say something and wait 24 hours before reading the response, or never read it at all. This cuts both ways. So-called ‘internet trolls’ are people who post to discussion forums or other online groups with the express purpose of stirring up controversy. They may not mean their criticism personally. They are just experts in a kind of emotional hit-and-run.
- Voices in your head
The very act of reading online creates a surprisingly intimate connection. While humans have been reading novels and letters for centuries, these are relatively formal modes of communication, and it’s only in the past decade that online communication has brought the intimacy of a letter to informal, everyday conversation.
- The imaginary world
The anonymity, invisibility and fantasy elements of online activities encourage participants to think that the usual rules don’t apply. The problem is that when life becomes a game that can be left behind at the flick of a switch, it’s easy to throw responsibility out of the window.
- No police
This imaginary world appears to have no police and no authority figures. Although there are people with authority online, it’s difficult to see them. There is no internet government, no one person in charge. So, people feel freer online away from authority, social convention and conformity.
Disintermediation
Disinhibition is magnified because social media also disintermediate the messages. Now you can talk to anyone and they can respond. It’s never been easier to make people hear. Because social media are so personal, it’s easy to get to people with sometimes intimidating results.
The latent anger lurking on Twitter, for instance, can be devastating to those who inadvertently trigger it. In July 2012, shortly after the #aurora theatre shootings, Celeb Boutique, an online clothes store that allows people to fashion themselves after celebrities, tweeted that: ‘#Aurora is trending, clearly about our Kim K inspired aurora dress.’18 Needless to say, it received thousands of e-mail complaints plus significant adverse broadcast coverage. Of course, this was a tweet in bad taste, and there are many examples of this.
QUICK TIP Social media are swords with two edges. They can be powerful for leaders to use, provided they have the judgement to use them wisely. They are most powerful when used as a listening tool.
The leader’s critique
Because of the above, leaders can be subject to a deluge of criticism, some anonymous, some not. This is especially the case in publicly represented positions or companies that are traded. In the 21st century, to the uninitiated, this can come as a shock. Spend a day tracking social coverage for any Congressman, MP or public figure and the level of abuse is shocking. One UK Labour MP, Jess Philips, reported that she had 600 rape threats in one day.19 It takes a certain type of courage and determination to continue in a public position when you, your family and co-workers are subjected to this.
Leaders often have no prior warning of this sort of public criticism and it can be bewildering to those that experience a crisis, for instance. It can come from named or unnamed sources and the volumes can be surprising, sometimes running into thousands of e-mails a minute. It is, though, useful to remind leaders of the words of the 25th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt:
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; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.’20
Leaders, at some point, can expect to find themselves on the receiving end of anger, whether it be from customers, shareholders, constituents, colleagues or the public. You can deal with anger in a straightforward way. Remember that when a fight breaks out in a bar, people often go to hit the person they’ve been wanting to hit, not the person who started the fight. Despite the provocation, it’s important to stay calm (or at least act it). This means speaking slowly and clearly. What you put into someone is what you get out. Anger begets anger. You should ask yourself if the anger is justified. Ask what role you have played in causing the anger and whether there’s anything you can immediately do to fix it. Sometimes the person is so angry, you may need to withdraw for safety and come back to them when they’ve calmed down.
Rule 34
Rule 34 of the internet, as it has become known, states that for every conceivable subject, there’s pornography for it. Belinda Luscombe, writing in Time Magazine,21 said: ‘Porn is so ubiquitous, it has spun off memes, including Rule 34,22 which states, “If it exists, there is porn of it.” (Leprechauns? Check. Pterodactyls? Check. Pandas? Check.) The internet is like a 24-hour all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant that serves every type of sex snack.’
It’s the same for anger. If it’s a thing, there’s anger for it. There’s another effect here as well. The profoundly opinionated, grossly intolerant and deeply ignorant are no longer isolated voices. They can find connections and form groups to create some sort of hate norm. This creates a mingled reality between what we hear in the real world and what we hear online – some of it fact and some of it most definitely fiction. Is it so hard to understand the rise of the extremes in such an environment? The same process swirls around good and bad causes online, driven by ‘Armchair Activism’. This is where people don’t get involved in good causes, but support them at a distance. It can be quite close to Slacktivism, a term that refers to those who use simple measures to support an issue or social cause which involves virtually no effort on the part of participants. Slacktivist activities include signing internet petitions, joining a community organization without contributing to it, copying and pasting social network statuses or messages and altering one’s credentials on social network services. Clicktivism is also similar and involves the use of digital media for facilitating social change and activism. The idea behind it is that social media allow for a quick and easy way to show support for a cause. Its focus has become inflating participation rates by asking less and less of their members.
The case for mindfulness
OK, so we’ve established there’s a lot of anger and ignorance out there. Perhaps it’s always been there? Perhaps the internet has just facilitated it? What can leaders do about it? They can seek to mitigate it as above. Leaders are logical, practical and resourceful people, not easily persuaded by the intangible, the illogical and the spiritual. They are also, however, made of flesh and blood, not necessarily given to seeking open confrontation to achieve objectives. Sometimes, they need to be able to absorb the pressures of an angry world.
In Chapter 1, we encountered Professor Ian McGilchrist who summed up the power of the analytical mind:23 ‘The left hemisphere’s talk is very convincing because it shaved off everything that it doesn’t find fits with its model and cut it out. This model is entirely self-consistent largely because it’s made itself so. The right hemisphere (the imagination) doesn’t have a voice and it can’t make these arguments.’
There’s been much talk about mindfulness in leadership24 and many companies such as Google, Aetna and General Mills have implemented schemes.25 This is the right brain writ large. It’s about paying attention to ourselves, being aware of the present and avoiding self-deception. It’s recognizing that thoughts are thoughts and not beliefs. It’s also recognizing that the very busyness leaders indulge in causes them to lose connection with others and themselves. Saint Augustine was an expert on this area: ‘Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.’26
Many employees have gone through these sorts of programmes and the data show that there’s a definite impact on leadership skills in the areas of productivity, decision-making, listening and in reducing stress. Jon Kabat-Zinn is a scientist, writer and Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He describes mindfulness as: ‘Paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.’ It’s about being more in the present and thereby being able to do everything with more discipline and focus.
Making the case for mindfulness, Monica Thakrar,27 writing in Forbes Magazine, says: ‘the biggest benefit of mindfulness is its direct impact on the development of emotional intelligence.’ Daniel Goleman, a leading expert on emotional intelligence, recently made a direct connection between it and mindfulness,28 saying that: ‘Emotional intelligence builds attention and focus and these are the cornerstones in enhancing self-awareness, as well as empathy. In turn, these are critical skills to enhancing emotional awareness.’
Mindfulness techniques are manifold but often appear under familiar names, eg meditation, breathing, yoga, walking, music, nature and so on – anything that allows you to come back to the present moment. Whatever focuses on the present moment is a mindfulness tool.
Megan Reitz and Michael Chaskalson,29 writing in the Harvard Business Review, say that mindfulness works because it improves resilience, the capacity for collaboration and the ability to lead in complex conditions. They say, however, that the techniques need to be practised and ingrained: ‘Simply attending one or more workshops might help strengthen resilience by sharing some useful tools and techniques, but other improvements require practice.’ They identified three areas of leadership perspective. The first they called Metacognition or ‘the ability to simply observe what you are thinking, feeling, and sensing so you can actually see what’s going on’. Second, allowing for ‘the ability to let what is the case, be the case. It’s about meeting your experience with a spirit of openness and kindness to yourself and others.’ Finally, they identified curiosity, ‘or taking a lively interest in what has shown up in our inner and outer worlds’.
Resolving conflict
In Jeffrey Krivis’ book Improvisational Negotiation: A Mediator’s Stories of Conflict,30 he points out how conflict is resolved. His process itself is worthy of note. He describes negotiation as: ‘reframing a situation in order to get people to shift their positions in a way that makes a resolution possible’. This is more than just dealing with anger. This is a process similar to mindfulness which is based around paying attention. This involves acting out the role of a neutral player who just wants to get the problem resolved. He says there are five stages to the process:
- Convening: Here the negotiator needs to work out whether all parties can be spoken to or whether the process needs to involve separation.
- Opening: This involves coaching both sides to make sure they make the best use of the time. It usually begins with an opening statement from both sides.
- Communication: This is where legal and/or personal arguments are made. These are to be laid out as logically as possible.
- Negotiation: This is the core of the process, which involves flexibility and imagination to come up with ideas that might meet the requirements of both sides.
- Closure: This is where agreements are codified and ratified by all parties.
An important point to conflict resolution is to check the reliability of the assumptions that both parties are making. In an age of social media half-truths, this can be significant. The ability to empathize and to be creative are important qualities here. This is especially the case when appealing to emotions for compromise.
The ability to resolve conflict relies heavily on the right-brain process. This is the ability to look for similarities rather than differences, alignments rather than contrasts and mutuality rather than conflict. In the future, leaders will find themselves called upon more frequently to resolve conflict, whether it be individual or group-based. The key to this is to understand the primary cause of the conflict. There may be secondary issues, but we’re interested in the principal concern.
As settlement agreements are sometimes improvised, it’s possible they need to be ‘tried on’. Where this is the case, some may be an immediate mismatch. Humility and an acknowledgement of misunderstanding can be useful skills here.
Krivis points to the right-brain skills: ‘Intuition can be a powerful mediation tool. It is especially useful in situations where you’re dealing with preconceived notions and need to improvise. Remember effective improvisation is a product of skill (education plus experience) and intuition.’ Sometimes, leaders also need to accept that resolution is not always possible. He says: ‘Get comfortable with the idea that when it comes to mediating your employees’ problems there are no hard and fast rules. Negotiation is all about going with the flow and seizing opportunities as they arise.’
Greed is good?
It might have been a great line, but it was a lie. There’s nothing good about greed. It divides people. It perpetuates injustice. It doesn’t create happiness or resources. It also comes in many forms. We often just think of it as a greed for money or food, but greed for power, control and the limelight and media attention is just as bad. A well-known story arc is based upon the psychology of the unexpected, man bites dog and so on. Once a successful leader is known and admired in the media, then the story waiting for them is that they are no longer a successful leader.
QUICK TIP In any meeting the true leader is always the one who facilitates the discussion and searches for the truth. When summing up and providing their view, they should speak last, if at all.
Greed is just another form of selfishness and, make no mistake, it provokes anger. The simple desire for something, such as wealth, power or food, is an attempt to fill a hole that cannot be filled. Leadership is wanting what you have, not having what you want.
The ultimate selfishness
There is a lesson in joined-up thinking here. Let’s take national political leadership as an example. Voters will not be denied. Nor will they accept deferred gratification. We saw earlier that politicians are fearful of the entitlement and impatience of electorates. This, in turn, places pressures on them and on economists to stimulate the economy through quantitative easing, thus creating inflation. This reduces the debts caused by living beyond the means, but undermines everything else. The internet accelerates that impatience and greed by fulfilling requirements faster than ever before. This does not make people more patient, nor does it make them less selfish. When they are denied what they have been so used to getting, the result is anger. This is the ultimate in selfish behaviour because it automatically assumes injustice and righteousness. It takes no heed of the target’s feelings. It has no empathy.
Empathy
In the 21st century, empathy is more powerful than authority. This is not a faith or belief in itself but an ability to tap into the other person’s situation. The Rev Alasdair Coles31 has a great deal of experience as a Chaplain in a number of institutions: ‘I spend a lot of time listening to people and it’s clear that for many, it’s a novel experience’, he says. The ability to solve problems through individual dialogue is spiritual leadership at its best. Leaders can learn a lot from this, but they need to learn how to listen. This requires patience (in short supply) but it also requires time. It’s surprising how obvious the required actions are when listening happens. In one report by the Harvard Business Review,32 empathy was defined as: ‘a deep emotional intelligence that is closely connected to cultural competence. Empathy enables those who possess it to see the world through others’ eyes and understand their unique perspectives.’
The process of non-doing
Nobody does nothing. If anyone asks you what you did at the weekend, it’s usually a tumble of events, as if to admit that doing nothing made you a loser. It was Einstein who said: ‘Creativity is the residue of time wasted.’33 The problem is that leaders are busy people. They got to where they are by doing stuff, and, as we’re beginning to see, that’s not enough. They must swap their ‘to do’ list for ‘to be’ lists. They must learn to be something. This is not easy, because to do so requires mindfulness. This means making time for yourself and others. It means finding new ways of solving old problems. Above all, it means making time to see the interconnectedness of things.
The role of humour
We live in serious times. Perhaps that’s all the more reason for us to take humour seriously. We can use all sorts of techniques to handle stress and anger in our teams but by far the easiest, quickest and most accessible is humour. It’s easily dismissed as a concept, because it doesn’t fall into the Western Reductionist model. We need to be on guard against the notion that only intellect and logic matter in leadership. This can easily turn us into what Nassim Taleb calls the IYI (Intellectual Yet Idiot34). Humour, when correctly executed, can signal a number of vital qualities, such as judgement. It takes real skill to use humour. When it’s used badly it’s worse than not being funny. It’s disastrous. We’ve all seen and heard a badly timed joke. The courage, skill and timing required to make a well-received joke are real leadership qualities. On top of this, leaders with a sense of humour tend to be more relaxed. Their teams tend to acquire skills more easily because competence always follows preference. People get good at what they like doing. If they’re having fun, it makes them more likely to repeat tasks and acquire new skills.
QUICK TIP It sounds like a stupid idea, but remember to smile when you greet people. So much of the tone of a meeting is set by how the leader looks.
Will McInnes is co-founder of Brighton-based social media firm NixonMcInnes. He advocates using the ‘Church of Fail’35 technique. This is where a forum is created for anyone to stand up and talk about the ways in which they have failed. This is quasi-support group cum church congregation and it’s an interesting idea. Of course, leadership has to commit to it and participate, but it also highlights how failure is a part of success. Leaders need to study failure and also the fear of failure, because this is often something that makes teams resistant. It may not be the change that is the problem; it may be what the change brings that is feared.
QUICK TIP Deal with anger in the team by organizing a ‘Church of Fail’. It can be funny but with a serious outcome to see what people consider to be failure.
Creative provenance
In Too Fast to Think,36 many senior leaders were asked where they were and what they were doing when they had their best ideas. The responses were uncannily similar: they were most often away from their workplaces, alone and, importantly, not trying. Could it be that we have a subconscious mind which is working away in the background, joining the dots and spotting the patterns? Is it coincidence that it reminds us of its output only when the left-brain process is either preoccupied or switched off? Not one of the leaders interviewed ever reported anger as being the provenance of insight, but some did report that they discovered ideas when a suggestion was made as a joke. The conclusion here is clear – anger and fear can inhibit individual as well as team performance. It can make teams dysfunctional and waste resources on internal conflict that should be used on more positive outcomes.
Conclusions
Intelligence in leadership is about much more than mere academic attainment. This is particularly acute when it comes to harnessing intelligence. This appears in many different forms, and leaders need to find time to connect with team members to locate and develop these skills. Maintaining balance and general awareness themselves, as well as the team, is another factor in success.
The promulgation of one type of hierarchical intelligence (short-term, drill-down, academic, data-based and so on) creates vulnerabilities. It shuts out potential and imagination. It excludes the long-term, diversity and opinion, which destroys hope and creates a causal chain of frustration, impatience and anger. The logical extrapolation of left-brained thinking is damaging to leadership because it notices the difference, but not the similarity, in people.
As we’ve seen already, the Kythera has a dark side which includes impatience, ignorance and anger. It is the online environment itself, with its ease of connectivity, that is leading to record levels of online abuse and bullying. This has fostered a climate offline where attacks on nurses, car drivers and airline staff, for instance, have become often irrational yet commonplace. This rising epidemic of atomized behaviour, ever more geared to individuals rather than a wider community, is something that leaders need to notice.
Above all, they must recognize the growing tide of frustration and cynicism and work to create more harmonious outcomes. This means recognizing and resolving conflict and focusing teams on shared goals and values. Mindfulness is an important tool in this respect. Even to consider it, though, requires a leap of faith. We need to suspend our left-brain judgement long enough to consider the intangible. Anger and rage are not logical, so maybe the solutions to them aren’t either?
Endnotes
1 Gardner, G (2011) Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences, Basic Books, New York
2 Gardner (2011) Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences, Basic Books, New York
3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
4 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nhs-staff-violent-attacks-government-blind-spot-hospital-assaults-nurses-unions-doctors-a8009441.html
5 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12370592
6 https://www.angermanage.co.uk/anger-statistics
7 http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2016-09-28-01.aspx
8 http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2016-09-28-01.aspx
9 http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2016-09-28-01.aspx
10 http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a40693/american-rage-nbc-survey
11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skdvlysoL68
12 https://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=2586
13 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/style/anger-rooms-the-wrecking-club.html
14 http://www.wreckingclub.com
15 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-everyone-on-the-internet-so-angry
16 https://thenextweb.com/media/2012/01/25/the-daily-mail-is-now-the-most-popular-newspaper-website-in-the-world
17 http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/08/six-causes-of-online-disinhibition.php
18 https://www.pushon.co.uk/blog/social-media-in-2012
19 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/labour-mp-jess-phillips-rape-death-threats-one-day-social-media-attacks-training-a7915406.html
20 http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html
21 http://ideas.time.com/contributor/belinda-luscombe/?iid=sr-link1
22 http://ideas.time.com/contributor/belinda-luscombe/?iid=sr-link1
23 https://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain
24 https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-to-bring-mindfulness-to-your-companys-leadership
25 https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-to-bring-mindfulness-to-your-companys-leadership
26 Garrison, B (2016) Leadership by the Book: Lessons from every book of the Bible, Elevate Faith, Farmington, MO
27 https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/06/28/how-to-create-mindful-leadership/#26d0cdac342a
28 https://www.eqsummit.com/dr-martyn-newman-interviews-godfather-emotional-intelligence-dan-goleman-prior-eqsummit2017
29 https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-to-bring-mindfulness-to-your-companys-leadership
30 Krivis, J (2006) Improvisational Negotiation: A mediator’s stories of conflict about love, money, anger – and the strategies that resolved them, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA
31 Lewis, C (2016) Too Fast to Think: How to reclaim your creativity in a hyper-connected work culture, Kogan Page, London
32 https://hbr.org/2015/09/empathy-is-still-lacking-in-the-leaders-who-need-it-most
33 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/review/the-residue-of-time-wasted-jonah-lehrer-talks-creativity
34 https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-16/nassim-taleb-exposes-worlds-intellectual-yet-idiot-class
35 https://www.inc.com/magazine/201311/leigh-buchanan/nixonmcinnes-innovation-by-celebrating-mistakes.html
36 Lewis, C (2016) Too Fast to Think: How to reclaim your creativity in a hyper-connected work culture, Kogan Page, London