Leadership, like fertilizer, contains elements that can be volatile or nurturing, depending on how one handles them. An unreflective leader is prone to volatility: he does not realize that his own anxieties are part of the fuel for his anger about some external event, and thus his response—berating employees, torching a meeting—is disproportionate to the event itself. A leader of this type finds himself apologizing frequently if he is decent, or embittering his followers if he is not.
