Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude

by Raymond M. Kethledge

Like General Mattis, Conant worries that leaders today do not reflect enough. “I’m astounded by the lack of introspection among leaders,” Conant says. “It’s not that you need to be completely unplugged from the outside world. But you do need to be completely plugged in to what you think. Shakespeare said, ‘To thine own self be true.’ But you can’t be true to yourself if you don’t know yourself in a deeper way. And you can’t know yourself without introspection.” Conant himself struggled on this point early in his career. “For my first ten years, when I was at General Mills, I worried about making others happy, rather than about what I thought was important. Then I was let go.”