A bookstorm of eight highlights, from this no-wasted-words guide to leadership, whether of a company or a play... a brief-but-potent read.

(By theater director Frank Hauser, and his mentee @russellreich.)

Starting with empathy for who you are serving.

Leadership is, itself, a tradecraft of performance -- even if, like the director, you are behind the scenes.

Understand that the perspective of those in other roles differ from yours... and take care of them accordingly.

When something hard happens, choose to see it as the moment life hands you to get better -- you need setbacks to improve.

Be simple-minded in how you size the importance of an event.

(Similar to the good-bad / big-small question that I learned after many, many years of him repeating it from Adeel Qalbani.)

The (only?) feedback that matters: specific, at-the-moment praise, to encourage more of the same behavior.

(I sometimes call it the animal-trainer model, after https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/11/style/modern-love-what-shamu-taught-me-happy-marriage.html.)

When you need to correct, do it privately -- the example to others isn't worth the shame for the person who is the recipient. An un-Bridgewater view that I have come to share over time.

Finally, counter-program, whenever possible -- note this is not the same as being contrarian in your belief, just choosing the opposite emphasis so your view stands out in sharp relief. /end

P.S. Thank you to @jamescham who is a human Goodreads (and, in this case, even gave me the book).