Hi, friend,

 

Let’s talk politics.

 

(Kidding. Mostly.)

 

Our 9-year-old asked me, if you could pick anyone from any point in history to be president today, who would it be?

 

I turned the question back to him and his answer was immediate: President Tubman.

 

Harriet Tubman? Tell me why.

 

Because, he told me, she did brave thing after brave thing. She escaped slavery and went back and escaped again. She helped other people escape, lots of them. She was a spy and she made it so women can vote. She made lots of things better.

 

 

People who have self-efficacy— the belief that they can solve their own problems — do one brave thing after another. 

 

Assuming none of Tubman’s incredibly brave plans went smoothly, she not only had self-efficacy but also extraordinary resilience.

 

So how do those of us who were not the first woman to lead a wartime expedition develop our self-efficacy?

 

By developing our creativity, of course. 

 

(Bet you saw that coming.)

 

Creativity is your ability to solve real world problems in new ways. Self-efficacy is believing in your ability to do so, which develops the more you do. Resilience is what develops as you do so adaptively, being nimble enough to adjust your plans as needed. All three feed into one another until you, like Harriet Tubman, do one brave thing after another.

 

How good does that sound?

Next week—why haven’t we been thinking in story all along?

In the meantime, we're thrilled that Harvard Business Review chose Angus’s article on our training for leaders as one of this year's 10 Best in their How to Lead Now issue.

 

Because reading stories of people who act differently than you do is an excellent way to get more creative, two great biographies of "President" Tubman.

As always, thank you for reading,

Sarah

 

P.S. Missed an issue? They're all available in our archive.