# Chapter 123 “No, I’m jealous of everyone who hasn’t met you.” Geissinger

Beyond intellectual rigor, there are other requirements of leadership. The foremost being, possessing a manner in which you can engage people in a warm and caring fashion. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care, it has been said. It is astonishing how few people seem to do this well and naturally. These are soft skills that have to be developed. Naturally nurturing people do exist, but they don’t generally show up in the C-suite in my experience and from what I have observed.

Caring about people will give you power. If you aren’t willing to be such a person, all you have remaining is force in your arsenal. Power is far superior over force. Power is a way to help people, force is a way to control people. I had lived most of my life wrestling with force wielders, driving me to accomplish their agendas and goals. I have now removed those people from my life.

Life went from a tsunami of stress and anxiety to a calm peaceful glacial lake. My weight dropped off as my stress and anxiety dropped off. Normal weight now for almost eight years. Clarity and deep work are much more possible, almost natural.

It took 23 years of that toxic work environment before enough was enough. Now that we have been out of it for 11 and a half years, hindsight tells me that I should have resigned much much sooner. You don’t have to work with people that you feel this way about. You don’t have to be jealous of those who have never met them.