Self-Command

What Self-Command means in leadership

You chair a project meeting. A colleague questions your proposed order of project tasks, and you reach toward the little bell used to end each agenda item. There is still time allotted to this one. You leave the bell alone and ask which step they think will fail. Its polished handle would have made an excellent last word. You let the objection have another sentence.

The temptation is to use a procedural tool for personal relief. Self-Command notices that motive and keeps it from becoming the rule for someone else. You can still end the discussion at the agreed point or make the decision your role requires; the reason must belong to the task.

Self-Command gives…

Others can offer relevant disagreement when the process does not contract whenever the chair feels challenged. Restraint also saves you from defending a procedural explanation for what began as an impulse to win.

Finding the balance

Use the authority the task requires, at the agreed limit, for reasons that survive the passing impulse to win.

In ordinary life

An inconvenient reply

Read the relevant objection before reaching for a permission you can withdraw.

A necessary close

End at the agreed limit and name the next step without a personal jab.

Nearby virtues, different work

Equanimity

Equanimity concerns steadiness as events change. Self-Command checks the particular impulse to misuse a power.

Fairness

Fairness gives reasons impartial consideration; Self-Command stops irritation from closing that opportunity.

Recognizing a counterfeit

Ostentatious composure is a counterfeit of Self-Command when you keep a calm voice while using a rule to punish a critic. Restraint concerns the exercise of power, including harm delivered politely.

How to cultivate Self-Command

• Identify the impulse before constructing a reason for it.
• Return to the purpose and limits agreed before the objection.
• Use a pause or appropriate handover if needed to keep the decision defensible.

Try it today

Recall a routine disagreement in a task you coordinate. Separate the decision the task needed from the response your pride wanted. Choose a reason you could defend without mentioning the irritation.

Questions worth returning to

• Would I invoke this rule if I liked the objection?
• What does the task actually require me to decide?

Choose your practice

These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.

Quotations and further reading

Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.

1. When men employ anger as the most powerful of agents, consider it to be a proof of power, and reckon a speedy revenge among the greatest blessings of great prosperity, would you not wish me to warn them that he who is the slave of his own anger is not powerful, nor even free?

   Seneca, Minor Dialogues, Together with the Dialogue on Clemency
   THE FIFTH BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED TO NOVATUS. OF ANGER. Book III.; section IV

   Seneca asks whether someone governed by anger can be called powerful. The official power to silence an objection can conceal a loss of self-direction.

2. Love is an agreeable, resentment a disagreeable passion; and accordingly we are not half so anxious that our friends should adopt our friendships, as that they should enter into our resentments.

   Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
   SECTION I. Of the Sense of Propriety.; CHAP. II. Of the Pleasure of mutual Sympathy.

   Smith notices our wish to recruit friends into resentment. A leader should be especially careful when others depend on their goodwill.

3. Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out; for as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law, but the revenge of that wrong, putteth the law out of office.

   Francis Bacon, Essays
   ESSAYS.; IV.—OF REVENGE.

   Bacon describes revenge as displacing the rule that ought to govern a wrong. A private grievance must not quietly become the chair’s procedure.

4. He may be to us an object of pity, perhaps of dislike, but not of anger or resentment; we shall not treat him like an enemy of society: the worst we shall think ourselves justified in doing is leaving him to himself, if we do not interfere benevolently by showing interest or concern for him.

   John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
   CHAPTER IV. OF THE LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL.

   Mill distinguishes dislike from a license to treat someone as an enemy. Irritation with a colleague does not settle their entitlement to a hearing.

5. Take away these opinions then, and resolve to dismiss thy judgment about an act as if it were something grievous, and thy anger is gone.

   Marcus Aurelius, Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius
   BOOK XI.

   Marcus asks the reader to examine the judgment feeding anger. This can open a choice about conduct without requiring a denial of genuine injury.

6. Anger, therefore, is not useful even in wars or battles: for it is prone to rashness, and while trying to bring others into danger, does not guard itself against danger.

   Seneca, Minor Dialogues, Together with the Dialogue on Clemency
   THE THIRD BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED TO NOVATUS. OF ANGER. Book I.; section XI

   Seneca observes that anger can neglect the danger to the angry person while pursuing harm to others. Official power does not make that impulse a competent guide.

7. for in evil, the best condition is not to will, the second not to can.

   Francis Bacon, Essays
   ESSAYS.; XI.—OF GREAT PLACE.129

   Bacon distinguishes not wanting to do harm from lacking the power to do it. The chair’s restraint matters because the bell really is within reach.

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