The Thread #3
What Peter Kaufman taught me about trust, leadership and being the one who reaches out first
Go Positive and Go First
I’m writing this from the Malvern Bakehouse, on a morning that has the good sense to be sunny, and things feel, genuinely, fine. Given what the last few weeks have looked like, fine is a decent place to be.
You’ll have seen the post a couple of weeks back about losing my mother. I stand by what I said there: it wasn’t a tragedy. She had a long, healthy, well-loved life, and she knew it. What I didn’t quite anticipate was how much I’d miss her in the ordinary, unremarkable ways: the thought that surfaces mid-morning, the reflex to pick up the phone, the small but persistent absence of a person who was simply always there.
The same has been true of Molly, my dog. I still look for her when I’m cooking. I still half-expect her underfoot when I’m walking the local hills. She had a good life too, a long and loved one, but the habits that formed around her don’t disappear the moment she’s gone. I keep turning to find her and she’s not there.
There’s a third thing I mentioned in the last newsletter, and I won’t go over it again here. But the combination of the three has left me, if I’m honest, flat. I’ve been quiet with friends who deserved better. Both my sons have birthdays this week and I’d been slow off the mark, which isn’t like me. I haven’t been at my sparkly best, and I’ve known it.
Now, I understand enough about how the brain works to know what this is. Neurochemistry, for the most part. The natural consequence of loss, disrupted routine, and the challenges that spark my own Sacred Flaws. These aren’t moral failures. They’re the ordinary human costs we all accrue in life.
But there’s something else true alongside all of that, there is a choice. I’ve been choosing, day by day, to stay in the low place. Which means I can also choose to leave it.
That thought sent me looking for inspiration, and I found it where I’d half-expected to: in a podcast I often return to.
I went back to Shane Parrish’s Knowledge Project conversation with Peter Kaufman. I’ve listened to it several times now and there’s always something more to take in. Kaufman is a serious and quietly remarkable thinker who has spent decades studying how the greatest minds across human history actually reasoned, and what that means for how any of us can live and work more wisely. I sent it to both my sons.
Before I’d even got to that principle, a friend had already shown me what it looks like. He’d read the post about my mum and Molly, and he simply got in touch. No waiting, no wondering whether it was the right moment. He just went positive and went first.
The principle that stayed with me most, the one I’ve been carrying around all week, is this: go positive and go first.
It sounds almost too simple, but what it actually demands of you is considerable. You stop waiting for the moment to feel right, stop letting the flatness run the day, and become the person who reaches out and acts before there is any guarantee of a good reception. You make the call. You sort the thing. You go first.
So that’s what I did. I messaged the friends I’d been quiet with. I made arrangements with both my sons for their birthdays. I stopped being the person waiting to feel better and became, again, the person who acts first.
I won’t pretend everything is transformed. But I will say it’s working. This morning, in a bakehouse in Malvern, the sun is out and things feel fine. For now, that’s enough.
Peter Kaufman’s 22-Second Course on Leadership
Why success and trust grow faster when someone is willing to go positive first
Kaufman runs Glenair and edited Poor Charlie’s Almanack, so he’s spent a long time thinking carefully about how things actually work, not just in one field but across a few. He’s also been extraordinarily successful by any sensible measure, while keeping a relatively low profile. His attributes success and happiness to a simple philosophy we can all learn from.
https://7skills.co.uk/peter-kaufmans-22-second-course-on-leadership
Leadership Rapport
Kaufman’s recommendations fit so well with the chapters on Rapport in Part 2 of the 7 Skills to impress™ book that it was an easy decision to link them here.
