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As the Civil War was concluding, Abraham Lincoln met with his top generals and staff aboard the River Queen in Williamsport, Virginia, in late March 1865. Part of this meeting is depicted in the famous painting The Peacemakers. When discussing how to treat the defeated South, Lincoln said that the Union must “let them up easy.” 

“It’s a term from wrestling where the idea is once you’ve got your victory, both sides sort of know who won, who lost, and you stand up and you basically show grace to the defeated person,” historian and Lincoln biographer Michael Vorenberg told me in an interview about his book, Lincoln’s Peace. “You shake hands, you don’t laud your victory, you don’t rub it in.”

This behavior was something Lincoln demonstrated “as a young man on the frontier in Illinois [and how] he won his way into the hearts of the community, especially with the tough guys.” The tall and rangy Lincoln, strengthened by physical labor, was an expert wrestler who was not afraid of bullies. And when he bettered them, he would not “beat them up” but instead “letting them up easy.”

Sadly, Lincoln never saw it through because he was assassinated weeks later. However, the lesson of going easy on your adversary rings true today. When our culture is so riven with division, those who can find the strength to rise about the heat of the moment can do much to ensure future peace, even collaboration. That is, enforce and earn peace through kindness.

Lessons for us

So, taking Lincoln’s words as inspiration for a lesson plan, here are some suggestions for finding ways to act upon “the better angels” of our nature when we find ourselves at odds with those who hold views different from our own.

Get the lay of the land. Determine the issues. Look for the root causes of problems and actions that have worked in the past. 

Ask questions. Understand what people want. Engage them in conversation. Spend more time listening than speaking. 

Listen to what people are not saying. So often, in intramural squabbles, people have their favorites. For this reason, many people will be reluctant to speak out. Therefore, do not expect straight answers. Look inside for how people react in your presence.

Invite everyone to participate. Strive for win-win solutions. Yes, there will be winners, but find ways to make everyone feel welcome and give them a voice in shaping the future.

Making the effort

One of my favorite quotes from Winston Churchill is:

“In War: Resolution.  In Defeat: Defiance,

In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.”

When we are emotionally invested in our beliefs, it can be difficult to disentangle emotion from reason. It takes practice and discipline to quell how you feel inside and how you project yourself. In short, the struggle may be hard, but when you win, act with the spirit of grace and goodwill.

First posted on Forbes.com 7.02.2024

Who wants to follow?

When we hear that phrase as an exhortation—at rallies or in movies—we see streams of people pressing forward to “follow the leader.” It is a noble moment for a noble cause. Yet when we ask that question at work, there is no mass stampede—sometimes not even a dribble. 

As The Economist’s Bartleby writes, followership is saddled with the loss of autonomy and agency. “Although some people have little desire to be in a position of authority,” writes Bartleby,” very few aspire to follow. The word itself conjures up a self-abnegating passivity, more ovine than human, more bleater than leader.”

Followership in the Shadows

As a result, while much is to be said and written about leadership, there is a paucity of writing – and daresay – thought on the concept of followership. One exception cited by Bartleby is the scholar Robert Kelly “who has usefully identified five styles of followership: sheep, who are wholly passive; yes-people, who enthusiastically do what the boss wants but never think for themselves; alienated followers, who can think for themselves but mainly to explain why the organisation is being stupid; pragmatists, who get on board with things but rarely initiate changes; and stars, who think for themselves and have bags of positivity and energy as well as a willingness to offer constructive criticism.” 

Followership, however, is vital to organizational effectiveness. Some years ago, I wrote about “the myth of the hierarchy,” by which I meant whatever the leaders say gets done. That’s nonsensical, of course! Unless people “in the middle” buy into the initiative, it dies, often a quick death.

Followers are the doers; they carry out the directives set by leadership. In healthy organizations, such followers are not drones. They can be initiators and creators as well as diligent, attentive and careful. “Star followers,” Bartleby writes, “behave like leaders in waiting.” In short, followers make things go.

How Followers Operate

The key to being an effective follower is to check out what needs to be done, often without being asked, adding your brainpower and determination to make it happen. They partner with their bosses to plan, align and execute. They provide continuous feedback loops so that boss and team are on the right page at the right time. Good followers do not wait to be told what to do next. They understand the strategic intention and how to fulfill the mission.

Leaders, too, can make good followers. When they seek out ideas from members of their team and help individuals put them into action, they are in essence becoming followers. They are following the best practice of doing what’s best for the organization.

Bartleby closes with a principle that the British Army promotes: “To follow effectively … is a choice.” Many well-run organizations abide by this same philosophy. Their example is a good reminder that good followership enables even better leadership.

First posted on Forbes.com 6.00.2024

I know how to learn.

Those were the exact words that Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain used in his solicitation to form a regiment of Maine volunteers to serve the cause of the Union in 1862. Abraham Lincoln had just issued a call for 300,000 more troops, and Chamberlain, just getting himself established as a professor at Bowdoin College, responded.

And learn he did. According to a new biography, On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain by Ronald C. White, Chamberlain was to learn much about what it takes to lead men into battle. His ability to lead came from his talent for bringing people together for a common purpose, something he had been doing as a teacher and prospective pastor.

His learning climaxed on July 2, 1863, at the Battle of the Little Round Top at Gettysburg. The 20th Maine Chamberlain’s regiment had the high ground and fought regiments from Alabama for hours. When they ran out of ammunition, Chamberlain gave the call to fix bayonets and charge down the hill. This effort so terrified the rebels that they turned tail and ran. The 20th Maine’s action on that day may have saved the Union. Had General Robert E. Lee’s forces been victorious at Gettysburg, they would have had an easy road to Washington, D.C., and its possible capture.

Chamberlain served an additional two years, becoming gravely wounded in 1864, causing him pain for the rest of his life. He returned to Maine, served as its governor, and returned to Bowdoin to become its president. While Chamberlain was active in planning the 50th anniversary of Gettysburg in 1913, his final illness prevented him from attending. He died the following year.

Lifetime of learning

Learning was central to Chamberlain’s life. And from him, we can take notes of how we can learn. My late father, a family physician, used to tell me that you go to college to learn how to learn. Chamberlain is the exemplar of Dad’s mantra. Here’s how.

Step back. Chamberlain was offered the colonelcy of the regiment, but he deferred to a former Adelbert Ames, an 1861 graduate of West Point who had been wounded at the First Battle of Bull Run. Chamberlain stuck close to Ames, a young man ten years his junior seeking to learn as much as possible.

Study hard. As White notes in his biography, Chamberlain hit the books hard both to qualify for entry into Bowdoin and later to catch up to his classmates after losing a year to illness. He continued his studies, writing to his wife Fanny, “I study, I tell you, every military work I can find.”

Set aside what you think you know. While Chamberlain had studied military strategy and tactics, he had not worn the uniform. Before the 20th Maine got its first taste of battle, Chamberlain observed combat maneuvers as his troops were held in reserve. Unlike Ames, a regular Army officer, he also understood that his was an army of volunteers and treated them with respect for their service.

Learn as you lead. Chamberlain had led a quiet life before the Civil War, even intending to become a minister or missionary after graduating from Bangor Theological Seminary. He opted for marriage and academics, but the war gave him a different education – raw, brutal, and violent. It enabled him to continue to lead, eventually becoming a general and serving as such when the Lee surrendered at Appomattox in April 1865. 

“Taking charge of your own learning is a part of taking charge of your life,” wrote Warren Bennis, like Chamberlain, a combat veteran at the Battle of the Bugle and later a professor and university president.

Leaders must learn to see the world as it is, not simply what they imagine it to be. Their perceptions become real when they are tested by adversity and challenged to respond to the call to serve.

First posted on Forbes.com 7.02.2024

“Part of resilience is shouldering the burden of knowledge to make a difference.”

Writes Joseph Pfeifer, the first on-scene battalion fire chief at the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan on 9/11. The comment, contained in his memoir Ordinary Heroes, refers to his initial reluctance to accept a promotion to deputy chief in the months after 9/11. 

Pfeifer was wrestling with the strain of working on the Pile (and later the Pit) to recover the remains of those who perished in the collapse of the towers. He also experienced personal loss; his brother Kevin was killed in the collapse, along with 343 fellow firefighters and first-responders. (Additionally more than 340 first-responders have died of complications suffered while working at the site of the collapse.)

Pfeifer realized upon reflection that he could make a difference, and he did. Pfeifer served another 17 years in the NYFD, eventually becoming the department’s Chief of Counterterrorism and Emergency Preparedness. And, together with faculty from West Point, Pfeifer taught a leadership course on counter-terrorism, the first of its kind for first responders. 

Resilience is generative

Pfeifer’s words on resilience illuminate something that is often overlooked when we consider resilience. It is the ability to learn from it, yes, but the capacity and duty to share those lessons with others. Resilience is critical to leadership because only some things go into play. Setbacks are inevitable. Tragedies may occur. Yet leaders are responsible for helping their people navigate the challenges.

While we hope plans will work, we know in our hearts and from experience that only some things do so. It falls to leaders to rise to the occasion and provide a way forward – as Pfeifer writes, with a sense of hope and the ability to unite people. 

Building on hope

Toward the end of his memoir, Pfeifer writes, “The heart of crisis leadership is the ability to sustain hope by unifying efforts to solve complex problems in the face of great tragedy.” When we experience adversity, we look to leaders to mobilize the team to act. Such mobilization then becomes a collective act. At the same time, significant challenges take time to solve. So, while solutions are still being formulated, leaders can do what Pfeifer advocates: give followers a sense of hope. Leaders who model this behavior not only provide emotional sustenance for themselves. They can nourish their own well-being with the knowledge they are making a positive difference by the example of their perseverance.

Nelson Mandela knew such an experience from having spent 27 years as a prisoner on Robbin Island off the coast of Capetown, South Africa. “Do not judge me by my success,” he wrote, “judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” 

Resilience, honed from adversity, becomes a source of strength to persevere as well as to teach others how to do the same.

First posted in Forbes.com on 3.08.2024

One does not just read Phil Klay; one experiences his writing deeply. Be it fiction or nonfiction, Klay’s writing evokes a visceral response. He writes about what it is like to be in a war zone and how that experience shapes everything that happens next. 

A Marine who served in Iraq, Klay is a writer who is equally at home in both fiction and nonfiction. His first book of short stories, Redeployment won the National Book Award in 2014. President Barack Obama cited his debut novel, Missionaries, as one of his favorites of 2020, the year it was published.

Seeking to explain

Klay’s newest work is Uneven Ground: Citizenship in an Era of Endless, Invisible War. The essays contained within trace his thoughts and feelings about what the war and its after-effects were having on the nation he had served. His work is very relevant to anyone in management because his insights into what it takes to lead in a time of uncertainty and ambiguity ring true.

In a review for the New York Times, James Fallows, an author and long-time commentator on national defense issues, writes that “the book is engrossing and important, and I hope readers will start with the longest parts first.” It is in the long parts, as in Klay’s fiction, that we feel the power of his story and the truths he tells.

Connectedness in a time of conflict

In an interview Klay told me, “Joining the military breaks you out of your bubble… You meet every kind of person in the military, which is one of the great things about it. And you’re all bound together by and stamped with a common identity and common purpose. You have a sort of common, intense experiences because you all go through the same sort of training and are gearing up to the same conflicts.”

Coming home can be challenging.  “When sometimes the veterans have difficult experiences suggesting to the civilian world, the assumption is that it’s because of negative things that they experience in the military.’ As true as that may be, Klay says, “It’s also important to note that there’s a lot of positive things about life in the military,” such as the sense of bonding, trust, and “a sense of broader purpose and mission.” Klay admits, “Of course, war makes you feel as though what you’re doing is extremely important because the stakes are life and death. That can be in some ways intoxicating.”

Klay offers advice for loved ones of combat veterans who have experienced some kind of trauma. “Ask him first to [talk about] the good things in his deployment. The people he loved and why he went in.” It is important, says Klay, to get the context, the totality of the experience beyond the bad experiences. “Whereas it’s the connections between people and the love between people and the, the richness of life that is destroyed in war. You need to understand that richness of life first for any of the bad things to have any kind of meaning.”

Diplomacy in conflict

War, as Klay explains, can teach diplomacy. This lesson was imparted to him when he witnessed the reaction of Special Forces Major Ian Fishback to the loss of two soldiers. It would have been acceptable for him to retaliate with more force, but Fishback opted for another course. “What he knew was that this was an extremely fragile situation that could have easily exploded into widespread violence. And so he went with the political solution, not knowing how it would turn out, whether it would be a good thing in the end.” 

Klay adds, “We often substitute an easy problem, which is, can I kill this guy with a hard problem, which is, can I operate in this region in a way that will, in the long-term lead to a more stable settlement that is in everybody’s interest.”

Sadly, such diplomacy is not serving those Afghans who worked with Americans and are still in Afghanistan. “The wars of the sort that we have waged where a lot was asked of a very small number of people, we haven’t even lived up to the promises that we made to those who helped us.” Such a policy reveals “an unwillingness to deal with the sort of after-effects of that [war] in a serious way.”

Personal stories

The stories that Klay tells resonate with humanity, none more powerfully than the story of Chaplain Patrick McLaughlin. In addition to offering support for Marines, the chaplain made a point of comforting the children, particularly those wounded fatally. “Chaps”  ,-McLaughlin would rock them in his arms as they died. He had a rocking chair for every victim and when he left the base to return to the States, he burned them all in a bonfire. Klay writes that Chaps “watched as the embers rose heavenward to, as he put it, ‘the children that once occupied them in my arms.’”

It is those after affects—most only soldiers and veterans – that Klay explores in his writing. And in doing so he casts a light on the effect of the war on his generation and the nation it served. Klay’s voice has urgency that compels us to listen and by listening to the issues facing, not simply those with direct experience of war, but also their families as well as the psyche of the nation that sent them there.

First posted on Forbes.com 8.08.2022

Resilience became a watchword of our pandemic year and beyond. 

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Mark Edmundson, an author and professor of English at the University of Virginia, argues that Ralph Waldo Emerson, a giant of poetic letters, is an excellent example of resilience. Emerson, like so many of that era, knew loss up close and personally. His wife died at 19, and his eldest son died at age five. 

“Life only avails not the having lived,” wrote Emerson in his essay, “Self-Reliance.” “Power ceases in the instant of repose, it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.” 

Edmundson himself writes, channeling Emerson, “Don’t make yourself a patient, don’t plump the mattress or pickle yourself in Cabernet. Instead, make life more demanding than it has been. Be tougher on yourself; fill your mind with your tasks and go after them, hard. When we’re down, we need to get up and fight as best we can—not tomorrow, but now.”

There is much to unpack in Emerson’s approach. For many, when stricken with grief, the solution is to persevere in life’s journey and with life’s calling. Some individuals, as we saw during our past year, have done this swimmingly. They have persisted despite tragedy. Others, perhaps the majority, need time to reflect, recharge and yes, mourn. 

Perseverance without acknowledgment of suffering may be short-sighted. You may sublimate your emotions, and ultimately yourself, with this approach. Doing so may hinder your ability to achieve better results.

Coping with loss

So many great artists, like Emerson, suffered significant loss. Great leaders, too, notably Theodore Roosevelt, suffered a loss. Like Emerson, TR lost his first wife. All of them channeled their feelings, or in our common parlance, “processed” the loss and integrated it into their lives. They emerged stronger for it, and their work attests to that fact.

Resilience is the ability to come back from defeat. To rise again, but as I have learned in this past year, it’s also the ability to meet the challenges of a transformed world. The world of January 2020 is no more; our duty is to create a “new normal” that embodies the best of what we had with the best of what we have learned. We will need resilience to do so.

Learned resilience

Over the past year, I have conducted over 100 interviews with women and men from different walks of life. One of them, Garrett Tennant, a Royal Marine, spoke about resilience can be learned through training. What special forces troops do is subject themselves to danger in training and, in the process, learn to adapt by monitoring their reactions and their behaviors so when they are in a combat situation, they know how to act. The fear does not dissipate; it is managed.

Others I interviewed told me how they, as business leaders imbued their organizations with resilience. They did it through their example. They put themselves out front, sharing their thoughts about the road ahead. They counseled individuals and also sought help themselves when necessary. Such leaders set an example that adversity is real, but so is our ability to manage it.

Nowhere is resilience more critical than in modern healthcare. The past year saw practitioners—physicians, nurses, aides—stressed to the max when dealing with the overload of Covid-19 patients. A few tragically broke under the weight of the burden. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority did not, but they did not emerge unscathed. It will take years of processing the stress of the pandemic before they are entirely whole.

Resilience is also a physical reaction to stimuli. As my colleague, Dr. Sharon Melnick, a clinical psychologist, teaches, we need to learn the practice of self-regulation. We cannot always be on; sometimes, we need to be off. Failure to do so leads to burnout. 

Shared resilience

Resilience need not be a solo enterprise. Some, like Emerson, can muscle through it, but most of us need to decompress, talk to colleagues and seek professional help to regain our equilibrium. We do heal ourselves, but doing so need not be in isolation.

Resilience, some say, is like a muscle. You can build it up, but if you don’t use it, it will atrophy. Never have we had a time when resilience is more necessary. So let’s use it.

First posted on Forbes.com 7/09/2021

Perfection within the field of human performance is a myth. Yet it persists. 

In a recent interview with host Terry Gross on Fresh Air, a renowned cellist said, “What allows me to not be paralyzed is to just say, I’m doing my best. And if it doesn’t work, you know my intention is to do the best.” 

Ma added that he kept himself alive and working, avoiding burnout by saying, “How do you rejuvenate, regenerate, and constantly be curious and active and do your best? I try and forgive myself because I don’t want to be neurotic.”

Limits to perfection

Understanding one’s limitations is often difficult for high achievers. Musicians says Ma may push themselves into the trap of the “industrial aesthetic”—error-free performance, as can be done in manufacturing.

Seeking further insights, I asked Tiffany Chang, an orchestra conductor, “I tell musicians that each performance doesn’t need to be exactly the same. It’s easy for a musician to have an ideal product in mind, and we spend all our efforts to recreate that ideal in practice. That is not always practical! The phrasing, tempo changes, and the tough corners don’t need to be executed in the exact same way. It is more important to be aware of each other at the moment and to navigate these passages together.” 

“I remind them that perfection is not the destination,” says Chang. “Taking a step toward better is the goal. There is no one perfect interpretation. There is only our interpretation that is right for us today because of all the factors, human and otherwise, we are faced with today. It’s helpful to focus on being better rather than being perfect.”

“I help my musicians by providing them with an interpretation, while giving them artistic licenses and space to find a way to realize that musical image on their own, rather than giving them step by step instructions or micromanaging,” says Change. “I give them the basis for a story, and ask them to find and perform the evidence in the music that supports and paints that particular story.”

“Tactile Thinking”

One way YoYo Ma keeps himself fresh is by employing different modes of thinking. Analytical thinking focuses on facts. Empathetic thinking focuses on feeling, but there is another thing – “tactile thinking.” His wife knows what he is doing because she can picture him working through “fingering and bowing” on the cello without playing. Ma says many others do the same, whether golf or tennis, thinking about how you will play a shot or react to a ball hitting you.

Chang says, “It’s easy to simply think ‘I just want it to be better’ which is quite vague and can lead to more of a reactive and passive rather than proactive approach.” By contrast, Chang works as their coach. “I ask musicians to think about one, two or three specific goals they want to tackle each rehearsal and each performance.” 

A good way – perhaps the best way – to keep in sync with self and others is via listening. Chang says, “Listening is crucial to achieve this connection and synergy.” How a piece is performed a given way one time does not dictate how it must be played the next time. “It’s more important that we are in sync with each other right now and supporting each other in today’s performance, rather than going rogue or being stubborn to do it ‘more right’ against a theoretical ideal.”

And that’s not bad advice for the rest of us. Listen and collaborate, and see what good things can happen.

First posted on Forbes.com 6.20.2024

It’s the easiest shot in golf because you don’t have to hit the ball.

 I perked up when veteran golf pro Tim Katanski said that to me. While I have been playing golf for decades — and, of course, I knew that you don’t strike the ball directly when it’s resting on the sand — I had never heard it expressed so clearly.*

 My point is not to impart a golf lesson. That would be malpractice. [When asked what my “handicap” is, I reply. Myself!] The lesson of the sand shot is to find ways to explicate, elucidate and teach with simplicity. Use similes and metaphors that make the complicated less so and, in the process, make it more accessible.

 Strive for clarity

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” is a phrase attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. As a true Renaissance man – an innovator, scientist, and artist – Leonardo sought to understand the world around him, applying his intellect and talents to interpret what he observed and to devise new methodologies.

 Complexity is the bedevilment of our culture. As the adage goes, it’s easy to make things complicated and more challenging to make them simpler. Simplicity is the act of reduction, not elimination. You want to make what you say understandable to make it easier to comprehend, thereby increasing accessibility and ultimately making it more actionable.

 The challenge for managers is to communicate with clarity and often with brevity.

Consider the following truisms:

 Know your purpose. Find your path.

 Managers mind the details. Leaders inspire their followers.

 Process is a way of doing. Principles are a way of being.

 Discern, decide and delegate.

 One team. One heartbeat.

Create your simple statements

Each one is simple and direct. The secret to formulating your own is to frame your issue. What is happening? What do you need people to do? Why do you need them to do it? For example, your competitor is launching a new product. Formulate your response. Make it short and pithy. “Our edge is the people who build and serve our products.”

 Or budget cuts are challenging. You do more with less. Try this. “Do the best we can with what we have.” It’s not a rah-rah statement; it’s an iteration of reality that frames performance not as a limitation but as an aspiration.

 Simplicity is the essence of knowledge. Striving for it is seldom easy, but achieving it can be rewarding. Just like a well-struck sand shot!

 *Caveat: This instruction applies to greenside sand shots. If the ball is in a fairway bunker – well away from the green — you sweep it out, making direct contact with the ball.

First posted on SmartBrief.com 7.02.2025

James Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13, which suffered an oxygen tank leak 200 miles from Earth, almost never had the opportunity to fly that mission.

As reporter Russell Lewis of National Public Radio noted in his remembrance of Lovell’s passing, perseverance was his special strength. Lovell did not get into the Naval Academy on his first try. He was later accepted and became a combat fighter pilot and qualified for the test pilot program at Edwards AFB. He did not qualify for the Mercury astronaut program, but was later accepted into the Gemini program. Again, a second try was successful.

Handling adversity

These setbacks steeled James Lovell to be an astronaut who could handle the pressures in times of adversity. Fear was not an option in times of crisis. As Lovell told the New York Times years later, “We were all test pilots, and the only thing we could do was try to get home,” he said to The New York Times in 1995. “The idea of despair never occurred to us, because we were always optimistic we would get home.”

It was this kind of bravery that transfixed the nation and, decades later, after Lovell published his story of the mission, led to a landmark motion picture directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks as Lovell.

Crisis leadership and teamwork

One thing Lovell noted about the Apollo 13 mission was NASA’s leadership. It scrambled together ad hoc solutions to engineer fixes that could make the command module safe enough to return to Earth. 

As Lovell told NPR in 2014, Apollo 13 “showed was what you could do with good leadership in an organization, how good leadership fosters teamwork, and how teamwork and initiative, when you faced a problem – to use the initiative or imagination to try to solve the problem because everything doesn’t flow freely in life, and things change.”

Perseverance + Resilience

Perseverance is something that strengthens as we use it—learning from Lovell’s example, when we face obstacles, we do not give up immediately. Learn from what you did and improve when necessary. Perseverance is an attribute of resilience, a must-have for anyone in leadership. 

Resilience emerges, as it did for Lovell, from setbacks. Do not become discouraged. Reflect on your past successes. Self-confidence is honed by achievement. Sometimes achievements come easily, but the ones that require extra effort are those that prepare us to face emerging challenges. 

Although Lovell captained Apollo 8, the first mission to leave Earth’s orbit and circle the Moon, he never achieved his dream of landing on the Moon. Life does not always work out as planned but Lovell made his mark in history by turning disaster into a life-saving mission.

Godspeed, Jim Lovell.

First posted on Forbes.com 8.10.2025

One comment stood out among the avalanche of video clips that media channels played upon the passing of Robert Redford.

An interviewer asked Redford if he were pleased with what he had accomplished.  The actor, then in his eighties, but still maintaining his youthful charm, replied that he was.

Of course, skeptics might say that Robert Redford was a superstar, the kind Hollywood used to have but is less common today. He had been a screen presence for sixty years, starring in such memorable classics as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (with fellow icon Paul Newman) and The Sting (again with Newman). There were also hits like All the President’s Men, Three Days of the Condor and Out of Africa. 

Branching Out

Redford applied his talents behind the camera, serving as director on Ordinary People (for which he won an Oscar) and  later directing eight other films including A River Runs Through It, Quiz Show and The Horse Whisperer.

Redford once said that if you were a movie star, few would take you seriously. While that may have been the norm for some, it did not apply to him.

Movies were not his only passion. Believing firmly in filmmaking as an art form, he launched the Sundance Film Festival in his adopted home state of Utah. This festival launched landmark films by many who would become major directors, including Quentin Tarantino and Ava DuVernay.

Living as he did in Utah, experiencing nature was paramount, and so he became an ardent environmentalist using his public platform to raise awareness for conservation and preservation of natural wilderness.

Facing adversity

Idyllic, yes, but not always. Redford lost a daughter in infancy, another son, age 58, died of cancer, his daughter experienced a near-death auto accident, and his first marriage ended in divorce. Later, he suffered financial losses and had to sell his stake in Sundance.

In fact, his early life gave no hint of his future. His mother died when he was a teen, and that loss set him somewhat adrift. He earned a baseball scholarship to Colorado but dropped out, in part because he enjoyed partying more than studying. He went to Europe for a year and made a living by selling street drawings. He had a knack for illustration.

Lessons for us

What Redford reminds us is to reflect on what we have accomplished by focusing on what we have done, rather than what we might have done. Take pride in your accomplishments, but do not dwell on them. Continue to pursue new horizons in your life and career. 

Bob Woodward, legendary reporter for the Washington Post and who was portrayed by Redford in All the President’s Men, said, “I loved him, and admired him — for his friendship, his fiery independence, and the way he used any platform he had to help make the world better, fairer, brighter for others.”

Redford persevered, and so his comment about being pleased with what he had accomplished resonates. One commenthe made resonates with those who did not know him in the days of his full stardom.

“I try to avoid giving advice. The only advice I will give is to pay attention. I don’t mean to the screen in your hand.”

In short, life is meant to be lived in reality, not virtually.

First posted on Forbes.com 9.25.2025