A few weeks ago, on behalf of President Biden, I spoke to the graduating class of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, one of our nation’s five service academies. This extraordinary group of young people will spend large parts of their lives at sea so the rest of us can live safely at home. They carry out missions vital to our national security, from upholding freedom of navigation to protecting vital shipping lanes to delivering ammunition to Ukrainian soldiers fighting for their freedom. It was an honor to be part of their commencement.
After thinking long and hard about what advice I could offer these young leaders, I focused on a core attribute of leadership that often gets overlooked. People will say that leadership is about confidence or vision, and it is about those things. But leadership is not about clinging to a singular attribute. It’s about cultivating equal and opposite attributes, and learning how to put that tension to use. Holding seemingly opposing ideas at once and still finding clarity and purpose.
