The Steel Fist in the Velvet Glove: Mastering 'Gentle Firmness' as a Kind Leader with guest Andrew Abela

The Kind Leader

In this episode of The Kind Leader podcast, host Gino Degregori interviews Andrew Abela, founding dean of the Busch School of Business at Catholic University and author of "Super Habits: The Universal Systems for a Successful Life." Abela shares insights on kind leadership, the science of habit formation, and how certain "super habits" can lead to human excellence and flourishing. He explains how his book synthesizes ancient philosophy, modern psychology, and business research to identify key habits that consistently lead to greater happiness, effectiveness, and success. The discussion covers topics like the role of love in leadership, the importance of forgiveness in fostering innovation, and how to develop "gentle firmness" as a leader. Abela also introduces the Super Habits app, a free tool to help people develop and track these transformative habits.

Sound Bites:

• Being a kind leader is being a loving leader... I define love not as an emotion, but as an attitude, intention, and habit of doing what is good for others."
• "As you grow in any one of these super habits, you become happier, you become more effective, you become healthier, and life just gets easier."
• "The courage that you build on the football field, you can use in a job interview, you can use when giving a presentation - it's very portable."
• "If you believe your resources are all scarce and your abilities are fixed, that will be true for you because you won't even try. But if you believe that you can always grow, that will be true for you because you'll try and grow."
• "Leaders who are forgiving have more innovation in their companies."

Takeaways:

• True leadership requires balancing firmness with gentleness, using anger productively rather than suppressing or exploding with it.
• Super habits are transferable across different areas of life and can be developed through consistent, small practices.
• Forgiveness in leadership creates an environment where people feel safe bringing bad news and creative ideas.
• Neuroplasticity means anyone can develop new habits and capabilities at any age through proper practice.
• Effective habit formation requires starting with easy, obvious actions that can be done consistently before increasing difficulty.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Kind Leadership 02:56 Defining Kind Leadership 05:59 The Concept of Super Habits 08:57 Building Consistency Through Habits 11:59 Mindset and Its Impact on Habits 14:51 Leadership and the Role of Forgiveness 18:09 Gentle Firmness in Leadership 21:00 The Future of Leadership 24:00 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Links:

Follow on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/deanabela/ Get the Superhabits book on Amazon https://a.co/d/8ZPihH5 Try the Superhabits app https://superhabits.link