The best riders in the world with the best horses make it look so elegant and graceful. When you watch it done well, it looks so easy that it's difficult for the public to understand how hard this really is.
In my experience, the skill of success breaks down into three things. The skill of marketing. The skill of sales. And the skill of leadership.
I have a rule that I don't review shows from photographs or from video. I certainly might go back and look at photographs and look at video to remind myself of something or for personal information. But I never review from that.
A lot of people relate leadership to formalities. They believe that leadership is about being professional and strong and always right and being a booming voice. I just don't buy that. I think that leadership is a soft skill; it's a people skill.
All the work that I have done is the type I would want to watch. If I can't watch it myself how can I expect people to watch it?
I don't watch a lot of my work. I'm not really interested in seeing it after I do it. Because I came from theater, where, you know, it's impossible to actually review your work, so why would I bother under any other circumstances?
Do I watch dancers as people? Yes, absolutely. Do I watch really good dancers for specifically who they are? Absolutely, because how they move best and how they look best is going to be most familiar to them, and not necessarily to me.
How can I look at it and say, there it is - it's real. This is what is happening. It might even be a catalyst for more personal growth for me. It might be a blessing in disguise. It might not be. What's my best course of action? How can I be skillful?
If young actors ask me things, I always tell them to get on set and watch how it's done. If you can, watch the people that you like, how they work.
There's a difference between talent and skill. You might have writing talent, but skill is learned. You have to practice. I remain teachable. I was sure that I didn't know everything. People who work with me will tell you I don't think I know everything. I watch people sink around me thinking that they knew everything.
I look at sports entertainment/professional wrestling, whichever you want to call it, I look at it as never done. You're never done learning or getting better or listening, and never done honing your skill.
The question was, in a sense, at Princeton Review, how much value was I adding as a public company CEO. I was adding less than other people might've... I think you want to move on when you've given your best work and then feel that you're not going to add as much value moving forward.
Everywhere that I go in the world, people desperately look to American leadership in all of their world's most difficult problems. You can look at any region of the world and the United States is still the country to which those regions look for leadership.
Most people who want to get ahead do it backward. They think, 'I'll get a bigger job, then I'll learn how to be a leader.' But showing leadership skill is how you get the bigger job in the first place. Leadership isn't a position, it's a process.
We should always be learning or we will cease to be able to change or adapt. I think the best work on leadership today is by Ronald Heifetz. His work is focused on adaptive leadership.
I'd like to see where boys and girls end up if they get equal encouragement - I think we might have some differences in how leadership is done.