The Mental Fitness Challenge helps develop both art and science side of leadership thanks to the book RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions for LIFE. Even after developing the skills to perform, the magic is in developing the communication skills to help others make the adjustment to perform. For example, if you remove a fly from a teammates forehead with an axe, you are exhibiting a lack of tact. Read the article and ponder how you can improve on the art side of your business. The Mental Fitness Challenge helps a person develop tact along with many other skills. Here is an old blog post from Orrin Woodward on the importance of tact:
Tact is the art of saying the right thing at the right time to the right person with the goal of steering his thoughts and behaviors to a productive result while strengthening the bond of trust. Leaders without tact are more likely to injure their teams than serve them. I believe that in order to move from a Level 2 Performer to a Level 3 Leader, as Chris Brady and I teach in Launching a Leadership Revolution, it’s imperative to develop the art of tact. The more tact you have the more you can guide your leadership craft without running it aground on the shallow waters of hurt feelings and damaged egos. There is an art and science to all businesses.
Though in its higher degrees it is essentially a natural gift, and is sometimes conspicuous in perfectly uneducated men, it may be largely cultivated and improved; and in this respect the education of good society is especially valuable. Such an education, whatever else it may do, at least removes many jarring notes from the rhythm of life. It tends to correct faults of manner, demeanor, or pronunciation which tell against men to a degree altogether disproportioned to their real importance, and on which, it is hardly too much to say, the casual judgments of the world are mainly formed; and it also fosters moral qualities which are essentially of the nature of tact.
We can hardly have a better picture of a really tactful man than in some sentences taken from the admirable pages in which Cardinal Newman has painted the character of the perfect gentleman.
‘ It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain. … He carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast—all clashing of opinion or collision of feeling, all restraint or suspicion or gloom or resentment; his great concern being to make everyone at ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unreasonable allusions or topics that may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favors while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes an unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. . . . He has too much good sense to be affronted at insult; he is too busy to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. … If he engages in controversy of any kind his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better though less educated minds, who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean. … He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater candor, consideration, indulgence. He throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human nature as well as its strength, its province, and its limits.’
