On leadership

When I was growing up, handwriting analysis was a big deal.  Did your writing lean forward?  Then you were an extrovert.  Backwards?  Well, obviously an introvert.  Big loops?  Generous.  Small loops?  Mean and selfish.  I cultivated a forward-slanting handwriting with generous (but not insanely so) loops.

I now have serious doubts about handwriting’s ability to reveal the secrets of ones soul, but I do believe that the spoken word is a dead giveaway.  When I say that, I don’t mean just the content, but also the style of delivery.  Some stylistic things are just a matter of education (“am not” rather than “ain’t,” for example), but others — the choice of specific words, the content used — are dead giveaways about a person’s beliefs regarding both the world around him and himself.

With VE day in mind, Greyhawk has looked at the way in which Churchill, Roosevelt and Hitler spoke.  It’s a short post, and quite obviously intended to make a point, but it’s nevertheless very instructive.