Three Aphorisms for Your New Year: Personal Leadership Principles

Here’s a truth most of us don’t like to admit: the personal leadership principles that guide our lives rarely come from bestselling books, viral posts, or polished keynote stages. (As an author and keynote speaker, this is very difficult for me!) They come from regular people saying something simple, true, and stubbornly useful at exactly the right moment.

TLDR: 3 Personal Leadership Principles for Your New Year

Here are three of those ideas, from my father, my mother-in-law, and from a former boss. These three personal leadership principles are aphorisms that have quietly shaped how I try to show up in the world. They’re not flashy. They don’t pretend to be profound. But they stick because they work.

1. What Jared says about Jordan says more about Jared than it does about Jordan.
2. There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us that it hardly behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us.
3. The answer’s no until you ask.

Taken together, they form a surprisingly solid operating system for the new year.

We’ll break them down with more detail, just below the video.

1. “What Jared says about Jordan says more about Jared than it does about Jordan.”

This one, from my dad, is deceptively simple and brutally revealing.

At first glance, it sounds like a lesson about gossip or trash-talk. But it’s much bigger than that. This aphorism is about projection, accountability, and the stories we tell ourselves to feel okay about our behavior.

When someone tears down a coworker, a leader, a competitor, or “people these days,” they’re rarely giving you clean data about the other person. They’re giving you insight into their own fears, frustrations, insecurities, and values.

That doesn’t mean criticism is never valid. It means criticism is never neutral.

Every complaint carries fingerprints.

In work settings, especially in IT and leadership roles, this shows up constantly:

• “Users are idiots.”
• “Management doesn’t care.”
• “That team never does their job.”
• “They should already know this.”

Sometimes there’s truth buried in those statements. But the tone, timing, and repetition say far more about the speaker than the target.

Here’s the uncomfortable part: this applies to you and me, too.

When you catch yourself venting, ranting, or labeling people as “difficult,” it’s worth asking a harder question than “Are they wrong?”

Ask:

• What am I protecting?
• What expectation went unmet?
• What emotion am I avoiding?
• What story am I telling myself to justify my reaction?

This aphorism isn’t about silencing yourself or pretending everything is fine. It’s about self-awareness. About recognizing that every judgment is also a mirror.

New year takeaway #1:

Before criticizing someone else, check what your words reveal about you. That single pause can prevent a lot of unnecessary damage to relationships, credibility, and culture.

2. “There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us that it hardly behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us.”

This one is from my mother-in-law. It carries weight. It’s longer, older, and quietly wiser.

At its core, it’s a reminder that human beings are not categories. We’re contradictions.

We love to sort people into clean buckets:

• Good employee / bad employee
• High performer / problem child
• Easy customer / nightmare customer
• Smart leader / incompetent leader
• Good person / bad person

Reality refuses to cooperate.

The “worst” person you deal with at work may also be:

• Under enormous personal stress
• Operating with incomplete information
• Carrying scars from a past failure or public embarrassment
• Acting out of fear, not malice

And the “best” person?
They still miss things.
They still snap under pressure.
They still make selfish choices sometimes.
They still get it wrong.
They may be carrying the weight of a secret.

This aphorism doesn’t excuse bad behavior. It helps you understand it.

That distinction matters.

Accountability without compassion becomes cruelty. Compassion without accountability becomes chaos.

The sweet spot, the place effective leaders live, is in holding both truths at the same time:

• People are responsible for their behavior.
  
• People are also more complex than their worst moments or, frankly, their best moments.

In the new year, this mindset changes how you handle conflict.

Instead of immediately asking, “Who screwed up?” you ask:

• “What pressures were at play?”
• “What incentives shaped this decision?”
• “What assumptions did we make?”
• “What support was missing?”
• How can we prevent this mistake from happening again?

That shift doesn’t make you soft. It makes you effective.

It also makes you harder to manipulate, because you’re no longer reacting to caricatures. You’re responding to reality.

New year takeaway #2:

Resist the urge to reduce people to labels. The moment you do, you stop seeing clearly and you stop leading well.

3. “The answer’s no until you ask.”

I heard this one from my former boss. This is the most practical, and the most underused, of the three.

So many opportunities die quietly because nobody asked:

• for clarification
• for help
• for resources
• for flexibility
• for forgiveness
• for feedback
• for the chance
• for the order
• for the date

Instead, we assume. We predict rejection. We rehearse disappointment in advance. We protect our ego by not giving it a chance to get bruised.

Here’s the irony: Not asking doesn’t spare you rejection. It guarantees it.

“The answer’s no until you ask” is about agency.

It’s about recognizing that silence is a decision, and usually the wrong one.

In professional life, this shows up everywhere:

• The promotion you didn’t apply for
• The boundary you didn’t set
• The deadline you didn’t negotiate
• The misunderstanding you didn’t clarify
• The customer expectation you didn’t reset
• The order you didn’t ask for

People often say, “I didn’t want to bother them,” or “I didn’t want to look stupid,” or “I didn’t think it would change anything.”

Those are stories. Convenient ones.

Asking doesn’t guarantee a yes. But it does something more important: it replaces imagined outcomes with real information.

And real information is power.

In the new year, this aphorism invites courage, not bravado, not entitlement, but quiet, respectful courage.

The courage to say:

• “Can you help me understand?”
• “Here’s what I need to succeed.”
• “What does success look like to you?”
• “Is there flexibility here?”
• “Can we revisit this?”

New year takeaway #3:

 If something matters, ask. Don’t let fear of “no” decide for you.

Putting the Three Together

Individually, each aphorism is useful. Together, they’re transformative.

They create a balanced framework for how to think, relate, and act.

1. Self-awareness before judgment
   (“What Jared says about Jordan…”)
2. Humility before certainty
   (“So much good in the worst of us…”)
3. Agency before assumption
   (“The answer’s no until you ask.”)

That’s a powerful combination.

It keeps you from:

• becoming cynical
• hardening into righteousness
• avoiding necessary conversations
• blaming others for problems you could influence

It nudges you toward:

• curiosity instead of contempt
• accountability without arrogance
• action instead of quiet resentment

This is what mature professionalism looks like. Not perfection. Not constant positivity. Just clarity, responsibility, and humanity.

Yes, there are evil people in the world. I’m not naive. I believe, however, that most people are kind and caring if given a chance.

A New Year Challenge

As you step into the new year, don’t just admire these aphorisms. Use them.

Try this:

• When you’re irritated by someone, ask what your reaction says about you.
• When you’re tempted to write someone off, remember the complexity you hope others grant you.
• When you want something to change, ask. Ask clearly, calmly, and respectfully.

None of this is flashy. All of it works.

And here’s the real gift of these three sayings: they scale.

They work at home.
They work at work.
They work when you’re leading.
They work when you’re struggling.
They work when things are going well, and especially when they aren’t.

That’s the kind of wisdom worth carrying into a new year.

Not because it sounds good, but because it helps you live better, work smarter, and treat people (including yourself) with a little more honesty and grace.

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