I’ll be upfront: this article is about politics. It’s about leadership, too. And it’s also about politics. Why are we settling for chaos when we can have calm?

One of the fundamental roles of a leader is to inspire calm, not chaos. As a young military leader, we learned that this is not only an act of care for your Soldiers, it’s a functional necessity. When the bullets start flying, everyone looks at the leader. If the leader reacts fearfully, then chaos ensues, and the team is at risk of taking casualties and failing the mission. If the leader responds with calm decisiveness, an American fighting force is nearly impossible to beat. That’s what I learned as a young man. That was a guiding directive in combat, and though I have made mistakes, it has served me well in business.

The idea of bringing calm, not chaos, does not suggest that leaders are in a constant zen-like state of being in which all awareness, all-knowingness, and all control are at their fingertips. That would be nice, but this isn’t the movies. In real life, we don’t get to stop the bullets and curiously pluck them from midair like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. Not at all. Leaders face the fear, experience the chaos, and take on the discomfort and the uncertainty as an act of service to their teammates. Real leaders do not pass that chaos on to their people. And they don’t amplify it either.

Leaders who amplify chaos instead of bringing calm are not helping those they serve. And though I’d be out of my depth to suggest all the complexities that occur on a psychological level, I will comment within my depth on what I observe on a spiritual level. Selfishness. Leaders who spit chaos like chaff from a bird evading a heat-seeker are selfish. There is an inherent orientation to self that obscures the focus on others. When we are so focused on ourselves, how can we, in good conscience, lead others well? We cannot.

Now, I concede our humanity. It is, after all, quite normal to have an orientation upon self. It is also normal to feel the stress, the strain, the anxiety, or whatever other word we wish to use for the base emotion of fear when things are scary. When we get attacked, insulted, assaulted, shouted down, or even shot at. I’ve experienced all of those. It’s scary. Yet, as leaders, do we not train our minds, bodies, and souls to respond calmly amidst the chaos? Don’t we train ourselves to consider how our response will influence others? We do. So why do we settle for anything less in our leaders?

Look, I talk to a lot of leaders in a lot of locations who are responsible for a lot of people. Not one of them settles for chaos in themselves or their organizations. Because though they feel the discomfort of leadership, they prioritize their responsibility for others. And that’s the whole point: responsibility. When we lead others, we are responsible for our influence on others and behave accordingly. We accept the discomfort on behalf of our people so they do not have to experience it, so we can all achieve positive results together. We do not amplify chaos by spewing our discomfort all over one another.

We do not name-call, mock, denigrate, deny, or dismiss others if we aim to unite, align, and lead people. There’s a word for all of that type of behavior, and it’s not leadership. It’s childishness.

We demand better in our teammates, our businesses, and our children. Why in the world are we so willing to forego such expectations of calm decency in our Nation's leaders? I’m not, and I hope you’re not either.