The True Mark Of A Leader: No Sweat

Want to be a leader? Exercise, don’t smoke, drink coffee, and get up at 6 a.m. Oh, one more thing: don’t sweat. Those, according to HealthDay, are the common characteristics of leaders that emerged from a study at Harvard’s Kennedy School’s Decision Science Laboratory. The Harvard Gazette reports that the researchers compared cortisol and self-reported anxiety levels between a group of nonleaders, mostly from around Greater Boston, and a group of leaders, mostly participants in a Harvard Kennedy School program that typically attracts mid- to high-ranking government and military officials. Results showed that leaders had both significantly lower levels of cortisol and lower anxiety than nonleaders. In fact, a similar study at the school found that the cortisol level, a good measure of stress, was 27 percent lower in leaders than in non-leaders. Read more in the Harvard Gazette.