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"I'm telling you to have empathy, but I'm not having empathy for you".  And I think that was a huge aha, is that if you were brought up, raised with this, give up your Saturdays, don't go to your kids' soccer game or cricket game, whatever it may be; work comes before everything, maybe get on to your second or third marriage because you've ground all your relationships to dust.  That's how you become a leader, and then in order to lead, you've got to have your people be afraid of you and not like you and that that's what you were brought up with.  This does seem like, "How could this possibly work?"

— Heather McGowan

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets ""I'm telling you to have empathy, but I'm not having empathy for you".  And I think that was a huge aha, is that if you were brought up, raised with this, give up your Saturdays, don't go to your kids' soccer game or cricket game, whatever it may be; work comes before everything, maybe get on to your second or third marriage because you've ground all your relationships to dust.  That's how you become a leader, and then in order to lead, you've got to have your people be afraid of you and not like you and that that's what you were brought up with.  This does seem like, "How could this possibly work?"" in the context of "" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 19, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Heather McGowan

About Heather McGowan

Heather McGowan is an American writer. She is the author of the novels Schooling and Duchess of Nothing Schooling was named a Best Book of the Year by Newsweek, The Detroit Free Press and The Hartford Courant. McGowan has a master in fine arts from Brown University.