What was it that made William Shakespeare the greatest writer of all time? According to the great poet John Keats, it was what Keats called "negative capability." That's the capacity to hold yourself in balance between the two poles of a situation without imposing your will in order to force a resolution. Doing so allows ambiguities to fully play out and opens everyone up to new levels of understanding. Keats described this quality as "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."

I devote much of my time and effort helping leaders build capabilities, yet this one is really tough. In our culture, we're not good at negative capability. We rush to judgment, facts be damned, and are eager to find solutions even if no good ones exist. Humans don't tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty well, yet it's the tension between uncertainty and resolution that makes our greatest drama, fiction and music.

In organizations, negative capability empowers leaders to approach problems and conflicts without rushing to one side or the other. It lets them "slow down the game" and allow all factors in a situation to become apparent before a solution is even contemplated. Negative capability is the purview of wise, calm, and controlled. It's a quality we could all do with more of.

How might building "negative capability" improve how you lead your team and yourself?

Less than two weeks ago America got a new hero: Charles Ramsey, a man from Cleveland, Ohio, who interrupted his enjoyment of a Big Mac to respond to the panicked pleas of a young woman in a neighboring house. As a result, three women who had been abducted and presumed dead for a decade were rescued.

Millions of Americans were charmed by Ramsey's self-effacing speech, but I was more taken with the fact he did something that so many of us are reluctant to do anymore: step across the barrier of our own self-containment and reach into someone else's life. We tend to deceive ourselves that our technology-Facebook, Twitter, texting-means that we're connected to other people. It's an illusion, because it allows us to be connected at our convenience. Real relationships mean getting involved when things are messy, chaotic, uncertain-and real.

In our organizations, we sometimes pursue a sanitized version of involvement with our people. We send memos and communicate via calendars. Leading is a full-contact sport - that means being hands-on, asking questions and caring about the answers, and reaching out to learn who the people we're working with truly are and what they truly need.

Are you sending communications or involved with your people?

That's a question I ask in my upcoming new book, "The Wave." Most corporate cultures define a winning team not only as one that achieves its objective every time but as one that constantly clears an ever-rising bar of expectations. No resting on laurels or congratulating ourselves for a well-fought campaign, folks; if we're not already finding new ways to exceed our performance from last quarter, we're losing.

Not only is that approach not sustainable, it doesn't reflect how people live, perform, and recover. The creative director who's a dynamo of ideas in Q1 might be running a bit dry in Q2. That doesn't mean she's incapable. It means she needs to recharge. People aren't machines.

To increase the wisdom of our organizations, it's important to appreciate that winning teams are those that combine consistent goal attainment with a culture that respects the natural ebb and flow of individual performance. I believe it is not the point to have one stellar quarter, but rather, to grow steadily over ten or twenty years. That long-term growth and performance only happens when we recognize that winning encompasses not just making the sale but making our people better, flaws and all.

How might you redefine "winning" in your organization?

Not long ago, my partner Matt Brubaker was running on the beach in La Jolla, California. He spotted a young seal on the beach waving its flippers and bobbing its head to get attention from passersby, hoping they would give it food. This struck Matt as funny, because the seal had its back to an ocean full of fish. All it had to do was turn around and dive!

In our organizations, it's easy to become so caught up in the pursuit of one objective that we completely overlook the abundance that's all around us. For example, while corporations like Microsoft and Apple spend billions to develop the Next Big Thing, tiny software app companies like Uber and BabelVerse have been tapping into the vast untapped resources of the mobile economy. Uber leverages limo drivers' considerable downtime by letting customers call for high-class rides from their smart phones, while BabelVerse turns foreign language speakers around the world into an army of on-demand interpreters, also accessible via a smart phone app. That's brilliant.

As we try to infuse our organizations with wisdom, it's important to step back from time to time, lift our noses from the grindstone and look around. We might see new opportunities, new customers, new markets and new ways of doing things.

Are you choosing from abundance or sitting with your back to the ocean?

The famous line from the Pogo comic strip goes, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." The above variation seems apt only a few days after the terrible bombing at the Boston Marathon. This awful event has left many people shaken and angered. But where they see fear, I see cause for hope.

Terrorism is unique among the tactics of war in that it doesn't seek to destroy the enemy directly. Instead, it seeks to sow fear, panic, paranoia and hysteria in its victims and make them destroy themselves. In a terrorist's mind, a perfect attack would lead to riots, arrests of suspicious individuals, economic collapse and the breakdown of civil society.

That's not what happened after Boston. If you watch the footage, dozens of people ran toward the explosion-toward harm-to help those caught in the blast. Runners who had just run 26 miles ran two more to Massachusetts General Hospital to donate blood. All over the city, people rushed to get back to their lives even as they sent leads to authorities and showed support for the victims. That's the opposite of panic and hysterical violence. That's courage, reason, restraint and love at work.

Part of wisdom lies in knowing that we have the capacity to be both our own worst enemies and best allies-and to be aware of the times when we're on the verge of letting fear take over. In our organizations as well as our communities, we can react to adverse events either with panic and rage or with calm and compassion. Which we choose determines much about whether we succeed or fail.

Is your organization more prone to panic or positive action?

The headline quote by Susan Sontag (full quote is "Whatever is happening, something else is always going on."), remains one of the more illuminating bits of wisdom I have ever read. It means that whatever we may feel we know about a situation on the surface, there are hidden layers that we know nothing about.

Keeping this truth in mind can change how we relate to and understand the people with whom we work. Take the example of a web developer that my writing partner, Tim, told me about. This gentleman, who had previously been as reliable as the tide, was driving his employer to distraction with his erratic performance on a project. He missed deadlines, did substandard work and seemed lost. Rather than come down on him, his supervisor asked him if there was anything wrong that he needed to talk about.

It turned out that in recent weeks the developer had not only been dealing with his father having a painful and risky surgery, but had been undergoing tests for a possibly deadly form of cancer. By keeping in mind the "something else is always going on" rule, his boss avoided disciplining a valued team member who really needed support. An increased understanding gave this leader greater options for leading in a personally challenging time.

Every person has a backstory, and no leader-no matter how perceptive-can claim to have read every word of it. Better we should keep Ms. Sontag's wise words close at hand.

How would greater awareness and sensitivity to those around you change how you lead?

According to a new study conducted by the Wharton School, leadership effectiveness and height are correlated. In other words, the taller you are, the better leader you'll be.

Just kidding.

Today is April 1st, also known as April Fool's Day. That's got me reflecting on the role of humor in leading. As a rule, business is often serious business: we're dealing with lives and livelihoods, health and safety, and powerful technologies. And, we need to lighten up once in a while.

I'm not suggesting that Boeing workers be allowed to throw pies in each other's faces while they're assembling the components of the 787 Dreamliner. I am suggesting that encouraging humor can help people defuse the tension that comes with Very Important Work. After all, as Bertrand Russell said, "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."

Some leaders discourage humor in the workplace because they see it as a coded challenge to their authority or don't understand its value to worker engagement. But what if humor could be open and intentional? What if the boss was the first one to share a joke each morning? Instead of being a means to express grievances and mock authority, humor can be a means to build camaraderie and bring teams together.

In your organization, are you the initiator of humor or the butt of the jokes?

The globe is a fascinating thing. Consider the International Date Line, which makes it possible to fly over the Pacific Ocean from Tokyo to Los Angeles and arrive before you left (that's really something they should mention on the in-flight safety card).Consider also the "joy" of time zones which invisibly yet powerfully affect our energy and equilibrium.

Finally, there's the equator. Right now it's the beginning of spring in North America. Flowers are budding, people are putting heavy coats into storage and summer is on the way. But south of the equator, the seasons flip-flop like a senator running for re-election. In the Southern Hemisphere, it's fall. In Sydney and Santiago, leaves are turning and the weather is getting cooler.

My point? No matter how things are going for you, they're not the same for everyone. It's easy to sequester ourselves in our own little world of timelines and goals and forget that just across the hall, the season might be completely different. And this doesn't just apply between teams but within them: the leader's weather might be balmy June while two or three key people are buried in January blizzards due to family troubles, medical issues or just plain burnout.

With awareness, we can act with empathy and wisdom. We don't assume that the solutions to our problems are the solutions to everybody's problems.

What season is it in your organization?

It's no secret that Congress is dysfunctional. Its futility is a product of the polarization that comes from tampering with population center boundaries of to create favorable voter rolls-a process known as "gerrymandering."

When you gerrymander a political district to populate it with more Republicans or Democrats, you're stocking it with folks who agree with you. That's great if you're trying to win an election. But it's terrible if you're starved for the kinds of honest, intelligent, dissenting views that expand perspective and increase wisdom.

We gerrymander our organizations, too. I've seen companies stacked with people who laugh at the leaders' jokes and tell them only what they want to hear. Those are diseased organizations. Gerrymandering snuffs out candor, rigorous discourse and tough scrutiny of new ideas.

If "steel sharpens steel," then visionary leaders should be seeking out people of robust intellects and varied backgrounds who disagree with them. The resulting metal-on-metal clashes will produce not only sparks, but light.

Is your organization gerrymandered? What is the impact?

In business, we treasure the stereotype of the grinder, the guy (or gal) who puts in the 14-hour days to get the job done. That's virtuous, we say. Sitting at your desk, mainlining coffee and not going home until the job is done is supposedly what makes millionaires and geniuses. People who can't stomach that sort of work style are labeled slackers or ADHD cases.

But what if the slackers were actually the geniuses?

New research from Florida State University reveals that people are actually at their most productive when they work in 90-minute intervals, take breaks, and typically work about four-and-a-half hours a day. That's heresy to your typical "push ‘em until they break" CEO, but who cares if it gets results? Part of wisdom is embracing what produces the greatest sustainable performance, whether or not it feels like something they would teach at the Wharton School.

Maybe it's time we started encouraging "creative distraction" instead of "creative destruction." Encouraging people to work in the way that best suits their mind and temperament appears to work wonders.

What value are you putting on rest and restoration?