I’ve noted how this research profoundly changed me and what I think about how life works. And one of the most significant transformations is my appreciation for the inevitable fog of life. Fog, I came to understand, is a common human experience, even for people who otherwise seem to have great clarity about what to make of their lives. And if episodes of fog enveloped even people in this study, none of us should judge ourselves harshly when we wake up one day to find ourselves befuddled and confused in the fog.

Sherman influenced events with a rare instinct to wait until precisely the right moment to speak. Historian George Bancroft wrote of Sherman, “In the convention he never made long speeches, but would intuitively seize on the turning point of a question, and present it in terse language, which showed his own opinion and the strength on which it rested.” This ability to sense “the turning point of a question” proved to be one of Sherman’s most effective leadership encodings.

Yet he remains far less well known than Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Adam’s, Jefferson, and Madison. Sherman sought impact, not fame, responsibility, not credit. He chose the responsibility to protect the Constitution, deploying his leadership encodings into the work right in front of him. Sherman might not have gained the famous legacy of his fellow founders, but he is one of the primary reasons the Constitution itself endured.

In the end, Franklin drew upon his earned respect and facility with language to formally move for adoption of the Constitution in a final speech (read aloud for him by the Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson) to secure enough support of the delegates to send it to the states for ratification. Franklin had come to see the wisdom in human affairs of embracing the best imperfect result.

SUB-CAPABILITY NO.3: CREDIBILITY EQUITY

Sherman and Franklin made a huge impact late in life partly by drawing upon storehouses of credibility they’d built over decades. It wasn’t just Franklin’s words at the end of the Constitutional Convention that held sway, but also that these words came from Franklin. It wasn’t just that Sherman articulated a strong argument to preserve the actual text of the Constitution and use the amendment mechanism to include the Bill of Rights, but also that the argument came from Sherman.