“
It’s time to care; it’s time to take responsibility; it’s time to lead; it’s time for a change; it’s time to be true to our greatest self; it’s time to stop blaming others.
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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You are not a failure until you start blaming others for your mistakes
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John Wooden (Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization)
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A good leader never takes credit but always takes the blame.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
“
A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.
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Arnold H. Glasow
“
Decisions of character come from understanding that they are accountable to God only, not to family, spouses, religious leaders, corporations, public opinion or your own ego.
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Shannon L. Alder
“
Don’t blame others. it won’t make you a better person.
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Lolly Daskal (The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You and Your Greatness)
“
When we aren't curious in conversations we judge, tell, blame and even shame, often without even knowing it, which leads to conflict."
-The Power Of Curiosity: How To Have Real Conversations That Create Collaboration, Innovation and Understanding
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Kirsten Siggins (The Power of Curiosity: How to Have Real Conversations That Create Collaboration, Innovation and Understanding)
“
FORGIVE FAILURE. The corollary to accountability is forgiveness. Things go wrong all the time in relationships, and the healthiest ones move on from them, leaving behind grudges and blame. This is not to say that failure is accepted; rather, that it is acknowledged and understood.
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Charlene Li (Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead)
“
It’s time to care; it’s time to take responsibility; it’s time to lead; it’s time for a change; it’s time to be true to our greatest self; it’s time to stop blaming others
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
“
The president had shifted to the 'we' mode now, something he invariably did when a potentially unpopular decision was at hand. For the easy ones, it was always 'I.' When he needed a crutch, and especially when he would need someone to blame, he opened up the decisionmaking process and included Critz.
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John Grisham (The Broker)
“
That's why I wanted to use Supper at Six to teach chemistry. Because when women understand chemistry, they begin to understand how things work."
Roth looked confused.
"I'm referring to atoms and molecules, Roth," she explained. "The real rules that govern the physical world. When women understand these basic concepts, they can begin to see the false limits that have been created for them."
"You mean by men."
"I mean by artificial cultural and religious policies that put men in the highly unnatural role of single-sex leadership. Even a basic understanding of chemistry reveals the danger of such a lopsided approach."
"Well," he said, realizing he'd never seen it that way before, "I agree that society leaves much to be desired, but when it comes to religion, I tend to think it humbles us--teaches us our place in the world."
"Really?" she said, surprised. "I think it lets us off the hook. I think it teachers us that nothing is really our fault; that something or someone else is pulling the strings; that ultimately, we're not to blame for the way things are; that to improve things, we should pray. But the truth is, we are very much responsible for the badness of the world. And we have the power to fix it.
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Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
“
A strong leader accepts blame and gives the credit. A weak leader gives blame and accepts the credit.
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John Wooden (Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization)
“
Not what happened and who’s to blame, but what are we going to do about it?
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Eric Schmidt (Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell)
“
Leaders respond & change; the rest quit and blame.
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Orrin Woodward
“
Seek the Blame; Give Away the Fame
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Miles Anthony Smith (Why Leadership Sucks™ Volume 1: Fundamentals of Level 5 Leadership and Servant Leadership)
“
If mistakes happen, effective leaders don’t place blame on others. They take ownership of the mistakes, determine what went wrong, develop solutions to correct those mistakes and prevent them from happening again as they move forward.
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Jocko Willink (The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win)
“
It isn't hard to find people who are caught up in Below the Line behavior. All you need to do is look for those whose first reaction is to blame (others), complain (about circumstances), and defend (yourself), or BCD.
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Urban Meyer (Above the Line: Lessons in Leadership and Life from a Championship Season)
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Blaming others for your situation may make you feel good, but it won’t improve your circumstances one bit.
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Frank Sonnenberg (Leadership by Example: Be a role model who inspires greatness in others)
“
Leaders inspire accountability through their ability to accept responsibility before they place blame.
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Courtney Lynch
“
Your haters may stage fake games that they know you cannot win so that you may fail and put that blame on you and in turn doubt yourself.
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Assegid Habtewold (The 9 Cardinal Building Blocks: For continued success in leadership)
“
A true Leader does not point fingers
A true Leader does not assign blame
A true Leader does not celebrate the mistakes of others
A true Leader points you in the right direction
A true Leader assigns praise however meager the task
A true Leader celebrates the accomplishments of his team
I true Leader Leads.
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Mark W. Boyer
“
Great leaders don't make excuses. They make things better. They are not unrealistic or blind to the difficulties they face. They simply are not discouraged by them. They never lose confidence that the problems can be solved. They maintain a positive attitude. Great leaders don't blame their people for not being where they ought to be; they take their people from where they are to where they need to be. Great leaders never lose faith that this is possible.
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Henry T. Blackaby (Spiritual Leadership)
“
Leaders begin with a different question than others. Replacing who can I blame with how am I responsible?
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Orrin Woodward
“
A society punishing a boy for stealing because he is otherwise unable to feed himself, would be hypocritical if not also blaming the instrument for not being tuned.
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Monaristw
“
Leaders learn more from blames than praises. Praises make them know what’s already done well; blames show them what’s yet to be done well.
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Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Ladder)
“
The best leaders don’t blame others. They own their actions and their outcomes.
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Mark Miller (The Heart of Leadership: Becoming a Leader People Want to Follow)
“
If you look in the mirror and don’t like what you see, don’t blame the mirror.
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Frank Sonnenberg (Leadership by Example: Be a role model who inspires greatness in others)
“
Every good-to-great company had Level 5 leadership during the pivotal transition years. • “Level 5” refers to a five-level hierarchy of executive capabilities, with Level 5 at the top. Level 5 leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitious, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves. • Level 5 leaders set up their successors for even greater success in the next generation, whereas egocentric Level 4 leaders often set up their successors for failure. • Level 5 leaders display a compelling modesty, are self-effacing and understated. In contrast, two thirds of the comparison companies had leaders with gargantuan personal egos that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company. • Level 5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results. They are resolved to do whatever it takes to make the company great, no matter how big or hard the decisions. • Level 5 leaders display a workmanlike diligence—more plow horse than show horse. • Level 5 leaders look out the window to attribute success to factors other than themselves. When things go poorly, however, they look in the mirror and blame themselves, taking full responsibility. The comparison CEOs often did just the opposite—they looked in the mirror to take credit for success, but out the window to assign blame for disappointing results.
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Jim Collins (Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't)
“
MY FIVE DOS FOR GETTING BACK INTO THE GAME:
1. Do expect defeat. It’s a given when the stakes are high and the competition is working ferociously to beat you. If you’re surprised when it happens, you’re dreaming; dreamers don’t last long.
2. Do force yourself to stop looking backward and dwelling on the professional “train wreck” you have just been in. It’s mental quicksand.
3. Do allow yourself appropriate recovery—grieving—time. You’ve been knocked senseless; give yourself a little time to recuperate. A keyword here is “little.” Don’t let it drag on.
4. Do tell yourself, “I am going to stand and fight again,” with the knowledge that often when things are at their worst you’re closer than you can imagine to success. Our Super Bowl victory arrived less than sixteen months after my “train wreck” in Miami.
5. Do begin planning for your next serious encounter. The smallest steps—plans—move you forward on the road to recovery. Focus on the fix.
MY FIVE DON’TS:
1. Don’t ask, “Why me?”
2. Don’t expect sympathy.
3. Don’t bellyache.
4. Don’t keep accepting condolences.
5. Don’t blame others.
”
”
Bill Walsh (The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership)
“
The common soldiers did not blame him for his excessive grief. They knew him. They knew his flaws. Indeed, I think they loved him all the more because he was flawed, as they were, and did not hide his passionate, blemished nature.
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Geraldine Brooks (The Secret Chord)
“
The White House elected to power in November 2008 campaigned on compelling promises of hope, change, and bringing the nation together. The reality it delivered for eight years was rather different: a brand of leadership that was narcissistic, aggressively secular, ideologically divisive, resistant to compromise, unwilling to accept responsibility for its failures, and generous in spreading blame. As
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Charles J. Chaput (Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World)
“
Self-serving leaders can literally get people killed. But in any society, leaders who aren’t willing to make sacrifices aren’t leaders, they’re opportunists, and opportunists rarely have the common good in mind. They’re easy to spot, though: opportunists live reflexively, blame others for failure, and are unapologetic cowards.
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Sebastian Junger (Freedom)
“
With families, I stopped creating encyclopedias of data about all their issues and began to search instead for the member with the greatest capacity to be a leader as I have defined it. That person generally turned out to be the one who could express himself or herself with the least amount of blaming and the one who had the greatest capacity to take responsibility for his or her own emotional being and destiny. I began to coach the “leader” alone, letting the rest of the family drop out and stay home. I stopped trying to get people to “communicate” or find better ways of managing their issues. Instead, I began to concentrate on helping the leader to become better defined and to learn how to deal adroitly with the sabotage that almost invariably followed any success in this endeavor. Soon I found that the rest of the family was “in therapy” whether or not they came into my office.
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Edwin H. Friedman (A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix)
“
Let's make a deal, if you don't blame me for your failures I won't take credit for your successes.
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Donavan Nelson Butler
“
When a kingdom rests on it, I always expect difficulty. Then, if there is none, no blame. But if there is, one is prepared.
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Geraldine Brooks (The Secret Chord)
“
Everybody wants to blame everybody else but no one wants to take responsibility for their own role in causing the problem!
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Todd G. Gongwer (Lead . . . for God's Sake!: A Parable for Finding the Heart of Leadership)
“
Every morning I look in the mirror and remind myself: "No one owes you sh*t!" In this way, I am never disappointed. Never placing blame.
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Brandi L. Bates
“
When we aren't curious in conversations we judge, tell, blame and even shame, often without even knowing it, which leads to conflict.
”
”
Kirsten Siggins (The Power of Curiosity: How to Have Real Conversations That Create Collaboration, Innovation and Understanding)
“
Amongst silly GAMES people play...BLAME is the poorest!
JUDGMENT comes a close second..CYNICISM is for losers..
#Games People Play
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Abha Maryada Banerjee (Nucleus - Power Women: Lead from the Core)
“
Kroldor’s men are going to blame him for the way things turned out,’ Hettar observed. ‘I know. But then, that’s one of the hazards of leadership.
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David Eddings (Magician's Gambit (The Belgariad, #3))
“
Blame keeps us stuck in the past. Responsibility paves the path for a better future. Blame
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Marilee G. Adams (Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 12 Powerful Tools for Leadership, Coaching, and Life)
“
Those five characteristics are: 1. Reactivity: the vicious cycle of intense reactions of each member to events and to one another. 2. Herding: a process through which the forces for togetherness triumph over the forces for individuality and move everyone to adapt to the least mature members. 3. Blame displacement: an emotional state in which family members focus on forces that have victimized them rather than taking responsibility for their own being and destiny. 4. A quick-fix mentality: a low threshold for pain that constantly seeks symptom relief rather than fundamental change. 5. Lack of well-differentiated leadership: a failure of nerve that both stems from and contributes to the first four. To reorient oneself away from a focus on technology toward a focus on emotional process requires that, like Columbus, we think in ways that not only are different from traditional routes but that also sometimes go in the opposite direction. This chapter will thus also serve as prelude to the three that follow, which describe the “equators” we have to cross in our time: the “learned” fallacies or emotional barriers that keep an Old World orientation in place and cause both family and institutional leaders to regress rather than venture in new directions.
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Edwin H. Friedman (A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix)
“
But leadership is about making the lives of others easier, not blaming them. Leadership is about the hard work of taking responsibility for how our actions and words affect the lives of others.
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L. David Marquet (Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say--and What You Don't)
“
The most feared situation is to end up inadvertently in the wrong place at the wrong time and get blamed. Yet this is exactly what happens in a structure that systematically diffuses responsibility. It is because managers fear blame-time that they diffuse responsibility; however such a diffusion inevitably means that someone, somewhere is going to become a scapegoat when things go wrong.
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Robert Jackall (Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers)
“
The true key, if you want to live an unstoppable life, then you need to take 100% control of your life. Stop blaming others for your failures and faults and start accepting responsibility for your life.
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Thomas Narofsky (You are Unstoppable!: Unleash Your Inspired Life)
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God, gather me5 to be with you as you are with me. Keep me in touch with myself, with my needs, my anxieties, my angers, my pains, my corruptions, that I may claim them as my own rather than blame them on someone else. O Lord, deepen my wounds into wisdom; shape my weaknesses into compassion; gentle my envy into enjoyment, my fear into trust, my guilt into honesty. O God, gather me to be with you as you are with me.
”
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Ruth Haley Barton (Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry (Transforming Resources))
“
The blame culture that still prevails in the majority of businesses works against this, as it causes “false reality syndrome” or “I will tell you what I think you want to hear, or what will keep me out of trouble.
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John Whitmore (Coaching for Performance Fifth Edition: The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership UPDATED 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION)
“
By telling you that you can transform your non-talents into talents, these less effective managers are not only setting you up to fail, they are intrinsically blaming you for your inevitable failure. This is perverse.
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Gallup Press (First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently)
“
What leadership? Tildy thought. The president had been almost entirely absent in the debate about how to deal with the contagion, except to blame the opposing party for ignoring public health needs before he took office.
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Lawrence Wright (The End of October)
“
Boat Crew Six had become comfortable with substandard performance. Working under poor leadership and an unending cycle of blame, the team constantly failed. No one took ownership, assumed responsibility, or adopted a winning attitude.
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Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
In democracies where the citizens may read, hear or say what they like, the leaders are no better and no worse than the followers. So perhaps, if we cannot blame the leaders because the job of peacemaking is a sorry mess, we can only blame ourselves.
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Martha Gellhorn (The Face of War)
“
TAKING 100% RESPONSIBILITY PROCESS STEP 1: Identify an issue/complaint about anything going on in your life. State the complaint in “unenlightened” terms. Be dramatic. Ham it up. Blame overtly. STEP 2: Step into 100% responsibility. Physically find a place in the room that represents your internal shift to being 100% responsible for the situation. STEP 3: Gain insight by completing these statements, repeating each of them several times, until you have what feels like a breakthrough: From the past this reminds me of… I keep this issue going by… What I get from keeping this issue going is… The lifelong pattern I’m noticing is… I can demonstrate 100% responsibility concerning this issue by… STEP 4: If during Step 3, you do not experience a shift, go back to Step 1 and repeat the process.
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Jim Dethmer (The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success)
“
When you as the leader fail to deal with sin in your own life, the people who work with you will soon lose confidence in you. If you are the leader, you must arm yourself for a lifetime of fighting against your natural tendencies toward self-indulgence and your proneness to blame others when you should assume responsibility.
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LeRoy Eims (Be a Motivational Leader: Lasting Leadership Principles)
“
Try This Counterintuitive Way To Be Well-Liked:
One of the biggest misconceptions about connecting is seeking, first, to be liked. In fact, the counterintuitive way to get someone to like you is in knowing this core truth: If they like the way they feel when around you, they will like you. In fact, they will project onto you the character traits they most like in others, even if you have not yet exhibited them.
Conversely, if they do not like the way they act when around you, they will instinctively blame you for it, regardless of the true reason. They will project onto you some of the qualities they most dislike in others. What's worse, they will go out of their way to prove they are right, even in ways that damage their reputation as well as yours.
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Kare Anderson (Mutuality Matters More Living a Happy, Meaningful and Satisfying Life With Others)
“
A leader must take responsibility for all his actions and not blame anyone for his problems. The follower, on the other hand, is always in search of a scapegoat or a miracle worker who can solve his problems. That is why leaders and followers complement each other. A leader is one who is willing to take on responsibility of not only his own failures but also that of his followers.
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Awdhesh Singh (The Secret Red Book of Leadership)
“
Racist stereotypes are used by politicians, policy makers, and the media to justify why certain groups of people should be treated the way that they are. It is easy to blame those in positions of leadership who drive racist stereotype narratives. But what about the narratives you are holding that continue to make it acceptable to allow people from other races to be talked about and treated the way they are?
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Layla F. Saad (Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor)
“
The trouble with the world is, like a planet full of little brats, everyone's going around constantly pointing the finger at everyone else as being to blame. Almost none look within and at themselves, and commence again from there.
At each and every level of day-to-day life, and just beneath the surface all the while, particularly in so-called leadership, though it's rarely if ever expressed - the immaturity of our age is utterly staggering.
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MuzWot
“
Kate leaned toward me. “What I need most when I’m in the box is to feel justified. Justification is what my box eats, as it were, in order to survive. And if I’d spent my whole night, and really a lot longer even than that, blaming my son, what did I need from my son in order to feel ‘justified,’ to feel ‘right’?” “You needed him to be wrong,” I said slowly, a knot forming in my stomach. “In order to be justified in blaming him, you needed him to be blame worthy.
”
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Arbinger Institute (Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box)
“
If you think about it all the successful people you know have 5 things in common:
1) They are focused
2) They are relentless
3) They are resourceful
4) They are flexible
5) They are constantly reinventing themselves - evolving, learning and growing
If you think about it all of the unsuccessful people you know have 5 things in common:
1) They are lazy
2) They complain, A LOT
3) They tend to blame everyone else for their situation
4) They are set in their ways
5) They know it all
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”
Germany Kent
“
Thus the pace, justification and mode of implementation of the genocide changed repeatedly from its inception in the summer of 1941. Examining the origins of 'the final solution' in terms of a process rather than a single decision uncovers a variety of impulses given by the Nazi leadership in general, and Hitler and Himmler in particular, to the fight against the supposed global enemy of the Germans. Overriding all of them, however, was the memory of 1918, the belief that the Jews, wherever and whoever they might be, threatened to undermine the German war effort, by engaging in subversion, partisan activities, Communist resistance movements and much else besides. What drove the exterminatory impulses of the Nazis, at every level of the hierarchy, was not the kind of contempt that stamped millions of Slavs as dispensable subhumans, but an ideologically pervasive mixture of fear and hatred, which blamed the Jews for all of Germany's ills, and sought their destruction as a matter of life and death, in the interests of Germany's survival.
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Richard J. Evans (The Third Reich at War (The History of the Third Reich, #3))
“
Often these approaches reflect the inverse of the habits of effective people. In fact, my brother, John Covey, who is a master teacher, sometimes refers to them as the seven habits of ineffective people: Be reactive: doubt yourself and blame others. Work without any clear end in mind. Do the urgent thing first. Think win/lose. Seek first to be understood. If you can’t win, compromise. Fear change and put off improvement. Just as personal victories precede public victories when effective people progress along the maturity continuum, so also do private failures portend embarrassing public failures when ineffective people regress along an
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Stephen R. Covey (Principle-Centered Leadership)
“
Indira was surrounded by people who had given up hope, who blamed their own misery on the influence of Christianity and western cultures, and yet, literally in the midst of squalor, her family had created a place of real beauty. It really makes you stop and think. Uncle Google should be spitting out eight hundred million things American schools have done right. The fact things are so screwed up makes no sense. If you believe Uncle Google, then we’ve done the exact opposite from Indira’s family—in the land of hope and plenty we’ve created a place that’s ugly. We have so much. Can things really be so bad? Maybe we can’t fix our schools because as individuals we’ve never truly been broken. Or maybe Chinese lanterns make everyone wax philosophical.
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Tucker Elliot (The Rainy Season)
“
The starting point of enlightenment, a goal that every person should strive for, is inner leadership. Leadership is far more than something businesspeople do at work. Leadership is all about personal responsibility, self-discovery, and creating value in the world by the people we become. Too many people spend their time blaming others for all that isn’t working in their lives. We blame our spouses for our unhappy home lives; we blame our bosses for our distress at work; we blame strangers on the freeway for making us angry; we blame our parents for keeping us small. Blame, blame, blame, blame. But blaming others is nothing more than excusing yourself. Blaming others for the current quality of your life is a sad way to live. In doing so, all you’re doing is playing the victim.
”
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Robin S. Sharma (The Saint, the Surfer, and the CEO: A Remarkable Story About Living Your Heart's Desires)
“
First and foremost,” says Harlowe. “In regard to the burning of the Vanderbilt Hotel, I want to make it clear how disgusted I am by the state of the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. This once-proud institution has become target practice for magicians two summers in a row. I blame this on a failure of leadership, and so I am relieving Chief Director Elizabeth Crowe of her duties, effective immediately. I will be stepping in to fill that position as well—” I’m just about to turn to Elsie to say how horrible this news is when the screen fades to black and Dylan Van Helsing’s face emerges, his bright red pupils piercing. My breath catches in my throat. “Dylan Van Helsing here to interrupt your regularly scheduled drivel. Ignore the silly faun—she can’t protect you any more than the last Prime Minister. Allow me to show you what real power looks like.
”
”
B.B. Alston (Amari and the Despicable Wonders (Supernatural Investigations #3))
“
As we leave our youth, there’s a pull toward complacency. We can start to coast, settle for what’s familiar and lose the juicy desire to expand our frontiers. We adopt the paradigm of a victim. We make excuses and then recite them so many times we train our subconscious mind to think they are true. We blame other people and outer conditions for our struggles, and we condemn past events for our private wars. We grow cynical and lose the curiosity, wonder, compassion and innocence we knew as kids. We become apathetic. Critical. Hardened. Within this personal ecosystem the majority of us create for ourselves, mediocrity then becomes acceptable. And because this mindset is running within us each day, the viewpoint seems so very real to us. We truly believe that the story we are running reveals the truth—because we’re so close to it. So, rather than showing leadership in our fields, owning our crafts by producing dazzling work and handcrafting delicious lives, we resign ourselves to average.
”
”
Robin S. Sharma (The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life)
“
When you’re married to the president, you come to understand quickly that the world brims with chaos, that disasters unfurl without notice. Forces seen and unseen stand ready to tear into whatever calm you might feel. The news could never be ignored: An earthquake devastates Haiti. A gasket blows five thousand feet underwater beneath an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana, sending millions of barrels of crude oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Revolution stirs in Egypt. A gunman opens fire in the parking lot of an Arizona supermarket, killing six people and maiming a U.S. congresswoman.
Everything was big and everything was relevant. I read a set of news clips sent by my staff each morning and knew that Barack would be obliged to absorb and respond to every new development. He’d be blamed for things he couldn’t control, pushed to solve frightening problems in faraway nations, expected to plug a hole at the bottom of the ocean. His job, it seemed, was to take the chaos and metabolize it somehow into calm leadership—every day of the week, every week of the year.
”
”
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
“
That’s why I wanted to use Supper at Six to teach chemistry. Because when women understand chemistry, they begin to understand how things work.” Roth looked confused. “I’m referring to atoms and molecules, Roth,” she explained. “The real rules that govern the physical world. When women understand these basic concepts, they can begin to see the false limits that have been created for them.” “You mean by men.” “I mean by artificial cultural and religious policies that put men in the highly unnatural role of single-sex leadership. Even a basic understanding of chemistry reveals the danger of such a lopsided approach.” “Well,” he said, realizing he’d never seen it that way before, “I agree that society leaves much to be desired, but when it comes to religion, I tend to think it humbles us—teaches us our place in the world.” “Really?” she said, surprised. “I think it lets us off the hook. I think it teaches us that nothing is really our fault; that something or someone else is pulling the strings; that ultimately, we’re not to blame for the way things are; that to improve things, we should pray.
”
”
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
“
Leadership is responsibility.
There comes a point when one must make a decision. Are YOU willing to do what it takes to push the right buttons to elevate those around you? If the answer is YES, are you willing to push the right buttons even if it means being perceived as the villain? Here's where the true responsibility of being a leader lies. Sometimes you must prioritize the success of the team ahead of how your own image is perceived. The ability to elevate those around you is more than simply sharing the ball or making teammates feel a certain level of comfort. It's pushing them to find their inner beast, even if they end up resenting you for it at the time.
I'd rather be perceived as a winner than a good teammate. I wish they both went hand in hand all the time but that's just not reality. I have nothing in common with lazy people who blame others for their lack of success. Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No excuses.
This is my way. It might not be right for YOU but all I can do is share my thoughts. It’s on YOU to figure out which leadership style suits you best.
Will check back in with you soon.. Till then
”
”
Anonymous
“
for the Labour Party – splendid news. That increasingly leftward bound organisation is in process of splitting, and Shirley Williams,fn31 Roy Jenkinsfn32 etc. will found a new Social Democratic Partyfn33 (this oddly repeats events in Oxford circa 1940 when I was chairman of the leftward bound Labour Club and Roy Jenkins led a group to found a new Social Democratic Club. How right he was!). It’s a pity about the Labour Party but given the whole scene the split is best. It is now official Labour policy to leave the Common Market and NATO! And unofficially are likely to abolish the House of Lords instantly and have no second chamber, abolish private schooling etc. And of course (this is perhaps the main point) to have the leadership under the control of the executive committee (and Labour activists in the constituencies) substituting party ‘democracy’ for parliamentary democracy. I blame Denis Healey and others very much for not reacting firmly earlier against the left. A crucial move was when the parliamentary party elected Michael Foot, that wet crypto-left snake, as leader instead of Denis. Now Denis and co. are left behind, complaining bitterly, to fight the crazy left. Shirley still hasn’t resigned from the party so it’s all a bit odd! ‘On your bike, Shirl,’ the lefty trade unionists shout at her!
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Iris Murdoch (Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995)
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end of the continuum are the ineffective people who transfer responsibility by blaming other people, events, or the environment—anything or anybody “out there” so that they are not responsible for results. If I blame you, in effect I have empowered you. I have given my power to your weakness. Then I can create evidence that supports my perception that you are the problem. At the upper end of the continuum toward increasing effectiveness is self-awareness: “I know my tendencies, I know the scripts or programs that are in me, but I am not those scripts. I can rewrite my scripts.” You are aware that you are the creative force of your life. You are not the victim of conditions or conditioning. You can choose your response to any situation, to any person. Between what happens to you and your response is a degree of freedom. And the more you exercise that freedom, the larger it will become. As you work in your circle of influence and exercise that freedom, gradually you will stop being a “hot reactor” (meaning there’s little separation between stimulus and response) and start being a cool, responsible chooser—no matter what your genetic makeup, no matter how you were raised, no matter what your childhood experiences were or what the environment is. In your freedom to choose your response lies the power to achieve growth and happiness.
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Stephen R. Covey (Principle-Centered Leadership)
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I will begin by describing the nature of an emotional regression and showing how in any society, no matter how advanced its state of technology, chronic anxiety can induce an approach to life that is counter-evolutionary. One does not need dictators in order to create a totalitarian (that, is totalistic) society. Then, employing five characteristics of chronically anxious personal families, I will illustrate how those same characteristics are manifest throughout the greater American family today, demonstrating their regressive effects on the thinking and functioning, the formation and the expression, of leadership among parents and presidents. Those five characteristics are: 1. Reactivity: the vicious cycle of intense reactions of each member to events and to one another. 2. Herding: a process through which the forces for togetherness triumph over the forces for individuality and move everyone to adapt to the least mature members. 3. Blame displacement: an emotional state in which family members focus on forces that have victimized them rather than taking responsibility for their own being and destiny. 4. A quick-fix mentality: a low threshold for pain that constantly seeks symptom relief rather than fundamental change. 5. Lack of well-differentiated leadership: a failure of nerve that both stems from and contributes to the first four. To
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Edwin H. Friedman (A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix)
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Chronic anxiety is systemic; it is deeper and more embracing than community nervousness. Rather than something that resides within the psyche of each one, it is something that can envelope, if not actually connect, people. It is a regressive emotional process that is quite different from the more familiar, acute anxiety we experience over specific concerns. Its expression is not dependent on time or events, even though specific happenings could seem to trigger it, and it has a way of reinforcing its own momentum. Chronic anxiety might be compared to the volatile atmosphere of a room filled with gas fumes, where any sparking incident could set off a conflagration, and where people would then blame the person who struck the match rather trying to disperse the fumes. The issues over which chronically anxious systems become concerned, therefore, are more likely to be the focus of their anxiety rather than its cause. This is why, for example, counselors, educators, and consultants who offer technical solutions for how to manage whatever brought the family in—conflict, money, parents, children, aging, sex—will rarely succeed in changing that family in any fundamental way. The anxiety that drives the problem simply switches to another focus. Assuming that what a family is worried about is what is “causing” its anxiety is tantamount to blaming a blown-away tree or house for attracting the tornado that uprooted it. As
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Edwin H. Friedman (A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix)
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From working with black males for more than a dozen years, I can say with confidence that many black males are both lazy and irresponsible. This view isn't popular with problem profiteers who blame all black woes upon white racism or poverty, but it is true, nonetheless.
The young men I work with represent just the tip of the iceberg of a far larger laziness problem within the black male population. The typical black male I work with has no work ethic, has little sense of direction in his life, is hostile toward whites and women, has an attitude of entitlement, and has an amoral outlook on life.
He has no strong male role model in his life to teach him the value of hard work, patience, self-control, and character. He is emotionally adrift and is nearly illiterate-either because he dropped out of school or because he's just not motivated enough to learn.
Many of the black males I've worked with have had a "don't give a damn" attitude toward work and life and believe that "white America" owes them a living. They have no shame about going on welfare because they believe whites owe them for past discrimination and slavery. This absurd thinking results in a lifetime of laziness and blaming, while taxpayers pick up the tab for individuals who lack character and a strong work ethic.
Frequently, blacks who attempt to enter the workforce often become problems for their employers. This is because they also have an entitlement mentality that puts little emphasis on working hard to get ahead. They expect to be paid for doing little work, often show up late, and have bad attitudes while on the job. They're so sensitized to
"racism" that they feel abused by every slight, no matter if it's intentional, unconscious, or even based in reality.
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Jesse Lee Peterson (Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America)
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Because when women understand chemistry, they begin to understand how things work.” Roth looked confused. “I’m referring to atoms and molecules, Roth,” she explained. “The real rules that govern the physical world. When women understand these basic concepts, they can begin to see the false limits that have been created for them.” “You mean by men.” “I mean by artificial cultural and religious policies that put men in the highly unnatural role of single-sex leadership. Even a basic understanding of chemistry reveals the danger of such a lopsided approach.” “Well,” he said, realizing he’d never seen it that way before, “I agree that society leaves much to be desired, but when it comes to religion, I tend to think it humbles us—teaches us our place in the world.” “Really?” she said, surprised. “I think it lets us off the hook. I think it teaches us that nothing is really our fault; that something or someone else is pulling the strings; that ultimately, we’re not to blame for the way things are; that to improve things, we should pray. But the truth is, we are very much responsible for the badness in the world. And we have the power to fix it.” “But surely you’re not suggesting that humans can fix the universe.” “I’m speaking of fixing us, Mr. Roth—our mistakes. Nature works on a higher intellectual plane. We can learn more, we can go further, but to accomplish this, we must throw open the doors. Too many brilliant minds are kept from scientific research thanks to ignorant biases like gender and race. It infuriates me and it should infuriate you. Science has big problems to solve: famine, disease, extinction. And those who purposefully close the door to others using self-serving, outdated cultural notions are not only dishonest, they’re knowingly lazy.
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Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
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That’s why I wanted to use Supper at Six to teach chemistry. Because when women understand chemistry, they begin to understand how things work.”
Roth looked confused.
“I’m referring to atoms and molecules, Roth,” she explained. “The real rules that govern the physical world. When women understand these basic concepts, they can begin to see the false limits that have been created for them.”
“You mean by men.”
“I mean by artificial cultural and religious policies that put men in the highly unnatural role of single-sex leadership. Even a basic understanding of chemistry reveals the danger of such a lopsided approach.”
“Well,” he said, realizing he’d never seen it that way before, “I agree that society leaves much to be desired, but when it comes to religion, I tend to think it humbles us—teaches us our place in the world.”
“Really?” she said, surprised. “I think it lets us off the hook. I think it teaches us that nothing is really our fault; that something or someone else is pulling the strings; that ultimately, we’re not to blame for the way things are; that to improve things, we should pray. But the truth is, we are very much responsible for the badness in the world. And we have the power to fix it.”
“But surely you’re not suggesting that humans can fix the universe.”
“I’m speaking of fixing us, Mr. Roth—our mistakes. Nature works on a higher intellectual plane. We can learn more, we can go further, but to accomplish this, we must throw open the doors. Too many brilliant minds are kept from scientific research thanks to ignorant biases like gender and race. It infuriates me and it should infuriate you. Science has big problems to solve: famine, disease, extinction. And those who purposefully close the door to others using self-serving, outdated cultural notions are not only dishonest, they’re knowingly lazy. Hastings Research Institute is full of them.
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Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
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Finally, Clement laid down a principle of Christian leadership and discipleship: “Therefore it is right for us, having studied so many and such great examples, to bow the neck and, adopting the attitude of obedience, to submit to those who are the leaders of our souls, so that by ceasing from this futile dissension we may attain the goal that is truly set before us, free from all blame.”4
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Roger E. Olson (The Story of Christian Theology)
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All that the world needs, is one, single, individual human, conscientious enough to take things seriously, not in a sad and desperate manner, rather in an involved, invincible and responsible manner. Why aren't you serious? Be serious - be serious or keep wailing and keep blaming, for what the world has become. You don't have the right to blame, if you don't do your part to lift the world up, from its grave of misery.
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Abhijit Naskar (Let The Poor Be Your God)
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After only eight months in office, Meadows made national headlines by sending an open letter to the Republican leaders of the House demanding they use the “power of the purse” to kill the Affordable Care Act. By then, the law had been upheld by the Supreme Court and affirmed when voters reelected Obama in 2012. But Meadows argued that Republicans should sabotage it by refusing to appropriate any funds for its implementation. And, if they didn’t get their way, they would shut down the government. By fall, Meadows had succeeded in getting more than seventy-nine Republican congressmen to sign on to this plan, forcing Speaker of the House John Boehner, who had opposed the radical measure, to accede to their demands. Meadows later blamed the media for exaggerating his role, but he was hailed by his local Tea Party group as “our poster boy” and by CNN as the “architect” of the 2013 shutdown. The fanfare grew less positive when the radicals in Congress refused to back down, bringing virtually the entire federal government to a halt for sixteen days in October, leaving the country struggling to function without all but the most vital federal services. In Meadows’s district, day-care centers that were reliant on federal aid reportedly turned distraught families away, and nearby national parks were closed, bringing the tourist trade to a sputtering standstill. National polls showed public opinion was overwhelmingly against the shutdown. Even the Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, a conservative, called the renegades “the Suicide Caucus.” But the gerrymandering of 2010 had created what Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker called a “historical oddity.” Political extremists now had no incentive to compromise, even with their own party’s leadership. To the contrary, the only threats faced by Republican members from the new, ultraconservative districts were primary challenges from even more conservative candidates. Statistics showed that the eighty members of the so-called Suicide Caucus were a strikingly unrepresentative minority. They represented only 18 percent of the country’s population and just a third of the overall Republican caucus in the House. Gerrymandering had made their districts far less ethnically diverse and further to the right than the country as a whole. They were anomalies, yet because of radicalization of the party’s donor base they wielded disproportionate power. “In previous eras,” Lizza noted, “ideologically extreme minorities could be controlled by party leadership. What’s new about the current House of Representatives is that party discipline has broken down on the Republican side.” Party bosses no longer ruled. Big outside money had failed to buy the 2012 presidential election, but it had nonetheless succeeded in paralyzing the U.S. government. Meadows of course was not able to engineer the government shutdown by himself. Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, whose 2012 victory had also been fueled by right-wing outside money, orchestrated much of the congressional strategy.
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Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
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All responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world, there's no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes, and admit failures. Take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.
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Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
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the failure of the established order of industrial society, and of the political classes who manage it, is becoming hard to ignore. Consider the way that the world’s leaders have reacted to the ongoing implosion of the global economy, or nearly any other recent crisis you care to name: in each case, it’s a broken-record sequence of understating the problem, trying to manage appearances, getting caught flatfooted by events, and struggling to load the blame for yet another round of failures onto anybody within reach. Rinse and repeat a few times, and even the most diehard supporters of the status quo start wishing that somebody, somewhere, would stand up and demonstrate some actual leadership.
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John Michael Greer (The Blood of the Earth: An essay on magic and peak oil)
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The key to letting go of negativity lies in our willingness to change our perspective and be proactive. It’s with this mindset that we’re able to persevere through difficult times and help others to do the same. Positivity is contagious, but it has to start with you. NO MORE EXCUSES…SERIOUSLY We make excuses all the time for a variety of reasons, mostly as a defense mechanism to protect ourselves from humiliation and criticism. Nobody wants to be cast in a negative light, so if there’s an opportunity to shift the blame without consequence, the decision seems obvious. Again, this all comes back to letting ourselves off the hook and deflecting accountability. It might be convenient, but it won’t get you very far in life. The same can be said for procrastination. Consider all the reasons why you put something off. You’re tired and would rather do the work another day. You’re afraid of what others might think if you don’t succeed. You don’t have all the answers, and that scares you. But this isn’t what we tell ourselves. Instead, we rationalize that it isn’t the right time to proceed with our plans.
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Jeff Hilderman (Clone Yourself: How to Overcome Bottleneck Leadership in 90 Days and Reclaim Your Freedom)
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Whenever he makes a mistake, he is the first to admit it and claim the blame. After one underperforming year, he told stockholders that they would have been better off if he had stayed at home all year instead of going to the office.
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Will Peters (Leadership Lessons: Warren Buffett, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Katharine Graham, Steve Jobs, and Ray Kroc)
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Regardless of life- which is full of obstacles and disappointments, we can make it to our dream place if we stop the blame game...
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Assegid Habtewold (The 9 Cardinal Building Blocks: For continued success in leadership)
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Accountability An executive in service, as I said in the first chapter, must be one who lives for today but cares nothing for tomorrow. If this is so, and he does what he has to do day-to-day, with zeal and thoroughness, so that nothing at all is left undone, he has no reason to feel any reproach or regret. But living in the moment of the day does not mean ignoring future consequences. Troubles arise when people rely on the future and become lazy and indolent and let things slide. They put off quite urgent affairs after a lot of discussion, not to speak of less important ones, in the belief that they will do just as well the next day. They push off this responsibility onto one comrade and blame another for shortcomings. And when trying to get someone to do something for them, if there is no one to assist, they leave it undone, so that before long there is a big accumulation of unfinished jobs. This is a mistake that comes from relying on the future against which one must be very definitely on one’s guard. For instance, some executives are never accountable enough to arrive on time for a meeting. These silly fellows waste time by having a smoke or chatting with their secretaries and colleagues when they ought to be starting, and so leave their office late. They then have to hurry so much that, as they walk or drive, they do not acknowledge with courtesy people they pass. And when they do get to their destination, they are all covered with perspiration and breathing heavily, and then have to make some plausible excuse for their lateness on account of some very urgent business they had to do. When an executive has a meeting, he never ought to be late for any private reason. And if one man takes care to be a little early and then has to wait a bit for a comrade who is late, he should not sit down and yawn, neither should he hurry away when his time is up as though reluctant to be there. For these things do not look at all well either.
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Don Schmincke (The Code of the Executive: Forty-seven Ancient Samurai Principles Essential for Twenty-first Century Leadership Success)
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(I say to my leadership, if you give me credit for the increase, you will give me blame for the decrease, so how about we just credit God?) Pastor,
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Jared C. Wilson (The Pastor's Justification: Applying the Work of Christ in Your Life and Ministry)
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It’s very easy to blame others, but very difficult to prove your ability.
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G.K. Dutta
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As Greg Savage points out in his article, “People don’t leave companies, they leave Leaders,’ when employees leave it’s not “the company” they blame. It’s not the location, or the team, or the database, or the air-conditioning. It’s the leadership!
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Gifford Thomas (The Inspirational Leader: Inspire Your Team To Believe In The Impossible)
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if there really is no way you can win, you never say it out loud. You assess why, change strategy, adjust tactics, and keep fighting and pushing till either you’ve gotten a better outcome or you’ve died. Either way, you never quit when your country needs you to succeed. As Team 5 was shutting down the workup and loading up its gear, our task unit’s leadership flew to Ramadi to do what we call a predeployment site survey. Lieutenant Commander Thomas went, and so did both of our platoon officers in charge. It was quite an adventure. They were shot at every day. They were hit by IEDs. When they came home, Lieutenant Commander Thomas got us together in the briefing room and laid out the details. The general reaction from the team was, “Get ready, kids. This is gonna be one hell of a ride.” I remember sitting around the team room talking about it. Morgan had a big smile on his face. Elliott Miller, too, all 240 pounds of him, looked happy. Even Mr. Fantastic seemed at peace and relaxed, in that sober, senior chief way. We turned over in our minds the hard realities of the city. Only a couple weeks from now we would be calling Ramadi home. For six or seven months we’d be living in a hornet’s nest, picking up where Team 3 had left off. It was time for us to roll. In late September, Al Qaeda’s barbaric way of dealing with the local population was stirring some of Iraq’s Sunni tribal leaders to come over to our side. (Stuff like punishing cigarette smokers by cutting off their fingers—can you blame locals for wanting those crazies gone?) Standing up for their own people posed a serious risk, but it was easier to justify when you had five thousand American military personnel backing you up. That’ll boost your courage, for sure. We were putting that vise grip on that city, infiltrating it, and setting up shop, block by block, house by house, inch by inch. On September 29, a Team 3 platoon set out on foot from a combat outpost named Eagle’s Nest on the final operation of their six-month deployment. Located in the dangerous Ma’laab district, it wasn’t much more than a perimeter of concrete walls and concertina wire bundling up a block of residential homes. COP Eagle’s
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Marcus Luttrell (Service: A Navy SEAL at War)
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General Electric was the largest company in the world in 2004, worth a third of a trillion dollars. It had either been first or second each year for the previous decade, capitalism’s shining example of corporate aristocracy. Then everything fell to pieces. The 2008 financial crisis sent GE’s financing division—which supplied more than half the company’s profits—into chaos. It was eventually sold for scrap. Subsequent bets in oil and energy were disasters, resulting in billions in writeoffs. GE stock fell from $40 in 2007 to $7 by 2018. Blame placed on CEO Jeff Immelt—who ran the company since 2001—was immediate and harsh. He was criticized for his leadership, his acquisitions, cutting the dividend, laying off workers and—of course—the plunging stock price. Rightly so: those rewarded with dynastic wealth when times are good hold the burden of responsibility when the tide goes out. He stepped down in 2017. But Immelt said something insightful on his way out. Responding to critics who said his actions were wrong and what he should have done was obvious, Immelt told his successor, “Every job looks easy when you’re not the one doing it.
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Morgan Housel (The Psychology of Money)
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To abuse and blame one another constantly cannot solve problems; they simply waste time and energy: To concentrate on the interests of the state and people and commitment to improving and achieving public welfare demonstrates the insight and foresight of a mature leadership.
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Ehsan Sehgal
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Apparently for bunch of cultural norms across the globe, women must exert twice the effort & absorb trice the hassle at the workplace to pave the way for their careers and make peace with the fact that as per tones of researches they will eventually be blamed! I just cannot accept that!
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Sally El-Akkad
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Israel is not the cause of Palestinian problems. In fact, no one has done more harm to the Palestinian people than their current leadership, whether it is Hamas in Gaza or the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Their main leadership technique is blaming Israel for every ill that befalls their people, thus abdicating their own responsibility.
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Aryeh Lightstone (Let My People Know: The Incredible Story of Middle East Peace—and What Lies Ahead)
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In a democracy, you cannot blame only a leading leader but also the entire leadership, including the voters' choice, if the party fails to fulfill its promises.
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Ehsan Sehgal
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To recap, the five dysfunctions of a team are as follows: Absence of Trust: Your co-workers are going to screw you over. Fear of Conflict: You’d call them on it, but you’re a pussy. Lack of Commitment: You stopped caring because you didn’t call them on it. Avoidance of Accountability: You blame your problems on your shit corporate culture that you helped create. Inattention to Results: You’ve got to screw them over first to fix this! So, you sabotage their department at the expense of the entire company.
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TOBO LEADERSHIP (A COMEDIC SUMMARY OF Patrick Lencioni's FIVE DYSFUNCTIONS OF A TEAM (Tobo Leadership))
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Rather than blaming people for their poor habits, Behavior Analysis focuses on altering the environment to help them succeed.
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Julie M. Smith (Vital Behavior Blueprint: 5 Steps to Embed Mission-Critical Habits into Your Organization's DNA)
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When the shit hit the fan, if everyone said "there, there" and made out it wasn't your fault, you just blamed yourself more. You needed to be an adult and step up, accept the responsibility and move on, or else you learned nothing and you got stuck in a spiral of self-doubt.
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Jez Cajiao
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Instead of blaming individuals for their poor habits, Behavior Analysis focuses on understanding observable behaviors and how the environment can be adjusted to support desired changes.
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Julie M. Smith (Vital Behavior Blueprint: 5 Steps to Embed Mission-Critical Habits into Your Organization's DNA)
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Chris Argyris, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, wrote a lovely article in 1977,191 in which he looked at the performance of Harvard Business School graduates ten years after graduation. By and large, they got stuck in middle management, when they had all hoped to become CEOs and captains of industry. What happened? Argyris found that when they inevitably hit a roadblock, their ability to learn collapsed: What’s more, those members of the organization that many assume to be the best at learning are, in fact, not very good at it. I am talking about the well-educated, high-powered, high-commitment professionals who occupy key leadership positions in the modern corporation.… Put simply, because many professionals are almost always successful at what they do, they rarely experience failure. And because they have rarely failed, they have never learned how to learn from failure.… [T]hey become defensive, screen out criticism, and put the “blame” on anyone and everyone but themselves. In short, their ability to learn shuts down precisely at the moment they need it the most.192 [italics mine] A year or two after Wave, Jeff Huber was running our Ads engineering team. He had a policy that any notable bug or mistake would be discussed at his team meeting in a “What did we learn?” session. He wanted to make sure that bad news was shared as openly as good news, so that he and his leaders were never blind to what was really happening and to reinforce the importance of learning from mistakes. In one session, a mortified engineer confessed, “Jeff, I screwed up a line of code and it cost us a million dollars in revenue.” After leading the team through the postmortem and fixes, Jeff concluded, “Did we get more than a million dollars in learning out of this?” “Yes.” “Then get back to work.”193 And it works in other settings too. A Bay Area public school, the Bullis Charter School in Los Altos, takes this approach to middle school math. If a child misses a question on a math test, they can try the question again for half credit. As their principal, Wanny Hersey, told me, “These are smart kids, but in life they are going to hit walls once in a while. It’s vital they master geometry, algebra one, and algebra two, but it’s just as important that they respond to failure by trying again instead of giving up.” In the 2012–2013 academic year, Bullis was the third-highest-ranked middle school in California.194
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Laszlo Bock (Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead)
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Archbishop Benson lived in a different era, but his rules for life carry relevance today: • Eagerly start the day’s main work. • Do not murmur at your busyness or the shortness of time, but buy up the time all around. • Never murmur when correspondence is brought in. • Never exaggerate duties by seeming to suffer under the load, but treat all responsibilities as liberty and gladness. • Never call attention to crowded work or trivial experiences. Before confrontation or censure, obtain from God a real love for the one at fault. Know the facts; be generous is your judgment. Otherwise, how ineffective, how unintelligible or perhaps provocative your well-intentioned censure may be. • Do not believe everything you hear; do not spread gossip. Do not seek praise, gratitude, respect, or regard for past service. • Avoid complaining when your advice or opinion is not consulted, or having been consulted, set aside. • Never allow yourself to be placed in favorable contrast with anyone. • Do not press conversation to your own needs and concerns. Seek no favors, nor sympathies; do not ask for tenderness, but receive what comes. • Bear the blame; do not share or transfer it. • Give thanks when credit for your own work or ideas is given to another.6
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J. Oswald Sanders (Spiritual Leadership: Principles of Excellence For Every Believer (Sanders Spiritual Growth Series))
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Now, as we’ve been talking about, in order to stay out of the box, it’s critical that we honor what our out-of-the-box sensibility tells us we should do for these people. However—and this is important—this doesn’t necessarily mean that we end up doing everything we feel would be ideal. For we have our own responsibilities and needs that require attention, and it may be that we can’t help others as much or as soon as we wish we could. In such cases, we will have no need to blame them and justify ourselves because we will still be seeing them as people that we want to help even if we are unable to help at that very moment or in the way we think would be ideal. We simply do the best we can under the circumstances. It may not be the ideal, but it will be the best we can do— offered because we want to do it.
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Arbinger Institute (Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box)