Compelling Leadership Quotes

A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel... he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men... a good ruler has to learn his world's language... it's different for every world... the language of the rocks and growing things... the language you don't hear just with your ears... the Mystery of Life... not a problem to solve, but a reality to experience... Understanding must move with the flow of the process.

There's got to be more to life than just living," Foyle said to the robot. "Then find it for yourself, sir. Don't ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts." "Why can't we all move forward together?" "Because you're all different. You're not lemmings. Some must lead, and hope that the rest will follow." "Who leads?" "The men who must...driven men, compelled men." "Freak men." "You're all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That's its hope and glory." "Thank you very much." "My pleasure, sir." "You've saved the day." "Always a lovely day somewhere, sir," the robot beamed. Then it fizzed, jangled, and collapsed.

Don't wait to be compelled to do great work.

The term 'black' was given a rebirth by the black youth revolt. As reborn, it does not refer to the particular color of any particular person, but to the attitude of pride and devotion to the race whose homeland from times immemorial was called 'The Land of the Blacks.' Almost overnight our youngsters made 'black' coequal with 'white' in respectability, and challenged the anti-black Negroes to decide on which side they stood. This was no problem for many who are light or even near-white in complexion, for they themselves were among the first to proclaim with pride, 'call me black!' Those who hate the term but hold the majority of leadership positions feel compelled to use it to protect their leadership roles.

Develop a compelling change vision that inspires employees with purpose and is aligned to the organisation’s strategy, values and beliefs

A company's vision often transcends the boardroom, and the company itself. A compelling vision can differentiate a company in the marketplace.

Listening is one of the most powerful, compelling ways to say, “You are a great person—I have confidence in you!

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.

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

So the German people clamored for order and leadership. But it was as though in the babble of their clamoring, they had summoned the devil himself, for there now rose up from the deep wound in the national psyche something strange and terrible and compelling. The Führer was no mere man or mere politician. He was something terrifying and authoritarian, self-contained and self-justifying, his own father and his own god. He was a symbol who symbolized himself, who had traded his soul for the zeitgeist. Germany wanted to restore its former glory, but the only means available was the debased language of democracy. So on January 30, 1933, the people democratically elected the man who had vowed to destroy the democratic government they hated. Hitler’s election to office destroyed the office.

Without a fresh perspective about pain, a compelling vision, and a clear plan, every heartache has the potential to stop you in your tracks.

Was Eve’s sin so much greater and more unforgivable than Adam’s that the entire female gender must forever be treated with suspicion and controlling measures?

Although data can make a compelling case for something, data rarely create the emotions needed to spur people into action

You can lead and motivate people without a certificate or title, what you need to do is to tell people a compelling secret that was only known to you.

Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the somber renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings. I mean long journeys across gray space. I mean danger, the edge of every void, the circumstance of one man imparting an erotic terror to the dreams of the republic. Understand the man who must inhabit these extreme regions, monstrous and vulval, damp with memories of violation. Even if half-mad he is absorbed into the public's total madness; even if fully rational, a bureaucrat in hell, a secret genius of survival, he is sure to be destroyed by the public's contempt for survivors. Fame, this special kind, feeds itself on outrage, on what the counselors of lesser men would consider bad publicity-hysteria in limousines, knife fights in the audience, bizarre litigation, treachery, pandemonium and drugs. Perhaps the only natural law attaching to true fame is that the famous man is compelled, eventually, to commit suicide. (Is it clear I was a hero of rock'n'roll?) Toward the end of the final tour it became apparent that our audience wanted more than music, more even than its own reduplicated noise. It's possible the culture had reached its limit, a point of severe tension. There was less sense of simple visceral abandon at our concerts during these last weeks. Few cases of arson and vandalism. Fewer still of rape. No smoke bombs or threats of worse explosives. Our followers, in their isolation, were not concerned with precedent now. They were free of old saints and martyrs, but fearfully so, left with their own unlabeled flesh. Those without tickets didn't storm the barricades, and during a performance the boys and girls directly below us, scratching at the stage, were less murderous in their love of me, as if realizing finally that my death, to be authentic, must be self-willed- a succesful piece of instruction only if it occured by my own hand, preferrably ina foreign city. I began to think their education would not be complete until they outdid me as a teacher, until one day they merely pantomimed the kind of massive response the group was used to getting. As we performed they would dance, collapse, clutch each other, wave their arms, all the while making absolutely no sound. We would stand in the incandescent pit of a huge stadium filled with wildly rippling bodies, all totally silent. Our recent music, deprived of people's screams, was next to meaningless, and there would have been no choice but to stop playing. A profound joke it would have been. A lesson in something or other. In Houston I left the group, saying nothing, and boarded a plane for New York City, that contaminated shrine, place of my birth. I knew Azarian would assume leadership of the band, his body being prettiest. As to the rest, I left them to their respective uproars- news media, promotion people, agents, accountants, various members of the managerial peerage. The public would come closer to understanding my disappearance than anyone else. It was not quite as total as the act they needed and nobody could be sure whether I was gone for good. For my closest followers, it foreshadowed a period of waiting. Either I'd return with a new language for them to speak or they'd seek a divine silence attendant to my own. I took a taxi past the cemetaries toward Manhattan, tides of ash-light breaking across the spires. new York seemed older than the cities of Europe, a sadistic gift of the sixteenth century, ever on the verge of plague. The cab driver was young, however, a freckled kid with a moderate orange Afro. I told him to take the tunnel. Is there a tunnel?" he said.

The religion department introduced me to the philosopher and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whose work resonated with me deeply. Niebuhr saw the evil in the world, understood that human limitations make it impossible for any of us to really love another as ourselves, but still painted a compelling picture of our obligation to try to seek justice in a flawed world.

Consider the following questions: • Who in your life “gets you” and doesn’t think you’re weak or strange when you wrestle with the complexities of your role? • Who listens to you without feeling compelled to give you advice? • Who asks second and third questions to draw you out instead of giving pat answers, simple prescriptions, and easy formulas? • Who is your safe haven so you can be completely honest and open? • Who fills your spiritual and emotional gas tank?

As full and equal partners Adam and Eve were responsible to tend the garden, to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, to subdue the earth, and to rule over the creatures. In other words, together they were given stewardship of the earth because they were equals.

There are, essentially, two compelling reasons why I believe the reading public should care about Fred and his work: First, he recognized the critical importance of learning during the earliest years. No one better understood how essential it is for proper social, emotional, cognitive, and language development to take place in the first few years of life. And no one did more to convince a mass audience in America of the value of early education. Second, he provided, and continues to provide, exemplary moral leadership. Fred Rogers advanced humanistic values because of his belief in Christianity, but his spirituality was completely eclectic; he found merit in all faiths and philosophies. His signature value was human kindness; he lived it and he preached it, to children, to their parents, to their teachers, to all of us everywhere who could take the time to listen.

The real value in setting goals is not in their achievement. The acquisition of the things you want is strictly secondary. The major reason for setting goals is to compel you to become the person it takes to achieve them. The greatest value is in the skills, knowledge, discipline and leadership

men have never seemed to object to women going off to difficult missionary assignments in the far corners of the earth. The matter of women preachers became a problem only when women wanted to be pastors back home, in the sometimes affluent neighborhoods that typically had churches pastored by men.

Most churches do not grow beyond the spiritual health of their leadership. Many churches have a pastor who is trying to lead people to a Savior he has yet to personally encounter. If spiritual gifting is no proof of authentic faith, then certainly a job title isn't either. You must have a clear sense of calling before you enter ministry. Being a called man is a lonely job, and many times you feel like God has abandoned you in your ministry. Ministry is more than hard. Ministry is impossible. And unless we have a fire inside our bones compelling us, we simply will not survive. Pastoral ministry is a calling, not a career. It is not a job you pursue. If you don’t think demons are real, try planting a church! You won’t get very far in advancing God’s kingdom without feeling resistance from the enemy. If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. Once a month I get away for the day, once a quarter I try to get out for two days, and once a year I try to get away for a week. The purpose of these times is rest, relaxation, and solitude with God. A pastor must always be fearless before his critics and fearful before his God. Let us tremble at the thought of neglecting the sheep. Remember that when Christ judges us, he will judge us with a special degree of strictness. The only way you will endure in ministry is if you determine to do so through the prevailing power of the Holy Spirit. The unsexy reality of the pastorate is that it involves hard work—the heavy-lifting, curse-ridden, unyielding employment of your whole person for the sake of the church. Pastoral ministry requires dogged, unyielding determination, and determination can only come from one source—God himself. Passive staff members must be motivated. Erring elders and deacons must be confronted. Divisive church members must be rebuked. Nobody enjoys doing such things (if you do, you should be not be a pastor!), but they are necessary in order to have a healthy church over the long haul. If you allow passivity, laziness, and sin to fester, you will soon despise the church you pastor. From the beginning of sacred Scripture (Gen. 2:17) to the end (Rev. 21:8), the penalty for sin is death. Therefore, if we sin, we should die. But it is Jesus, the sinless one, who dies in our place for our sins. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus died to take to himself the penalty of our sin. The Bible is not Christ-centered because it is generally about Jesus. It is Christ-centered because the Bible’s primary purpose, from beginning to end, is to point us toward the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the salvation and sanctification of sinners. Christ-centered preaching goes much further than merely providing suggestions for how to live; it points us to the very source of life and wisdom and explains how and why we have access to him. Felt needs are set into the context of the gospel, so that the Christian message is not reduced to making us feel better about ourselves. If you do not know how sinful you are, you feel no need of salvation. Sin-exposing preaching helps people come face-to-face with their sin and their great need for a Savior. We can worship in heaven, and we can talk to God in heaven, and we can read our Bibles in heaven, but we can’t share the gospel with our lost friends in heaven. “Would your city weep if your church did not exist?” It was crystal-clear for me. Somehow, through fear or insecurity, I had let my dreams for our church shrink. I had stopped thinking about the limitless things God could do and had been distracted by my own limitations. I prayed right there that God would forgive me of my small-mindedness. I asked God to forgive my lack of faith that God could use a man like me to bring the message of the gospel through our missionary church to our lost city. I begged God to renew my heart and mind with a vision for our city that was more like Christ's.

Professionalism is the grease that lubricates an organization’s functional gears. Of course, professionalism alone is inadequate to ensure business success. It must be accompanied by the leadership’s compelling vision for the business and the execution of a well thought-out strategic plan. Assuming these exist, the organization’s people will make the difference in the end.

It is especially important for Christian leaders to consider how they can lead in such a way that nonbelievers feel compelled to consider Jesus. “So far as it depends on you,” Scripture says, “live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18). Instead of using our platforms and influence to persuade other people of faith to take a moral stand against secular ethics, what if we focused on embodying Jesus’s Spirit-filled, life-giving ethics beautifully and compellingly?

While we were forming mobs to drive an Autherine Lucy [the black woman who integrated the University of Alabama in 1956] from an Alabama campus, the Russians were compelling ALL children to attend the best possible schools,” opined the Chicago Defender. Until the United States cured its “Mississippiitis”—that disease of segregation, violence, and oppression that plagued America like a chronic bout of consumption—the paper declared, it would never merit the position of world leadership.

Black newspapers and their readers wasted no time in making the link between America’s inadequacy in space and the dreadful conditions facing many black students in the South. “While we were forming mobs to drive an Autherine Lucy [the black woman who integrated the University of Alabama in 1956] from an Alabama campus, the Russians were compelling ALL children to attend the best possible schools,” opined the Chicago Defender. Until the United States cured its “Mississippiitis”—that disease of segregation, violence, and oppression that plagued America like a chronic bout of consumption—the paper declared, it would never merit the position of world leadership. An editorial in the Cleveland Call and Post

The more the State of Israel relied on force to manage the occupation, the more compelled it was to deploy hasbara. And the more Western media consumers encountered hasbara, the more likely they became to measure Israel’s grandiose talking points against the routine and petty violence, shocking acts of humiliation, and repression that defined its relationship with the Palestinians. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a professional explainer who spent the early years of his political career as a frequent guest on prime time American news programs perfecting the slickness of the Beltway pundit class, the Israeli government invested unprecedented resources into hasbara. Once the sole responsibility of the Israeli foreign ministry, the task of disseminating hasbara fell to a special Ministry of Public Diplomacy led by Yuli Edelstein, a rightist settler and government minister who called Arabs a “despicable nation.” Edelstein’s ministry boasted an advanced “situation room,” a paid media team, and coordination of a volunteer force that claimed to include thousands of volunteer bloggers, tweeters, and Facebook commenters fed with talking points and who flood social media with hasbara in five languages. The exploits of the propaganda soldiers conscripted into Israel’s online army have helped give rise to the phenomenon of the “hasbara troll,” an often faceless, shrill and relentless nuisance deployed on Twitter and Facebook to harass public figures who expressed skepticism of official Israeli policy or sympathy for the Palestinians.

A common behavior is to feel compelled to start improving the value stream at the micro level and focus on reducing process time. However, an interesting phenomenon occurs when teams maintain a macro perspective: process time reductions become a by-product of addressing the IT systems and barriers to flow at a macro level. The facilitator may frequently need to redirect the team to help them stay focused on the macro and eliminate the easy-to-see waste within the value stream. Going into the weeds (process-level analysis) comes later as you execute the transformation plan and define and document standard work via smaller PDSA cycles.

The CIO is a leadership role, in its best form; leadership is about creating a powerful future that is compelling in the present.

INPUTS: Stated succinctly, what is the clear and compelling purpose for the system? OUTPUTS: What are the meaningful outcomes you are committed to achieving? FEEDBACK: To what degree does your feedback process allow you to manage the inputs and improve the outputs on a consistent basis? In what ways has your “systems intelligence” grown?

Lucitta knew Russian politics, and discussed how Trotsky was compelled by Stalin’s régime to deny many of his beliefs. It seemed that Mella, believing in one’s own personal independence, developed an interest in Trotsky’s philosophy. Basically, Trotsky believed that an international revolution should be initiated by the people, and that Communism wouldn’t succeed if it were only in one country surrounded by capitalistic states. Stalin countered that Marxism should be concentrated and strengthened under strong leadership in one country, which was the case in Russia. It didn’t help Trotsky’s cause within the Communist Party, when he contended that Stalinism in reality was “Tyranny disguised as Communism.

Niebuhr saw the evil in the world, understood that human limitations make it impossible for any of us to really love another as ourselves, but still painted a compelling picture of our obligation to try to seek justice in a flawed world.

belief in the product may be the single most compelling factor in that exchange of trust we call a sale.

The new leadership structure in the quarter revealed the complexity of intra- (and inter-) plantation politics and economies. Diverse origins and competing ambitions fractured plantations and neighborhoods as often as they created new solidarities. Differences among slaves fueled powerful and often deadly disputes - rivalries rooted in petty accumulations of wealth or the other small rewards of plantation life. Still other conflicts arose between older residents and new arrivals. Slaveholders became maestros at recognizing and manipulating these rivalries, seizing upon their slaves' diverse personalities, abilities, aspirations, and petty jealousies to promote one individual, family, or faction at the expense of others. Planters understood that small privileges distributed to slaves could reap large advantages for themselves. But, if masters appreciated the strategy of divide and conquer, slaves also understood that, despite their internal differences, they had a common foe whose power knew few bounds and whose compunctions about using it had even fewer limitations. Fear from above, as well as common experience, compelled slaves to stand together, and as they did, the terrain of struggle between master and slave shifted once again.

It comes out better if one persuades rather than compels. Let me suggest to the reader that the assumptions be examined—both about the making of profit and about undertaking to compel service by law. Is all that we want from profit-making business the lowest price we can exact? In my own efforts to help business to become more serving I feel that I am contending with a popular view that price is all.

When I daily admit how needy I am, daily meditate on the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and daily feed on the restorative wisdom of his Word, I am propelled to share with others the grace that I am daily receiving at the hands of my Savior. There simply is no set of exegetical, homiletical, or leadership skills that can compensate for the absence of this in the life of a pastor. It is my worship that enables me to lead others to worship. It is my sense of need that leads me to tenderly pastor those in need of grace. It is my joy in my identity in Christ that leads me to want to help others live in the middle of what it means to be “in Christ.” In fact, one of the things that makes a sermon compelling is that the preacher is worshiping his way through his own sermon.

a picture of a future you seek to create, described in the present tense, as if it were happening now. A statement of ‘our vision’ shows where we want to go, and what it will be like when we get there... The more richly detailed and visual the image is, the more compelling it will be. Because of its tangible and immediate quality, a vision gives shape and direction to the organization’s future. And it helps people set goals to take the organization closer. It

The best leaders think broadly and act directly. The best leaders articulate a clear and compelling vision. The best leaders model the ethics and the values and the behaviors that the company stands for. “As the leadership goes in this regard, so goes the health of the company” (Interview with Mike Irizarry, 12/19/22). The best leaders deliver.

Let’s consider changing the word “motivated” to “inspired.” Here’s why: if your challenge as the leader is to motivate people, I would argue that you’ve got the wrong people. People who need daily motivating require a cheerleader; your role as the leader is not to lead cheers. Your role is to create an environment where each individual can do great work in service of something bigger than themselves. Creating such an environment requires that you as the leader have and can articulate a compelling vision of the future and a compelling vision of the value of the work that you’re asking your team to do. Creating such an environment requires that you as the leader can articulate the value that each person on the team brings to that team. Creating such an environment requires that you as the leader understand what “value” means to each person on your team, how they define it, how they view it, where they see it, and where they don’t see it. You as the leader need to know, and enable, each person on your team to connect themselves to the value of the work in front of them. That’s inspirational leadership.

You have a passionate, unfiltered, messy, provocative discussion that ends when the leader of the team decides all the information has been aired. At that point, if no one has made a compelling enough argument for making a decision, the leader breaks the tie.

Thucydides tells us that prior to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War an Athenian citizen informed the Spartan assembly that Athens was animated by three of the strongest motives - fear, interest, and honor. Among other things this is a statement on the enduring motivations of humanity. Fear and interest are understandably compelling; the idea of honor is less clear. Honor can be expressed in terms of reputation, respect, prestige, fame, pride, and esteem. When the ideas of fear, interest, and honor intersect people become exceptionally motivated. Fear of punishment produces only so much effort as to alleviate the threat of punishment. Monetary or other material interest engenders only enough effort to achieve the reward. When the ideas of honor become involved people are motivated to exceed expectations - they go "above and beyond the call of duty.

There ought to be an opportunity when someone is working on a particular problem or issue, that they can come in and say, “Look, I’m not here to get the answer; I’m here to discuss an issue, and I’d like to be able to pick your brain but not feel compelled to do what you tell me. Let’s talk through the problem. You’ve had lots of different experiences; you’ve been around in the world longer. Let me take the best and leave the rest. Let me just pick your brain.” That is a valuable thing in a reporting relationship that rarely gets used. RAY VIAULT, VICE CHAIRMAN, GENERAL MILLS

The power to compel is not the same thing as leadership, and one does inspire the other. You are not a leader, Walters, you are a bully and a coward of the worst kind. the fear you believe you inspire is merely the fear in which you constantly live, and it undermines the very leadership you profess to have. Strip a bully of his pulpit and he becomes a cowering, quivering thing... You will never lose the fear because it defines you, and the very things you seek to annihilate will be those which ultimately destroy you.

I use your trust in me to compel that will to action. That’s leadership.

US Military Was Prepared to Act in Benghazi Contrary to what the Obama administration has told the American people, the US military was poised and ready to respond immediately and forcefully against terrorists in Benghazi, Libya. That’s what we learned in December 2015 from an email exchange from then–Department of Defense Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash to State Department leadership immediately offering “forces that could move to Benghazi” during the terrorist attack on Benghazi. In an email sent to top Department of State officials, at 7:19 p.m. ET, only hours after the attack had begun, Bash says, “we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.” The Obama administration redacted the details of the military forces available, oddly citing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemption that allows the withholding of “deliberative process” information. The Obama administration and Clinton officials hid this compelling Benghazi email for years. The email makes readily apparent that the military was prepared to launch immediate assistance that could have made a difference, at least at the CIA annex. The fact that the Obama Administration withheld this email for so long only worsens the scandal of Benghazi.

Behold a unique individualist employing thousands all over the world and influencing the masses as a media phenomenon. Even in the early stages of campaigning for the Republican Party’s nomination, news that Trump was about to have a press conference or deliver a speech in a stadium compelled cable TV networks stop whatever they were broadcasting, cancel their advertisement time, and give Trump—LIVE—their complete attention until his speech was over. Who else gets such treatment? A mensch possessing intuitive Uranian synchronicity with success. He’s plugged into life’s universal rules of how you win, how to transform your weaknesses into strengths and get things done you want done. When you’re Trump you make magic in part because you are a flexible Gemini riding Green-Hornet colored Uranus, adapting your ideas to unexpected changes. You can evolve them inasmuch as cardinal (leadership) and mutable planetary positioning influences your astrology

A leader is someone who has the capacity to create a compelling vision that takes people to a new place, and to translate that vision into action. 

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.” Hardship is what makes the story of our lives more compelling in the telling. The

Variety is the Spice of Life. Voices come in all shapes, tones, and sizes. Some are compelling and effective, while others are grating and agitating.

Neen James (NeenJames.com) is an eloquent and successful international speaker who stands at four-feet-eleven with a rich Australian dialect and a high-pitched voice. For years, fellow speakers with good intentions told her she needed to take voice lessons to lower her pitch to give her more depth for a compelling stage presence. With complete confidence and loyalty to her uniqueness, she ignored the naysayers and her amazing signature voice has become a powerful brand.

public statements condemning segregation, sharply worded telegrams to Washington, and meetings with White House officials—were demonstrably ineffectual. New and more dramatic measures were in order. Mass action, Randolph reasoned, would be required, and he proposed a protest of 10,000 black people marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to demand an end to segregation in the armed forces and exclusion from jobs in the defense industry. Drawing on community organizing and protest networks developed during the 1920s and 1930s, this would be a broad, national mobilization of African Americans. The substance of their demand would be full and equal participation in the national defense effort, and the form of the demand would be a mass mobilization designed to compel the federal government to action. The MOWM, in effect, pioneered the type of protest politics that was used to considerable effect during the civil rights movement to push the federal government to enforce or enact African American citizenship rights. Randolph announced the March on Washington proposal in a January 1941 statement to the press. He declared that “power and pressure do not reside in the few, and intelligentsia, they lie in and flow from the masses.… Power is the active principle of only the organized masses, the masses united for a definitive purpose.” 19 Two months later Randolph issued the official call for the march, set for July 1, 1941. Drawing on his standing as a prominent black leader, and especially as the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), Randolph made his case that the time was right. “In this period of power politics, nothing counts but pressure, more pressure, and still more pressure,” he wrote in the call to march. “To this end we propose that 10,000 Negroes MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOR JOBS IN NATIONAL DEFENSE AND EQUAL INTEGRATION IN THE FIGHTING FORCES.” 20 To coordinate this massive effort, organizers established a March on Washington Committee, headed by Randolph, along with a sponsoring committee and regional committees in cities across the country. Galvanized by a rising desire for action within black communities, the idea found enthusiastic approval in the black press and eventually won the endorsement of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Urban League, and other elements of black leadership. 21 By the end of May, Randolph estimated that 100,000 black Americans would march. A national grassroots movement was afoot, and Randolph grew even more confident in his vision for the demonstration. “Let the Negro masses march!” he declared. “Let the Negro masses speak!” 22

It is not the rights of women to occupy “official” ministerial roles, nor their equality to men in those roles, that set the terms of their service to God and their neighbors. It is their obligations that do so—obligations that derive from their human abilities empowered by divine gifting.

The evangelical position, represented by the personal stories in this book, including my own, understands that a fully authoritative Bible supports the freedom of women under Christ without male supervision to follow their God-given callings and special gifts of the Spirit, including full leadership ministries. This view can be called the “inclusive” view of ministry

she was given a dying Sunday evening women’s class in a megachurch. The class began to grow rapidly. The women then began to bring their husbands, who gladly listened to Mom teach until the pastor stepped in to stop it!

Instead of worrying about hypothetical slippages awaiting egalitarian believers, like sliding into secular feminism, theological liberalism, or homosexuality, they would do better to deal with brutal violations of their “family values” that are actually happening today within their hierarchy-driven allegedly Christian homes.

In the history of the United States, we find that women were regularly preachers on the American frontier. Ironically, Baptists, who in some fundamentalist churches now bar women ministers, had more female preachers than any other denomination. Women pastored almost half of all Baptist churches in the state of Maine in the mid-nineteenth century. This was also the case in almost half of the Baptist churches in Michigan and Wisconsin.

I felt responsible to use my gifts, but in future churches, that pointed in the direction of children’s or music ministry. But, like many women in the church whom I knew, I felt neither a call nor a predisposition to children or song.

post-war redomestication of women was the watchword in the wider culture. As a result, the 1950s historically reflect the period when a growing middle class enabled the most widespread imposition of the nineteenth-century Doctrine of Separate Spheres.24

How I changed my mind about women in leadership came through the gradual piling up of anomalies against a powerful but unsustainable paradigm.

Leaders, no matter what their religious or philosophical convictions are, feel the promptings of the natural moral law, compelling them to do good and avoid evil. Leaders are, of course, as subject to sinful inclinations as anyone else. But they know that if they habitually practice virtue, they will strengthen their character and overcome their flaws.

The Brotherhood gambled on the ‘pious wings in the movement’ (the words of Hassan Al-Tuhami, one of the closest members of the coup's leadership to the Brotherhood), and in so doing, positioned itself as a strategic opponent of Nasser (who at the time – the second half of 1953 – was sidelining all the coup's leaders who were not personally loyal to him). The chain of events led to a bitter confrontation between Nasser and the Brotherhood. In 1954 Nasser accused the Brotherhood's ‘secret apparatus’ of perpetrating an attempt on his life that had just taken place in Alexandria. Soon after, the Brotherhood was officially abolished, scores of its members were imprisoned and thousands were compelled to leave Egypt.

In essence, the apostle is the one who is most likely to facilitate the emergence of communitas, a particular kind of community that is shaped and formed around a challenge or compelling task.

Instead of using our platforms and influence to persuade other people of faith to take a moral stand against secular ethics, what if we focused on embodying Jesus’s Spirit-filled, life-giving ethics beautifully and compellingly?

they simply define a high-performing team as: ‘A small group of people so committed to something larger than themselves that they will not be denied’ (p 259). This simple but powerful statement provides a provocative challenge to all those who want to lead or coach high-performing teams: how to help the team discover its compelling purpose that will engender the passion and commitment to fulfil it.

Unmanaged” deconstructs the discipline of management and makes the compelling case that knowledge workers perform much more effectively for “Humble Gardeners” than “Angry Ranchers.” With decades of experience working with hundreds of professional service firms, Jack Skeels presents a convincing case for how the chronically misunderstood agile framework can produce transformational results.

Rather, the key is in inspiring a clear, consistent, and compelling structure of accountability that keeps employees engaged in their work, receptive toward accountability, and resourceful toward results.

Using outdated methods of triggering traditional accountability with your team compels them to avoid instead of engage, become discouraged instead of empowered, stuck instead of innovative, and resentful instead of inspired.

You need to have a strong, compelling vision if you want to reach for the impossible things in your life. Thinking: "I will never get out of debt" or "I will never be in a healthy relationship" keeps us stuck in limiting beliefs. What if the opposite was true?

Great leaders have a compelling vision for the future that persuades others to follow them through thick and thin.

Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology. When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible. At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales. Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day. We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform. Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.[431]

Leadership is more about providing and communicating a compelling vision, inspiring and motivating people, and, when necessary, helping the organization change by reallocating resources and changing the systems and structures. Management is ensuring that the trains run on time; leadership is about ensuring that they are headed to the right destination. Management is about execution; leadership is about strategy and change.

Our best leaders recognize that leadership has nothing to do with position or power. Your followers want to know where you are going to take them. Casting a compelling vision is critical to your success. Your followers need a reason to go where you are going. Leadership is not about managing things as they are today. Leadership is about transforming reality into your vision for a better tomorrow.

Everyone walking this planet has a compelling God-given purpose. It’s unique to you. No one else can pull it off. It’s yours. It fulfills your deepest need for significance.

Human nature compels us to pursue audacious goals, to reach beyond our comfort zones and explore the frontier of our limits. To reach for our individual greatness.

One of the most challenging tasks in life is enduring the leadership of a fool, being compelled to sit and listen, even when you're acutely aware of their absolute incompetence.

Why should our customers buy from us over anyone else?” That’s it. It’s disarmingly simple. But that one question can take your entire commercial leadership team to a very dark place as you realize it’s much harder to answer than you might have thought. In fact, most companies can’t answer it, at least not in a way that’s compelling to customers (again, being “innovative,” “customer-focused,” and “solutions-oriented” doesn’t count).

If we want better and more effective organizations and societies, we first and foremost need to improve the quality of our leaders. Compelling evidence suggests that leadership is more likely to improve if we start drawing more heavily from the female talent pool, especially if we understand that the women most likely to drive positive change look quite different from the typical leaders we have today, irrespective of gender. But even more critically, we must put in place much bigger obstacles for the disproportionate glut of incompetent men who are so adept at becoming leaders, to everyone’s peril.

We owe to those we lead a level of communication that goes beyond saying things once, and we owe them the time and creativity to make those communications clear and reasonable and compelling. The grace of our words, the urgency that synergizes, and the repetition that reminds—these things are our responsibility.

Without cultural change, we are hopeless to change existing results.5 Of all changes, cultural change is the most difficult. It is essentially changing the collective DNA of an entire group of people. To understand how to change culture, it is helpful to know how change works in general. Changing Church Culture Change is extremely difficult. One of the most vivid and striking examples of this painful reality is the inability of heart patients to change even when confronted with grim reality. Roughly six hundred thousand people have a heart bypass each year in the United States. These patients are told they must change. They must change their eating habits, must exercise, and quit smoking and drinking. If they do not, they will die. The case for change is so compelling that they are literally told, “Change or die.”6 Yet despite the clear instructions and painful reality, 90 percent of the patients do not change. Within two years of hearing such brutal facts, they remain the same. Change is that challenging for people. For the vast majority of patients, death is chosen over change. Yet leadership is often about change, about moving a group of people to a new future. Perhaps the most recognized leadership book on leading an organization to change is John Kotter’s Leading Change. And when ministry leaders speak or write about leadership, they often look to the wisdom found in the book of Nehemiah, as it chronicles Nehemiah’s leadership in rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. Nehemiah led wide-scale change. Nehemiah never read Kotter’s book, and he led well without it. The Lord well equipped Nehemiah for the task of leading God’s people. But it is fascinating to see how Nehemiah’s actions mirror much of what Kotter has observed in leaders who successfully lead change. With a leadership development culture in mind, here are the eight steps for leading change, according to Kotter, and how one can see them in Nehemiah’s leadership. 1. Establish a sense of urgency. Leaders must create dissatisfaction with an ineffective status quo. They must help others develop a sense of angst over the brokenness around them. Nehemiah heard a negative report from Jerusalem, and it crushed him to the point of weeping, fasting, and prayer (Neh. 1:3–4). Sadly, the horrible situation in Jerusalem had become the status quo. The disgrace did not bother the people in the same way that it frustrated Nehemiah. After he arrived in Jerusalem, he walked around and observed the destruction. Before he launched the vision of rebuilding the wall, Nehemiah pointed out to the people that they were in trouble and ruins. He started with urgency, not vision. Without urgency, plans for change do not work. If you assess your culture and find deviant behaviors that reveal some inaccurate theological beliefs, you must create urgency by pointing these out. If you assess your culture and find a lack of leadership development, a sense of urgency must be created. Leadership development is an urgent matter because the mission the Lord has given us is so great.

2. Form a guiding coalition. Effectively leading change requires a community of people, a group aligned on mission and values and committed to the future of the organization. Nehemiah enlisted the wisdom and help of others. He invited others to participate in leading the effort to rebuild the wall. As you diagnose the culture in your church, do not lead alone. Change will not happen with one lone voice. It is foolish for leaders to attempt to lead alone, and insanity for leaders to attempt to lead change alone. 3. Develop a vision and strategy. Vision attracts people and drives action. Without owning and articulating a compelling vision for the future, leaders are not leading. The vision Nehemiah articulated to the people was simple and compelling: “Let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.” Nehemiah wisely rooted the action of building the wall with visionary language: “We are the people of God and should not be in disgrace.” The vision to build leaders is more challenging than building a wall, but the motivation is the same: “We are the people of God. We must spread His fame to all spheres of life and to the ends of the earth.” 4. Communicate the vision. Possessing a vision for change is not sufficient; the vision must be communicated effectively. Without great communication, a vision is a mere dream. Nehemiah communicated the vision personally through behavior and to others through his words. Besides his communication, Nehemiah embodied the vision. His commitment to it was clear to all. He traveled many miles and risked much to be in Jerusalem instigating change. He continued to press on toward the completion of the vision despite ridicule (Neh. 6:3). Vision is stifled when the leader preaches something different than he lives. If a church is going to effectively communicate the vision to develop and deploy leaders, this vision must own the leaders. It must compel you to personally pour your life into others.

A person who causes you to react controls you. A person who compels you to think and consider doing differently influences you.

Here’s the brutal truth: Not everyone in your organization will share your vision. The responsibility that you have as the leadership team is to share your V/TO and inspire your people with a compelling vision. As long as they understand it, they want to be a part of it, and their actions perpetuate the vision, they share it. The ones that don’t will stand out by contrast. Most of the time, they’ll leave before you have to let them go. But as a good manager, you’ll be doing them and others in the company a disservice by keeping them around. You may have to help free up the futures of the ones that don’t willingly leave.

A common behavior is to feel compelled to start improving the value stream at the micro level and focus on reducing process time. .. redirect the team to help them stay focused on the macro and eliminate the easy-to-see waste within the value stream

progressives. Nobody expects otherwise. In early May, Knut M. Wittkowski, who specialized in biostatistics and epidemiology for twenty years at Rockefeller University, posted a video on YouTube. He offered sane and sober arguments against the American lockdown. YouTube memory-holed it.20 In April, when Wittkowski first began speaking out, his former employer felt compelled to respond, announcing that his views “do not represent the views of The Rockefeller University, its leadership, or its faculty.”21 Now, that normally goes without saying. We’re not aware of any university that says their faculty speak for it. But in the age of social mania, many universities fear the diverse and critical dialog that used to be the essence of higher education. Evidently, Rockefeller University is one of them.

For cohesive teams, meetings are compelling and vital. They are forums for asking difficult questions, challenging one another’s ideas, and ultimately arriving at decisions that everyone agrees to support and adhere to, in the best interests of the company.

Wherever you’re working is where you take a stand. You don’t have to go looking for new places, other issues, compelling causes.

In early May, Knut M. Wittkowski, who specialized in biostatistics and epidemiology for twenty years at Rockefeller University, posted a video on YouTube. He offered sane and sober arguments against the American lockdown. YouTube memory-holed it.20 In April, when Wittkowski first began speaking out, his former employer felt compelled to respond, announcing that his views “do not represent the views of The Rockefeller University, its leadership, or its faculty.”21 Now, that normally goes without saying. We’re not aware of any university that says their faculty speak for it. But in the age of social mania, many universities fear the diverse and critical dialog that used to be the essence of higher education. Evidently, Rockefeller University is one of them.

God creates man and woman to cherish their shared equality while complementing their various differences..Most people view marriage as a means of self-fulfillment accompanied by sexual satisfaction..The husband is the head of his wife? Wives should submit to their husbands? Are you serious?.In our limited understanding, we hear [these] words and we recoil in disgust..As soon as we hear the word submission alongside the previous picture of headship, we immediately think in terms of inferiority and superiority, subordination and domination..God made clear from the start that men and women are equal in dignity, value and worth..[submission] means to yield to another in love..The three persons of the Trinity are equally diving..Yet the Son submits to the Father..this doesn't mean that God the Father is dominating and that God the Son is cruelly forced into compulsory subordination. Rather, the Son gladly submits to the Father in the context of close relationship..submission is not a burden to bear..Onlookers will observe a wife joyfully and continually experiencing her husband's sacrificial love for her..the world will realize that following Christ is not a matter of duty. Instead, it is a means to full, eternal, and absolute delight..the first sin occurred..as a response to a gender-specific test..the man sits silently by-- like a wimp..the man has the audacity to blame his wife..the first spineless abdication of a man's responsibility to love, serve, protect, and care for his wife..Sure, through a job a man provide[s] for the physical needs of his wife, but..that same job often prevents him from providing for her spiritual, emotional, and relational needs..He never asks how she feels, and he doesn't know what's going on in her heart. He may think he's a man because of his achievements at work and accomplishments in life, but in reality he's acting like a wimp who has abdicated his most important responsibility on earth: the spiritual leadership of his wife..The work of Satan in Genesis 3 is a foundational attack not just upon humanity in general but specifically upon men, women, and marriage..For husbands will waffle back and forth between abdicating their responsibility to love and abusing their authority to lead. Wives, in response, will distrust such love and defy such leadership. In the process they'll completely undercut how Christ's gracious sacrifice on the cross compels glad submission in the church..Headship is not an opportunity for us to control our wives; it is a responsibility to die for them..[Husbands], don't love our wives based upon what we get from them..Husbands, love your wives not because of who they are, but because of who Christ is. He loves them deeply, and our responsibility is to reflect his love..the Bible is not saying a wife is not guilty for sin in her own life. Yet the Bible is saying a husband is responsible for the spiritual care of his wife. When she struggles with sin, or when they struggle in marriage, he is ultimately responsible..If we are harsh with our wives, we will show the world that Christ is cruel with his people..God's Word is subtly yet clearly pointing out that God has created women with a unique need to be loved and men with a unique need to be respected..Might such a wife be buying into the unbiblical lie that respect is based purely upon performance? So wives, see yourselves in a complementary, not competitive, relationship with your husband..we cannot pick and choose where to obey God.

Our world—our families, organizations, and communities—are crying out for compelling leadership. As we think of compelling leadership—of the genuine desire to follow someone we believe in—we cannot help but think of Jesus Christ. When you look at the passion, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, it makes you want to follow. It makes you want to crown His greatness. And anyone who still thinks of following this kind of leader leads to a life of boredom simply hasn’t taken time to engage in the type of life Jesus has called us to.

Leadership is about telling a compelling story. Make sure your story is more fact than fiction.

Great brands compel us. They read our minds. They reflect what’s in our hearts. They “get us.” They inspire us to do things spontaneously. They help us overcome indecision and stagnancy. Without a second thought.