Competence And Character Quotes

Your friends will believe in your potential, your enemies will make you live up to it.

Trust is equal parts character and competence... You can look at any leadership failure, and it's always a failure of one or the other.

Truth is stranger than fiction," as the old saying goes. When I watch a documentary, I can't help crying and then I think to myself, "Fiction can't compete with this." But when I mentioned this to a veteran manga artist friend of mine he said that "fiction brings salvation to characters in stories that would otherwise have no salvation at all." His words strengthened the conviction of my manga spirit.

I decree and declare in the name of Jesus that I am maturing in the faith and in character. I command my flesh to submit to the obedience of Christ. I command all barricades seeking to stunt my growth to be rendered powerless over my life. I put away the childish things and move to new levels of responsibility, competence, power, and authority. In Jesus's name, amen.

A moment of choice is a moment of truth. It's the testing point of our character and competence.

How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember...No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory...Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory. Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character. Competing to see who can memorize more pages of poetry might seem beside the point, but it's about taking a stand against forgetfulness, and embracing primal capacities from which too many of us have became estranged...memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human.

The approach of old school consulting companies is to sell the transfer of knowledge. They see themselves as selling information and selling advice. But at Mayflower-Plymouth we see ourselves more like a teacher in the global classroom - we teach businesses and business people how to thrive in business. We provide not just knowledge but also skills and competencies and depth of character and culture and values and habits.

Emotions are faster than thoughts. That means emotion trumps competencies, behavior, and character unless we learn to be self-aware and channel our emotions consciously.

I could do worse than become my own grandma, or anyone of the strong women who raised us. Our strengths emerged from theirs; we build on their heritage and transform their resilience and competence into our own.

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson’s play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, “I won’t count this time!” Well! He may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work. Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keeps faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out.

Let me outline briefly as I can what seem to me the characteristics of these opposite kinds of mind. I conceive a strip-miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter's goal is money, profit; the nurturer's goal is health -- his land's health, his own, his family's, his community's, his country's. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible. The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order -- a human order, that is, that accommodates itself both to other order and to mystery. The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, "hard facts"; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.

All too often people pretend to be professional. "Professionalism" is sometimes a facade for fraud. Be pro, but be real. Honesty and transparency combined with character, competence and real results is the key to being a true pro.

It's hard for me to see characters as villains... just heroes with competing agendas.

the three pillars of the Rebelution: character, competence, and collaboration

The specialty in all life is expecting the exception, while ignorant of real acceptance, until unexpectedly you re-witness your own ignorance to 'be' the cause that awakens others. One does not do this yesterday, or today. You do this with expressing honesty everyday.

My selection process is based on “three Cs”: first character, then competence, and finally chemistry with me and with the rest of the team. Character. Competence. Chemistry.

Within each of us are two competing sides, a polarity of character. Only one leads to greatness.

(1) He must be competent, (2) he must exercise good judgment, and (3) he must have character. By itself, competence is meaningless without character and good judgment. If

It takes two people to build a relationship. It takes character and competence to make it strong.

Ego is essentially self-loathe, not self-love.

Trust is a function of two things: competence and character.

When I was young, I wanted power. Now that I'm old, I want peace. When I was young, I wanted titles. Now that I'm old, I want contentment. When I was young, I wanted money. Now that I'm old, I want happiness. When I was young, I wanted excitement. Now that I'm old, I want calm. When I was young, I wanted praise. Now that I'm old, I want respect. When I was young, I wanted houses. Now that I'm old, I want fulfillment. When I was young, I wanted cars. Now that I'm old, I want satisfaction. When I was young, I wanted possessions. Now that I'm old, I want experiences. When I was young, I wanted medals. Now that I'm old, I want mastery. When I was young, I wanted lackeys. Now that I'm old, I want companions. When I was young, I wanted amusement. Now that I'm old, I want rest. When I was young, I wanted beauty. Now that I'm old, I want substance. When I was young, I wanted fame. Now that I'm old, I want legacy. When I was young, I wanted command. Now that I'm old, I want freedom. When I was young, I wanted authority. Now that I'm old, I want influence. When I was young, I wanted reputation. Now that I'm old, I want character. When I was young, I wanted treasure. Now that I'm old, I want truth. When I was young, I wanted confidence. Now that I'm old, I want conviction. When I was young, I wanted lovers. Now that I'm old, I want friends. When I was young, I wanted excess. Now that I'm old, I want joy. When I was young, I wanted degrees. Now that I'm old, I want wisdom. When I was young, I wanted university. Now that I'm old, I want nature. When I was young, I wanted prominence. Now that I'm old, I want humanity. When I was young, I wanted accomplishment. Now that I'm old, I want laughter. When I was young, I wanted greatness. Now that I'm old, I want health. When I was young, I wanted resources. Now that I'm old, I want strategies. When I was young, I wanted contacts. Now that I'm old, I want competence. When I was young, I wanted followers. Now that I'm old, I want students. When I was young, I wanted crowds. Now that I'm old, I want intimacy. When I was young, I wanted empires. Now that I'm old, I want dignity. When I was young, I wanted honor. Now that I'm old, I want integrity. When I was young, I wanted popularity. Now that I'm old, I want loyalty. When I was young, I wanted lovers. Now that I'm old, I want children. When I was young, I wanted strength. Now that I'm old, I want youth. When I was young, I wanted life. Now that I'm old, I want Heaven.

Politics is likely to be a competition between legitimate opposing interests. Philosophy is likely to be a tension between competing half-truths. A personality is likely to be a battleground of valuable but

In political matters I have always been a down-the-middle-line person. When it comes to leaders, I care less about their party affiliation and more about their character and competence. I don’t care how they would vote on school prayer or abortion or gay marriage or gun laws. I want to know that they know what the hell they’re doing, and that they are made of that kind of unswerving steel that will not be rattled in moments that count, no matter what is coming at them. I want to know that they won’t flinch in the face of debate, danger, or death.

If we were to take a stick and put it into a glass of water, it would seem to be crooked. Why? Because we look at it through two mediums—air and water. It is the same with our understanding of God. His various characteristics, such as His justice, seem crooked to us. The wicked seem to prosper and the righteous suffer. It seems that unfair events take place all the time. The problem is not with God but with us. We view God’s proceedings through a double medium of flesh and spirit. Therefore, it is not that God’s character is bent, it is that man is not competent to judge.

Dr. Doris Parker: I have your ten week report. You know what it says "F, F, F… ". Do you know what that means? It means you don't care. Student: You're brilliant. (Pause) Can I go now? Dr. Doris Parker: (Sarcastic laugh) God! you're shallow, disgusting creature. You wanna know the truth? Dr. Doris Parker: One, you're not gonna be in a band or a model missy because you have no ambition. With no skills you'd be competing with 80 percent of US work force for minimum wage job which you will work at for the rest of your life, till you're replaced by a computer. Student: I don't care! Dr. Doris Parker: The only talent you ever have is *insult*. Your life will basically become a carnival of pain and when you can't stand not one more day, not one more hour, it will get worse, much worse. Every day I come to this office and I listen to you kids *insult* all over your selves. It is so easy to be careless, it takes courage and character to care. Not that you have any of those qualities.

He was shown into the drawing-room, an apartment of great elegance and no character. Above the mantelpiece hung a portrait in pastel of Cicely O’Callaghan. The artist had dealt competently with the shining texture of the dress and hair, and had made a conscientious map of the face. Alleyn felt he would get about as much change from the original as he would from the picture.

All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body. An education established and controlled by the State should only exist, if it exist at all, as one among many competing experiments, carried on for the purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain standard of excellence.

All great writers are actors, even merely competent ones are. They have the actor's capacity for getting inside the skins of their leading characters and transfiguring them- whatever they may be, even murderers- with what they can give of themselves. They do that quite as much as actors do.

OBSOLETE, adj. No longer used by the timid. Said chiefly of words. A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer, but if it is a good word and has no exact modern equivalent equally good, it is good enough for the good writer. Indeed, a writer's attitude toward "obsolete" words is as true a measure of his literary ability as anything except the character of his work. A dictionary of obsolete and obsolescent words would not only be singularly rich in strong and sweet parts of speech; it would add large possessions to the vocabulary of every competent writer who might not happen to be a competent reader.

how every character is effectively a tiny figure in a suffocating world of associations and obligations; where many an American novel might send its protagonist out into the world to make his own destiny, in Sōsuke’s Japan he cannot move for all his competing (and unmeetable) responsibilities to his aunt, his younger brother, his wife, and society itself.

Workshop Hermeticism, fiction for which the highest praise involves the words 'competent,' 'finished,' 'problem-free,' fiction over which Writing-Program pre- and proscriptions loom with the enclosing force of horizons: no character without Freudian trauma in accessible past, without near-diagnostic physical description; no image undissolved into regulation Updikean metaphor; no overture without a dramatized scene to 'show' what's 'told'; no denouement prior to an epiphany whose approach can be charted by and Freitag on any Macintosh.

Skills are important. Ethics are necessary. Competence is desirable. Character is crucial.

How does one build bridges of trust with another? By paying attention to communication, commitment, competence, and character. Pay

Trust is the confidence that emerges when character and competence converge.

Great leadership has more to do with character, courage, and conviction than it does with specific skills or competencies.

People will not be committed to your leadership unless they can trust you as a competent professional and respect you as a person of good character.

To build your competence without regard for character is narcissistic, and to build character without working on skills is devoid of impact.

Because Chamberlain, Moore, and Winters were leaders of character first, competence second, and courage third.

when you’re looking to build a team of people you can delegate to, you want to look for two specific character traits: integrity and competency.

Ten Principles for Success Strive to be a leader of character, competence, and courage. Lead from the front. Say, “Follow me!” and then lead the way. Stay in top physical shape—physical stamina is the root of mental toughness. Develop your team. If you know your people, are fair in setting realistic goals and expectations, and lead by example, you will develop teamwork. Delegate responsibility to your subordinates and let them do their jobs. You can’t do a good job if you don’t have a chance to use your imagination or your creativity. Anticipate problems and prepare to overcome obstacles. Don’t wait until you get to the top of the ridge and then make up your mind. Remain humble. Don’t worry about who receives the credit. Never let power or authority go to your head. Take a moment of self-reflection. Look at yourself in the mirror every night and ask yourself if you did your best. True satisfaction comes from getting the job done. The key to a successful leader is to earn respect—not because of rank or position, but because you are a leader of character. Hang Tough!—Never, ever, give up.

Most of these stories are on the tragic side. But the reader must not suppose that the incidents I have narrated were of common occurrence. The vast majority of these people, government servants, planters, and traders, who spent their working lives in Malaya were ordinary people ordinarily satisfied with their station in life. They did the jobs they were paid to do more or less competently,. They were as happy with their wives as are most married couples. They led humdrum lives and did very much the same things every day. Sometimes by way of a change they got a little shooting; but at a rule, after they had done their day's work, they played tennis if there were people to play with, went to the club at sundown if there was a club in the vicinity, drank in moderation, and played bridge. They had their little tiffs, their little jealousies, their little flirtations, their little celebrations. They were good, decent, normal people. I respect, and even admire, such people, but they are not the sort of people I can write stories about. I write stories about people who have some singularity of character which suggests to me that they may be capable of behaving in such a way as to give me an idea that I can make use of, or about people who by some accident or another, accident of temperament, accident of environment, have been involved in unusual contingencies. But, I repeat, they are the exception.

In the work environment the stakes are suddenly raised. People are no longer struggling for good grades or social approval, but for survival. Under such pressure, they reveal qualities of their characters that they normally try to conceal. They manipulate, compete, and think of themselves first. We are blindsided by this behavior and our emotions are churned up even more than before, locking us into the Naïve Perspective.

BE BRIEF. Brevity beats verbosity in social media. You’re competing with millions of posts every day. People make snap judgments and move right along if you don’t capture their interest at a glance. My experience is that the sweet spot for posts of curated content is two or three sentences on Google+ and Facebook and 100 characters on Twitter. The sweet spot for content that you create, such as blog posts, is 500 to 1,000 words.

Dreams built with trust (character and competence) ignite the best in each and everyone of us. We must keep dreaming. We must continue to light the fuse of each other’s dreams so that one day, we can ALL dream together.

When our lives and the lives of those we lead are on the line it’s not the surface features or man-made categories that matters, it’s the character and characteristics such as competence, courage, compassion, and common sense.

A few months ago on a school morning, as I attempted to etch a straight midline part on the back of my wiggling daughter's soon-to-be-ponytailed blond head, I reminded her that it was chilly outside and she needed to grab a sweater. "No, mama." "Excuse me?" "No, I don't want to wear that sweater, it makes me look fat." "What?!" My comb clattered to the bathroom floor. "Fat?! What do you know about fat? You're 5 years old! You are definitely not fat. God made you just right. Now get your sweater." She scampered off, and I wearily leaned against the counter and let out a long, sad sigh. It has begun. I thought I had a few more years before my twin daughters picked up the modern day f-word. I have admittedly had my own seasons of unwarranted, psychotic Slim-Fasting and have looked erroneously to the scale to give me a measurement of myself. But these departures from my character were in my 20s, before the balancing hand of motherhood met the grounding grip of running. Once I learned what it meant to push myself, I lost all taste for depriving myself. I want to grow into more of a woman, not find ways to whittle myself down to less. The way I see it, the only way to run counter to our toxic image-centric society is to literally run by example. I can't tell my daughters that beauty is an incidental side effect of living your passion rather than an adherence to socially prescribed standards. I can't tell my son how to recognize and appreciate this kind of beauty in a woman. I have to show them, over and over again, mile after mile, until they feel the power of their own legs beneath them and catch the rhythm of their own strides. Which is why my parents wake my kids early on race-day mornings. It matters to me that my children see me out there, slogging through difficult miles. I want my girls to grow up recognizing the beauty of strength, the exuberance of endurance, and the core confidence residing in a well-tended body and spirit. I want them to be more interested in what they are doing than how they look doing it. I want them to enjoy food that is delicious, feed their bodies with wisdom and intent, and give themselves the freedom to indulge. I want them to compete in healthy ways that honor the cultivation of skill, the expenditure of effort, and the courage of the attempt. Grace and Bella, will you have any idea how lovely you are when you try? Recently we ran the Chuy's Hot to Trot Kids K together as a family in Austin, and I ran the 5-K immediately afterward. Post?race, my kids asked me where my medal was. I explained that not everyone gets a medal, so they must have run really well (all kids got a medal, shhh!). As I picked up Grace, she said, "You are so sweaty Mommy, all wet." Luke smiled and said, "Mommy's sweaty 'cause she's fast. And she looks pretty. All clean." My PRs will never garner attention or generate awards. But when I run, I am 100 percent me--my strengths and weaknesses play out like a cracked-open diary, my emotions often as raw as the chafing from my jog bra. In my ultimate moments of vulnerability, I am twice the woman I was when I thought I was meant to look pretty on the sidelines. Sweaty and smiling, breathless and beautiful: Running helps us all shine. A lesson worth passing along.

Love is not enough. Nor are attentiveness, romantic feelings, a charming personality, great competencies and skills, or promises to change. You need substance underneath the topping. Don’t sell yourself short. Character always wins over time.

The characteristics of a value-based leader are: other-centredness, calling, competence, and finally character. How do i define character? Two aspects: Integrity ( you must keep your promises, you must live out your life, you must be genuine) and Morality.

I believe that all leaders need to have someone in their life who is close enough to them and loves them enough to be able to look them straight in the eye and say “bulls--t” when needed. These are actually the types of close relationships that liberate leaders.

Don't look for knowledge, look for wisdom. Don't look for opinions, look for facts. Don't look for theories, look for evidence. Don't look for speculation, look for certainties. Don't look for certificates, look for competance. Don't look for degrees, look for diligence. Don't look for position, look for influence. Don't look for jobs, look for a career. Don't look for skills, look for talents. Don't look for approval, look for individuality. Don't look for validation, look for self acceptance. Don't look for empires, look for happiness. Don't look for popularity, look for excellence. Don't look for acclaim, look for performance. Don't look for conquests, look for brilliance. Don't look for followers, look for friends. Don't look for muscles, look for courage. Don't look for appearance, look for character. Don't look for body, look for heart. Don't look for sexmates, look for helpmates. Don't look for vengance, look for mercy. Don't look for fate, look for opportunity. Don't look for luck, look for destiny. Don't look for fate, look for opportunity. Don't look for wealth, look for health. Don't look for today, look for tomorrow. Don't look for miracles, look for faith. Don't look for religion, look for love. Don't look for messiahs, look for peace. Don't look for temples, look for truth. Don't look for angels, look for God.

What makes them so tragic is the gap between what his characters might like to accomplish and what fate provides to them. The idea of controlling one’s fate seemed to have become part of the human consciousness by Shakespeare’s time—but not yet the competencies to achieve that end.

Whether or not you employ humor in dealing with difficult subjects, the tone of the writing is of the utmost importance. Personally, I can read about almost any subject if I feel a basic trust in, and respect for, the writer. The voice must have authority. But more than that, I must know that the writer is all right. If she describes a suicide attempt or a babysitter's cruelty to her, or a time of acute loneliness, I need to feel that the writer, not the character who survived the experience, is in control of telling the story....The tone of such pieces may be serious, ironic, angry, sad, or almost anything except whiny. There must be no hidden plea for help - no subtle seeking of sympathy. The writer must have done her work, made her peace with the facts, and be telling the story for the story's sake. Although the writing may incidentally turn out to be another step in her recovery, that must not be her visible motivation: literary writing is not therapy. Her first allegiance must be to the telling of the story and I, as the reader, must feel that I'm in the hands of a competent writer who needs nothing from me except my attention.

She was an ordinary person. But by ‘ordinary’ I just mean that she didn’t have any need to dramatize herself. It’s not a criticism. I don’t think of the urge to perform as something that adds to a person’s character. If anything, it’s a defect, especially when it’s coupled with a need to compete.

My theory is that it's like a person who speaks French who comes to America. At first they're making all kinds of mistakes, and you can hardly understand them. Then they keep on practicing until they speak rather well, and you find there's a delightful twist to their way of speaking -- their accent is rather nice, and you love to listen to it. So I must have had some sort of accent playing the frigideira, because I couldn't compete with those guys who had been playing it all their lives; it must have been some kind of dumb accent. But whatever it was, I became a rather successful frigideira player.

There is tremendous stress these days on liking people, helping people, getting along with people, as qualifications for a manager. These alone are never enough. In every successful organization there is one boss who does not like people, who does not help them, and who does not get along with them. Cold, unpleasant, demanding, he often teaches and develops more men than anyone else. He commands more respect than the most likable man ever could. He demands exacting workmanship of himself as well as of his men. He sets high standards and expects that they will be lived up to. He considers only what is right and never who is right. And though often himself a man of brilliance, he never rates intellectual brilliance above integrity in others. The manager who lacks these qualities of character—no matter how likable, helpful, or amiable, no matter even how competent or brilliant—is a menace and should be adjudged “unfit to be a manager and a gentleman.

Aristotle does not consider virtue and wealth strictly synonymous. What he holds, in accordance with the doctrine of the golden mean, is that a moderate competence is most likely to be associated with virtue: “Mankind do not acquire or preserve virtue by the help of external goods, but external goods by the help of virtue, and happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are most highly cultivated in their mind and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities

An example of the Peter Pan syndrome is used in Aldous Huxley's 1962 novel Island. In it, one of the characters talks about male "dangerous delinquents" and "power-loving troublemakers" who are "Peter Pans". These types of males were "boys who can't read, won't learn, don't get on with anyone, and finally turn to the more violent forms of delinquency." He uses Adolf Hitler as an archetype of this phenomenon:[15] A Peter Pan if ever there was one. Hopeless at school. Incapable either of competing or co- operating. Envying all the normally successful boys—and, because he envied, hating them and, to make himself feel better, despising them as inferior beings. Then came the time for puberty. But Adolf was sexually backward. Other boys made advances to girls, and the girls responded. Adolf was too shy, too uncertain of his manhood. And all the time incapable of steady work, at home only in the compensatory Other World of his fancy. There, at the very least, he was Michelangelo. Here, unfortunately, he couldn't draw. His only gifts were hatred, low cunning, a set of indefatigable vocal cords and a talent for nonstop talking at the top of his voice from the depths of his Peter-Panic paranoia. Thirty or forty million deaths and heaven knows how many billions of dollars—that was the price the world had to pay for little Adolf's retarded maturation.

If you are to live in this world, then you must be willing to actively participate in life." You cannot just be an expectator. You cannot just be sitting down at the bleachers and comtemplate the game and expect to win. You are to step out of your comfortable zone. You are to participate and do your very best. Remember, "Every pro was once an amateur. Every expert was once a beginner." And every beginner once decided to step down from the bleachers and start participating. Build a solid foundation for your life. Stay rooted in the Word. Don't let the holy things become common. Be disciplined and be committed. Sacrifice what you are to sacrifice in order to succeed. But never ever your values, integrity, character, and principles. Never give up nor give in. Be aware that people will hate you on your way up. People will rate you. They'll will shake you and try to bring you down. "But how strong you stand, is what makes you." Choose to live by choice not by chance. Be motivated and not manipulated. BE useful not used. Make changes and not excuses. Aim to excel not to compete. Choose self-esteem, not self pitty. Choose to listen to your inner voice, (which is GOd's word whispering to you) not to the random opinions of others. And finally, choose to live for yourself and not to please others. Word of advice, "make your goals so big, that your everyday problems seem insignificant." Have a bless day

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it. He knew that the lack made a man petty, mean, grasping; it distorted his character and caused him to view the world from a vulgar angle; when you had to consider every penny, money became of grotesque importance: you needed a competency to rate it at its proper value.

It must be admitted that many forms, considered by highly-competent judges as varieties, have so perfectly the character of species that they are ranked by other highly-competent judges as good and true species. But to discuss whether they are rightly called species or varieties, before any definition of these terms has been generally accepted, is vainly to beat the air.

In his last book, in 2005, Masterson does touch upon a variation of the abandonment depression in ’the three primary cornerstones of character work.’ For the borderline, a sense of abandonment arises from a question of ’competence’; for the narcissist, ’painful vulnerability’ rests on a sense of deep imperfection; and for the schizoid, there is ’danger’ in the possibility of not being able to make any connection at all.

Learning is the accomplice of inquiry. Prudence is the accomplice of caution. Reason is the accomplice of ingenuity. Insight is the accomplice of understanding. Wisdom is the accomplice of discipline. Tenacity is the accomplice of improvement. Innovation is the accomplice of growth. Intuition is the accomplice of opportunity. Acclaim is the accomplice of excellence. Loyalty is the accomplice of trust. Wealth is the accomplice of luxury. Power is the accomplice of influence. Literacy is the accomplice of knowledge. Performance is the accomplice of development. Competence is the accomplice of progress. Curiosity is the accomplice of awareness. Courage is the accomplice of confidence. Desire is the accomplice of accomplishment. Ambition is the accomplice of determination. Mastery is the accomplice of honor. Character is the accomplice of reputation. Talent is the accomplice of skill. Education is the accomplice of success.

She loved reading stories about people taking off on adventures, discovering they were natural leaders born to make a difference in the world, but a hero? Heroes went through so much hardship. Heroes were the stuff of tragedies. They took charge of situations and challenged authority and made decisions not only for themselves but on behalf of other people too. Arlo…Arlo could barely make up her mind about going to school. She was a disappointment in pretty much every area of her life, and she’d only disappoint at this, too, because this… this was more than just poking around for clues to pass of to other, more competent people. This was choosing to be responsible for other people’s lives, to keep them safe, to be their hope. Arlo was firmly an evil extra, a background character, the healer of an adventuring party if anything at all. She simply didn’t have what it took to be anything else, no matter what Fate seemed to think.

A bare two years after Vasco da Gama’s voyage a Portuguese fleet led by Pedro Alvarez Cabral arrived on the Malabar coast. Cabral delivered a letter from the king of Portugal to the Samudri (Samudra-raja or Sea-king), the Hindu ruler of the city-state of Calicut, demanding that he expel all Muslims from his kingdom as they were enemies of the ‘Holy Faith’. He met with a blank refusal; then afterwards the Samudra steadfastly maintained that Calicut had always been open to everyone who wished to trade there… During those early years the people who had traditionally participated in the Indian Ocean trade were taken completely by surprise. In all the centuries in which it had flourished and grown, no state or kings or ruling power had ever before tried to gain control of the Indian Ocean trade by force of arms. The territorial and dynastic ambitions that were pursued with such determination on land were generally not allowed to spill over into the sea. Within the Western historiographical record the unarmed character of the Indian Ocean trade is often represented as a lack, or failure, one that invited the intervention of Europe, with its increasing proficiency in war. When a defeat is as complete as was that of the trading cultures of the Indian Ocean, it is hard to allow the vanquished the dignity of nuances of choice and preference. Yet it is worth allowing for the possibility that the peaceful traditions of the oceanic trade may have been, in a quiet and inarticulate way, the product of a rare cultural choice — one that may have owed a great deal to the pacifist customs and beliefs of the Gujarati Jains and Vanias who played such an important part in it. At the time, at least one European was moved to bewilderment by the unfamiliar mores of the region; a response more honest perhaps than the trust in historical inevitability that has supplanted it since. ‘The heathen [of Gujarat]’, wrote Tomé Pires, early in the sixteenth century, ‘held that they must never kill anyone, nor must they have armed men in their company. If they were captured and [their captors] wanted to kill them all, they did not resist. This is the Gujarat law among the heathen.’ It was because of those singular traditions, perhaps, that the rulers of the Indian Ocean ports were utterly confounded by the demands and actions of the Portuguese. Having long been accustomed to the tradesmen’s rules of bargaining and compromise they tried time and time again to reach an understanding with the Europeans — only to discover, as one historian has put it, that the choice was ‘between resistance and submission; co-operation was not offered.’ Unable to compete in the Indian Ocean trade by purely commercial means, the Europeans were bent on taking control of it by aggression, pure and distilled, by unleashing violence on a scale unprecedented on those shores.

On a hike in East Africa 2 million years ago, you might well have encountered a familiar cast of human characters: anxious mothers cuddling their babies and clutches of carefree children playing in the mud; temperamental youths chafing against the dictates of society and weary elders who just wanted to be left in peace; chest-thumping machos trying to impress the local beauty and wise old matriarchs who had already seen it all. These archaic humans loved, played, formed close friendships and competed for status and power – but so did chimpanzees, baboons and elephants. There was nothing special about humans. Nobody, least of all humans themselves, had any inkling that their descendants would one day walk on the moon, split the atom, fathom the genetic code and write history books. The most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were insignificant animals with no more impact on their environment than gorillas, fireflies or jellyfish.

[T]he strongest defense of the humanities lies not in the appeal to their utility — that literature majors may find good jobs, that theaters may economically revitalize neighborhoods — but rather in the appeal to their defiantly nonutilitarian character, so that individuals can know more than how things work, and develop their powers of discernment and judgment, their competence in matters of truth and goodness and beauty, to equip themselves adequately for the choices and the crucibles of private and public life.

Fiction and life are different; with fiction, the writer does the hard work for us. Fictional characters are easier to 'see,' given a competent novelist--and a competent reader. They are placed at a certain distance, moved this way and that, posed to catch the light, turned to reveal their depth; irony, that infrared camera for filming in the dark, shows them when they are not aware that anyone is looking. But life is different. The better you know someone, the less well you often see them (and the less well they can therefore be transferred into fiction). They may be so close as to be out of focus, and there is no operating novelist to dispel the blur.

With so much knowledge written down and disseminated and so many ardent workers and eager patrons conspiring to produce the new, it was inevitable that technique and style should gradually turn from successful trial and error to foolproof recipe. The close study of antique remains, especially in architecture, turned these sources of inspiration into models to copy. The result was frigidity—or at best cool elegance. It is a cultural generality that going back to the past is most fruitful at the beginning, when the Idea and not the technique is the point of interest. As knowledge grows more exact, originality grows less; perfection increases as inspiration decreases. In painting, this downward curve of artistic intensity is called by the sug- gestive name of Mannerism. It is applicable at more than one moment in the history of the arts. The Mannerist is not to be despised, even though his high competence is secondhand, learned from others instead of worked out for himself. His art need not lack individual character, and to some connoisseurs it gives the pleasure of virtuosity, the exercise of power on demand, but for the critic it poses an enigma: why should the pleasure be greater when the power is in the making rather than on tap? There may be no answer, but a useful corollary is that perfection is not a necessary characteristic of the greatest art.

FIRST WAVE: SELF TRUST The first wave, Self Trust, deals with the confidence we have in ourselves—in our ability to set and achieve goals, to keep commitments, to walk our talk—and also with our ability to inspire trust in others. The whole idea is to become, both to ourselves and to others, a person who is worthy of trust. The key principle underlying this wave is credibility, which comes from the Latin root credere, meaning “to believe.” In this first wave, we will explore the “4 Cores of Credibility,” where we will discuss ways to increase our credibility in order to firmly establish trust with ourselves and with others. The end result of high character and high competence is credibility, judgment, and influence.

As she grew up, as her character was built, as she became headstrong rather than pert, and clever enough to know when to hide her cleverness, as she discovered friends and social life and a new kind of loneliness, as she came from country to town and began amassing her future memories, she admitted her mothers's rule: they made their mistakes, now you make your mistakes. And there was a logical consequence of this, which became part of Martha's creed: after the age of twenty-five, you were not allowed to blame anything on your parents. Of course, it didn't apply if your parents had done something terrible - had raped and murdered you and stolen all your money and sold you into prostitution - but in the average course of an average life, if you were averagely competent and averagely intelligent, and more so if you were more so, then you were not allowed to blame your parents. Of course you did, there were times when it was just too tempting. If only they'd bought me roller-skates like they promised, if only they'd let me go out with David, if only they'd been different, more loving, richer, cleverer, simpler. If only they'd been more indulgent; if only they'd been more strict. If only they'd encouraged me more; if only they'd praised me for the right things...None of that. Of course Martha felt it, some of the time, wanted to cuddle such resentments, but then she would stop and give herself a talking-to. You're on your own, kid. Damage is a normal part of childhood. Not allowed to blame anything on them anymore. Not allowed.

This is simply the long history of the origin of responsibility. That task of breeding an animal which can make promises, includes, as we have already grasped, as its condition and preliminary, the more immediate task of first making man to a certain extent, necessitated, uniform, like among his like, regular, and consequently calculable. The immense work of what I have called, "morality of custom", the actual work of man on himself during the longest period of the human race, his whole prehistoric work, finds its meaning, its great justification (in spite of all its innate hardness, despotism, stupidity, and idiocy) in this fact: man, with the help of the morality of customs and of social strait-waistcoats, was made genuinely calculable. If, however, we place ourselves at the end of this colossal process, at the point where the tree finally matures its fruits, when society and its morality of custom finally bring to light that to which it was only the means, then do we find as the ripest fruit on its tree the sovereign individual, that resembles only himself, that has got loose from the morality of custom, the autonomous "super-moral" individual (for "autonomous" and "moral" are mutually-exclusive terms),—in short, the man of the personal, long, and independent will, competent to promise, and we find in him a proud consciousness (vibrating in every fibre), of what has been at last achieved and become vivified in him, a genuine consciousness of power and freedom, a feeling of human perfection in general. And this man who has grown to freedom, who is really competent to promise, this lord of the free will, this sovereign—how is it possible for him not to know how great is his superiority over everything incapable of binding itself by promises, or of being its own security, how great is the trust, the awe, the reverence that he awakes—he "deserves" all three—not to know that with this mastery over himself he is necessarily also given the mastery over circumstances, over nature, over all creatures with shorter wills, less reliable characters? The "free" man, the owner of a long unbreakable will, finds in this possession his standard of value: looking out from himself upon the others, he honours or he despises, and just as necessarily as he honours his peers, the strong and the reliable (those who can bind themselves by promises),—that is, every one who promises like a sovereign, with difficulty, rarely and slowly, who is sparing with his trusts but confers honour by the very fact of trusting, who gives his word as something that can be relied on, because he knows himself strong enough to keep it even in the teeth of disasters, even in the "teeth of fate,"—so with equal necessity will he have the heel of his foot ready for the lean and empty jackasses, who promise when they have no business to do so, and his rod of chastisement ready for the liar, who already breaks his word at the very minute when it is on his lips. The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, of this power over himself and over fate, has sunk right down to his innermost depths, and has become an instinct, a dominating instinct—what name will he give to it, to this dominating instinct, if he needs to have a word for it? But there is no doubt about it—the sovereign man calls it his conscience.

He was a very private person, unemotional and undemonstrative in public. To a great degree he was unconcerned about his image, caring little for “glory” in the conventional sense. His gods were logic and reason. The character of Mr. Spock in the popular science-fiction series“Star Trek” could easily have been patterned after Spruance. The admiral competed not with others but with his own impossibly high selfexpectations, and that is the way he judged his successes and failures. A man who relied on deeds rather than words to make his mark, Spruance seemed oblivious to what posterity would think of him. He did not like to speak publicly, nor did he do much writing if he could avoid it. He authored no wordy, self-justifying memoirs. His achievements, intellect, and integrity were responsible for the great respect accorded him by his peers.

Ignorance lowers you, curiosity elevates you; knowledge puts you on a higher pedestal than information. Confusion lowers you, understanding elevates you; discernment puts you on a higher pedestal than intellect. Imprudence lowers you, insight elevates you; wisdom puts you on a higher pedestal than perception. Greed lowers you, contentment elevates you; peace puts you on a higher pedestal than indifference. Bitterness lowers you, happiness elevates you; joy puts you on a higher pedestal than pleasure. Anger lowers you, patience elevates you; longstanding puts you on a higher pedestal than tolerance. Cruelty lowers you, compassion elevates you; kindness puts you on a higher pedestal than apathy. Despair lowers you, hope elevates you; perseverance puts you on a higher pedestal than dispassion. Fear lowers you, courage elevates you; faith puts you on a higher pedestal than confidence. Hatred lowers you, mercy elevates you; love puts you on a higher pedestal than sympathy. Illiteracy lowers you, education elevates you; enlightenment puts you on a higher pedestal than talent. Imitating lowers you, creativity elevates you; originality puts you on a higher pedestal than innovation. Incompetence lowers you, skill elevates you; excellence puts you on a higher pedestal than enthusiasm. Laziness lowers you, hard work elevates you; diligence puts you on a higher pedestal competence. Failure lowers you, perseverance elevates you; success puts you on a higher pedestal than ambition. Mediocrity lowers you, talent elevates you; genius puts you on a higher pedestal than aptitude. Obscurity lowers you, fame elevates you; influence puts you on a higher pedestal than popularity. Ego lowers you, honor elevates you; humility puts you on a higher pedestal than applause. Poverty lowers you, success elevates you; wealth puts you on a higher pedestal than prominence. Dishonor lowers you, esteem elevates you; character puts you on a higher pedestal than reputation.

Then she took my hand and led me away from my friends and her friends. I’d expected to spend the evening at a distance from her, stealing glances across the fairground, maybe having a brief conversation. Now my hand was in hers, our fingers entwined like they had been that one night we’d walked home from the movies together. The night I’d been sure we would be together. it was like a montage out of a film, everything seen as if through a filter. We wandered the fairground for hours, me with my arm around her waist, and she didn’t even seem to care that people would see us. That night, Grace was not Grace; she was effervescent, lighthearted, a character out of a book. We competed against each other at bumper cars. Fed each other cotton candy. At the top of the Ferris wheel, we took swigs of straight vodka from her flask. The city, sprawled out in the distance, looked small from up there, a collection of toy buildings in a tilt-shift photograph. I even won her a prize at the laughing clowns. And I lapped it up, every moment of it, thinking that this was how things would be from now on.

How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember. We’re all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least. Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory. Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character. Competing to see who can memorize more pages of poetry might seem beside the point, but it’s about taking a stand against forgetfulness, and embracing primal capacities from which too many of us have become estranged. That’s what Ed had been trying to impart to me from the beginning: that memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it’s about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human.

I conceive a strip miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter’s goal is money, profit; the nurturer’s goal is health—his land’s health, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible. The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order—a human order, that is, that accommodates itself both to other order and to mystery. The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, “hard facts”; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.

To me, the mark of a truly great sporting venue has never been what it sounds like or how it feels when the stands are packed. That's easy. Even the most generic cookie-cutter stadium or arena feels electric when the game is big, the lights are on, and the crowd is amped. The real measure of a ballpark's character is how the place feels when it's empty. When the only noises to be heard are produced by the occasional breeze that slips through the concourse. It rattles the ropes on the empty center-field flagpoles. It pushes a stray plastic cup around beneath the feet of the box seats. And if you listen closely enough, that wind carries on it the whispers of the ghosts. The athletes who played between the lines, their toes in the dirt where only those who compete are allowed to roam. During my career in sports media, I've heard their voices at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Darlington Raceway. I've heard them at Lambeau Field and the Rose Bowl. I've heard them at old Boston Garden and Augusta National. And the morning of Thursday, March 3, 1994, I heard them at McCormick Field. Cobb, Gehrig, Dizzy Dean, Hank Greenberg, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Willie Stargell. From the Hall of Famers to a thousand minor leaguers whose names no one remembers. I swear, they were all there that morning to welcome us into the little mountain ballpark that they'd helped build.

Like stress, emotion is a concept we often invoke without a precise sense of its meaning. And, like stress, emotions have several components. The psychologist Ross Buck distinguishes between three levels of emotional responses, which he calls Emotion I, Emotion II and Emotion III, classified according to the degree we are conscious of them. Emotion III is the subjective experience, from within oneself. It is how we feel. In the experience of Emotion III there is conscious awareness of an emotional state, such as anger or joy or fear, and its accompanying bodily sensations. Emotion II comprises our emotional displays as seen by others, with or without our awareness. It is signalled through body language — “non-verbal signals, mannerisms, tones of voices, gestures, facial expressions, brief touches, and even the timing of events and pauses between words. [They] may have physiologic consequences — often outside the awareness of the participants.” It is quite common for a person to be oblivious to the emotions he is communicating, even though they are clearly read by those around him. Our expressions of Emotion II are what most affect other people, regardless of our intentions. A child’s displays of Emotion II are also what parents are least able to tolerate if the feelings being manifested trigger too much anxiety in them. As Dr. Buck points out, a child whose parents punish or inhibit this acting-out of emotion will be conditioned to respond to similar emotions in the future by repression. The self-shutdown serves to prevent shame and rejection. Under such conditions, Buck writes, “emotional competence will be compromised…. The individual will not in the future know how to effectively handle the feelings and desires involved. The result would be a kind of helplessness.” The stress literature amply documents that helplessness, real or perceived, is a potent trigger for biological stress responses. Learned helplessness is a psychological state in which subjects do not extricate themselves from stressful situations even when they have the physical opportunity to do so. People often find themselves in situations of learned helplessness — for example, someone who feels stuck in a dysfunctional or even abusive relationship, in a stressful job or in a lifestyle that robs him or her of true freedom. Emotion I comprises the physiological changes triggered by emotional stimuli, such as the nervous system discharges, hormonal output and immune changes that make up the flight-or-fight reaction in response to threat. These responses are not under conscious control, and they cannot be directly observed from the outside. They just happen. They may occur in the absence of subjective awareness or of emotional expression. Adaptive in the acute threat situation, these same stress responses are harmful when they are triggered chronically without the individual’s being able to act in any way to defeat the perceived threat or to avoid it. Self-regulation, writes Ross Buck, “involves in part the attainment of emotional competence, which is defined as the ability to deal in an appropriate and satisfactory way with one’s own feelings and desires.” Emotional competence presupposes capacities often lacking in our society, where “cool” — the absence of emotion — is the prevailing ethic, where “don’t be so emotional” and “don’t be so sensitive” are what children often hear, and where rationality is generally considered to be the preferred antithesis of emotionality. The idealized cultural symbol of rationality is Mr. Spock, the emotionally crippled Vulcan character on Star Trek.

HARRIS: It’s worth emphasizing the connection between perception and action. It’s one thing to talk about it in the context of catching a cricket ball, but when you talk about the evolutionary logic of having developed perceptual capacities in the first place, the link to action becomes even more explicit. We haven’t evolved to perceive the world as it is for some abstract epistemological reason. We’ve evolved to perceive what’s biologically useful. And what’s biologically useful is always connected—at least when we’re talking about the outside world—to actions. If you can’t move, if you can’t act in any way, there would have been very little reason to evolve a capacity for sight, for instance. SETH: Absolutely. The sea squirt—a very simple marine creature—swims about during its juvenile phase looking for a place to settle, and once it settles and starts filter feeding, it digests its own brain, because it no longer has any need for perceptual or motor competence. This is often used as an unkind analogy for getting tenure in academia. But you’re absolutely right: perception is not about figuring out what’s really there. We perceive the world as it’s useful for us to do so. This is particularly important when we think about perception of the internal state of the body, which we mentioned earlier. Brains are not for perceiving the world as it is. They didn’t evolve for doing philosophy or complex language, they evolved to guide action. But even more fundamentally, brains evolved to keep themselves and their bodies alive. The most basic cycle of perception and action doesn’t involve the outside world or the exterior surfaces of the body at all. It’s all about regulating the internal physiology of the body and keeping it within bounds compatible with survival. This gives us a clue about why experiences of mood and emotion, and the basic experiences of selfhood, have a fundamentally nonobject-like character.

How do you decide what video game to choose in the vast ocean of online gaming nonsense? There are 100s if not thousands of options permeating the internet. They range from honestly free, pay to win, and all the way up to an actual subscription based model. One of the first decisions you need to make is quite simply, what kind of game do I enjoy? Are you more of a first person shooter type person? If so you will most likely want to ignore role playing games or real time strategies. conversely if you are more of a role playing or real time strategy fan perhaps first person shooters are not for you. Once you have the type of game you are looking for nailed down games the next step: do you want to pay money? This is a big one and a tricky one. So many games out there present themselves as 'free'. I assure you, they are most certainly not free. Think a simple little game like Candy Crush is free? Next time you are in the Google Play or iTunes store Improve WoW PvP check on top grossing apps. You will very quickly change your mind on that. On a more relevant note some games are both free and pay, but maintain a respectful balance. By this I mean you do not HAVE to fork out hard earned cash in order to compete. League of Legends is an amazing example of this. A player cannot obtain any upgrade which will make their character better through monetary expenditures. What you can do; however, is purchase cosmetic items or other no stat gain frill. On the other end of the spectrum you have a game such as the behemoth World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft has managed to maintain a subscription based model for 10 years now. Multiple 'WoW Killers' have risen up since the inception of World of Warcraft using the subscription base as well. Damn near every one of them is now free to play. Rift and Star Wars are the two that really stick out. Leading up to their release forums Wow XP Off PvP Stream across the internet proclaimed them the almighty killer of World of Warcraft. Instead Warcraft kept on trucking and both of those games changed style to f2p not long after their release. These are just a few different games and styles of games for you to choose from. Remember, you get what you pay for in almost every case. (LoL being the exception that proves the rule)

The key to preventing this is balance. I see the give and take between different constituencies in a business as central to its success. So when I talk about taming the Beast, what I really mean is that keeping its needs balanced with the needs of other, more creative facets of your company will make you stronger. Let me give you an example of what I mean, drawn from the business I know best. In animation, we have many constituencies: story, art, budget, technology, finance, production, marketing, and consumer products. The people within each constituency have priorities that are important—and often opposing. The writer and director want to tell the most affecting story possible; the production designer wants the film to look beautiful; the technical directors want flawless effects; finance wants to keep the budgets within limits; marketing wants a hook that is easily sold to potential viewers; the consumer products people want appealing characters to turn into plush toys and to plaster on lunchboxes and T-shirts; the production managers try to keep everyone happy—and to keep the whole enterprise from spiraling out of control. And so on. Each group is focused on its own needs, which means that no one has a clear view of how their decisions impact other groups; each group is under pressure to perform well, which means achieving stated goals. Particularly in the early months of a project, these goals—which are subgoals, really, in the making of a film—are often easier to articulate and explain than the film itself. But if the director is able to get everything he or she wants, we will likely end up with a film that’s too long. If the marketing people get their way, we will only make a film that mimics those that have already been “proven” to succeed—in other words, familiar to viewers but in all likelihood a creative failure. Each group, then, is trying to do the right thing, but they’re pulling in different directions. If any one of those groups “wins,” we lose. In an unhealthy culture, each group believes that if their objectives trump the goals of the other groups, the company will be better off. In a healthy culture, all constituencies recognize the importance of balancing competing desires—they want to be heard, but they don’t have to win. Their interaction with one another—the push and pull that occurs naturally when talented people are given clear goals—yields the balance we seek. But that only happens if they understand that achieving balance is a central goal of the company.

Now, who and what is this minstrel in reality? Where does he come from? In what respects does he differ from his predecessors? He has been described as a cross between the early medieval court-singer and the ancient mime of classical times. The mime had never ceased to flourish since the days of classical antiquity; when even the last traces of classical culture disappeared, the descendants of the old mimes still continued to travel about the Empire, entertaining the masses with their unpretentious, unsophisticated and unliterary art. The Germanic countries were flooded out with mimes in the early Middle Ages; but until the ninth century the poets and singers at the courts kept themselves strictly apart from them. Not until they lost their cultured audience, as a result of the Carolingian Renaissance and the clericalism of the following generation, and came up against the competition of the mimes in the lower classes, did they have, to a certain extent, to become mimes themselves in order to be able to compete with their rivals. Thus both singers and comedians now move in the same circles, intermingle and influence each other so much that they soon become indistinguishable from one another. The mime and the scop both become the minstrel. The most striking characteristic of the minstrel is his versatility. The place of the cultured, highly specialized heroic ballad poet is now taken by the Jack of all trades, who is no longer merely a poet and singer, but also a musician and dancer, dramatist and actor, clown and acrobat, juggler and bear-leader, in a word, the universal jester and maître de plaisir of the age. Specialization, distinction and solemn dignity are now finished with; the court poet has become everybody’s fool and his social degradation has such a revolutionary and shattering effect on himself that he never entirely recovers from the shock. From now on he is one of the déclassés, in the same class as tramps and prostitutes, runaway clerics and sent-down students, charlatans and beggars. He has been called the ‘journalist of the age’, but he really goes in for entertainment of every kind: the dancing song as well as the satirical song, the fairy story as well as the mime, the legend of saints as well as the heroic epic. In this context, however, the epic takes on quite new features: it acquires in places a more pointed character with a new straining after effect, which was absolutely foreign to the spirit of the old heroic ballad. The minstrel no longer strikes the gloomy, solemn, tragi-heroic note of the ‘Hildebrandslied’, for he wants to make even the epic sound entertaining; he tries to provide sensations, effective climaxes and lively epigrams. Compared with the monuments of the older heroic poetry, the ‘Chanson de Roland’ never fails to reveal this popular minstrel taste for the piquant.

In their eagerness to eliminate from history any reference to individuais and individual events, collectivist authors resorted to a chimerical construction, the group mind or social mind. At the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries German philologists began to study German medieval poetry, which had long since fallen into oblivion. Most of the epics they edited from old manuscripts were imitations of French works. The names of their authors—most of them knightly warriors in the service of dukes or counts—were known. These epics were not much to boast of. But there were two epics of a quite different character, genuinely original works of high literary value, far surpassing the conventional products of the courtiers: the Nibelungenlied and the Gudrun. The former is one of the great books of world literature and undoubtedly the outstanding poem Germany produced before the days of Goethe and Schiller. The names of the authors of these masterpieces were not handed down to posterity. Perhaps the poets belonged to the class of professional entertainers (Spielleute), who not only were snubbed by the nobility but had to endure mortifying legal disabilities. Perhaps they were heretical or Jewish, and the clergy was eager to make people forget them. At any rate the philologists called these two works "people's epics" (Volksepen). This term suggested to naive minds the idea that they were written not by individual authors but by the "people." The same mythical authorship was attributed to popular songs (Volkslieder) whose authors were unknown. Again in Germany, in the years following the Napoleonic wars, the problem of comprehensive legislative codification was brought up for discussion. In this controversy the historical school of jurisprudence, led by Savigny, denied the competence of any age and any persons to write legislation. Like the Volksepen and the Volkslieder, a nation s laws, they declared, are a spontaneous emanation of the Volksgeist, the nations spirit and peculiar character. Genuine laws are not arbitrarily written by legislators; they spring up and thrive organically from the Volksgeist. This Volksgeist doctrine was devised in Germany as a conscious reaction against the ideas of natural law and the "unGerman" spirit of the French Revolution. But it was further developed and elevated to the dignity of a comprehensive social doctrine by the French positivists, many of whom not only were committed to the principies of the most radical among the revolutionary leaders but aimed at completing the "unfinished revolution" by a violent overthrow of the capitalistic mode of production. Émile Durkheim and his school deal with the group mind as if it were a real phenomenon, a distinct agency, thinking and acting. As they see it, not individuais but the group is the subject of history. As a corrective of these fancies the truism must be stressed that only individuais think and act. In dealing with the thoughts and actions of individuais the historian establishes the fact that some individuais influence one another in their thinking and acting more strongly than they influence and are influenced by other individuais. He observes that cooperation and division of labor exist among some, while existing to a lesser extent or not at ali among others. He employs the term "group" to signify an aggregation of individuais who cooperate together more closely.

I have described the total and terrifying dependence of the modern combat soldier on the competence and trustworthiness of others in the army. This all-inclusive dependence not only means relying on the army to provide ammunition, intelligence, food, water, and medical evacuation, but also relying on your own not to kill you with weapons intended for the enemy. The soldier's vulnerability is never more dramatically apparent than when artillery, bombs, or napalm intended to support troops in a fight with the enemy kill the very men they are meant to protect.

If you think you’re right, you just dress it up in a convincing coat of paint. Like camouflage. By doing that, you advance the same basic idea you always thought was right. Isn’t that a healthy way to compete?

What I admired most about A Few Good Men was the originality Aaron Sorkin and Rob Reiner showed by not having my character and Tom’s get involved in anything romantic, or even unprofessional. There was an expectation at that time on the part of studios and audiences that if an attractive woman showed up on film, it was only a matter of time before you saw her in bed with the leading man, or at least half naked. But Rob and Aaron had the nerve to buck that convention: they thought this story was about something else, and they were right. Years later Aaron told a film school class: “The whole idea of the movie was that these young lawyers were in way over their heads and two Marines were on trial for their lives, so if Tom Cruise and Demi Moore take time out to roll in the hay, I just didn’t think we would like them as much for doing that.” Sorkin said he wrote to an exec who had been lobbying hard for a sex scene. “I’ll never forget what the executive wrote back, which was, ‘Well if Tom and Demi aren’t going to sleep together why is Demi a woman?’ and that completely stumped me.” I loved that my character didn’t rely on her sex appeal, which was certainly something I hadn’t encountered very often in my roles. They presented a woman who was valuable to her colleagues—and to the story itself—because of her competence.

But of course this only tries to make a magic out of being black, as if racial self-love and solidarity were the same thing as individual will and character—as if “black pride” could do the individual’s hard work of developing into a person who can compete successfully in the modern world.

To build you competence without regard for character is narcissistic, and to build character without working on skills is devoid of impact. We need to work on both in order to serve our souls and a higher purpose.

The word cartoon had lost it’s meaning over the years, and some kid’s shows had far too much adult content or they simply didn’t teach good values. It was hard enough raising a child and trying to instill morally sound character traits without having to compete with the media sources using bad behavior as entertainment.

The heart of Jesus’s leadership was putting his Spirit in his disciples by mentoring and teaching, and then setting them free to pursue vision, for God.

In his book The Speed of Trust, Stephen Covey says there are two components to trust: character and competence. You may initially trust someone if you know them to be a man or woman of sound character. But if that person fails to deliver on their promises, if they are shown to be incompetent in handling the affairs of the business, then after a while you lose trust in them. As a leader your competence can and will be measured in your personal behavior, your professional demeanor, your effectiveness in handling problems, and your consistency. To be a great leader you must be trusted by your employees. If they do not trust you, they will not follow you. It takes time to build trust, but it is time well spent if you intend to lead effectively.

Character is best thought of as existing in two distinct but related categories of competency – performance character competency and moral character competency. Performance character consists of specific acquired strengths usually necessary for high achievement and performance: focus, persistence, resilience, confidence, positivity, decisiveness, courage, tough-mindedness, ambition, reliability, discipline, fortitude.

We seek to know truth and we teach others: There is a God. This is his world, and we with it. This God is totally good and totally competent. He comes to us in Jesus Christ, whom we can totally trust. He gives us a book and a history, through which his Spirit will lead us to all we need to know about him and about us. Respecting the priority of the mind in spiritual formation means that we seek to understand these things and to help others understand them. We work in depth. We can choose to turn our minds toward these truths. Belief will come as God’s gift within the hidden depths of our lives and will grow under the nurturing of the Word and the Spirit. That is what is going on in a local congregation that is following God’s plan for spiritual formation.

No competent leader is going to be anxious to impress people with his credentials. Leaders who are truly able are qualified because of their character. They are easily identified, not by letters of commendation, but because of the influence they have on others. They are people who are confident of their calling, and yet at the same time, they know they are utterly dependent on God as the source of their true power.

Games and sports is about fun and making you a better person not a bitter person. Sports is about developing your character and spirit . It is not just about winning medals or trophies, but it is also about winning people's heart, love , support and respect.

Harriet had been only too right about Wilfrid. She had spent portions of four days in altering and humanizing Wilfrid, and today, after a distressful morning with him, had reached the dismal conclusion that she would have to rewrite the whole thing from the beginning. Wilfrid’s tormented humanity stood out now against the competent vacuity of the other characters like a wound. Moreover, with the reduction of Wilfrid’s motives to what was psychologically credible, a large lump of the plot had fallen out, leaving a gap through which one could catch glimpses of new and exciting jungles of intrigue.

There is tremendous stress these days on liking people, helping people, getting along with people, as qualifications for a manager. These alone are never enough. In every successful organization there are bosses who do not like people, who do not help them, and who do not get along with them. Cold, unpleasant, demanding, they often teach and develop more people than anyone else. They command more respect than the most likable person ever could. They demand exacting workmanship of themselves and other people. They set high standards and expect that they will be lived up to. They consider only what is right and never who is right. And though often themselves persons of brilliance, they never rate intellectual brilliance above integrity in others. The manager who lacks these qualities of character—no matter how likable, helpful, or amiable, no matter, even, how competent or brilliant—is a menace who is unfit to be a manager.

Social selection has big implications for mental disorders. When I began treating patients, many wanted help to make them less sensitive to what other people thought about them. It was the 1970s zeitgeist: I’m okay, you’re okay, let’s shed stifling social conventions and follow our bliss. Escaping conformity seemed like a laudable goal. I did my best to help patients achieve those aims, usually with only modest success. As I came to understand how partner selection shapes relationships, I gradually recognized why social anxiety is overwhelmingly common. Natural selection shaped us to care enormously about what other people think about our resources, abilities, and character. This is what self-esteem is all about. We constantly monitor how much others value us. Low self-esteem is a signal to try harder to please others.114,115 However, trying harder to please others often conflicts with competing for status, creating plenty of conflicts that you hear about in psychotherapy.

CHARACTER OVER COMPETENCY. When churches put together a candidate profile, they need to begin by laying out a vision for what they think a senior pastor ought to be. By walking through the key texts on Christian leadership (as we did in chapter 3), they can show that they are committed to a leader who is not a bully but gentle (1 Tim. 3:3; cf. Titus 1:7); not out for shameful gain but eagerly serving (1 Peter 5:2); not domineering but setting an example (1 Peter 5:3); and not quarrelsome but kind (2 Tim. 2:24). To be sure, this doesn’t mean the search committee cares only about character. Competency in a number of areas matters too. But the church needs to be clear that giftedness is not the only—or main—thing they are looking for.

The collective benefits of higher education will not be asserted unless the public can be engaged in defining them. A student’s future returns on his or her personal investment of time and money will seem more critical than the public benefits to be derived from ensuring that all students become people of character as well as of competence. An institution’s prowess in potentially lucrative lines of scientific research will seem more essential to its mission than its participation in the development of an aesthetically engaged and broadly humane society. Unless there is public discussion that can help support the balancing of public and private priorities, colleges and universities will dance only to the private ambitions that ensure continuing high levels of enrollment and high ratings in the various surveys of satisfaction that give institutions a boost in national rankings.

Almost seventy-five percent of our leaders have come right out of Willow. These are people who have proven their character, competence, and chemistry fit while serving in volunteer positions within our ministry.

Here’s an unsavory question: If Rebecca did behave just like Robert, exhibiting his kind of self-assuredness, what would her boss think then? All the evidence suggests that Rebecca wouldn’t fare so well, whether her boss was male or female. For women, this is the big conundrum of confidence. A host of troubling studies now show that we pay a heavy social and even professional penalty when we act as aggressively as men do. If we walk into our boss’s office with unsolicited opinions, speak up first at meetings, and give business advice above our pay grade, we are either disliked, or—let’s not beat around the bush—labeled “a bitch.” The more a woman succeeds, the worse the vitriol seems to get. It’s not just her competence that’s called into question; it’s her very character.

the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible. The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order—a human order, that is, that accommodates itself both to other order and to mystery. The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, “hard facts”; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.

When you hire a person, you don’t just hire their competencies, you also hire the sum total of who they are—competence, character, and culture. You don’t want to stop with can they do the job, but you want to ask, can they be what this job needs? That moves us into the culture territory.

The first duty of liberality (dana) which demands that a ruler should contribute generously towards the welfare of the people makes the tacit assumption that a government should have the competence to provide adequately for its citizens. In the context of modern politics, one of the prime duties of a responsible administration would be to ensure the economic security of the state. Morality (sila) in traditional Buddhist terms is based on the observance of the five precepts, which entails refraining from destruction of life, theft, adultery, falsehood and indulgence in intoxicants. The ruler must bear a high moral character to win the respect and trust of the people, to ensure their happiness and prosperity and to provide a proper example. When the king does not observe the dhamma, state functionaries become corrupt, and when state functionaries are corrupt the people are caused much suffering. It is further believed that an unrighteous king brings down calamity on the land. The root of a nation’s misfortunes has to be sought in the moral failings of the government. The third duty, paricagga, is sometimes translated as generosity and sometimes as self-sacrifice. The former would constitute a duplication of the first duty, dana, so self-sacrifice as the ultimate generosity which gives up all for the sake of the people would appear the more satisfactory interpretation. The concept of selfless public service is sometimes illustrated by the story of the hermit Sumedha who took the vow of Buddhahood. In so doing he who could have realized the supreme liberation of nirvana in a single lifetime committed himself to countless incarnations that he might help other beings free themselves from suffering.

There was absolutely no way Martine’s pretty face and wholesome character could even compete or compare with this highly sexually attractive female who had claimed him as her own from the first minute she laid eyes on him.

What all that means is that readers fundamentally want to feel something, not about your story, but about themselves. They want to play. They want to anticipate, guess, think, and judge. They want to finish a story and feel competent. They want to feel like they’ve been through something. They want to connect with your characters and live their fictional experience, or believe that they have. Creating

Moderation is based on the idea that things do not fit neatly together. Politics is likely to be a competition between legitimate opposing interests. Philosophy is likely to be a tension between competing half truths. A personality is likely to be a battleground of valuable but incompatible traits.

With appropriate adjustments, the unelected officials of the shadow government, be they cabinet secretaries, generals, or corporate senior executives, respond to the same stimuli in roughly the same way ... Rumsfeld is an egregious example of a character type that seems to be magnetically drawn to the upper levels of the governmental corporate world. Actual competence is often less important than boundless self-confidence and a startling lack of reflectiveness about what one is actually doing. It is not corruption so much as bias confused with principle.

Competence' may get you to the top but only 'character' and 'commitment' will keep you there on a sustainable basis. So build 3 Cs.

From my recent blog tour interview: I recently spent time updating my Goodreads page to include the names of authors whose works inspire me, and as I thought about it, the characters in the books I liked all share certain traits in common. The heroes of the novels were highly competent men in the world of work. They had great families and friends. They were experienced with women. Everything was great, but something was missing. They were adrift in that their relationships with women didn't fulfill them emotionally. It was something they were actually aware of, or something acted as a catalyst that brought them face to face with their reality. I especially liked when the heroes were introspective enough to realize that they needed to do something about their lives.

they will have the right to expect from you the highest standards of character, professional competence and integrity.

Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg has written a comprehensive and perhaps definitive text on building resilience in children—Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics.17 In it he teaches that resilience is comprised of competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, coping, and control, which he terms the “7 C’s,” and which emanate from the positive youth movement, itself an outgrowth of the positive psychology movement. Taking

Attachment divides the child's world into those the child likes and those the child is indifferent to, those who attract and those who repel, those to approach and those to avoid. All too commonly in today's world parents and peers have become attachments that compete — like lovers who compete for the same beloved. As many parents have experienced to their great sorrow, children cannot be both peer-oriented and parent-oriented at the same time. A child's alienated stance toward his parents does not represent a character flaw, ingrained rudeness, or behavior problems. It is what we see when attachment instincts have become misdirected.

Our children are absorbing everything we do and say. Don’t just think about what you are feeding their bodies; consider what you are feeding their minds. Let the words that you direct toward them, as well as toward your husband, be words that lift up instead of tear down. They need healthy food to build strong bodies, and they need healthy words to build strong spirits. There will be enough in the world to challenge their confidence. It is your job to create unshakable character through the words that you choose. Eliminate the toxic phrases but also look for opportunities to feed them with words and phrases that enrich and empower. “You did it!” “You are so smart!” “You amaze me!” “I am astounded at how incredible you are!” These words act like building blocks, creating strength and competence. And the opportunities to build them up are always there.

So who is the real Jerry Falwell? Is he a rabid, hate-spewing fundamentalist? Or is he a dutiful family man, a talented preacher, and a competent administrator? Was John McCain right when he called Dr. Falwell an “agent of intolerance” during the 2000 presidential campaign? Or was the Wall Street Journal right when, in 1978, it described him as a “man of charm, drive, talent, and ambition”? Well, in a way, both are right. In fact, that’s the overwhelming impression I get from the time I’ve spent watching Dr. Falwell this semester and talking to him this afternoon: he’s a complex character, but he’s not hiding anything. He may be a blundering, arch-conservative provocateur, and he may spew anti-gay venom more often than most people brush their teeth, but I honestly think he believes every word he preaches, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he really does stay awake at night worrying about the homosexual agenda, the evils of abortion, and the imminent spread of liberalism. He really does think America needs to be saved.

An accurate budget must be built on a base of thorough research. You must do research on your community to find out what it will cost to get a church off the ground. You need to solidly answer questions such as:, What will the cost of living in this community be?, What will my salary be? How about salaries for additional staff?, How much will it cost to rent space for the church to meet in?, How much will it cost to operate a business in this city (office rent, phones, computer equipment, copy equipment, and so on)? Talk with other pastors in the community. Find out what their start-up costs were and what they are currently spending to maintain and operate the church. Other pastors can be a valuable resource for you on many levels. The worst mistake you can make is to start the budget process by viewing economic realities through a rose-colored lens. If you speculate too much or cut corners in this area, you’ll end up paying dearly down the road. Remember, God never intended for you to go it alone. There are people and resources out there to help you prepare. Ask others for help. God receives no glory when you are scraping the bottom to do His work. So don’t think too small. Church planting is an all or nothing venture. You can’t just partially commit. You have to fully commit, and often that means with your wallet. Don’t underestimate the importance of having a base of prayer partners. You need prayers as desperately as you need money. You need prayers as desperately as you need money. An unhealthy launch may occur when a new church begins as the result of a church split, when a planter is disobedient in following God, or when there is a lack of funding or solid strategy. Finding the right teammates to help you on this journey is serious business. The people you bring on to your staff will either propel you down the road toward fulfilling the vision for your church or serve as speed bumps along the way. You should never be afraid to ask potential staff members to join you—even if it means a salary cut, a drastic position change or a significant new challenge for them. When you ask someone to join your staff, you are not asking that person to make a sacrifice. (If you have that mentality, you need to work to change it.) Instead, you are offering that person the opportunity of a lifetime. There are three things that every new church must have before it can be a real church: (1) a lead pastor, (2) a start date, and (3) a worship leader. Hire a person at the part-time level before bringing him or her on full time. When hiring a new staff person, make sure he or she possesses the three C's: Character, Chemistry & Competency Hiring staff precedes growth, not vice versa. Hire slow, fire fast. Never hire staff when you can find a volunteer. Launch as publicly as possible, with as many people as possible. There are two things you are looking for in a start date: (1) a date on which you have the potential to reach as many people as possible, and (2) a date that precedes a period of time in which people, in general, are unlikely to be traveling out of town. You need steppingstones to get you from where you are to your launch date. Monthly services are real services that you begin holding three to six months prior to your launch date. They are the absolute best strategic precursor to your launch. Monthly services give you the invaluable opportunity to test-drive your systems, your staff and, to an extent, even your service style. At the same time, you are doing real ministry with the people in attendance. These services should mirror as closely as possible what your service will look like on the launch date. Let your target demographic group be the strongest deciding factor in settling on a location: Hotel ballrooms, Movie theaters, Comedy clubs, Public-school auditoriums, Performing-arts theaters, Available church meeting spaces, College auditoriums, Corporate conference space.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF DISCIPLES • A disciple abides in Christ through the Word and prayer (John 15:7). • A disciple bears much fruit (verse 8). • A disciple responds to God's love with obedience (verses 9-10). • A disciple possesses joy (verse I I ). • A disciple loves as Christ loved (verses 12-13).19 PERSONAL COMPETENCIES OF DISCIPLES • A disciple submits to a teacher who teaches him or her how to follow Jesus. • A disciple learns Jesus' words. • A disciple learns Jesus' way of ministry. • A disciple imitates Jesus' life and character. • A disciple finds and teaches other disciples for Jesus .20

Lyotard. The assertion that postmodernity is “incredulity toward metanarratives” is ultimately a claim to be affirmed by the church, pushing us to recover (a) the narrative character of Christian faith, rather than understanding it as a collection of ideas, and (b) the confessional nature of our narrative and the way in which we find ourselves in a world of competing narratives.

Usability has much more to do with obedience than giftedness. Obedience even precedes character. If we will obey Jesus, trust Him enough to say “Yes Lord,” and trust that He sees in us something we have not exhibited, this is enough for Him to begin to forge our character. First is obedience, second character, and third competency.

In leadership, skills may take you where character won't keep you.

Luck is waiting for something to turn up; labor, with keen eye and strong will, will turn something up. Luck lies in bed and wishes the postman would bring him news of a legacy; labor turns out at six o'clock, and, with busy pen or ringing hammer, lays a foundation for a competence. Luck whines; labor whistles. Luck relies on charms; labor depends on character. Luck slips down to indigence; labor strides upward to independence.

Suppose that, through legislation (an artificial means) and through a government-run school voucher program (an artificially created market), public schools are privatized. "Natural evolution" will then take place: Schools will have to compete, only the best competitors will survive, and those schools that cannot compete will cease to exist. The surviving schools, by the Folk Theory of the Best Result, will be the best schools. It is an argument entirely based on two metaphors and a folk theory, all of which derive from Strict Father morality. Many people do not notice that Evolution Is Survival Of The Best Competitor is, indeed, a metaphor, much less a Strict Father metaphor. One way to reveal its metaphorical character is to contrast it with a metaphor for evolution that takes the perspective of Nurturant Parent morality: Evolution Is The Survival Of The Best Nurtured. Here "best nurtured" is taken to include both literal nurturing by parents and others and metaphorical nurturing by nature itself. Where fitting an ecological niche is being metaphorized as winning a competition in one case, it is metaphorized as being cared for by nature in the other. Both are metaphors for evolution, but they have very different entailments, especially when combined with the metaphor Natural Change Is Evolution and the folk theory that evolution yields the best result. Putting these together yields a very different composite metaphor for natural change, namely, Natural Change Is The Survival Of The Best Nurtured, which produces the best result. Applied to the issue of whether public schools should be privatized, this metaphor would entail that they should not be. Rather, public schools need to be "better nurtured," that is, given the resources they need to improve: better-trained and better-paid teachers, smaller classes, better facilities, programs for involving parents, community involvement, and so on.

Real empowerment comes from having both the principles and the practices understood and applied at all levels of the organization. Practices are the what to do’s, specific applications that fit specific circumstances. Principles are the why to do’s, the elements upon which applications or practices are built. Without understanding the principles of a given task, people become incapacitated when the situation changes and different practices are required to be successful. When training people, we often teach skills and practices, the specific how to of a given task. But when we teach practices without principles, we tend to make people dependent on us or others for further instruction and direction. Principle-centered leaders are men and women of character who work with competence “on farms” with “seed and soil” on the basis of natural principles and build those principles into the center of their lives, into the center of their relationships with others, into the center of their agreements and contracts, into their management processes, and into their mission statements. The challenge is to be a light, not a judge; to be a model, not a critic.

In a team relationship, as in any relationship, we trust people because we are comfortable with both their character and competence. By character“, I mean our perception of another person's motives, values, honesty, or moral fiber. Competence, on the other hand, refers to the capability, knowledge, and skill of a team member in general, and specifically as it impacts his or her assigned role. If we don't trust both a team member's character and competence, it is unlikely that we will put our desired goals, performance appraisal, compensation, or career into that person's care.

The obstacle to achieving such vocational diversification and general aptitude does not lie in the human character as such, but rather in the mass of qualifying educational and vocational restrictions imposed by every privileged group in order to maintain its special status, emoluments, and perquisites. Though the reputed object of these regulations is often laudable, as measures to ensure competence and protect members from unqualified rivals, the underlying aim is to prevent fresh activities and organizations from arising in competition with the power system. As a result, the scope of human initiative through direct action becomes limited: today the smallest new measure must run a gauntlet of licensing laws, professional codes, trades union regulations, wage schedules, promotion priorities, bureaucratic restrictions and inspections. Even the exigencies of war were only partly able to break down or bypass these barriers-for where are they more deeply entrenched than in the military machine itself? This explains, perhaps, why there is so little prospect of overcoming the defects of the power system by any attack that employs mass organizations and mass efforts at persuasion; for these mass methods support the very system they attack. The changes that have so far been effective, and that give promise of further success, are those that have been initiated by animated individual minds, small groups, and local communities nibbling at the edges of the power structure by breaking routines and defying regulations. Such an attack seeks, not to capture the citadel of power, but to withdraw from it and quietly paralyze it. Once such initiatives become widespread, as they at last show signs of becoming, it will restore power and confident authority to its proper source: the human personality and the small face-to-face community.

Competence As many cases show, a police officer without an understanding of people will not deal competently with conflict, while one who has it can calm adversaries and ease tension.

Angry tears stung her eyes. Tension built and boiled inside her. Her cheeks grew hot with suppressed anger, her movements became jerky and abrupt. She shoved an errant strand of hair out of her face, stormed to the washstand — And collided with her husband. He had been coming toward her with a piece of wet linen and a bowl half-filled with water. As he and Juliet bounced off each other, some of the water spilled onto the carpet, the rest down the front of his waistcoat. Ignoring it, Gareth held out the damp rag like a truce offering. "Here." "What's that for?" "She needs washing, doesn't she?" "What do you know about babies?" "Come now, Juliet. I am not entirely lacking in common sense." "I wonder," she muttered, spitefully. He summoned a polite though confused smile — and that only stoked Juliet's temper all the more. She did not want him to be such a gentleman, damn it!  She wanted a good, out-and-out row with him. She wanted to tell him just what she thought of him, of his reckless spending, of his carefree attitude toward serious matters. Oh, why hadn't she married someone like Charles — someone capable, competent, and mature? "What is wrong, Juliet?" "Everything!" she fumed. She plunged the linen in the bowl of water and began swabbing Charlotte's bottom. "I think Perry was right. We should go straight back to your brother, the duke." "You should not listen to Perry." "Why not? He's got more sense than you and the rest of your friends combined. We haven't even been married a day, and already it's obvious that you're hopelessly out of your element. You have no idea what to do with a wife and daughter. You have no idea where to go, how to support us — nothing. Yet you had to come charging after us, the noble rescuer who just had to save the day. I'll bet you didn't give any thought at all to what to do with us afterward, did you? Oh!  Do you always act before thinking? Do you?" He looked at her for a moment, brows raised, stunned by the force of her attack. Then he said dryly, "My dear, if you'll recall, that particular character defect saved your life. Not to mention the lives of the other people on that stagecoach." "So it did, but it's not going to feed us or find us a place to live!"  She lifted Charlotte's bottom, pinned a clean napkin around the baby's hips, and soaped and rinsed her hands. "I still cannot believe how much money you tossed away on a marriage license, no, a bribe, this morning, nor how annoyed you still seem to be that we didn't waste God-knows-how-much on a hotel tonight. You seem to have no concept of money's value, and at the rate you're going, we're going to have to throw ourselves on the mercy of the local parish or go begging in the street just to put food in our bellies!" "Don't be ridiculous. That would never happen." "Why wouldn't it?" "Juliet, my brother is the Duke of Blackheath. My family is one of the oldest and richest in all of England. We are not going to starve, I can assure you." "What do you plan to do, then, work for a living? Get those pampered, lily-white hands of yours dirty and calloused?

Blast it, Silverton, just look at the collection of suitors she’s got trailing after her, especially Broadmore.” Nigel gloomily watched the broad-shouldered Corinthian sweep Amelia gracefully down the room. “What girl wouldn’t want to be romanced by someone who looks like bloody Prince Charming?” Silverton frowned. “And you’re what? The frog on the lily pad?” “Hardly, but I can’t compete with Broadmore. He’s got every girl in town half in love with him already. Why not Amelia?” “Because Broadmore’s an arrogant ass. Do you really want Miss Easton spending the rest of her life with him? You’d be doing the poor girl a service by stealing him a march.” Nigel had never looked at it that way before. Broadmore was an arrogant ass, one who had a great deal more bottom than brains. Not that Amelia seemed to think so. As she and Broadmore spun past him, her light-hearted laugh drifted behind her, shimmering like fairy dust in the air. “I see your point,” Nigel replied. “But Amelia doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by Broadmore’s character defects.” He tried to ignore the way his heart twisted into a hard knot at the thought of Amelia married to another man. Silverton

Real empowerment comes from having both the principles and the practices understood and applied at all levels of the organization. Practices are the what to do’s, specific applications that fit specific circumstances. Principles are the why to do’s, the elements upon which applications or practices are built. Without understanding the principles of a given task, people become incapacitated when the situation changes and different practices are required to be successful. When training people, we often teach skills and practices, the specific how to of a given task. But when we teach practices without principles, we tend to make people dependent on us or others for further instruction and direction. Principle-centered leaders are men and women of character who work with competence “on farms” with “seed and soil” on the basis of natural principles and build those principles into the center of their lives, into the center of their relationships with others, into the center of their agreements and contracts, into their management processes, and into their mission statements. The challenge is to be a light, not a judge; to be a model, not a critic. Section 1 PERSONAL     and INTERPERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS  

Trustworthiness at the personal level. Trustworthiness is based on character, what you are as a person, and competence, what you can do. If you have faith in my character but not in my competence, you still wouldn’t trust me. Many good, honest people gradually lose their professional trustworthiness because they allow themselves to become “obsolete” inside their organizations. Without character and competence, we won’t be considered trustworthy, nor will we show much wisdom in our choices and decisions. Without meaningful ongoing professional development, there is little trustworthiness or trust. • Trust at the interpersonal level. Trustworthiness is the foundation of trust. Trust is the emotional bank account between two people that enables them to have a win-win performance agreement. If two people trust each other, based on the trustworthiness of each other, they can then enjoy clear communication, empathy, synergy, and productive interdependency. If one is incompetent, training and development can help. But if one has a character flaw, he or she must make and keep promises to increase internal security, improve skills, and rebuild relationships of trust. Trust—or the lack of it—is at the root of success or failure in relationships and in the bottom-line results of business, industry, education, and government.

Ultimately leadership boils down to a relationship. High-quality relationships are based on trust—trust of one anothers' competence as well as character.

Lawrence as a leader of the Arab Revolt. Though many might argue that leaders are made, not born, Lawrence’s case suggests a delicate balance between nature and nurture in the development of any great leader. Leadership is perhaps the most important human imperative: without leaders—without purpose, direction, and motivation—society as we know it could not function. Leadership is a fundamental birthright that at one time or another we are all called upon to exercise, whether as leader or follower. Yet in both roles, personal character and professional competence are demanded.

In Singin’ in the Rain, Lina Lamont provides both an effective “beard” for Don and Cosmo and a foil, representing both the reason for Don’s “unattached” state and the basis for their mutual contempt for women. Yet the signs are all there to be read for those interested in reading them: Cosmo and Don performing as a burlesque team, in which they sit on each other’s laps and play each other’s violins; Cosmo’s comment to Lina after the premiere of The Royal Rascal, “Yeah, Lina, you looked pretty good for a girl”;30 and their bullying, in “Moses Supposes,” of the fogyish diction coach, figuratively drawn out of his closet only to be ridiculed as an asexual “pansy” who can’t sing and dance (thus both confirming and denying homosexuality at the same time).31 On a broader scale, Kelly’s career as a dancer, offering a more masculinized style of athletic dance (in opposition especially to the stylized grace of Fred Astaire), represented a similar balancing act between, in this case, the feminized occupation of balletic dance and a strong claim of heterosexual masculinity. Significantly, the process of exclusion they use with the diction coach is precisely what Cosmo proposes they apply to Lina in converting The Dueling Cavalier into a musical: “It’s easy to work the numbers. All you have to do is dance around Lina and teach her how to take a bow.” But they also apply the strategy to Kathy, who is only just learning to “dance” in this sense (conveniently so, since Debbie Reynolds had had but little dance training, as noted).32 Early on, we see her dance competently in “All I Do Is Dream of You,” but she then seems extremely tentative in “You Were Meant for Me,” immobile for much of the number, not joining in the singing, and dancing only as Don draws her in (which is, of course, consistent with her character’s development at this point). With “Good Mornin’,” though, she seems to “arrive” as part of the Don-Cosmo team, even though for part of the number she serves as a kind of mannequin—much like the voice teacher in “Moses Supposes,” except that she sings the song proper while Don and Cosmo “improvise” tongue-twisting elaborations between the lines. As the number evolves, their emerging positions within the group become clear. Thus, during their solo clownish dance bits, using their raincoats as props, Kathy and Don present themselves as fetishized love objects, Kathy as an “Island girl” and Don as a matador, while Cosmo dances with a “dummy,” recalling his earlier solo turn in “Make ’em Laugh.

Our perceptions can be vastly different. And yet we both have lived with our paradigms for years, thinking they are “facts,” and questioning the character or the mental competence of anyone who can’t “see the facts.

The leader’s character is what makes the difference between advancing or de-centering the morale, competence, and commitment of an organization. The truth about confession is that it doesn’t lead to people’s weakness and disrespect; instead, it transforms the leader’s character and earns her greater respect and power. This is the strange paradox of leading: to the degree you attempt to hide or dissemble your weaknesses, the more you will need to control those you lead, the more insecure you will become, and the more rigidity you will impose—prompting the ultimate departure of your best people. The dark spiral of spin control inevitably leads to people’s cynicism and mistrust. So do yourself and your organization a favor and don’t go there. Prepare now to admit to your staff that you are the organization’s chief sinner.

Page 107 -- Trading minorities, it is argued, come into conflict with business rivals of other ethnic groups. Conflict occurs, not merely because of ordinary business rivalries, but because immigrant minorities are able to undercut their rivals by the use of their own credit institutions, their guild techniques of restraining competition among themselves, and their use of cheap, usually family, labor. Their interests also collide with the interests of those with whom they transact business: consumers, tenants, clients. Finally, because trading minorities have the ability to obtain their own cheap labor, they depress the prospects for labor in the host society. The tractable character of labor in middleman minority firms insures that rising wages in competing businesses would not be accompanied by similar increases for workers of minority firms. A competing firm in the host society that granted a wage increase would find itself priced out of the market. Eventually, workers in host society firms come to identify immigrant businesses and the low wages they pay as the source of the low wages paid in the economy generally

Watch what you say because words are powerful and irreversible, they can build you up or crush you down to the ground. Your words can cost you your integrity Your words can cost you your dignity Your words can cost you your trustworthiness Your words can cost you your character Your words can cost you your competence Your words can cost you your accountability Your words can cost you your entire life. Think before you speak and always remember that words can be forgiven but they will never be forgotten. Words! Words! Words! ‘Don’t use foul or abusive language, Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them’(Ephesians 4:29, NLT).

The idea that democracy is incompatible with excellence, that high standards are inherently elitist - or, as we would say today: sexist, racist, and so on - has always been the best argument against it. Unfortunately many democrats secretly - or not so secretly - share this belief, and are therefore unable to answer it. Instead, they fall back on the claim that democratic men and women make up in tolerance what they lack in character. The latest variation on this familiar theme - its reductio ad absurdum - is that a respect for cultural diversity forbids us to impose the standards of privileged groups on the victims of oppression. This is so clearly a recipe for universal competence; or at least a disastrous split between the competent classes and the incompetent, that it is rapidly losing whatever credibility it may have had when our society, because of its abundance of land and natural resources, combined with its chronic shortage of labour, offered a more generous margin for incompetence.

There are many reasons to improve our awareness of God’s active presence in our lives. The best reason is the guidance and friendship we receive from “checking in” with God throughout the day. Other benefits include healing emotional wounds, enhancing character and building community. This booklet will help you learn the Immanuel journaling method for use in your life and fellowship community. The principles involved will be explained using biblical 1 truths for relating to God and neuroscience for improving our awareness. A more mindful attachment with God leads to clearer knowledge of who we can become. “ME,” my identity, is ultimately shaped by who I love and what pain I avoid. Love and the pain I avoid often compete within me to see whether my love or my fear of pain is stronger. As Christians we know “God is love” (1

Dogs consistently win the part of square-jawed hero and sympathetic ear, while cats compete vigorously with British character actors for the role of effete villain, whining sidekick, and insufferable snob. Is this grossly unfair? I think not. By deed and association, cats have won a most unenviable reputation due to their predilection for uncivil disobedience and conditional affection.

Unfortunately, society is still backward about the need for and the place of psychotherapy, and there is a common feeling that anyone who needs psychotherapy is weak or incompetent. To harbor repressed feelings has nothing to do with strength of character or mental competence. And yet we are so unenlightened about this matter in the United States that one is virtually ruled out of seeking public office if he or she has ever been in psychotherapy. (page 102)

the best product companies hire competent people of character, and then coach and develop them into members of extraordinary teams.

Erica seemed slightly confused by this line of thought, as it concerned human emotions, but she nodded agreement anyhow. “Exactly.” “It might not work out so easily for you,” Chip warned. “Jessica Shang has a lot going for her. She’s pretty, she’s nice, she’s fun—and she’s rich.” “Yes,” Erica agreed. “But I’m me.” Chip laughed dismissively. “I’m just saying, given the choice between two girls, if one of them’s a billionaire, that’s gonna mean something. This Mike character’s gonna show up to the hotel, find out Daddy Shang rented the whole darn thing, and be gobsmacked. And once Jessica starts batting her eyes at him, he’s gonna think he hit the mother lode.” “Mike’s not that shallow,” I argued. “We’re all that shallow,” Chip retorted. “Whether we want to believe it or not. Mike’s on a weeklong vacation. He’s not looking to fall in love. He’s looking to have fun! And who’s he gonna have more fun with? The girl he can only afford to take to McDonald’s—or the girl who has an entire hotel and a private jet and all the free food they can eat?” “Good point,” I conceded. “I can compete with that,” Erica said confidently. “How?” Jawa asked. “No offense, but you’re not exactly the warmest person in the world. Your own family doesn’t even think you can make friends with Jessica. So what do you know about winning over a boy’s affection?” “I know it’s easy,” Erica replied. “Much easier than making friends with someone. To make friends with another girl is work. You have to be nice and pretend to like the same things and have all these excruciatingly dull conversations about your feelings. To get a guy to fall for you, you barely even need to use your brain.” “That is not true,” Jawa argued, offended. “Really?” Erica came around the table to Jawa, kneeled close to him, batted her eyelashes, and purred, “Would you like to go somewhere quiet and explain why you’re right to me?” Jawa looked as though his brain had shorted out. Face-to-face with Erica, his fourteen-year-old mind was completely overwhelmed by her beauty. “Sure!” he said eagerly. “Let’s go right now!

The three Cs of hiring are character, competence, and chemistry. Character is first on the list because it is the most important.

I was discovering, the difficulty of competing in a game where there were no clearly defined rules, a game in which your opponents are not merely trying to put a ball through a basket or push it across your goal line, but are instead trying to convince the broad public—at least implicitly, more often explicitly—that in matters of judgment, intelligence, values, and character, they are more worthy than you.

...I'm learning the need to actively seek diverse representation in decision making, leadership and speaker scheduling. To the degree we do not, we are consciously or unconsciously discriminating and thereby doing a disservice to the kingdom. To be clear, diversity doesn't trump competence, character, or having a message. Leaders and teachers have, and should have, a high bar of accountability with regard to teaching and influence.

It is when we are weak that God’s power is manifest, not when we are strong [...] The trouble for many of us as Christian leaders is that we simply don’t like it! Or we think that our churches don’t want it. Faced with a choice between apparently strong, resilient, visionary, resourceful leaders or weak but prayerful ones, we secretly think the church wants the first type. We can imagine that they won’t want us if we delight in weakness. We can confuse confidence with competence, all the while neglecting character.

On the contrary, moderation is based on an awareness of the inevitability of conflict. If you think that the world can fit neatly together, then you don’t need to be moderate. If you think all your personal qualities can be brought together into simple harmony, you don’t need to hold back, you can just go whole hog for self-actualization and growth. If you think all moral values point in the same direction, or all political goals can be realized all at once by a straightforward march along one course, you don’t need to be moderate, either. You can just head in the direction of truth as quickly as possible. Moderation is based on the idea that things do not fit neatly together. Politics is likely to be a competition between legitimate opposing interests. Philosophy is likely to be a tension between competing half-truths. A personality is likely to be a battleground of valuable but incompatible traits. As Harry Clor put it in his brilliant book On Moderation, “The fundamental division in the soul or psyche is at the root of our need for moderation.

BROKEN TRUST: A BEGINNING For many people, broken trust is a dead end. It’s the end of a relationship, the end of an opportunity—sometimes even the end of self-confidence and the ability to ever trust again. But it doesn’t have to be. In fact, I contend that broken trust can actually become a significant beginning. If you’ve broken trust with someone else, it’s an opportunity to get your own act together, to improve your character and competence, to behave in ways that inspire trust. Hopefully this will influence the offended party to restore trust in you. But even if it doesn’t, your effort may well affect others in positive ways, and it will definitely enable you to create more high-trust relationships in the future.

For all of us there are activities in life that are competence-building and activities that are character-building. When I was first asked to give talks, I built competence in my dharma. But when I was asked to take out the trash, it built my character.

The e-mail was a booklist I had sent to Joanna on Monday morning. Several items had been highlighted. She’d asked for books for her daughters that featured girls who accomplished more than simply catching Prince Charming. Joanna had come in late one night the previous week, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, radiating righteous indignation. She marched up to the reference desk and promptly launched into a diatribe against fairy tales, kids’ movies in general and Disney in particular, the prevalence of purple, pink, and sparkle in little girls’ clothing, and marketing aimed at children. She wound up with a brief thanks for Hermione Granger, “a smart, competent character the girls can grow up with,” and bemoaned the fact that it would be years before her kids were ready for Katniss Everdeen.

The reality is that most people have an inner fixed-mindset pessimist in them right alongside their inner growth-mindset optimist. Recognizing this is important because it’s easy to make the mistake of changing what we say without changing our body language, facial expressions, and behavior. So what should we do? A good first step is to watch for mismatches between our words and actions. When we slip up—and we will—we can simply acknowledge that it’s hard to move away from a fixed, pessimistic view of the world. One of Carol’s colleagues, Susan Mackie, works with CEOs and encourages them to give names to their inner fixed-mindset characters. Then they can say things like “Oops. I guess I brought Controlling Claire to the meeting today. Let me try that again.” Or: “Overwhelmed Olivia is struggling to deal with all the competing demands, can you help me think this through?” Ultimately, adopting a gritty perspective involves recognizing that people get better at things—they grow.

Some tasks build competence, and some build character. The brainless activities annoyed me, but eventually I learned that doing an activity that was mentally unchallenging freed space for reflection and introspection. It was worthwhile after all.

The Challenge of leadership: inspiring people to work hard and to execute tasks willingly. To meet that challenge, a leader must demonstrate three things: 1. He must be competent. 2. He must exercise good judgement. 3. He must have character.

Let me be clear on this: the best product companies hire competent people of character, and then coach and develop them into members of extraordinary teams.

People disagree about the meaning of books, bodies, and schools, and how they should be valued. In fact, we disagree about the norms appropriate to many of the domains that markets have invaded—family life, friendship, sex, procreation, health, education, nature, art, citizenship, sports and the way we contend with the prospect of death. But that's my point: once we see that markets and commerce change the character of the goods they touch, we have to ask where markets belong—and where they don't. And we can't answer this question without deliberating about the meaning and purpose of goods, and the values that should govern them. Such deliberations touch, unavoidably, on competing conceptions of the good life. This is terrain on which we sometimes fear to tread. For fear of disagreement, we hesitate to bring our moral and spiritual convictions into the public square. But shrinking from these questions does not leave them undecided. It simply means that markets will decide them for us.

Our best work is a representation of our internal character, competency, and excellence.

While adapting perfectly to the preservation of these distinctions at an ideological level, neo-liberal rationality effects an unprecedented deactivation of their normative character. Dilution of public law in favour of private law; configuration of public activity to the criteria of profitability and productivity; symbolic devaluation of law as the specific act of the legislature; strengthening of the executive; prioritization of procedure; a tendency for police powers to break free of any judicial control; promotion of the 'citizen-consumer' responsible for arbitrating between competing 'political offers' - these are so many proven trends attesting to the depletion of liberal democracy as a political norm.

HEROES ARE DESIGNED TO TRANSFORM At the beginning of a story, the hero is usually flawed, filled with doubt, and ill-equipped for the task set before them. The guide aids them on their journey, rife with conflict. The conflict begins to change the character, though. Forced into action, the hero develops skills and accrues the experience needed to defeat their foe. Though the hero is still filled with doubt, they summon the courage to engage, and in the climactic scene defeat the villain, proving once and for all they have changed, that they are now competent to face challenges and are better versions of themselves. The story has transformed them. This same character arc, by the way, is the arc for The Old Man and the Sea, Pride and Prejudice, Pinocchio, Hamlet, Sleeping Beauty, and Tommy Boy. It’s the arc of almost every popular story we can name. Why? Because it’s our story. Feelings of self-doubt are universal, as is the desire to become somebody competent and courageous. And all of this matters when it comes to branding our products and services. A few important questions we have to ask ourselves when we’re representing our brand are: Who does our customer want to become? What kind of person do they want to be? What is their aspirational identity?

When they can't compete with your character, they attack your reputation.

When they can't compete with your character, they attack your reputation.

Theme and plot relate to character arc. As does structure. Concept relates to theme in that concept sets the stage for the theme to announce itself. And so on, again. The value in separating the core competencies into separate buckets is that we can then clearly understand the definition and criteria for each, which are unique and therefore demanding of fully differentiated understanding, as well as how each relates to the others.

Here then, at the most introductory level of definition, and in no particular order, are the Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling: CONCEPT—The idea or seed that evolves into a platform for a story. Best and most empowering when expressed as a “what if?” question. The answer leads to further “what if?” questions in a branching and descending hierarchy, and the collective whole of those choices and answers becomes your story. CHARACTER—Don’t leave home without one. Every story needs a hero. We don’t need to like him (contrary to what your high school composition teacher told you), but we do need to root for him. THEME —Yes, it’s like putting smoke into a bottle, but it can be done. Not to be confused with concept, theme is what your story is illuminating about real life. STRUCTURE—What comes first, what comes next, and so forth … and why. And no, you can’t just make it up for yourself. There are expectations and standards here. Knowing what they are is the first step toward getting published. SCENE EXECUTION—You can know the game, but if you can’t play it well you can’t win. A story is a series of scenes with some connective tissue in place. And there are principles and guidelines to make them work. WRITING VOICE—The coat of paint, or if you prefer, the suit of clothes, that delivers the story to the reader. The biggest risk here is letting your writing voice get in the way. Less is more. Sparingly clever or sparsely eloquent is even better.

The genesis of the story, the very first spark of thought that leads to another thought that ends up being a story, always emerges from one of the four elemental core competencies—concept, character, theme, or, less often, structure. It doesn’t matter which, because the other three elements must be added to the mix—and, just like the original idea, developed—before the story can work.

Don’t overate your experience to hide incompetence.

Developing leaders who can navigate complexity is now a strategic priority—and, if done well, a competitive advantage. Beyond developing competency and capability, we need to develop leaders with courage and compassion, consciousness and character.

Walter Brennan was always in demand and gave the lie to the Hollywood cliché that you are only as good as your last picture. He never delivered anything less than a competent performance, but he never deceived himself when he was playing in lousy pictures.

The 3Cs of Leadership; Character; the compassionate morality to protect others rights, Charisma; an inspiring personality which gives hope, and Competency; with unquenchable thirst for knowledge

First and foremost, a leader should strive to be an individual of flawless character, technical competence, and moral courage.

Whether it’s a momentary lapse in ethical judgment or moral concern, cowardly leaders have caused tremendous damage to the law enforcement profession. And some of the more shocking and disturbingly immoral acts committed by cowards have drawn the character and the competency of the profession into question—and who could blame the public for doing so? And that’s perhaps the worst part about the immoral and unethical behavior of cowardly leaders. There are no answers that can morally justify or ethically support a police chief who engages in a cover-up to hide police corruption.[28] And there’s not much that can be said to uphold the character of a deputy chief that gets arrested for conspiracy to distribute heroin.[29

(1) He must be competent, (2) he must exercise good judgment, and (3) he must have character.

So how do you get to know yourself? The first way is to spend some time alone - just you - without all the outside influences of peers and family that so powerfully shape our aspirations. Give yourself enough time to hear your own heart’s desires, rather than being drowned out by what others want you to do with your life. I am sure the advice your family gives you is motivated by great love, but that doesn’t necessarily mean their advice about your aspirations and career is right for you. This is your life. Be bold with it. Live it with energy and purpose in the direction that excites you. Listen to your heart, look for your dreams: they are God-inspired. You will find that you have certain core competencies, things you naturally find you are good at. Look to those skills, feed them. Your purpose, dreams and aspirations will often be aligned with your natural core competencies. Listen to what the Bible says: You are wonderfully and powerfully made. In other words: it is no accident you are good at certain things! The second way to get to know yourself is to test yourself. Throw yourself into new challenges. Set yourself hard tasks. Find out what makes you come alive and test what you’re capable of.

To understand the crisis we need to get beyond the blame game. For at the root of the crisis was not a failure of characters or competence, but a failure of ideas. . . the present crisis is to a large extent the fruit of the intellectual failure of the economics profession. (28)

All Western liberal democracies recognise the importance of the principle of ‘fairness’, but Australia probably emphasises it more than most. Our belief in the ‘fair go’ has evolved to become part of our national culture, even though it is not entirely clear what this term means. In the mid-nineteenth century, a ‘fair go’ seems to have referred mainly to the importance of opening up opportunities so that everyone could compete. It was consistent with what today we think of as a meritocratic ideal. In the early decades of federation, however, governments increasingly pursued a national agenda intended to blur social divisions and build a strong sense of belonging and sameness, and the ‘fair go’ ideal in this period came to be identified with the political manipulation of distributional outcomes associated with an egalitarian ethic. This national interventionist strategy has, however, been in retreat for 30 years or more (although it remains relatively strong in the area of social policy), and survey evidence demonstrates that most Australians today have a much broader understanding of ‘fairness’ than mere egalitarianism. The ‘fair go’ today still recognises the ideal of equalising outcomes, but it also encompasses the competing ideals of meritocracy (reward for effort and talent) and fair exchange (the liberal principle of the right to private property provided it has been acquired in accordance with the rule of law). The egalitarian definition of fairness, which is taken for granted by the social policy intelligentsia as the only relevant definition, does not therefore do justice to what most Australians mean by a ‘fair go’ in the contemporary period. Indeed, if our social affairs intellectuals and pressure groups ever got their way, and taxes and welfare benefits were both raised even higher than they are at present in order to narrow what they call the ‘income gap’, the result would be the very opposite of what most Australians think a ‘fair go’ entails.

André Beaufre captured the interactive nature, the dueling character of strategic behavior when he states that strategy is the art of the dialectic of two opposing wills using force to resolve their dispute.37 A recently posited definition emphasizes the dynamic nature of this process, and of strategy, stating that strategy is a process, a constant adaptation to shifting conditions and circumstances in a world where chance, uncertainty and ambiguity dominate, a view that is very much in line with Boyd’s idea.38 Strategy has also widespread application beyond the military sphere. Since World War II civil institutions – businesses, corporations, non-military government departments, universities – have come to develop strategies, by which they usually mean policy planning of any kind.39 But here too there are various opinions of what strategy is and does.40 The following viewpoints enjoy agreement among experts:41 Strategy concerns both organization and environment: the organization uses strategy to deal with changing environments; Strategy affects overall welfare of the organization: strategic decisions are considered important enough to affect the overall welfare of the organization; Strategy involves issues of both content and process: the study of strategy includes both the actions taken, or the content of strategy, and the processes by which actions are decided and implemented; Strategies exist on different levels: firms have corporate strategy (what business shall we be in?) and business strategy (how shall we compete in each business?); Strategy involves various thought processes: strategy involves conceptual as well as analytical exercises.

There are times to teach and train and times not to teach. When relationships are strained and charged with emotion, attempts to teach or train are often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection. A better approach is to be alone with the person and to discuss the principle privately. But again, this requires patience and internal control—in short, emotional maturity. BORROWING STRENGTH BUILDS WEAKNESS In addition to parents, many employers, leaders, and others in positions of authority may be competent, knowledgeable, and skillful (at day six) but are emotionally and spiritually immature (at day two). They, too, may attempt to compensate for this deficiency, or gap, by borrowing strength from their position or their authority. How do immature people react to pressure? How does the boss react when subordinates don’t do things his way? The teacher when the students challenge her viewpoint? How would an immature parent treat a teenage daughter when she interrupts with her problems? How does this parent discipline a bothersome younger child? How does this person handle a difference with a spouse on an emotionally explosive matter? How does the person handle challenges at work? An emotionally immature person will tend to borrow strength from position, size, strength, experience, intellect, or emotions to make up for a character imbalance. And what are the consequences? Eventually this person will build weakness in three places: First, he builds weakness in himself. Borrowing strength from position or authority reinforces his own dependence upon external factors to get things done in the future. Second, he builds weakness in the other people. Others learn to act or react in terms of fear or conformity, thus stunting their own reasoning, freedom, growth, and internal discipline. Third, he builds weakness in the relationship. It becomes strained. Fear replaces cooperation. Each person involved becomes a little more arbitrary, a little more agitated, a little more defensive. To win an argument or a contest, an emotionally immature person may use his strengths and abilities to back people into a corner. Even though he wins the argument, he loses. Everyone loses. His

moved to the aura-based system. That's part of development: You throw stuff out there, and it works or it doesn't." Ultimately, however, auras passed the Blizzard North test: If a proposal's merit held up after testing, it made the cut. Auras became a defining characteristic of the Paladin. His assortment of combat skills and defensive auras enabled solo players to survive and thrive on their own, while Paladin players were sought after on Battle.net for the benefits their auras granted to parties. To fully upgrade each of any hero's thirty skills would require 600 skill points. The maximum character-level is 99, meaning players will never receive enough points to master—fully upgrade—all thirty skills. That limitation forces them to make difficult choices: maximize proficiency in a few skills, focus on a half dozen, or potentially spread themselves thin to become competent in all abilities but a master of none. Because each hero's skills are exclusive, all players wind up specializing simply by choosing a class. From there they only specialize further, investing heavily in some skills, spending a single point in others to satisfy requirements for later abilities, and ignoring most of the rest. Those limitations are not meant to restrain players, but to encourage them to think carefully about upgrades. The thought they put into skill points creates a bond between players and their avatars, and the satisfaction that comes from seeing a character evolve—as well as choosing each and every piece of a character's equipment load—feeds into Dave Brevik's peacock mentality: No two players were likely to spec out the same hero. In fact, a single player could roll several Amazons or Paladins and develop each differently. In a way, assigning exclusive skills to Diablo II's heroes was more limiting than Diablo's spell books, which could be read and cast by any of the game's three heroes as long as players dumped enough experience points into their Magic stat. Blizzard North's team saw that limitation as a good thing. It fostered agency, asking players to play an active role in evolving their characters.

The Speed of Trust, Stephen M. R. Covey teaches us that to create real wealth and prosperity in the sales industry, you must engage in specific activities that are designed to communicate high character and high competence.

A competent leader should be strong and confident enough in his character to stand up against many in service of the few.

A competent leader should be firm in his stance and confident enough in his character to stand up against many in service of the few.

God Tends to Select the Lowliest to Lead. The world selects leaders according to perceived competence. God selects His representatives by character. He delights to seek out the humblest and lowest and by their elevation to glorify Himself. A humble teenage girl said it best: “He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly” (Luke 1:51–52). We stand with Mary and magnify the Lord, rejoicing in God our Savior. He has done all things well, even setting up surprising people to lead us.

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Likewise, until we drop unwarranted assumptions about people, we can’t expect to bring about lasting improvements in our organizations: we can’t magnify our human resources using manipulative management techniques any more than we can repair Humpty Dumpty with more horses and more men. Nevertheless, in this topsy-turvy world, matters often get turned around. We confuse efficiency with effectiveness, expediency with priority, imitation with innovation, cosmetics with character, or pretense with competence.

Centuries ago, members of the educated class discovered that they could no longer compete in football, baseball, and basketball, so they stole lacrosse from the American Indians to give them something to dominate.

Experiment: To replace negative character labels, try the following steps: 1. Pick a new, positive character label that you would prefer. For example, if your old belief is “I’m incompetent,” you would likely pick “I’m competent.” 2. Rate how much you currently believe the old negative character label on a scale of 0 (= I don’t believe it at all) to 100 (= I believe it completely). Do the same for the new positive belief. For example, you might say you believe “I’m incompetent” at level 95 and believe “I’m competent” at level 10 (the numbers don’t need to add up to 100). 3. Create a Positive Data Log and a Historical Data Log. Strengthening your new, positive character label is often a more helpful approach than attempting to hack away at the old, negative one. I’m going to give you two experiments that will help you do this. Positive Data Log. For two weeks, commit to writing down evidence that supports your new, positive character belief. For example, if you are trying to boost your belief in the thought “I’m competent” and you show up to an appointment on time, you can write that down as evidence. Don’t fall into the cognitive trap of discounting some of the evidence. For example, if you make a mistake and then sort it out, it’s evidence of competence, not incompetence, so you could put that in your Positive Data Log. Historical Data Log. This log looks back at periods of your life and finds evidence from those time periods that supports your positive character belief. This experiment helps people believe that the positive character quality represents part of their enduring nature. To do this experiment, split your life into whatever size chunks you want to split it into, such as four- to six-year periods. If you’re only in your 20s, then you might choose three- or four-year periods. To continue the prior example, if you’re working on the belief “I’m competent,” then evidence from childhood might be things like learning to walk, talk, or make friends. You figured these things out. From your teen years, your evidence of general competency at life might be getting your driver’s license (yes, on the third try still counts). Evidence from your early college years could be things like successfully choosing a major and passing your courses. Evidence for after you finished your formal education might be related to finding work to support yourself and finding housing. You should include evidence in the social domain, like finding someone you wanted to date or figuring out how to break up with someone when you realized that relationship wasn’t the right fit for you. The general idea is to prove to yourself that “I’m competent” is more true than “I’m incompetent.” Other positive character beliefs you might try to strengthen could be things like “I’m strong” (not weak), “I’m worthy of love” (not unlovable), and “I’m worthy of respect” (not worthless). Sometimes the flipside of a negative character belief is obvious, as in the case of strong/weak, but sometimes there are a couple of possible options that could be considered opposites; in this case, you can choose. 4. Rerate how much you believe the negative and positive character labels. There should have been a little bit of change as a result of doing the data logs. For example, you might bow believe “I’m incompetent” at only 50 instead of 95, and believe “I’m competent” at 60 instead of 10. You’ve probably had your negative character belief for a long time, so changing it isn’t like making a pack of instant noodles.

S.T.A.R.T. Serving, thanking, asking, and receiving are the fast track to trust in personal and business relationships. Why? Because when we live these principles, we are actively working to build our character, which is the most direct channel to increased feelings of self-worth and confidence and thus competence, productivity, and meaningful success—all of which are at the foundational level of trust.

Good writers express their moral vision slowly and subtly, primarily through the story structure and the way the hero deals with a particular situation. Your moral vision is communicated by how your hero pursues his goal while competing with one or more opponents and by what your hero learns, or fails to learn, over the course of his struggle. In effect, you, as the author, are making a moral argument through what your characters do in the plot. How does this sort of moral argument, the argument of action, work in storytelling?

The Characters’ Values in Conflict Using your character web, now place the values of each of the major characters in conflict as these people compete for the same goal. 1. Identify a set of values for your hero and each of the other major characters. Remember, values are deep-seated beliefs about what makes a good life. 2. Try to give a cluster of values to each character. 3. Make each set of values as different from the others as possible. 4. As your hero and his opponents fight over the goal, make sure their values come into direct conflict.

Many characters exist in an organization. Someone explains the rules and logic by which the system operates in great detail. • Many of these characters, including the hero, go after a negative goal that involves killing someone or destroying something. • Each believes strongly in the goal and thinks what he is doing makes complete sense. In fact, it is totally illogical. • The opponents, also within the system, compete for the same goal and also give detailed but insane justifications. • One sane person, usually the ally, continually points out that none of this makes any sense and action will lead to disaster. He functions as a chorus, but no one listens to him. • All the characters, including the nominal hero, use extreme, sometimes even murderous, methods to reach the goal. • The actions of the characters lead to death and destruction for almost all. • The battle is intense and destructive, with everyone still thinking he is right. The consequences are death and madness. • No one, including the hero, has a self-revelation. But it is so obvious that the hero should have had a self-revelation that the audience has it instead. • The remaining characters are horribly maimed by the struggle but immediately resume their efforts to reach the goal. • Slightly more positive black comedies end with the sane person watching in horror and either leaving the system or trying to change it.

With a StoryBrand-inspired narrative, ordinary jobs become extraordinary adventures. With a unifying BrandScript, the above story would have gone more like this: Before even applying for a job, the prospective employee has already heard the buzz on the street about this cool company. It’s somehow more alive. The people who work there love it and so do their customers. They exude a sense of competence within their industry as well as across the community in general. Their leaders are respected. Even their former employees talk about it with a hint of sentimental longing. On the list of ideal places to work, there are few that compare. During the first interview, the candidate starts to understand where the buzz has been coming from. The hiring manager describes the company the way you might describe Lewis and Clarke preparing to tame the western frontier. There are interesting characters whose lives have led them to this place. Business goals sound like plot twists. There are mountains to climb and rivers to cross. There are storms to weather, bears to hunt, and treasure to find. The hiring manager is visibly excited as she walks effortlessly through the seven categories of the company’s narrative. But not just anyone gets selected for this expedition. The employees of this company aren’t trying to be snobs; they’re just staying true to the story they’re following and they don’t want to compromise the plot. If you happen to be selected, it’s because destiny basically demands it. Instantly the candidate’s concept of work shifts up a level. It’s no longer just about what he can get out of it. It’s also about who he will become if he’s allowed to enter the story. He senses that working for this company will transform him. By the second and third interviews, the candidate has met most of the team and even been interviewed by them. Everyone he meets tells the exact same story he heard on the street and in the first interview. The story is growing on him. He realizes he needs to be part of a story like this to be fully satisfied in life. We all do. Finally, his first day on the job arrives, and the onboarding experience is more like being adopted than getting hired. He spends quality time with a facilitator who takes a small, new team through a curriculum explaining the story of their customer and how the company positions themselves as the guide in their customers’ story. Amazingly, the onboarding is more about the company’s customers than it is about the company itself. This organization loves their customers and is obsessed with seeing them win the day. Finally, the new employee discovers the secret. These people are here to serve a customer they love.

This is our aim in people work. It involves not just ministry skills and competencies, but growth in convictions (understanding) and character (godliness).

I know who you are by how and where you spend your time.

Parents can cultivate the character of a child, not the competence of a child.

The proper social role of the highly able Endogenous personality is not as leader. Indeed, the Endogenous personality should be excluded from leadership as he will tend to lack the desire to cooperate with or care for the feelings of others. His role should be as an intuitive/ inspired ‘adviser’ of rulers. Adviser-of-rulers is a term which should be taken to include various types of prophet, shaman, genius, wizard, hermit, and holy fool – the Socrates of the early Platonic dialogues is an historical example, as is Diogenes, the Cynic, of Sinope (c.412-323 BC), who lived in a barrel and is supposed to have snubbed Alexander the Great (without being punished), or even the Fool character in Shakespeare plays. These are extremes; but the description of Endogenous personality and of an ‘inner orientation’ also applies to most historical examples of creative genius. The Endogenous personality – therefore – does not (as most men) seek primarily for social, sexual or economic success; instead the Endogenous personality wants to live by his inner imperatives. The way it is supposed-to-work, the ‘deal’, the ‘social contract’; is that the Endogenous personality, by his non-social orientation, is working for the benefit of society as a whole; at the cost of his not competing in the usual status competitions within that society. His ‘reward’ is simply to be allowed, or – better – actively enabled, to have the minimal necessary sustenance, psychological support (principally being ‘left alone’ and not harassed or molested; but ideally sustained by his family, spouse, patron or the like) to be somehow providedwith the time and space and wherewithal to do his work and communicate the outcome. For the Endogenous personality, this is its own reward.

He dreamed big dreams - impossible dreams they told him. Then he moved heaven and earth to make his dreams come true. When you, as a leader, start with a vision, then communicate that vision to the people you lead, utilize your people skills to motivate and inspire them, maintain your character and integrity at every decision-point, command with competence, lead with boldness and confidence, and support your people with your serving heart, your vision will become your reality.

in this weird Nazi world there were a number of men of little competence and intelligence and no character—veritable thugs—who, to one’s astonishment, would be given posts of key importance, with power over the life and death of millions.

If we all realized how much education and effort is required to be in a healthy relationship, we’d stop deifying celebrity couples or the fictional characters in our books or on our screens. We’d take one look at the perfect pair and remember they are two people with competing wants, desires, and triggers.

This disdain for female actors was a Northern European tradition. In Spain, France, and Italy, women were played by women—a fact that astonished British travelers, who seem often to have been genuinely surprised to find that women could play women as competently onstage as in life. Shakespeare got maximum effect from the gender confusion by constantly having his female characters—Rosalind in As You Like It, Viola in Twelfth Night—disguise themselves as boys, creating the satisfyingly dizzying situation of a boy playing a woman playing a boy.