Conscious Leadership Quotes

Whenever I am in a difficult situation where there seems to be no way out, I think about all the times I have been in such situations and say to myself, "I did it before, so I can do it again.

When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work – the most you will make is 5 dollars.

Today is a new day and it brings with it a new set of opportunities for me to act on. I am attentive to the opportunities and I seize them as they arise. I have full confidence in myself and my abilities. I can do all things that I commit myself to. No obstacle is too big or too difficult for me to handle because what lies inside me is greater than what lies ahead of me. I am committed to improving myself and I am getting better daily. I am not held back by regret or mistakes from the past. I am moving forward daily. Absolutely nothing is impossible for me.

A sign of power in a man is not only when people follow what he suggests, but also when people make a conscious effort to do the exact opposite of what he suggests.

A conscious human is driven by their conscience, not popular opinion.

You are not alone in the struggles of life. Entire cosmos is with you. It evolves through the way you face and overcome challenges of life. Use everything in your advantage.

Tomorrow's leaders will not lead dictating from the front, nor pushing from the back. They will lead from the centre - from the heart

Learn to master your thoughts and watch closely what you deposit into your spirit. Speak over your life. Living in peace has transformative power.

...[I]ron discipline does not preclude but presupposes criticism and contest of opinion within the Party. Least of all does it mean that discipline must be 'blind'. On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes conscious and voluntary submission, for only conscious discipline can be truly iron discipline.

The only way to follow your path is to take the lead.

Mindfulness is the art of cosmic collaboration.

There is enough mystery in human nature to keep the world stuck in a perpetual state of righteous speculation. Only the wise and compassionate will rise above it, with enough vision to see that inconsistency is a normal occurrence, during the spiritual battle of forgiveness and justice.

Rulers are not anointed. They are created by the void of self-mastery.

The point at which things happen is a decision. In stead of focusing on yourself, focus on how you can help someone else.

YOU ARE JUST You are not just for the right or left, but for what is right over the wrong. You are not just rich or poor, but always wealthy in the mind and heart. You are not perfect, but flawed. You are flawed, but you are just. You may just be conscious human, but you are also a magnificent reflection of God.

an organization cannot evolve beyond its leadership’s stage of development.

We cannot, of course, expect every leader to possess the wisdom of Lincoln or Mandela’s largeness of soul. But when we think about what questions might be most useful to ask, perhaps we should begin by discerning what our prospective leaders believe it worthwhile for us to hear. Do they cater to our prejudices by suggesting that we treat people outside our ethnicity, race, creed or party as unworthy of dignity and respect? Do they want us to nurture our anger toward those who we believe have done us wrong, rub raw our grievances and set our sights on revenge? Do they encourage us to have contempt for our governing institutions and the electoral process? Do they seek to destroy our faith in essential contributors to democracy, such as an independent press, and a professional judiciary? Do they exploit the symbols of patriotism, the flag, the pledge in a conscious effort to turn us against one another? If defeated at the polls, will they accept the verdict, or insist without evidence they have won? Do they go beyond asking about our votes to brag about their ability to solve all problems put to rest all anxieties and satisfy every desire? Do they solicit our cheers by speaking casually and with pumped up machismo about using violence to blow enemies away? Do they echo the attitude of Musolini: “The crowd doesn’t have to know, all they have to do is believe and submit to being shaped.”? Or do they invite us to join with them in building and maintaining a healthy center for our society, a place where rights and duties are apportioned fairly, the social contract is honored, and all have room to dream and grow. The answers to these questions will not tell us whether a prospective leader is left or right-wing, conservative or liberal, or, in the American context, a Democrat or a Republican. However, they will us much that we need to know about those wanting to lead us, and much also about ourselves. For those who cherish freedom, the answers will provide grounds for reassurance, or, a warning we dare not ignore.

Our evolution depends on our memory. If we keep forgetting the mistakes of the past, only to keep repeating them, then we will never change. Humanity will never move forward, spiritually or morally, to become superior beings.

Character is what the world needs - character that will empower the mind with such an unimaginable strength that one would meet death face to face and say “some other time, pal!

QUALITY leadership is neither the product of one great individual nor the result of odd historical accidents. Rather, it comes from deeply bred traditions and communities that shape and mold talented and gifted persons. Without a vibrant tradition of resistance passed on to new generations, there can be no nurturing of a collective and critical consciousness—only professional conscientiousness survives.

Parker Palmer observes, "A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what's going on inside him or her self, inside his or her consciousness, lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.

This isn’t a matter for the eyes, it is a matter for the heart. Many signs point to a growing historical consciousness among the American people. I trust this is so. It is useful to remember that history is to the nation as memory is to the individual. As persons deprived of memory, they become disoriented and lost, not knowing where they have been and where they are going. So a nation denied a conception of the past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future. When I’m depressed, I ascribe our behavior to stupidity, the stupidity of our leadership, the stupidity of our culture.

True listening is actually that period of silence and allowing someone’s words to reach your conscious brain, but it also includes something else that’s a little weird: with your posture, your face, and your sounds, you signal to someone, “I want what you have, I need to know what you know, and I want you to keep telling me the things you’re telling me.

Competition is created from within, when you make a conscious decision to demand more from yourself.

A leader who allows their subordinates to suffer as proof of who is the boss likely quenches their thirst with salt water from a rusted canteen.

successful leadership takes conscious development and requires being true to your life story.

Leadership behaviors are one of the most critical influences on an organizational culture.

At any particular time, leaders are operating from either fear or love. This

one of the most powerful and disconcerting forces in human nature—confirmation bias. Our brains have evolved to crave information consistent with what we already believe. We seek out and focus on facts and arguments that support our beliefs. More worrisome, when we are trapped in confirmation bias, we may not consciously perceive facts that challenge us, that are inconsistent with what we have already concluded. In a complicated, changing, and integrated world, our confirmation bias makes us very difficult people. We simply can’t change our minds.

I am no feminist. Even though the term "feminism" is founded upon the basic principle of gender equality, it possesses its own fundamental gender bias, which makes it inclined towards the wellbeing of women, over the wellbeing of the whole society. And if history has shown anything, it is that such fundamental biases in time corrupt even the most glorious ideas and give birth to prejudice, bigotry and differentiation.

We create karma by all kinds of selfish actions.The first thing we must understand is that we are psychologically asleep.It is very difficult for us to be conscious of ourselves. We are not very aware. We must come to recognize that we do not pay attention.

Integrity is the sentry for the conscious soul.

Conscious discipline creates control and clarity to act intentionally.

Everybody has a natural gift. When you tap into whatever your gift is that will allow you to connect organically with others and will lead to more positive outcomes in your life.

Words are catch-basins of experience, fingerprints and footprints of the past that the literary detective may scrutinize in order to sleuth out the history of human consciousness.

The reason most of your staff are asleep and disengaged, is because you have boring, and bully managers, and no REAL Leaders to inspire and unleash potential.

A dream conceived from the inside-out eventually becomes reality. But a dream desired from the outside-in is subject to spoil and tragedy.

Rethink Your Success Mindset: Times are getting tougher. We need tougher mindsets to ensure that we go beyond survive to thrive.

We often describe unconscious leaders as reactive. They react from a “story” about the past or an imagined future, and their personality, ego, or mind takes over.

The Africans and the underdeveloped peoples, contrary to what is commonly believed, are quick to build a social and political consciousness. The danger is that very often they reach the stage of social consciousness before reaching the national phase. In this case the underdeveloped countries’ violent calls for social justice are combined, paradoxically enough, with an often primitive tribalism. The underdeveloped peoples behave like a starving population—which means that the days of those who treat Africa as their playground are strictly numbered. In other words, their power cannot last forever. A bourgeoisie that has only nationalism to feed the people fails in its mission and inevitably gets tangled up in a series of trials and tribulations. If nationalism is not explained, enriched, and deepened, if it does not very quickly turn into a social and political consciousness, into humanism, then it leads to a dead end. A bourgeois leadership of the underdeveloped countries confines the national consciousness to a sterile formalism. Only the massive commitment by men and women to judicious and productive tasks gives form and substance to this consciousness.

The Future of work is all about CREAM. More Consciousness, Relationships, Empathy, AdaptAgility, and Meaning. We must be building a more human-centered context for stakeholders, as opposed to JUST MORE profits for shareholders".

Mark you, no Krishna can clear your eyes and make you look with a broader vision upon life in your march upward and onward, until the Self within you morphs into Krishna – until the Self morphs into Buddha – until the Self turns into Christ.

Civil and voting rights for blacks didn’t come from the White House or from masses demonstrating in front of the White House. They came after the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–56, the Freedom Rides in 1961, the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham in 1963, the Mississippi Freedom Summer and Freedom Schools in 1964, and the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. In other words, they came only after hundreds of thousands of black Americans and their white supporters had accepted the challenge and risks of ourselves making or becoming the changes we want to see in the world. Women’s leadership in the public sphere didn’t come from the White House or from CEOs. It came only after millions of women came together in small consciousness-raising groups to share stories of our “second sex” lives. Today’s good news is that Americans in all walks of life have begun to create another America from the ground up in many unforeseen ways. In our bones we sense that this is no ordinary time. It is a time of deep change, not just of social structure and economy but also of ourselves.

We seek to uncover behind the events changes in the collective consciousness. We reject wholesale references to the “spontaneity” of the movement, references which in most cases explain nothing and teach nobody. Revolutions take place according to certain laws. This does not mean that the masses in action are aware of the laws of revolution, but it does mean that the changes in mass consciousness are not accidental, but are subject to an objective necessity which is capable of theoretic explanation, and thus makes both prophecy and leadership possible.

To change a culture, the leaders have to change the messages people receive about what they must do to fit in. When people understand that there are new requirements for belonging, they adjust their behavior accordingly. Cultural change starts with a new set of messages. Culture-changing communication is nonverbal—the “doing” rather than the “saying”—and comes most vividly from leadership behaviors. The behavior of leaders exemplifies what people with power—and those who aspire to have it—are supposed to do. A small change in a senior manager’s behavior can send a big message.

The shoes of leadership have many ways to pinch and blister the feet of those who walk in them. But here's the thing, when we do walk in them despite the difficulties and challenges, our gait gradually changes from an ungainly, self-conscious toddle to a poised, purposeful stride that inspires trust in those who follow.

To generate an enduring peace, we will each have to continue to make progress as Christ conscious leaders, becoming increasingly aware of our unity with others and expanding our ability to receive Divine Love and be a vehicle for Divine Love. We will each have to detach from any impediments in our tribes, our families, and our own self-will that deter us from a commitment to fulfill God’s purpose in our lives, to do our work, and to continue our lifelong transformation as Christ conscious leaders. And we will have to come to realize that, in partnership with the Eternal Absolute, we each have the power – and the calling – to build the kingdom of God on earth.

Becoming an inspiration means making a conscious decision every day to hold yourself to a higher standard. Become what you want to see in others.

A Consciously Conscious Revolutionary Workplace mindset, is People Firsts, to ensure that it's not a prostitute of our children's future.

Leaders are solutions conscious. They don’t complain. You would find them repeating this common question; “how will it be done, and by who?

Culture is the constant constraint that controls creativity, commitment, collaboration, and cohesion.

Your UNconscious mind has more power, influence and control over your thoughts, feelings, decisions, and choices, than your conscious mind.

Limitless Leadership is the secret ingredient that helps common people, create high performance teams, that achieve outstanding and uncommon results.

Hope is the spotlight that shines on the mine fields of possibility

Bad Culture is the contaminated oxygen your staff breath, as they get indoctrinated by your limiting context.

Fear based mindsets see challenges as problems, that are dangerous and impossible. Courageous Mindsets see problems as challenges, that are possible and exciting.

The right mindset is the most powerful force we can use to positively change the world.

REAL Leadership is the building of belief, that activates and aligns the full potential, for a meaningful cause

Appreciation and recognition are qualities that most leaders forget, but desperately need, to build a positive, passionate and engaged workplace.

A Culture of clear consistent communication and connection is the foundation of a high performance team that thrives and flourishes.

High Performance Teams create cultures of caring, connection, commitment, collaboration and clear consistent communication

Most people are interested in success, but not COMMITTED to success, which is why 85%+ of people seldom achieve their desired level of success.

A High Performance team requires people with High Performance Mindsets, with relevant competence, committed and balanced communication, to a meaningful and challenging goal.

To go from Bitter to BETTER, means you need to turn your I onto an E, by embracing WE.

REAL success, satisfaction and joy has nothing to do with owning STUFF!

The world needs gigantic strong wills in front of which even the mountains will be crumbled.

If you're a boss, and not a leader, your time is limited.

Impossible is a perception based upon a limiting mental illusion. Possible is the belief in the potential of unseen possibility,

In a Consciously Conscious Revolutionary Workplace, people are promoted based upon skillset, AND more importantly MINDSET

Courage is the belief in self, and the possible ability to prevail in the face of adversity.

These toxic residues lead to high turnover and low innovation, creativity, and collaboration. No team can win with these elements corroding their effectiveness long term.

Everyone is achieving at 100% of their potential, limited by beliefs and mindset constraints.

The dialectic of antiquity tended towards leadership (the great individual and the masses--the free man and the slaves); so far the dialectic of Christendom tends towards representation (the majority sees itself in its representative and is set free by the consciousness that it is the majority which is represented, in a sort of self-consciousness); the dialectic of the present age tends towards equality, and its most logical--though mistaken--fulfilment is levelling, as the negative unity of the negative reciprocity of all individuals.

Developing ALL staff to their fullest potential, on a daily basis, is the most powerful and humane approach, to building a high-performance organisation, that positively changes the world.

Seems today everyone is waiting for someone or someday. Some-one and Some-day don’t exist! There is only YOU and only NOW. Now is the time for YOU to take SWIFT ACTION with FIERCE Focus!

Leaders #1 job is to help their people, teams, leadership, and culture, to be #FutureFit...by supporting People, Planet & Profits, in a Consciously Constructive Revolutionary Workplace... today.

Intelligence analysts should be self-conscious about their reasoning processes. They should think about how they make judgments and reach conclusions, not just about the judgments and conclusions themselves.

The 114 chakras are different from the maram points, or acupressure points; the chakras are more focused on maximizing information exchange with the higher cosmos for healing, balancing, and deep spirituality.

I dream of a time when politics, cultures and predispositions stop being a divisive, destructive, evil force, and instead…becomes a positive, unifying force for good; freedom, love, abundance, peace, meaning and joy.

James MacGregor Burns wrote that “the Leader’s fundamental act is to induce people to be aware or conscious of what they feel – to feel their true needs so strongly, to define their values so meaningfully, that they can be moved to purposeful action.

TAKING 100% RESPONSIBILITY PROCESS STEP 1: Identify an issue/complaint about anything going on in your life. State the complaint in “unenlightened” terms. Be dramatic. Ham it up. Blame overtly. STEP 2: Step into 100% responsibility. Physically find a place in the room that represents your internal shift to being 100% responsible for the situation. STEP 3: Gain insight by completing these statements, repeating each of them several times, until you have what feels like a breakthrough: From the past this reminds me of… I keep this issue going by… What I get from keeping this issue going is… The lifelong pattern I’m noticing is… I can demonstrate 100% responsibility concerning this issue by… STEP 4: If during Step 3, you do not experience a shift, go back to Step 1 and repeat the process.

It is more important to be instrumental to people than to feel that you are important and give yourself importance. One who is instrumental eventually realizes this fact and focuses on being instrumental to someone in any way and every way possible. Sainthood is servitude, service to humanity, and a serving attitude.

Communist agitators have done everything in their power to fan the flame of artificial class-consciousness in the minds of the workers, but the basic struggle between labor and capital has not been to overthrow capitalism but to get the workers a more equitable share of the fruits of capitalism. For example, during the past twenty years labor has attained a higher status in the United States than ever before. The Communists tried to seize leadership in this reform trend, but the more the workers earned the more independent they became—not only by asserting their rights in relation to their employers but also in discharging the Communist agitators from labor union leadership.

We had better want the consequences of what we believe or disbelieve, because the consequences will come! . . . But how can a society set priorities if there are no basic standards? Are we to make our calculations using only the arithmetic of appetite? . . . The basic strands which have bound us together socially have begun to fray, and some of them have snapped. Even more pressure is then placed upon the remaining strands. The fact that the giving way is gradual will not prevent it from becoming total. . . . Given the tremendous asset that the family is, we must do all we can within constitutional constraints to protect it from predatory things like homosexuality and pornography. . . . Our whole republic rests upon the notion of “obedience to the unenforceable,” upon a tremendous emphasis on inner controls through self-discipline. . . . Different beliefs do make for different behaviors; what we think does affect our actions; concepts do have consequences. . . . Once society loses its capacity to declare that some things are wrong per se, then it finds itself forever building temporary defenses, revising rationales, drawing new lines—but forever falling back and losing its nerve. A society which permits anything will eventually lose everything! Take away a consciousness of eternity and see how differently time is spent. Take away an acknowledgement of divine design in the structure of life and then watch the mindless scurrying to redesign human systems to make life pain-free and pleasure-filled. Take away regard for the divinity in one’s neighbor, and watch the drop in our regard for his property. Take away basic moral standards and observe how quickly tolerance changes into permissiveness. Take away the sacred sense of belonging to a family or community, and observe how quickly citizens cease to care for big cities. Those of us who are business-oriented are quick to look for the bottom line in our endeavors. In the case of a value-free society, the bottom line is clear—the costs are prohibitive! A value-free society eventually imprisons its inhabitants. It also ends up doing indirectly what most of its inhabitants would never have agreed to do directly—at least initially. Can we turn such trends around? There is still a wealth of wisdom in the people of this good land, even though such wisdom is often mute and in search of leadership. People can often feel in their bones the wrongness of things, long before pollsters pick up such attitudes or before such attitudes are expressed in the ballot box. But it will take leadership and articulate assertion of basic values in all places and in personal behavior to back up such assertions. Even then, time and the tides are against us, so that courage will be a key ingredient. It will take the same kind of spunk the Spartans displayed at Thermopylae when they tenaciously held a small mountain pass against overwhelming numbers of Persians. The Persians could not dislodge the Spartans and sent emissaries forward to threaten what would happen if the Spartans did not surrender. The Spartans were told that if they did not give up, the Persians had so many archers in their army that they would darken the skies with their arrows. The Spartans said simply: “So much the better, we will fight in the shade!

Experts say that the nervous system needs to be reprogrammed to allow for greater happiness, fulfillment, and relational connectedness. The good news is that the nervous system is highly receptive to new programming. In fact, it is somewhat capable of reprogramming itself if we provide support. To create the space and allow the nervous system to develop this new capacity, we encourage leaders to integrate just after they experience a new high. For example, you close the deal you never thought you’d be able to close; you get the promotion you’ve always wanted; you have a great weekend away with your partner and experience a new level of closeness. At these moments, we suggest leaders integrate by doing things that are grounding, ordinary, mindless, soothing, mundane, and/or repetitive. This could be going for a walk, mowing the lawn, sweeping the floor, washing the car, making a meal, flipping through a favorite hobby magazine, or taking a little longer shower. This allows for the gentle raising of old Upper Limits (the reprogramming of the nervous system), without forcefully blowing past them in a way that actually causes a big crash.

A true leader always leads by example, by demonstrating to others how the work is done. Sri Krishna, being a great spiritual leader of his time, also chose to perform certain worldly activities. Why? He explains, “If ever I cease to be vigilantly engaged in action, then people would follow my footsteps in every way and no one would perform action.”28 The life of Krishna is marked by ordinariness. He did the earthly job of cow herding, and also indulged in romancing, dancing and playing the flute. He demonstrated a life for others to emulate. He led a balanced life with his strengths as well as frailties. His life was, therefore, not extraordinary. He was not an epitome of perfection. He showed others how to lead a normal, worldly life by himself performing all the actions and yet drifting away from it by reaching for higher ideals.

The point is, education in its truest form, is the foundation of all human endeavors. It is the most noble of all the civilized elements of human consciousness. Education enables the humans to achieve their fullest mental and physical potential in both personal and social life. The ability of being educated is what distinguishes humans from animals. You can teach a cockatoo to repeat a bunch of vocabularies, but you cannot teach it to construct a space shuttle and go to the moon.

Burned-out, stressed-out, and frazzled leaders foster organizations that experience high turnover, low employee engagement, steep healthcare costs, and dysfunctional teams that often work against one another. The current models of leadership require organizations to motivate their people largely with fear and extrinsic rewards. Though no one argues that these forms of motivation can produce short-term results, they are usually accompanied by distrust and cynicism in the workplace, which have long-term negative consequences.

my advice is; Let’s join the caravan of humanity, and ally ourselves with a conscious progress, let’s join the secular non-sectarian societies, lets distant ourselves from military tradition, and join the human race in benefiting humanity as a whole, let’s heal our environment, and adapt social justices, that will empower the poor and the oppressed to gain his or her fundamental human rights, let’s find mercy and compassion in our souls without reference to any religious fanaticism or national extremism…if we could do that, only then we can begin the return journey back to civilization….

Hitler’s style of leadership functioned precisely because of the readiness of all his subordinates to accept his unique standing in the party, and their belief that such eccentricities of behaviour had simply to be taken on board in someone they saw as a political genius. ‘He always needs people who can translate his ideologies into reality so that they can be implemented,’ Pfeffer is reported as stating. Hitler’s way was, in fact, not to hand out streams of orders to shape important political decisions. Where possible, he avoided decisions. Rather, he laid out – often in his diffuse and opinionated fashion – his ideas at length and repeatedly. These provided the general guidelines and direction for policy-making. Others had to interpret from his comments how they thought he wanted them to act and ‘work towards’ his distant objectives. ‘If they could all work in this way,’ Hitler was reported as stating from time to time, ‘if they could all strive with firm, conscious tenacity towards a common, distant goal, then the ultimate goal must one day be achieved. That mistakes will be made is human. It is a pity. But that will be overcome if a common goal is constantly adopted as a guideline.’ This instinctive way of operating, embedded in Hitler’s social-Darwinist approach, not only unleashed ferocious competition among those in the party – later in the state – trying to reach the ‘correct’ interpretation of Hitler’s intentions. It also meant that Hitler, the unchallenged fount of ideological orthodoxy by this time, could always side with those who had come out on top in the relentless struggle going on below him, with those who had best proven that they were following the ‘right guidelines’. And since only Hitler could determine this, his power position was massively enhanced.

Starting with Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia, by 1760, there had been eighteen uprisings aimed at overthrowing colonial governments. There had also been six black rebellions, from South Carolina to New York, and forty riots of various origins. By this time also, there emerged, according to Jack Greene, “stable, coherent, effective and acknowledged local political and social elites.” And by the 1760s, this local leadership saw the possibility of directing much of the rebellious energy against England and her local officials. It was not a conscious conspiracy, but an accumulation of tactical responses.

BRAVE EMPATH, that is what I will be calling you in this book as I coach you in empath skills. You are brave. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been attracted to this system for helping empaths. Plenty of other books exist to console empaths who feel like victims. It takes uncommon courage to embrace who you are, to pursue skills that can abolish empath-related suffering, and to claim the leadership role that is rightfully yours. Yes, leadership role. Of all the skill sets I teach, Empath Empowerment is my very favorite because that leadership is so important. Granted, before you gain skills as an empath, you may not feel much like a leader at all.

Force and Conflict The leader who understands how process unfolds uses as little force as possible and runs the group without pressuring people. When force is used, conflict and argument follow. The group field degenerates. The climate is hostile, neither open nor nourishing. The wise leader runs the group without fighting to have things a certain way. The leader’s touch is light. The leader neither defends nor attacks. Remember that consciousness, not selfishness, is both the means of teaching and the teaching itself. Group members will challenge the ego of one who leads egocentrically. But one who leads selflessly and harmoniously will grow and endure.

When, then, the Social Democrat worker found himself in the economic crisis which degraded him to the status of a coolie, the development of his revolutionary sentiments was severely retarded by the conservative structuralization that had been taking shape in him for decades. Either he remained in the camp of the Social Democrats, notwithstanding his criticism and rejection of their policies, or he went over to the NSDAP [Nazi party] in search of a better replacement. Irresolute and indecisive, owing to the deep contradiction between revolutionary and conservative sentiments, disappointed by his own leadership, he followed the line of least resistance. Whether he would give up his conservative tendencies and arrive at a complete consciousness of his actual responsibility in the production process, i.e., at a revolutionary consciousness, depended solely on the correct or incorrect leadership of the revolutionary party. Thus the communist assertion that it was the Social Democrat policies that put fascism in the saddle was correct from a psychological viewpoint. Disappointment in Social Democracy, accompanied by the contradiction between wretchedness and conservative thinking, must lead to fascism if there are no revolutionary organizations. For example, following the fiasco of the Labor party's policies in England, in 1930–31, fascism began to infiltrate the workers who, then, in the election of 1931, cut away to the Right, instead of going over to communism.

You always have the power of choice. Externally, things may be out of your control. But one thing you can always control and master is your inner control: how you perceive the situation, how you filter it. There’s a tremendous freedom in taking leadership of how you perceive things. An obstacle is only an obstacle if that’s how you look at it. We make choices every day, and when you choose not to choose you are also making a choice. As soon as you make the conscious decision to be happy or successful, the universe moves to get you there. You can choose what impacts you. You can choose what scares you. You can choose to be confident, loved, or damaged. You can choose to let something define you or nothing define you. You can’t change the cards you were dealt, but you can always choose how you play your hand.

You know what the best course I ever took at college was? Biology. We studied evolution. And I learned something important.’ Now he included Leonard in his gaze. ‘It helped me choose my career. For thousands, no, millions of years we had these huge brains, the neo-cortex, right? But we didn’t speak to each other, and we lived like fucking pigs. There was nothing. No language, no culture, nothing. And then, suddenly, wham! It was there. Suddenly it was something we had to have, and there was no turning back. So why did it suddenly happen?’ Russell shrugged. ‘Hand of God?’ ‘Hand of God my ass. I’ll tell you why. Back then we all used to hang out together all day long doing the same thing. We lived in packs. So there was no need for language. If there was a leopard coming, there was no point saying, Hey man, what’s coming down the track? A leopard! Everyone could see it, everyone was jumping up and down and screaming, trying to scare it off. But what happens when someone goes off on his own for a moment’s privacy? When he sees a leopard coming, he knows something the others don’t. And he knows they don’t know. He has something they don’t, he has a secret, and this is the beginning of his individuality, of his consciousness. If he wants to share his secret and run down the track to warn the other guys, then he’s going to need to invent language. From there grows the possibility of culture. Or he can hang back and hope the leopard will take out the leadership that’s been giving him a hard time. A secret plan, that means more individuation, more consciousness.’ The band was starting to play a fast, loud number. Glass had to shout his conclusion, ‘Secrecy made us possible,’ and Russell raised his beer to salute the theory.

The climate for relationships within an innovation group is shaped by the climate outside it. Having a negative instead of a positive culture can cost a company real money. During Seagate Technology’s troubled period in the mid-to-late 1990s, the company, a large manufacturer of disk drives for personal computers, had seven different design centers working on innovation, yet it had the lowest R&D productivity in the industry because the centers competed rather than cooperated. Attempts to bring them together merely led people to advocate for their own groups rather than find common ground. Not only did Seagate’s engineers and managers lack positive norms for group interaction, but they had the opposite in place: People who yelled in executive meetings received “Dog’s Head” awards for the worst conduct. Lack of product and process innovation was reflected in loss of market share, disgruntled customers, and declining sales. Seagate, with its dwindling PC sales and fading customer base, was threatening to become a commodity producer in a changing technology environment. Under a new CEO and COO, Steve Luczo and Bill Watkins, who operated as partners, Seagate developed new norms for how people should treat one another, starting with the executive group. Their raised consciousness led to a systemic process for forming and running “core teams” (cross-functional innovation groups), and Seagate employees were trained in common methodologies for team building, both in conventional training programs and through participation in difficult outdoor activities in New Zealand and other remote locations. To lead core teams, Seagate promoted people who were known for strong relationship skills above others with greater technical skills. Unlike the antagonistic committees convened during the years of decline, the core teams created dramatic process and product innovations that brought the company back to market leadership. The new Seagate was able to create innovations embedded in a wide range of new electronic devices, such as iPods and cell phones.

Business leadership is based on two elements: vision and technical competence. Top people in a given industry always embody at least one of those two elements. Sometimes, but rarely, they embody both of them. Simply put, vision is the ability to see what other people don’t. It’s a Ford executive named Lee Iacocca realizing that a market existed for an automobile that was both a racing car and a street vehicle—and coming up with the Mustang. It’s Steven Jobs realizing that computers needed to be sold in a single box, like a television sets, instead of piece by piece. About one hundred years ago, Walter Chrysler was a plant manager for a locomotive company. Then he decided to go into the car business, which was a hot new industry at the time. The trouble was, Walter Chrysler didn’t know a lot about cars, except that they were beginning to outnumber horses on the public roadways. To remedy this problem, Chrysler bought one of the Model T Fords that were becoming so popular. To learn how it worked, he took it apart and put it back together. Then, just to be sure he understood everything, he repeated this. Then, to be absolutely certain he knew what made a car work, he took it apart and put it together forty-eight more times, for a grand total of fifty. By the time he was finished, Chrysler not only had a vision of thousands of cars on American highways, he also had the mechanical details of those cars engraved in his consciousness. Perhaps you’ve seen the play called The Music Man. It’s about a fast-talking man who arrives in a small town with the intention of hugely upgrading a marching band. However, he can’t play any instruments, doesn’t know how to lead a band, and doesn’t really have any musical skills whatsoever. The Music Man is a comedy, but it’s not totally unrealistic. Some managers in the computer industry don’t know how to format a document. Some automobile executives could not change a tire. There was once even a vice president who couldn’t spell potato. It’s not a good idea to lack the fundamental technical skills of your industry, and it’s really not a good idea to get caught lacking them. So let’s see what you can do to avoid those problems.

The information in this topic of decision making and how to create and nurture it, is beneficial to every cop in their quest to mastering tactics and tactical decision making and are a must read for every cop wanting to be more effective and safe on the street. My purpose is to get cops thinking about this critical question: In mastering tactics shouldn’t we be blending policy and procedure with people and ideas? It should be understandable that teaching people, procedures helps them perform tasks more skillfully doesn’t always apply. Procedures are most useful in well-ordered situations when they can substitute for skill, not augment it. In complex situations, in the shadows of the unknown, uncertain and unpredictable and complex world of law enforcement conflict, procedures are less likely to substitute for expertise and may even stifle its development. Here is a different way of putting it as Klein explains: In complex situations, people will need judgment skills to follow procedures effectively and to go beyond them when necessary.3 For stable and well-structured tasks i.e. evidence collection and handling, follow-up investigations, booking procedures and report writing, we should be able to construct comprehensive procedure guides. Even for complex tasks we might try to identify the procedures because that is one road to progress. But we also have to discover the kinds of expertise that comes into play for difficult jobs such as, robbery response, active shooter and armed gunman situations, hostage and barricade situations, domestic disputes, drug and alcohol related calls and pretty much any other call that deals with emotionally charged people in conflict. Klein states, “to be successful we need both analysis (policy and procedure) and intuition (people and ideas).”4 Either one alone can get us into trouble. Experts certainly aren’t perfect, but analysis can fail. Intuition isn’t magic either. Klein defines intuition as, “ways we use our experience without consciously thinking things out”. Intuition includes tacit knowledge that we can’t describe. It includes our ability to recognize patterns stored in memory. We have been building these patterns up all our lives from birth to present, and we can rapidly match a situation to a pattern or notice that something is off, that some sort of anomaly is warning us to be careful.5

Well before the end of the 20th century however print had lost its former dominance. This resulted in, among other things, a different kind of person getting elected as leader. One who can present himself and his programs in a polished way, as Lee Quan Yu you observed in 2000, adding, “Satellite television has allowed me to follow the American presidential campaign. I am amazed at the way media professionals can give a candidate a new image and transform him, at least superficially, into a different personality. Winning an election becomes, in large measure, a contest in packaging and advertising. Just as the benefits of the printed era were inextricable from its costs, so it is with the visual age. With screens in every home entertainment is omnipresent and boredom a rarity. More substantively, injustice visualized is more visceral than injustice described. Television played a crucial role in the American Civil rights movement, yet the costs of television are substantial, privileging emotional display over self-command, changing the kinds of people and arguments that are taken seriously in public life. The shift from print to visual culture continues with the contemporary entrenchment of the Internet and social media, which bring with them four biases that make it more difficult for leaders to develop their capabilities than in the age of print. These are immediacy, intensity, polarity, and conformity. Although the Internet makes news and data more immediately accessible than ever, this surfeit of information has hardly made us individually more knowledgeable, let alone wiser, as the cost of accessing information becomes negligible, as with the Internet, the incentives to remember it seem to weaken. While forgetting anyone fact may not matter, the systematic failure to internalize information brings about a change in perception, and a weakening of analytical ability. Facts are rarely self-explanatory; their significance and interpretation depend on context and relevance. For information to be transmuted into something approaching wisdom it must be placed within a broader context of history and experience. As a general rule, images speak at a more emotional register of intensity than do words. Television and social media rely on images that inflamed the passions, threatening to overwhelm leadership with the combination of personal and mass emotion. Social media, in particular, have encouraged users to become image conscious spin doctors. All this engenders a more populist politics that celebrates utterances perceived to be authentic over the polished sound bites of the television era, not to mention the more analytical output of print. The architects of the Internet thought of their invention as an ingenious means of connecting the world. In reality, it has also yielded a new way to divide humanity into warring tribes. Polarity and conformity rely upon, and reinforce, each other. One is shunted into a group, and then the group polices once thinking. Small wonder that on many contemporary social media platforms, users are divided into followers and influencers. There are no leaders. What are the consequences for leadership? In our present circumstances, Lee's gloomy assessment of visual media's effects is relevant. From such a process, I doubt if a Churchill or Roosevelt or a de Gaulle can emerge. It is not that changes in communications technology have made inspired leadership and deep thinking about world order impossible, but that in an age dominated by television and the Internet, thoughtful leaders must struggle against the tide.