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Kindness is universal. Sometimes being kind allows others to see the goodness in humanity through you. Always be kinder than necessary.
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Germany Kent
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A leader leads by example not by force.
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Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
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Here are a few important principles to remember with regard to the giving and receiving between males and females. When a male demands, a female reacts; she doesn’t respond. When a male gives, a female responds. When a male commits, a female submits. Nothing is more precious to a female than a committed male. Nothing is no more depressing to a female than an uncommitted male. Here’s the secret, guys: If you want a submitted female, be a committed male. It’s that simple. When a male abuses, a female refuses. Whenever a man abuses a woman, she refuses to respond. When a male shares, a female cares. If you find a man who is willing to share with the woman in his life, you will find a woman who is willing to care for her man. When a male leads, a female follows. When a man carries out his God-given responsibility for leadership, a woman responds by following his lead. Leadership does not mean being bossy, always telling others what to do. No, leadership means going ahead, not putting others in the front. Good leaders lead by example, not by decree. Jesus led by example, and so did Moses, Peter, Paul, and all the other great leaders in the Bible. Leading by example means doing ourselves the things we wish others to do.
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Myles Munroe (The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage)
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Self-leaders are still true leaders even if they have no known followers. True leaders inspire by the influence of their characters and general self-made brands. Leadership is defined by the virtues of one's behaviour.
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Israelmore Ayivor
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Contrary to popular opinion, leadership is not a reserved position for a particular group of people who were elected or appointed, ordained or enthroned. Leadership is self-made, self-retained, self-inculcated and then exposed through a faithful, sincere and examplary life.
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Israelmore Ayivor
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We are no longer in the dispensation of age and experience. We are in the era of knowledge and information. Information leads a true leader and a true leader leads others.
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Israelmore Ayivor
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Self-leaders do not look for followers because they are busily pursuing their influencial dreams that followers will trace and ask for. Followers look for influence and that can be obtained from self-leaders.
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Israelmore Ayivor
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Seven Ways To Get Ahead in Business:
1. Be forward thinking
2. Be inventive, and daring
3. Do the right thing
4. Be honest and straight forward
5. Be willing to change, to learn, to grow
6. Work hard and be yourself
7. Lead by example
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Germany Kent
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If you're not reaching back to help anyone then you're not building a legacy.
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Germany Kent
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A young child is a leader to an elderly person once his purpose has a faithful, sincere and trustworthy influence on people. Leadership is not restricted to position and age; it is self-made and influencial. Everyone has this self-leadership quality.
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Israelmore Ayivor
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You don't lead people by what you say to them; you lead them by what they see you do. True leaders are self-leaders.
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Israelmore Ayivor
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As you become more present in your own life, you will begin to enlighten others by your example.
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Germany Kent
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Leadership is an art expressed by the demonstration of characters worthy of immitation, emulation and inspiration. It is neither a title nor a postion.
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Israelmore Ayivor
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You can be in your room and lead people. Just develop your potentials and publicize them and you will see people looking for your product. That is influence; self-made leaders do not look for followers. Followers look for them.
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Israelmore Ayivor
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A true leader stays exhausted, abhors arrogance, and never looks down on the weakest link. He fights for his men and leads by example. That’s what it meant to be uncommon among uncommon. It meant being one of the best and helping your men find their best too.
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David Goggins (Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds)
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The concept of leadership is abused by people who think a person becomes a leader when he grows grey hair, put into a position and expected to function. Everyone has a leadership potential carried within in a specific area of his or purpose. Leadership is universal and built on trust.
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Israelmore Ayivor
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Christ manifests his divine leadership in your sincere followership. Christ's followers become true leaders because Christ is the model of true leadership.
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Israelmore Ayivor
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To lead by example is to offer your life as a living diarry for others to read. Never make your life pages blank; make some marks there. Many people are reading you.
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Israelmore Ayivor
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Leaders lead by example. No leader asks more than he is prepared to give himself.
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David Amerland (The Tribe That Discovered Trust: How Trust is Created, Propagated, Lost and Regained in Commercial Interactions)
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A “self-leader” is the positively influence you have on yourself and on others without any influence with your titles and positions. You must be able to lead yourself before you can lead others.
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Israelmore Ayivor
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True leadership is a picture, not just words. If you're not leading by example, you're not leading!
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Jonathan Nettles (Shine Little Light: Bittersweet Memories of Miracles & Wonders)
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Before we ask where the leaders are, we should look in a mirror and ask the person we see “Why are you not leading”?
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Carlos Wallace
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Leaders lead themselves first and foremost. Only then can they act as example and inspiration to others.
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Christopher Babson (Breakout Presentations: "WOW!" People in Business and Life)
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From the moment I enter a room, I am clear about how I intend to be treated and how I intend to engage. I do not tell self-deprecating jokes about my race or gender, though I will do so about my personal idiosyncrasies. I can be charmingly humble or playfully self-effacing without pandering to stereotypes in order to make others comfortable. For example, my attire, my hairstyle, even my presentation style, reflect me rather than aping the behavior of others. I know that when I offer criticism of men in the workplace, I may be seen as a man-hater. I know because I am not married, I may be seen as a lesbian. I know because I will never be less than curvaceous and wear my hair natural
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Stacey Abrams (Minority Leader: How to Lead from the Outside and Make Real Change)
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Motivation is a fine example of social complexity. It is nonlinear and sometimes unpredictable. It cannot be defined or modeled with a single diagram.
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Jurgen Appelo (Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)))
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Great leaders lead by example, not by making an example of others.
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Stewart Stafford
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Leaders dramatically influence the culture of their organizations through their own work habits. Being a leader does not mean one has 'made it' and is now exempt from hard work. Rather, leaders should set the pace for others. Few things discourage employees and volunteers any more than lazy leaders. Leaders should not ask their people to undertake tasks they are unwilling to perform themselves.
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Henry T. Blackaby (Spiritual Leadership: Moving People on to God's Agenda)
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The best leaders are those that lead by example and are both team followers as well as team leaders. We believe that in general, the best ideas and decisions are made from the bottom up, meaning by those on the front lines that are closest to the issues and/or the customers. The role of a manager is to remove obstacles and enable his/her direct reports to succeed. This means the best leaders are servant-leaders. They serve those they lead.
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Tony Hsieh (Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose)
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Noun leaders must have titles and positions. Verb leaders lead by example. Noun leaders say "listen to me" and "Obey me." Verb leaders say: :Follow me" and "Let me serve you." A movement will not survive under leaders that demand titles and positions.
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Ralph W. Neighbour Jr.
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True leaders are those who can offer appropriate advice based on their own rich experience, not people who just give orders and are all words and no substance. Leaders are first people of action who lead by personal example. They are not people who merely occupy some status or position. Leaders are people of hard work, not people of tactics and maneuvering. Above all, they are not authoritarians.
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Daisaku Ikeda (The Heart of the Lotus Sutra: Lectures on the "Expedient Means" and "Life Span" Chapters)
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When those who have been placed in my life to lead me and train me betray me and turn against me, as Saul turned against David, I will follow the example of David and refuse to let hope die in my heart. Holy Spirit, empower me to be a spiritual father or mother to those who need me to disciple, love, support, and encourage them. Father, raise up spiritual leaders in our land who can lead others with justice, mercy, integrity, and love. Allow me to be one of these leaders. When I am cut off from my father [physical or spiritual] through his insecurity, jealousy, or pride, cause me to recognize that as You did with David, You want to complete Your work in my life. Holy Spirit, release me from tormenting thoughts or self-blame and striving for acceptance. Cause me to seek only Your acceptance and restoration. I refuse to allow the enemy to cause me to seek revenge against those who have wronged me. I will not raise my hand against the Lord’s anointed or seek to avenge myself. I will leave justice to You. Father, cause my heart to be pure as David’s was pure. Through Your power, O Lord, I will refuse to attack my enemies with my tongue, for I will never forget that both death and life are in the power of the tongue (Prov. 18:21). I will never seek to sow discord or separation between myself and my Christian brothers and sisters, for it is an abomination to my Lord. I will remain loyal to my spiritual leaders even when they have rejected me or wronged me. I choose to be a man [or woman] after the heart of God, not one who seeks to avenge myself. Holy Spirit, like David I will lead my Christian brother and sister to honor our spiritual leaders even in the face of betrayal. I refuse to sow discord among brethren. I will show kindness to others who are in relationship with the ones who have wronged me. Like David I will find ways to honor them and will not allow offense to cause me to disrespect them. Father, only You are worthy to judge the intents and actions of myself or of those around me. I praise You for Your wisdom, and I submit to Your leading. Lord, I choose to remain loyal to those in a position of authority over me. I choose to focus on the calling You have placed on my life and to refuse to be diverted by the actions of others, even when they have treated me wrongly. Father, may You be able to examine my life and know and see that there is neither evil nor rebellion in my heart toward others (1 Sam.24:11).
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John Bevere (The Bait of Satan: Living Free from the Deadly Trap of Offense)
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Who, for example, would have ever predicted that the high school student who uses too many verbs in her college admissions essay is likely to make lower grades in college? Or that the poet who overuses the word I in his poetry is at higher risk of suicide? Or that a certain world leader’s use of pronouns could reliably presage whether he’d lead his country into war? By looking more carefully at the ways people convey their thoughts in language we can begin to get a sense of their personalities, emotions, and connections with others.
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James W. Pennebaker (The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us)
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Research has found that successful leaders share three behavioral traits: they lead by example, admit their mistakes, and see positive qualities in others
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Beau Lotto (Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently)
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In this business, it's not what you know, or even who you know. It's who knows you, that makes all the difference.
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Germany Kent
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No amount of awards will give you character.
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Germany Kent
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When a leader makes that fateful decision to hold one class of Soldiers to a higher standard over another that person has just set a new standard so low it doesn't register at all.
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Donavan Nelson Butler
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Leaders decorate the world; character is their paint. They live exemplary life and make the world better than they found it.
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Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Ladder)
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The real power of a leader is in the number of minds he can reach, hearts he can touch, souls he can move, and lives he can change.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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To possess effective natural leadership abilities is one of life's greatest assets.
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Germany Kent
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Many historians, many sociologists and psychologists have written at lenght, and with deep concern, about the price that Western man has had to pay and will go on paying for technological progress. They point out, for example, that democracy can be hardly expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized.But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralisation of power.
As the machinery of mass production is made more efficient it tends to become more complex and more expensive - and so less available to the eterpriser of limited means. Moreover, mass production cannot work without mass distribution; but mass distribution raises problems which only the largest producers can satisfactorily solve. In a world of mass production and mass distribution the Little Man, with his inadequate stock of working capital, is at a grave disadvantage. In competition with Big Man, he loses his money and finally his very existence as an independent producer; the Big Man has grobbled him up. As the Little Men disappear, more and more economic power comes to be wielded by fewer and fewer people. Under a dictatorship the Big Business, made possible by advancing technology and the consequent ruin of Little Business, is controlled by the State - that is to say, by small group of party leaders and soldiers, policemen and civil servants who carry out their orders.
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Aldous Huxley (Brave New World Revisited)
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It is the leader’s job to lead by example and enforce the values and the behaviors to set the culture for any company or work group. Show me a company in rapid decline, and I will show you someone in charge who doesn’t give a _____.
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Beth Ramsay (#Networking is people looking for people looking for people)
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Preaching to the masses, although necessary, will never suffice in the work of preparing leaders for evangelism. Nor can occasional prayer meetings and training classes for Christian workers do this job. Building men and women is not that easy. It requires constant personal attention, much like a father gives to his children. This is something that no organization or class can ever do. Children are not raised by proxy. The example of Jesus would teach us that it can be done only by persons staying close to those whom they seek to lead.
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Robert E. Coleman (The Master Plan of Evangelism)
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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.
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Dick Winters (Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters)
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Another great example of the power of vulnerability -- this time in a corporation -- is the leadership approach taken by Lululemon's CEO, Christine Day. In a video interview with CNN Money, Day explained that she was once a very bright, smart executive who "majored in being right." Her transformation came when she realized that getting people to engage and take ownership wasn't about "the teling" but about letting them come into the idea in a purpose-led way, and that her job was creating the space for others to perform. She chracterized this change as the shift from "having the best idea or problem solving" to "being the best leader of people.
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Brené Brown (Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead)
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The 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs, or effort usually lead to a majority of the results, outputs, or rewards. Taken literally, this means that, for example, 80 percent of what you achieve in your job comes from 20 percent of the time spent. Thus for all practical purposes, four-fifths of the effort—a dominant part of it—is largely irrelevant.
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Andy Stanley (Next Generation Leader)
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So often in the church, being a pastor or a "spiritual leader" means being the example of "godly living." A pastor is supposed to be the person who is really good at this Christianity stuff — the person others can look to as an example of righteousness. But as much as being the person who is the best Christian, who "follows Jesus" the most closely can feel a little seductive, it's simply never been who I am or who my parishioners need me to be. I'm not running after Jesus. Jesus is running my ass down. Yeah, I am a leader, but I'm leading them onto the street to get hit by the speeding bus of confession and absolution, sin and sainthood, death and resurrection — that is, the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm a leader, but only by saying, "Oh, screw it. I'll go first.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber (Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People)
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And yet that performance has a method. Trump's artlessness, like Mark Antony's, is only apparent. Listen, for example, as he performs one of his favorite riffs. He begins by saying something critical of Mexicans and Chinese. Then he turns around and says, 'I love the Mexican and Chinese people, especially the rich ones who buy my apartments or stay at my hotels or play on my golf courses.' It's their leaders I criticize, he explains, but then in a millisecond he pulls the sting from the criticism: 'they are smarter and stronger than our leaders; they're beating us.' And then the payoff all this has been leading up to, the making explicit of what has been implied all along. 'If I can sell them condominiums, rent space to them in my building at my price, and outfox them in deals, I could certainly outmaneuver them when it came to trade negotiations and immigration.' (And besides, they love me.)
Here is the real message, the message that makes sense of the disparate pieces of what looks like mere disjointed fumbling: I am Donald Trump; nobody owns me. I don't pander to you. I don't pretend to be nice and polite; I am rich and that's what you would like to be; I'm a winner; I beat people at their own game, and if you vote for me I will beat our adversaries; if you want wonky policy details, go with those losers who offer you ten-point plans; if you want to feel good about yourselves and your country, stick with me.
So despite the lack of a formal center or an orderly presentation, Trump was always on point because the point was always the same. He couldn't get off message because the one message was all he had.
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Stanley Fish
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There was a natural overlap, for example, between the deep anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime and that of some leading Islamic scholars. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muḥammad al-Ḥusaynī, had welcomed the rise of a man he later referred to as “al-ḥajj Muḥammad Hitler.” The German leader’s anti-Semitic views were grist to the mill of a man happy to call for the death of Jews, whom he referred to as “scum and germs.
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Peter Frankopan (The Silk Roads: A New History of the World)
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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.
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Nihar Satpathy (The Puzzles of Life)
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But without a Montezuma, how do you lead? Instead of a chief, the Apaches had a Nant'an-a spiritual and cultural leader. The Nant'an led by example and held no coercive power. Tribe members followed the Nant'an because they wanted to, not because they had to. One of the most famous Nant'ans in history was Geronimo, who defended his people against the American forces for decades. Geronimo never commanded an army. Rather, he himself started fighting, and everyone around him joined in. The idea was, "If Geronimo is taking arms, maybe it's a good idea. Geronimo's been right in the past, so it makes sense to fight alongside him." You wanted to follow Geronimo? You followed Geronimo. You didn't want to follow him? Then you didn't. The power lay with each individual-you were free to do what you wanted. The phrase "you should" doesn't even exist in the Apache language. Coercion is a foreign concept.
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Ori Brafman (The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations)
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The most effective leader is the one who satisfies the psychological needs of his followers. For example, it is one thing to be a good leader of Americans, who are raised in a tradition of democracy and have a high need for independence. But the American brand of democratic leadership doesn’t work so well in Europe, where executives have a psychological need for more autocratic leadership. That is one of many reasons why it is wise for American agencies to appoint locals to lead their foreign subsidiaries.
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David Ogilvy (Ogilvy on Advertising)
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Decentralized systems, on the other hand, are a little trickier to understand. In a decentralized organization, there's no clear leader, no hierarchy, and no headquarters. If and when a leader does emerge, that person has little power over others. The best that person can do to influence people is to lead by example. Nevins calls this an open system, because everyone is entitled to make his or her own decisions. This doesn't mean that a decentralized system is the same as anarchy. There are rules and norms, but these aren't enforced by any one person. Rather, the power is distributed among all the people and across geographic regions. Basically, there's no Tenochtitlan, and no Montezuma.
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Ori Brafman (The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations)
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Religion is another example of social contract disengagement. First, disengagement is often the result of leaders not living by the same values they’re preaching. Second, in an uncertain world, we often feel desperate for absolutes. It’s the human response to fear. When religious leaders leverage our fear and need for more certainty by extracting vulnerability from spirituality and turning faith into “compliance and consequences,” rather than teaching and modeling how to wrestle with the unknown and how to embrace mystery, the entire concept of faith is bankrupt on its own terms. Faith minus vulnerability equals politics, or worse, extremism. Spiritual connection and engagement is not built on compliance, it’s the product of love, belonging, and vulnerability.
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Brené Brown (Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead)
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A leader who fails to live amongst his folk will be like a blind man that does not know the light from darkness. Yet a leader who fails to serve but waits to be served will toil endlessly in his rule and he will find no meaning in his leadership. Yet a leader who aspires for glory and fame will be like a cub that can't learn the tricks of hunting. Yet a leader that seeks wars and warmongers will cause depression among his countrymen. A leader that seeks wealth rather leading will make his countrymen corrupt. A corrupt leader will make the country poorer and corrupt because it is his law to be corrupt. A leader must live like his people. A leader will be known by his deeds and not by his name and a great leader will not govern. A leader is an example for all his subjects. A great leader will not serve while the country is getting hungrier and starving but a leader will become hungry like his hungry citizens.
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David Ssembajjo (Servants of the Underground)
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Another example of neoracist influence in K–12 public education comes from New York City. In 2018, the NYC Department of Education earmarked $23 million for mandatory “anti-bias” training for the city’s teachers over the course of four years. Leading this charge was chancellor of schools Richard Carranza, whose philosophy has less to do with eliminating actual racism than with eliminating so-called white supremacy culture in schools. In a presentation to top administrators, Carranza called for an end to all aspects of white supremacy, including “a sense of urgency,” “worship of the written word,” “perfectionism,” “individualism,” and “objectivity.” Instead of these false values, he argued that teachers should prioritize non-white values like “the ability to relate to others.” The idea that perfectionism, objectivity, and good grammar belong to white people and shouldn’t be taught to blacks and Hispanics is exactly the kind of idea that leaders of the civil rights movement fought against. There is nothing anti-racist about this idea. It is, at its core, racist.
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Coleman Hughes (The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America)
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The word character comes from the Ancient Greek, 'kharakter,' meaning they mark that is left on a coin during its manufacture. Character is also the mark left on you by life, and the mark we leave on life.
It's the impact you make when you're here, the trace you leave once you've gone.
Character rises out of our values, our purpose, the standards we set ourselves, our sacrifice and commitment, and the decisions we make under pressure, but it is primarily defined by the contribution we make, the responsibility we take, the leadership we show.
[...]
John Wooden said, 'Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.'
Character is forged by the way we respond to the challenges of life and business, by the way we lead our life and teams. If we value life, life values us. If we devalue it, we dishonour ourselves and our one chance at living. THIS is our time.
Leadership is surely the example we set. The way we lead our own life is what makes us a leader.
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James Kerr (Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life)
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Those who govern on behalf of the rich have an incentive to persuade us we are alone in our struggle for survival, and that any attempts to solve our problems collectively – through trade unions, protest movements or even the mutual obligations of society – are illegitimate or even immoral. The strategy of political leaders such as Thatcher and Reagan was to atomize and rule. Neoliberalism leads us to believe that relying on others is a sign of weakness, that we all are, or should be, ‘self-made’ men and women. But even the briefest glance at social outcomes shows that this cannot possibly be true. If wealth were the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the ‘self-attribution fallacy’.10 This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you were not responsible. The same applies to the belief in personal failure that assails all too many at the bottom of the economic hierarchy today. From birth, this system of belief has been drummed into our heads: by government propaganda, by the billionaire media, through our educational system, by the boastful claims of the oligarchs and entrepreneurs we’re induced to worship. The doctrine has religious, quasi-Calvinist qualities: in the Kingdom of the Invisible Hand, the deserving and the undeserving are revealed through the grace bestowed upon them by the god of money. Any policy or protest that seeks to disrupt the formation of a ‘natural order’ of rich and poor is an unwarranted stay upon the divine will of the market. In school we’re taught to compete and are rewarded accordingly, yet our great social and environmental predicaments demand the opposite – the skill we most urgently need to learn is cooperation. We are set apart, and we suffer for it. A series of scientific papers suggest that social pain is processed11 by the same neural circuits as physical pain.12 This might explain why, in many languages, it is hard to describe the impact of breaking social bonds without the terms we use to denote physical pain and injury: ‘I was stung by his words’; ‘It was a massive blow’; ‘I was cut to the quick’; ‘It broke my heart’; ‘I was mortified’. In both humans and other social mammals, social contact reduces physical pain.13 This is why we hug our children when they hurt themselves: affection is a powerful analgesic.14 Opioids relieve both physical agony and the distress of separation. Perhaps this explains the link between social isolation and drug addiction.
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George Monbiot (The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came to Control Your Life))
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I read Dickens and Shakespear without shame or stint; but their pregnant observations and demonstrations of life are not co-ordinated into any philosophy or religion: on the contrary, Dickens's sentimental assumptions are violently contradicted by his observations; and Shakespear's pessimism is only his wounded humanity. Both have the specific genius of the fictionist and the common sympathies of human feeling and thought in pre-eminent degree. They are often saner and shrewder than the philosophers just as Sancho-Panza was often saner and shrewder than Don Quixote. They clear away vast masses of oppressive gravity by their sense of the ridiculous, which is at bottom a combination of sound moral judgment with lighthearted good humor. But they are concerned with the diversities of the world instead of with its unities: they are so irreligious that they exploit popular religion for professional purposes without delicacy or scruple (for example, Sydney Carton and the ghost in Hamlet!): they are anarchical, and cannot balance their exposures of Angelo and Dogberry, Sir Leicester Dedlock and Mr Tite Barnacle, with any portrait of a prophet or a worthy leader: they have no constructive ideas: they regard those who have them as dangerous fanatics: in all their fictions there is no leading thought or inspiration for which any man could conceivably risk the spoiling of his hat in a shower, much less his life. Both are alike forced to borrow motives for the more strenuous actions of their personages from the common stockpot of melodramatic plots; so that Hamlet has to be stimulated by the prejudices of a policeman and Macbeth by the cupidities of a bushranger. Dickens, without the excuse of having to manufacture motives for Hamlets and Macbeths, superfluously punt his crew down the stream of his monthly parts by mechanical devices which I leave you to describe, my own memory being quite baffled by the simplest question as to Monks in Oliver Twist, or the long lost parentage of Smike, or the relations between the Dorrit and Clennam families so inopportunely discovered by Monsieur Rigaud Blandois. The truth is, the world was to Shakespear a great "stage of fools" on which he was utterly bewildered. He could see no sort of sense in living at all; and Dickens saved himself from the despair of the dream in The Chimes by taking the world for granted and busying himself with its details. Neither of them could do anything with a serious positive character: they could place a human figure before you with perfect verisimilitude; but when the moment came for making it live and move, they found, unless it made them laugh, that they had a puppet on their hands, and had to invent some artificial external stimulus to make it work.
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George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman)
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Where to stash your organizational risk? Lately, I’m increasingly hearing folks reference the idea of organizational debt. This is the organizational sibling of technical debt, and it represents things like biased interview processes and inequitable compensation mechanisms. These are systemic problems that are preventing your organization from reaching its potential. Like technical debt, these risks linger because they are never the most pressing problem. Until that one fateful moment when they are. Within organizational debt, there is a volatile subset most likely to come abruptly due, and I call that subset organizational risk. Some good examples might be a toxic team culture, a toilsome fire drill, or a struggling leader. These problems bubble up from your peers, skip-level one-on-ones,16 and organizational health surveys. If you care and are listening, these are hard to miss. But they are slow to fix. And, oh, do they accumulate! The larger and older your organization is, the more you’ll find perched on your capable shoulders. How you respond to this is, in my opinion, the core challenge of leading a large organization. How do you continue to remain emotionally engaged with the challenges faced by individuals you’re responsible to help, when their problem is low in your problems queue? In that moment, do you shrug off the responsibility, either by changing roles or picking powerlessness? Hide in indifference? Become so hard on yourself that you collapse inward? I’ve tried all of these! They weren’t very satisfying. What I’ve found most successful is to identify a few areas to improve, ensure you’re making progress on those, and give yourself permission to do the rest poorly. Work with your manager to write this up as an explicit plan and agree on what reasonable progress looks like. These issues are still stored with your other bags of risk and responsibility, but you’ve agreed on expectations. Now you have a set of organizational risks that you’re pretty confident will get fixed, and then you have all the others: known problems, likely to go sideways, that you don’t believe you’re able to address quickly. What do you do about those? I like to keep them close. Typically, my organizational philosophy is to stabilize team-by-team and organization-by-organization. Ensuring any given area is well on the path to health before moving my focus. I try not to push risks onto teams that are functioning well. You do need to delegate some risks, but generally I think it’s best to only delegate solvable risk. If something simply isn’t likely to go well, I think it’s best to hold the bag yourself. You may be the best suited to manage the risk, but you’re almost certainly the best positioned to take responsibility. As an organizational leader, you’ll always have a portfolio of risk, and you’ll always be doing very badly at some things that are important to you. That’s not only okay, it’s unavoidable.
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Will Larson (An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management)
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Many historians, many sociologists and psychologists have written at length, and with deep concern, about the price that Western man has had to pay and will go on paying for technological progress. They point out, for example, that democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such concentration and centralization of power. As the machinery of mass production is made more efficient it tends to become more complex and more expensive – and so less available to the enterpriser of limited means. Moreover, mass production cannot work without mass distribution; but mass distribution raises problems which only the largest producers can satisfactorily solve. In a world of mass production and mass distribution the Little Man, with his inadequate stock of working capital, is at a grave disadvantage. In competition with the Big Man, he loses his money and finally his very existence as an independent producer; the Big Man has gobbled him up. As the Little Men disappear, more and more economic power comes to be wielded by fewer and fewer people. Under a dictatorship the Big Business, made possible by advancing technology and the consequent ruin of Little Business, is controlled by the State – that is to say, by a small group of party leaders and the soldiers, policemen and civil servants who carry out their orders.
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Aldous Huxley (Brave New World Revisited)
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Are you an influencer? Are you in media? Do you run a conference? A business? A podcast? Are you a mom in the PTA? Are you a teller at the local bank? Are you a volunteer for Sunday school at church? Are you a high school student? Are you a grandma of seven? Great! I need you. We need you! We need you to live into your purpose. We need you to create and inspire and build and dream. We need you to blaze a trail and then turn around and light the way with your magic so other women can follow behind you. We need you to believe in the idea that every kind of woman deserves a chance to be who she was meant to be, and she may never realize it if you—yes, you—don’t speak that truth into her life. You’ll be able to do that if you first practice the idea of being made for more in your own life. After all, if you don’t see it, how do you know you can be it? If women in your community or your network marketing group or your Zumba class don’t ever see an example of a confident woman, how will they find the courage to be confident? If our daughters don’t see a daily practice of us feeling not only comfortable but truly fulfilled by the choice to be utterly ourselves, how will they learn that behavior? Pursuing your goals for yourself is so important, and I’d argue that it’s an essential factor in living a happy and fulfilled existence—but it’s not enough simply to give you permission to make your dream manifest. I want to challenge you to love the pursuit and openly celebrate who you become along the journey. When your light shines brighter, others won’t be harmed by the glare; they’ll be encouraged to become a more luminescent version of themselves. That’s what leadership looks like. Leaders are encouraging. Leaders share information. Leaders hold up a light to show you the way. Leaders hold your hand when it gets hard. True leaders are just as excited for your success as they are for their own, because they know that when one of us does well, all of us come up. When one of us succeeds, all of us succeed. You’ll be able to lead other women to that place if you truly believe that every woman is worthy and called to something sacred.
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Rachel Hollis (Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals (Girl, Wash Your Face))
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THE MAJOR ATTRIBUTES OF LEADERSHIP The following are important factors of leadership:- 1. UNWAVERING COURAGE based upon knowledge of self, and of one's occupation. No follower wishes to be dominated by a leader who lacks self-confidence and courage. No intelligent follower will be dominated by such a leader very long. 2. SELF-CONTROL. The man who cannot control himself, can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one's followers, which the more intelligent will emulate. 3. A KEEN SENSE OF JUSTICE. Without a sense of fairness and justice, no leader can command and retain the respect of his followers. 4. DEFINITENESS OF DECISION. The man who wavers in his decisions, shows that he is not sure of himself. He cannot lead others successfully. 5. DEFINITENESS OF PLANS. The successful leader must plan his work, and work his plan. A leader who moves by guesswork, without practical, definite plans, is comparable to a ship without a rudder. Sooner or later he will land on the rocks. 6. THE HABIT OF DOING MORE THAN PAID FOR. One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness, upon the part of the leader, to do more than he requires of his followers. 7. A PLEASING PERSONALITY. No slovenly, careless person can become a successful leader. Leadership calls for respect. Followers will not respect a leader who does not grade high on all of the factors of a Pleasing Personality. 8. SYMPATHY AND UNDERSTANDING. The successful leader must be in sympathy with his followers. Moreover, he must understand them and their problems. 9. MASTERY OF DETAIL. Successful leadership calls for mastery of details of the leader's position. 10. WILLINGNESS TO ASSUME FULL RESPONSIBILITY. The successful leader must be willing to assume responsibility for the mistakes and the shortcomings of his followers. If he tries to shift this responsibility, he will not remain the leader. If one of his followers makes a mistake, and shows himself incompetent, the leader must consider that it is he who failed. 11. COOPERATION. The successful leader must understand, and apply the principle of cooperative effort and be able to induce his followers to do the same. Leadership calls for POWER, and power calls for COOPERATION. There are two forms of Leadership. The first, and by far the most effective, is LEADERSHIP BY CONSENT of, and with the sympathy of the followers. The second is LEADERSHIP BY FORCE, without the consent and sympathy of the followers.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich [Illustrated & Annotated])
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Cultivate Spiritual Allies One of the most significant things you learn from the life of Paul is that the self-made man is incomplete. Paul believed that mature manhood was forged in the body of Christ In his letters, Paul talks often about the people he was serving and being served by in the body of Christ. As you live in the body of Christ, you should be intentional about cultivating at least three key relationships based on Paul’s example: 1. Paul: You need a mentor, a coach, or shepherd who is further along in their walk with Christ. You need the accountability and counsel of more mature men. Unfortunately, this is often easier said than done. Typically there’s more demand than supply for mentors. Some churches try to meet this need with complicated mentoring matchmaker type programs. Typically, you can find a mentor more naturally than that. Think of who is already in your life. Is there an elder, a pastor, a professor, a businessman, or other person that you already respect? Seek that man out; let him know that you respect the way he lives his life and ask if you can take him out for coffee or lunch to ask him some questions — and then see where it goes from there. Don’t be surprised if that one person isn’t able to mentor you in everything. While he may be a great spiritual mentor, you may need other mentors in the areas of marriage, fathering, money, and so on. 2. Timothy: You need to be a Paul to another man (or men). God calls us to make disciples (Matthew 28:19). The books of 1st and 2nd Timothy demonstrate some of the investment that Paul made in Timothy as a younger brother (and rising leader) in the faith. It’s your job to reproduce in others the things you learn from the Paul(s) in your life. This kind of relationship should also be organic. You don’t need to approach strangers to offer your mentoring services. As you lead and serve in your spheres of influence, you’ll attract other men who want your input. Don’t be surprised if they don’t quite know what to ask of you. One practical way to engage with someone who asks for your input is to suggest that they come up with three questions that you can answer over coffee or lunch and then see where it goes from there. 3. Barnabas: You need a go-to friend who is a peer. One of Paul’s most faithful ministry companions was named Barnabas. Acts 4:36 tells us that Barnabas’s name means “son of encouragement.” Have you found an encouraging companion in your walk with Christ? Don’t take that friendship for granted. Enjoy the blessing of friendship, of someone to walk through life with. Make it a priority to build each other up in the faith. Be a source of sharpening iron (Proverbs 27:17) and friendly wounds (Proverbs 27:6) for each other. But also look for ways to work together to be disruptive — in the good sense of that word. Challenge each other in breaking the patterns of the world around you in order to interrupt it with the Gospel. Consider all the risky situations Paul and Barnabas got themselves into and ask each other, “what are we doing that’s risky for the Gospel?
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Randy Stinson (A Guide To Biblical Manhood)
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Growth was so rapid that it took in generations of Westerners, not just Lincoln Steffens. It took in the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. It even took in the Soviet Union’s own leaders, such as Nikita Khrushchev, who famously boasted in a speech to Western diplomats in 1956 that “we will bury you [the West].” As late as 1977, a leading academic textbook by an English economist argued that Soviet-style economies were superior to capitalist ones in terms of economic growth, providing full employment and price stability and even in producing people with altruistic motivation. Poor old Western capitalism did better only at providing political freedom. Indeed, the most widely used university textbook in economics, written by Nobel Prize–winner Paul Samuelson, repeatedly predicted the coming economic dominance of the Soviet Union. In the 1961 edition, Samuelson predicted that Soviet national income would overtake that of the United States possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997. In the 1980 edition there was little change in the analysis, though the two dates were delayed to 2002 and 2012. Though the policies of Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders could produce rapid economic growth, they could not do so in a sustained way. By the 1970s, economic growth had all but stopped. The most important lesson is that extractive institutions cannot generate sustained technological change for two reasons: the lack of economic incentives and resistance by the elites. In addition, once all the very inefficiently used resources had been reallocated to industry, there were few economic gains to be had by fiat. Then the Soviet system hit a roadblock, with lack of innovation and poor economic incentives preventing any further progress. The only area in which the Soviets did manage to sustain some innovation was through enormous efforts in military and aerospace technology. As a result they managed to put the first dog, Leika, and the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space. They also left the world the AK-47 as one of their legacies. Gosplan was the supposedly all-powerful planning agency in charge of the central planning of the Soviet economy. One of the benefits of the sequence of five-year plans written and administered by Gosplan was supposed to have been the long time horizon necessary for rational investment and innovation. In reality, what got implemented in Soviet industry had little to do with the five-year plans, which were frequently revised and rewritten or simply ignored. The development of industry took place on the basis of commands by Stalin and the Politburo, who changed their minds frequently and often completely revised their previous decisions. All plans were labeled “draft” or “preliminary.” Only one copy of a plan labeled “final”—that for light industry in 1939—has ever come to light. Stalin himself said in 1937 that “only bureaucrats can think that planning work ends with the creation of the plan. The creation of the plan is just the beginning. The real direction of the plan develops only after the putting together of the plan.” Stalin wanted to maximize his discretion to reward people or groups who were politically loyal, and punish those who were not. As for Gosplan, its main role was to provide Stalin with information so he could better monitor his friends and enemies. It actually tried to avoid making decisions. If you made a decision that turned out badly, you might get shot. Better to avoid all responsibility. An example of what could happen
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Daron Acemoğlu (Why Nations Fail: FROM THE WINNERS OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty)
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We need to be humble enough to recognize that unforeseen things can and do happen that are nobody’s fault. A good example of this occurred during the making of Toy Story 2. Earlier, when I described the evolution of that movie, I explained that our decision to overhaul the film so late in the game led to a meltdown of our workforce. This meltdown was the big unexpected event, and our response to it became part of our mythology. But about ten months before the reboot was ordered, in the winter of 1998, we’d been hit with a series of three smaller, random events—the first of which would threaten the future of Pixar. To understand this first event, you need to know that we rely on Unix and Linux machines to store the thousands of computer files that comprise all the shots of any given film. And on those machines, there is a command—/bin/rm -r -f *—that removes everything on the file system as fast as it can. Hearing that, you can probably anticipate what’s coming: Somehow, by accident, someone used this command on the drives where the Toy Story 2 files were kept. Not just some of the files, either. All of the data that made up the pictures, from objects to backgrounds, from lighting to shading, was dumped out of the system. First, Woody’s hat disappeared. Then his boots. Then he disappeared entirely. One by one, the other characters began to vanish, too: Buzz, Mr. Potato Head, Hamm, Rex. Whole sequences—poof!—were deleted from the drive. Oren Jacobs, one of the lead technical directors on the movie, remembers watching this occur in real time. At first, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Then, he was frantically dialing the phone to reach systems. “Pull out the plug on the Toy Story 2 master machine!” he screamed. When the guy on the other end asked, sensibly, why, Oren screamed louder: “Please, God, just pull it out as fast as you can!” The systems guy moved quickly, but still, two years of work—90 percent of the film—had been erased in a matter of seconds. An hour later, Oren and his boss, Galyn Susman, were in my office, trying to figure out what we would do next. “Don’t worry,” we all reassured each other. “We’ll restore the data from the backup system tonight. We’ll only lose half a day of work.” But then came random event number two: The backup system, we discovered, hadn’t been working correctly. The mechanism we had in place specifically to help us recover from data failures had itself failed. Toy Story 2 was gone and, at this point, the urge to panic was quite real. To reassemble the film would have taken thirty people a solid year. I remember the meeting when, as this devastating reality began to sink in, the company’s leaders gathered in a conference room to discuss our options—of which there seemed to be none. Then, about an hour into our discussion, Galyn Susman, the movie’s supervising technical director, remembered something: “Wait,” she said. “I might have a backup on my home computer.” About six months before, Galyn had had her second baby, which required that she spend more of her time working from home. To make that process more convenient, she’d set up a system that copied the entire film database to her home computer, automatically, once a week. This—our third random event—would be our salvation. Within a minute of her epiphany, Galyn and Oren were in her Volvo, speeding to her home in San Anselmo. They got her computer, wrapped it in blankets, and placed it carefully in the backseat. Then they drove in the slow lane all the way back to the office, where the machine was, as Oren describes it, “carried into Pixar like an Egyptian pharaoh.” Thanks to Galyn’s files, Woody was back—along with the rest of the movie.
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Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
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“I’m talking about greatness, about taking a lever to the world and moving it,” Larry Ellison said, walking the grounds of his new Woodside property in spring 2000 with his best friend, Steve Jobs. “I’m not talking about moral perfection. I’m talking about people who changed the world the most during their lifetime.”
Jobs, who had returned to Apple three years earlier, enjoyed the conversational volleying with Larry about who was history’s greatest person. The Apple co-founder placed Leonardo da Vinci and Gandhi as his top choices, with Gandhi in the lead.
Leonardo, a great artist and inventor, lived in violent times and was a designer of tanks, battlements, ramparts, and an assortment of other military tools and castle fortifications. Larry joked that had Leonardo not been gay, he would have been “a perfect fit for the Bush administration.”
Jobs, who had studied in India, cited Gandhi’s doctrine of nonviolent revolution as an example of how it was possible to remain morally pure while aggressively pursuing change.
Larry’s choice could not have been more different from Gandhi: the Corsican-born military leader Napoleon Bonaparte. “Napoleon overthrew kings and tyrants throughout Europe, created a system of free public schools, and wrote one set of laws that applied to everybody. Napoleon achieved liberal ends through conservative means,” Larry argued. " - The Billionaire and the Mechanic
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Julian Guthrie (The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, The America's Cup)
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My hope is that our leaders will capitalize on our country's most admirable qualities. When people in other nations face a challenge or a problem, it would be good for them to look to Washington for assistance or as a sterling example. Our government should be known to be opposed to war, dedicated to the resolution of disputes by peaceful means and whenever possible, eager to accomplish this goal. We should be seen as the unswerving champion of human rights both among our own citizens and within the global community. America should be the focal point around which other nations can rally against threats to the quality of our common environment. We should be willing to lead by example in sharing our great wealth with those in need. Our own society should provide equal opportunity for all citizens and assure that they are provided the basic necessities of life. It would be no sacrifice in exemplifying these traits. Instead, our nation's well being would be enhanced by restoring the trust, admiration and friendship that our nation formerly enjoyed among other peoples. At the same time, all Americans could be united in a common commitment to revive and nourish the political and moral values that we have espoused and sought during the past 240 years.
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Jimmy Carter (A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety)
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This experience of partness within a dynamic whole leads to a temporary suspension of individual responsibility-which is replaced by unconditional subordination to the 'controlling centre', the leader of the crowd. It further entails the temporary effacement of all self-assertive tendencies: the total surrender of the individual to the collectivity is manifested in altruistic, heroic, self-sacrificing acts-and at the same time in bestial cruelty towards the enemy or victim of the collective whole. This is a further example of the self-transcending emotions serving as catalysts or triggers for their opponents.
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Arthur Koestler (The Act of Creation)
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Above all else, know that good leaders always define their own reality. No one else can build a discipling culture for you—it must begin in your own life and then overflow into the lives of those you lead. You will not be the perfect example, but you can be a living example.
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Mike Breen (Building a Discipling Culture)
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I arrived at the FBI having spent decades watching leaders, reading about leaders, and trying to lead. From all that learning and all those mistakes, I knew the kind of leader I wanted to follow and the kind I wanted to be. And I set out immediately to try to set that example.
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James B. Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
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On another occasion, Alinsky was working in his home base of Chicago to force Chicago’s department stores to give jobs to black activists who were Alinsky’s cronies. On this issue of course Alinsky was competing—or working in tandem, however we choose to view it—with Chicago’s number one racial shakedown man, Jesse Jackson. Jackson mastered a simple strategy of converting race into a protection racket. He would offer to “protect” Chicago businesses from accusations of racism—accusations that the businesses knew were actually fomented by Jackson himself. The businesses would then pay Jackson to make the trouble go away, and also to chase away other potential troublemakers. In return for his efforts, Jackson would typically receive hundreds of thousands in annual donations from the company, plus jobs and minority contracts that would go through his network, and finally other goodies such as free flights on the corporate airplane, supposedly for his “charitable work.” Later Jackson would go national with this blackmail approach. In New York, for example, Jackson opened an office on Wall Street where he extracted millions of dollars in money and patronage from several leading investment houses including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, First Boston, Morgan Stanley, Paine Webber, and Prudential Securities. On the national stage, another race hustler, Al Sharpton, joined Jackson. For two decades these shakedown men in clerical garb successfully prosecuted their hustles. Jackson was the leader at first, but eventually Sharpton proved more successful than Jackson. While Jackson’s star has faded, Sharpton became President Obama’s chief advisor on race issues.
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Dinesh D'Souza (Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party)
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A low-context culture is a place where little is left to assumption so things are spelled out explicitly. In contrast, high-context cultures are places where people have significant history together and so a great deal of understanding can be assumed. Things operate in high-context cultures as if everyone there is an insider and knows how to behave. Written instructions and explicit directions are minimal because most people know what to do and how to think. Our families are probably the most tangible examples we have of high-context environments. After years of being together, we know what the unspoken rules are of what to eat, how to celebrate holidays, and how to communicate with each other. Many of our workplaces are the same. We know when to submit check requests, how to publicize an event, and how to dress on “casual” Fridays. New employees joining these kinds of organizations can really feel lost without adequate orientation. And many religious services are also very high context. People routinely stand, bow, or recite creeds that appear very foreign and confusing to someone just joining a religious community for the first time. Discerning whether a culture provides direct and explicit communication versus one that assumes a high degree of shared understanding is a strategic point of knowledge. And leaders need to bear in mind the areas of their own organizational and national culture that are high context and how that affects outsiders when they enter. Table
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David Livermore (Leading with Cultural Intelligence: The New Secret to Success)
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Leading by example through "Servant Leadership" used to be a badge of honor that distinguished you from the Corps of the Blue Falcon. Present day I see the ranks of the Blue Falcon surging in a flagless flotilla of blurred morals, a low tide of integrity, and selfish ethics adrift with no anchorage. The pulse of the led is directly influenced by the organizational heart rate of the leader.
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Donavan Nelson Butler
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Orders come from customers, not from leaders.
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Joyce Rachelle
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In most congregations, the people will not rise up to work until after they first see the leadership rise up and work. Leaders lead not only by teaching but also by example, "neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock." (1 Peter 5:3)
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Daniel Botkin (A Heart to Pray & A Mind to Work)
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38. No One Cares How Much You Know Until They Know How Much You Care
My SAS patrol sergeant Chris Carter was the living embodiment of this advice, and if you are ever in a position of leading a team or managing people, following his selfless example will help you become a better leader and enable your team to achieve more.
Can you imagine how I felt after Chris had let me drink his last drops of water? Gratitude doesn’t come close.
One of the regiment’s toughest, most hardened of soldiers was showing that he was looking out for me way beyond the call of duty. And once I had been shown how much he cared, I knew that, in return, I would never let him, or the regiment, down.
That simple act of kindness, of caring, is always at the heart of great brotherhoods. Call it what you will: camaraderie, shared purpose. The end product was that here was a man I would work my guts out for. And that made us all stronger.
Ditto, on a mountain: the most important bit of kit or resource on any expedition is always the human asset. When valued and empowered, humans have proved they can truly overcome the impossible and scale the unconquerable. But first we have to be valued and empowered.
The real value of a team is never in the flash hi-tech equipment or branded sponsors. It’s the people and the relationships between them.
As a leader, in whatever field, it is one thing for your team to see how much you know, but that knowledge isn’t what will make your team great. What makes the critical difference is how you use that knowledge.
Do you use it to empower and support those around you? Do you value others above yourself?
Is your ego small enough, and your backbone strong enough, to raise others up high on your shoulders?
If you let people know, through your words and actions, that they really matter, that their work matters, that their wellbeing matters to you, then they will go to the ends of the Earth for you. Why? Because they know they can trust you to use all your knowledge, skills and power to support and encourage them.
You see, no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.
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Bear Grylls (A Survival Guide for Life: How to Achieve Your Goals, Thrive in Adversity, and Grow in Character)
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Good leaders awaken new leaders by their silence; by the self-leading example.
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Alan Maiccon
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self-leadership entails sharpening the leadership skills that you originally possess and the leader in you emerges forth to accomplish what is required of you more efficiently.
For example, a simple housewife is a leader. She is a born leader, even as suppressed as she may be depending upon the society she belongs to or her circumstances, she does lead, and she takes the reigns of her household, trains her children in the ways of life, etc.
Thereby every human has a leader hidden in them. Self-leadership is about recognizing your leadership traits, sharpening them, and putting them into action.
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Henrietta Newton Martin, Author-Supervision, Leadership, & Administration in Social Work Organizatio
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Are Class Captains and School Prefects managers or leaders? Schools miss it when they assign a student to discipline other students. Class captains and school prefects are leaders not managers. A Leader is on A MISSION not on A DUTY. And being a leader goes beyond expecting compliance from others, which is what managers do. If your school assigns prefect to enforce compliance in any way you are doing it all wrong. For one, seeking compliance from anyone is complicated and it comes with a position that "demands" respect and thus you are putting such children at a risk of being hated by their peers. Prefect should be examples not authority figures, plus they should be trained to act like leaders should, if you also don't train them, you are doing it too wrong. Here are some of those "things" you should train your prefect: 1. Active listening 2. How to help their peers and other students find meaning in learning 3. How to make others students wellbeing and safety their priority. 4. How to inspire others and lead by example. Charity begins from school too. Your prefects can learn people skills that can guarantee their future right from your school. Your prefects should be assets to your school because of what they can learn to do now to become better in future not because of what they can do for your school now, which obviously is very little.
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Asuni LadyZeal
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Life is not a spectator sport. Build a career as a pioneer and inspirational force of good leading the way for others to follow through your passion, community work and career.
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Germany Kent
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But it was a glaring, undeniable example of one of the most fundamental and important truths at the heart of Extreme Ownership: there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.
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Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
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Always lead from the front, lead by example, and personify the infantry motto of “Follow me!” This is a cornerstone of basic leadership and one of the primary expectations of any leader at any level.
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Coley D Tyler (Ghosts of Fallujah)
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A true leader stays exhausted, abhors arrogance, and never looks down on the weakest link. He fights for his men and leads by example. That’s what it meant to be uncommon among uncommon.
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David Goggins (Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds)
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Leadership is meeting people where they are so you can take them where they need to go.
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Todd Stocker (Leading From The Gut: 3 Power Principles of Effective Leaders)
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Don't you believe in an afterlife?"
"I don't. But I also feel we can never be certain of such things. I imagine it offers great comfort to you, and I'm all for anything that offers you peace of mind, life satisfaction, and encourages a virtuous life. But, personally, I don't find the idea of a reunion in heaven credible. I consider it as stemming from a wish."
"Then what religion do you believe in?"
"I don't believe in any religion or any god. I have an entirely secular view of life."
"But how is it possible to live like that? Without a set of ordained morals. How can life be tolerable or have any meaning without the idea of improving your position in the next life?"
I began to grow uneasy about where this discussion would lead and whether I was serving James's best interests. All in all, however, I decided it was best to continue being forthright.
"My real interest is in this life and in improving it for myself and others. Let me speak to your puzzlement about how I can find meaning without religion. I disagree about religion being the source of meaning and morality. I don't think there is an essential connection-or let me at least say an exclusive connection-between religion, meaning, and morality. I think I live a fulfilling and virtuous life. I am fully dedicated to helping others, like you for example, to live a more satisfying life. I would say I get my meaning in life from this human world right here, right now. I think my meaning comes from helping others find their meaning. I believe that preoccupation with a next life may undermine full participation in this life."
James looked so interested that I continued on for a few minutes to describe some of my recent readings in Epicurus and Nietzsche that emphasized this very point. I mentioned how Nietzsche much admired Christ but felt that Paul and later Christian leaders diluted Christ's real message and drained this current life of meaning. In fact, I pointed out, Nietzsche had
much hostility toward Socrates and Plato because of their disdain of the body, their emphasis on the soul's immortality, and their concentration on preparing for the next life. These very beliefs were cherished by the Neo-Platonists and eventually permeated early Christian eschatology.
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Irvin D. Yalom (Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death)
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Leadership is not just having experience, but it is having the ability to lead by your own example.
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Shiva Negi
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Leadership is all about having the ability to lead by your own example.
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Shiva Negi
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Leadership is not just having vision, but also having the ability to lead by your own example.
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Shiva Negi
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And yet, so many managers aren’t aware of it when it’s happening (perhaps because they enjoy being deferred to). It simply doesn’t occur to them that after they get promoted to a leadership position, no one is going to come out and say, “Now that you are a manager, I can no longer be as candid with you.” Instead, many new leaders assume, wrongly, that their access to information is unchanged. But that is just one example of how hidden-ness affects a manager’s ability to lead.
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Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
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The Major Attributes of Leadership. The following are important factors of leadership:— 1. Unwavering courage based upon knowledge of self, and of one’s occupation. No follower wishes to be dominated by a leader who lacks self-confidence and courage. No intelligent follower will be dominated by such a leader very long. 2. Self-control. The man who cannot control himself can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate. 3. A keen sense of justice. Without a sense of fairness and justice, no leader can command and retain the respect of his followers. 4. Definiteness of decision. The man who wavers in his decisions, shows that he is not sure of himself, cannot lead others successfully. 5. Definiteness of plans. The successful leader must plan his work, and work his plan. A leader who moves by guesswork, without practical, definite plans, is comparable to a ship without a rudder. Sooner or later he will land on the rocks. 6. The habit of doing more than paid for. One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness, upon the part of the leader, to do more than he requires of his followers. 7. A pleasing personality. No slovenly, careless person can become a successful leader. Leadership calls for respect. Followers will not respect a leader who does not grade high on all of the factors of a pleasing personality. 8. Sympathy and understanding. The successful leader must be in sympathy with his followers. Moreover, he must understand them and their problems. 9. Mastery of detail. Successful leadership calls for mastery of the details of the leader’s position. 10. Willingness to assume full responsibility. The successful leader must be willing to assume responsibility for the mistakes and the shortcomings of his followers. If he tries to shift this responsibility, he will not remain the leader. If one of his followers makes a mistake, and shows himself incompetent, the leader must consider that it is he who failed. 11. Cooperation. The successful leader must understand and apply the principle of cooperative effort and be able to induce his followers to do the same. Leadership calls for power, and power calls for cooperation. There are two forms of leadership. The first, and by far the most effective, is leadership by consent of, and with the sympathy of the followers. The second is leadership by force, without the consent and sympathy of the followers. History is filled with evidences that leadership by force cannot endure. The downfall and disappearance of dictators and kings is significant. It means that people will not follow forced leadership indefinitely. Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, were examples of leadership by force. Their leadership passed. Leadership-by-consent of the followers is the only brand which can endure! Men may follow the forced leadership temporarily, but they will not do so willingly.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
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Sometimes leadership requires examples.
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Jason Fox (Battle Scars)
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Sustain a positive outlook. Cultivate a can-do spirit, and you will be an inspiration to employees. And, when that's a tall order, fake it until you make it! • Be known as a fair person. Employees want to be treated fairly, and you must take the necessary steps to make sure they feel that is the case. • Keep an eye on morale. Morale at the workplace can be affected positively or negatively by an incident that, although it might seem insignificant to you, might be very important to your employees. A contented group of employees will do more and better work than an unhappy group. • Set an example. If you want your employees to work hard and succeed, then set an example by doing so yourself. Be a spectacular role model! • Take responsibility for your actions. If something goes wrong and it's your fault, step up to the plate and acknowledge whatever it is that went wrong and why. • Maintain your sense of humor. Don't take yourself too seriously, and don't be in such a hurry that you haven't got time to tell or listen to a positive (tasteful) story. Studies suggest laughter and good humor go a long way in helping employees function well in the workplace. • Acknowledge good work through praise. Everyone wants to hear “well done” now and then, so make sure you acknowledge good work. Say it privately and say it within earshot of others, too. • Give credit for ideas. If one of your employees comes up with a great idea, by all means give that person the credit he or she deserves. Don't allow anyone to take an employee's idea and pass it off as his own. (Managers are sometimes accused of stealing an employee's idea; be scrupulous about avoiding even a hint of such a thing.) Beyond the basic guidelines listed above, a good manager must possess other positive qualities: • Understanding: Conventional wisdom dictates that you walk in someone else's shoes before you judge her. Keep that in mind when dealing with people in the workplace. • Good communication skills: Keep your communication skills in good working order. You might want to join speaking organizations to learn how to be a better public speaker. But don't stop there. You communicate when you send a memo, write e-mail, and lead a meeting. There's no such thing as being a “perfect” communicator. An excellent manager will view the pursuit of this art as a work in progress. • Strong listening skills: When was the last time you really listened to someone when he was talking to you? Did you give him your full, undivided attention, or was your mind thinking about five other different things? And when you are listening, do you really know what it is people are trying to tell you? (You might have to ask probing questions in order to get the message.) • Leadership: Employees need good leaders to help guide them, so make sure your leadership skills are enviable and on-duty. • Common sense: You'll need more than your fair share if you expect to be a good manager of people. Some managers toss common sense out the window and then foolishly wonder what happened when things go wrong. • Honesty: Be honest and ethical in all of your business dealings — period! • A desire to encourage: Encouragement is different than praise. Encouragement helps someone who hasn't yet achieved the goal. Employees need your input and encouragement from time to time in order to be successful, so be prepared to fill that role.
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Marilyn Pincus (Managing Difficult People: A Survival Guide For Handling Any Employee)
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Leaders show examples. They have something to offer and they’ll offer it by the process of how they got it. Anyone who has no examples to show may not lead better.
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Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Ladder)
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Westerners, not just Lincoln Steffens. It took in the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. It even took in the Soviet Union’s own leaders, such as Nikita Khrushchev, who famously boasted in a speech to Western diplomats in 1956 that “we will bury you [the West].” As late as 1977, a leading academic textbook by an English economist argued that Soviet-style economies were superior to capitalist ones in terms of economic growth, providing full employment and price stability and even in producing people with altruistic motivation. Poor old Western capitalism did better only at providing political freedom. Indeed, the most widely used university textbook in economics, written by Nobel Prize–winner Paul Samuelson, repeatedly predicted the coming economic dominance of the Soviet Union. In the 1961 edition, Samuelson predicted that Soviet national income would overtake that of the United States possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997. In the 1980 edition there was little change in the analysis, though the two dates were delayed to 2002 and 2012. Though the policies of Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders could produce rapid economic growth, they could not do so in a sustained way. By the 1970s, economic growth had all but stopped. The most important lesson is that extractive institutions cannot generate sustained technological change for two reasons: the lack of economic incentives and resistance by the elites. In addition, once all the very inefficiently used resources had been reallocated to industry, there were few economic gains to be had by fiat. Then the Soviet system hit a roadblock, with lack of innovation and poor economic incentives preventing any further progress. The only area in which the Soviets did manage to sustain some innovation was through enormous efforts in military and aerospace technology. As a result they managed to put the first dog, Leika, and the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space. They also left the world the AK-47 as one of their legacies. Gosplan was the supposedly all-powerful planning agency in charge of the central planning of the Soviet economy. One of the benefits of the sequence of five-year plans written and administered by Gosplan was supposed to have been the long time horizon necessary for rational investment and innovation. In reality, what got implemented in Soviet industry had little to do with the five-year plans, which were frequently revised and rewritten or simply ignored. The development of industry took place on the basis of commands by Stalin and the Politburo, who changed their minds frequently and often completely revised their previous decisions. All plans were labeled “draft” or “preliminary.” Only one copy of a plan labeled “final”—that for light industry in 1939—has ever come to light. Stalin himself said in 1937 that “only bureaucrats can think that planning work ends with the creation of the plan. The creation of the plan is just the beginning. The real direction of the plan develops only after the putting together of the plan.” Stalin wanted to maximize his discretion to reward people or groups who were politically loyal, and punish those who were not. As for Gosplan, its main role was to provide Stalin with information so he could better monitor his friends and enemies. It actually tried to avoid making decisions. If you made a decision that turned out badly, you might get shot. Better to avoid all responsibility. An example of what could happen
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Daron Acemoğlu (Why Nations Fail: FROM THE WINNERS OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty)
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Because the vast majority of leaders are men, it is not possible to generalize from any one example. But the dearth of female leaders causes one woman to be viewed as representative of her entire gender. And because people often discount and dislike female leaders, these generalizations are often critical. This is not just unfair to the individuals but reinforces the stigma that successful women are unlikeable.
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Sheryl Sandberg (Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead)
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Serving is the best kind of Leading.
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Todd Stocker
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Leadership
Leadership has a lot more to it than simply telling people what to do, keeping track of efforts, penalizing those who are late or who disrupt, and hiring / firing.
Great leaders are also great workers with a level of competence and confidence learned on the job that others accept and are willing to follow.
These leaders are good at working with themselves, they have developed discipline, an ability to delay gratification, curiosity as to why people think or do things the way they do, and are open minded and accepting of change.
Just look at any sports team, military unit or successful company and you will read or hear about all the leaders that make up the company. Most frequently these leaders are not the ones with a title, but the ones who make the place run through their efforts, focus, determination and ability to overcome obstacles.
It is from these ranks that titles are granted and rewards given. These people have proven that they can lead by example, are able to shoulder the load and have what it takes to lead others, helping them grow just as they were helped on their way.
My book entitled YOU Working With YOU is all about you, helping you to become the leader that you are capable of becoming.
Just showing up to work might keep you employed, stepping up and leading by example is what others will notice and align with.
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Richard Morin (You Working With You: A Roadmap to Self Mastery)
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The phenomenon I’m describing, rooted so firmly in that primal human drive for self-preservation, probably doesn’t sound surprising: We all know that people bring their best selves to interactions with their bosses and save their lesser moments for their peers, spouses, or therapists. And yet, so many managers aren’t aware of it when it’s happening (perhaps because they enjoy being deferred to). It simply doesn’t occur to them that after they get promoted to a leadership position, no one is going to come out and say, “Now that you are a manager, I can no longer be as candid with you.” Instead, many new leaders assume, wrongly, that their access to information is unchanged. But that is just one example of how hidden-ness affects a manager’s ability to lead.
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Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: an inspiring look at how creativity can - and should - be harnessed for business success by the founder of Pixar)
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Service introduces you to the leadership throne. Service to mankind is the vision on which leadership is mounted. You serve and in your service, you train more leaders by becoming an example!
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Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Watchwords)
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The leader’s job is to show the way. The bottom line is that you can’t tell anything about the condition of the way if you've not traveled on it yourself!
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Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Watchwords)