“
It’s exceedingly difficult for employees to have the company’s back when they can’t trust the company to have theirs. Actually, it’s impossible.
”
”
Hanna Hasl-Kelchner (Seeking Fairness at Work: Cracking the New Code of Greater Employee Engagement, Retention & Satisfaction)
“
Your behavior reflects your actual purposes.
”
”
Ronald A. Heifetz (The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World)
“
The best way to protect an asset is with systems that self organize and self execute behaviors which function as protective to the asset.
”
”
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
“
The most attractive thing about you should have less to do with your face or body and more to do with your attitude and how you treat people.
”
”
Germany Kent
“
There is too much negativity in the world. Do your best to make sure you aren't contributing to it.
”
”
Germany Kent
“
You're a leader. It's your job to keep your passion hot. Do whatever you have to do, read whatever you have to read, go wherever you have to go to stay fired up. And don't apologize to anybody.
”
”
Bill Hybels (Courageous Leadership)
“
Humans' needs are never constant, and they are also very complex.
”
”
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
“
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.
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor
“
When you realize that people treat you according to how they see themselves rather than how you really are, you are less likely to be affected by their behavior.
”
”
John C. Maxwell (Be a People Person: Effective Leadership Through Effective Relationships)
“
To be accountable means that we are willing to be responsible to another person for our behavior and it implies a level of submission to another's opinions and viewpoints.
”
”
Wayde Goodall (Why Great Men Fall)
“
Freedom of Speech doesn't justify online bullying. Words have power, be careful how you use them.
”
”
Germany Kent
“
When you can truly understand how others experience your behavior, without defending or judging, you then have the ability to produce a breakthrough in your leadership and team. Everything starts with your self-awareness. You cannot take charge without taking accountability, and you cannot take accountability without understanding how you avoid it.
”
”
Loretta Malandro (Fearless Leadership: How to Overcome Behavioral Blindspots and Transform Your Organization)
“
Great leaders know that under the turmoil of chaos and change, there is a beauty of patterns and designs.
”
”
Amit Ray (Mindfulness Meditation for Corporate Leadership and Management)
“
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.
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor
“
Growing a culture requires a good storyteller. Changing a culture requires a persuasive editor.
”
”
Ryan Lilly
“
Misleaders are slow to work hard but quick to act on greed. They convince their men that dishonest behavior leads to great wealth.
”
”
Xenophon (Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War)
“
Exemplary leaders know that if they want to gain commitment and achieve the highest standards, they must be models of the behavior they expect of others.
”
”
James M. Kouzes (The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations)
“
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.
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor
“
The goal shouldn’t be to make the perfect decision every time but to make less bad decisions than everyone else.
”
”
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
“
acknowledge and reward great questions and instances of “I don’t know, but I’d like to find out” as daring leadership behaviors. The big shift here is from wanting to “be right” to wanting to “get it right.
”
”
Brené Brown (Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.)
“
As far as I can tell, kids are called bossy when they behave in a dictatorial and domineering fashion. They’re called bossy when they try to order people around and refuse to listen to authority figures. Here’s a suggestion: instead of telling us not to refer to them as bossy, why don’t we teach them not to be bossy? We concentrate so much on eradicating negative words while forgetting to address the behavior that the words describe.
”
”
Matt Walsh
“
Great leaders don’t lead others with bitterness or resentfulness of past mistakes, they lead with hope and knowledge of the past to inform greater decision making in the future.
”
”
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
“
Leadership behaviors are one of the most critical influences on an organizational culture.
”
”
Fred Kofman (Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values)
“
While we would like to believe otherwise, it is usually not the cream that rises to the top; our society rewards behaviors that are actually disadvantageous to everyone. Studies have shown that the traits long considered signs of strong leadership (like overconfidence and aggression) are in reality disastrous in both business and politics.
”
”
Ijeoma Oluo (Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America)
“
Whenever we are in the box, we have a need that is met by others’ poor behavior. And so our boxes encourage more poor behavior in others, even if that behavior makes our lives more difficult.
”
”
Arbinger Institute (Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box)
“
Psychological pseudoscience dies hard, especially when there are commercial interests at stake.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Your values are the soul of your leadership, and they drive your behavior.
”
”
John C. Maxwell (The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential)
“
Leaders need to correct for cognitive biases the way a sharpshooter corrects for wind velocity or a yachtsman corrects for the tide.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Leaders need to sacrifice "power-over" to get "power-to".
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
To be an ethical leader is indeed to be different. This kind of leader acknowledges the complexity of running a responsible business, yet tries to do it anyway.
”
”
Andrew Leigh (Ethical Leadership: Creating and Sustaining an Ethical Business Culture)
“
when you face disappointments and trials in life, your response dictates the character that will be created in you as a result.
”
”
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
“
If you seek to correct a subordinate’s overall behavior or performance, start by telling them what they do well, then tell them where they need to improve.
”
”
Harold G. Moore (Hal Moore on Leadership: Winning When Outgunned and Outmanned)
“
People who appear to be resisting change may simply be the victim of bad habits. Habit, like gravity, never takes a day off.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
You are responsible for everything you TWEET and RETWEET.
”
”
Germany Kent
“
a large body of empirical research conducted over decades suggests that student evaluations are more than unhelpful; instead, they are likely to change the behaviors of presenters in ways that make learning and personal growth less likely. That is one reason why Armstrong concluded that “teacher ratings are detrimental to students.
”
”
Jeffrey Pfeffer (Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time)
“
Leadership isn't about power for the sake of power - not true leadership. Instead it deals with modeling behavior you want others to have, and with responsibility for being certain the people you lead are treated equitably, and with respect. Not an easy task. You can't make other people feel anything, or think anything; you can only try to teach them what you want them to feel and think and why you think they should act accordingly.
”
”
Laura Weakley
“
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.
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor
“
[T]hese leaders must not believe they are actually being watched, for their behavior in no way reflects the possible existence of a set of values or ethical laws that supersedes their own dominion.
”
”
Arthur C. Clarke (The Garden of Rama (Rama, #3))
“
When it comes to leaders we have, if anything, a superabundance—hundreds of Pied Pipers…ready and anxious to lead the population. They are scurrying around, collecting consensus, gathering as wide an acceptance as possible. But what they are not doing, very notably, is standing still and saying, ' This is what I believe. This I will do and that I will not do. This is my code of behavior and that is outside it. This is excellent and that is trash.' There is an abdication of moral leadership in the sense of a general unwillingness to state standards….Of all the ills that our poor…society is heir to, the focal one, it seems to me, from which so much of our uneasiness and confusion derive, is the absence of standards. We are too unsure of ourselves to assert them, to stick by them, if necessary in the case of persons who occupy positions of authority, to impose them. We seem to be afflicted by a widespread and eroding reluctance to take any stand on any values, moral, behavioral or esthetic.
”
”
Barbara W. Tuchman
“
It isn't hard to find people who are caught up in Below the Line behavior. All you need to do is look for those whose first reaction is to blame (others), complain (about circumstances), and defend (yourself), or BCD.
”
”
Urban Meyer (Above the Line: Lessons in Leadership and Life from a Championship Season)
“
This isn’t a matter for the eyes, it is a matter for the heart. Many signs point to a growing historical consciousness among the American people. I trust this is so. It is useful to remember that history is to the nation as memory is to the individual. As persons deprived of memory, they become disoriented and lost, not knowing where they have been and where they are going. So a nation denied a conception of the past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future. When I’m depressed, I ascribe our behavior to stupidity, the stupidity of our leadership, the stupidity of our culture.
”
”
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
“
Mindfulness requires being a beginner. Setting absurdly high-standards, and being unwilling to be a novice, are the joint enemies of personal progress and change. Nobody benchpresses 100 kilos the first time they enter a gym.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Too few leaders have the emotional fortitude to take responsibility for failure.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Strategic coherence is more important than strategic perfection.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
When business leaders talk about the next quarter, they ought to sometimes be talking about the next quarter century.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Leaders create culture. Culture drives behavior. Behavior produces results.
”
”
Urban Meyer (Above the Line: Lessons in Leadership and Life from a Championship Season)
“
It’s not a lesson learned until it’s a behavior changed.
”
”
Richie Norton
“
The most damaging cognitive bias is overconfidence (illusory superiority), making leaders use their “gut” when they should be more rational.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Good management has a lot to do with incentives and decentives. It's about making sure the company has systems in place that incentivize desired behaviors and decentivize undesirable behavior.
”
”
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
“
To change a culture, the leaders have to change the messages people receive about what they must do to fit in. When people understand that there are new requirements for belonging, they adjust their behavior accordingly. Cultural change starts with a new set of messages. Culture-changing communication is nonverbal—the “doing” rather than the “saying”—and comes most vividly from leadership behaviors. The behavior of leaders exemplifies what people with power—and those who aspire to have it—are supposed to do. A small change in a senior manager’s behavior can send a big message.
”
”
Fred Kofman (Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values)
“
We often trick ourselves into thinking that we possess enough knowledge or control over any given situation to make correct choices. Maybe that is why we hold on to the decisions we make so dearly even when we know we are wrong.
”
”
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
“
people get trapped by using patterns of behavior to protect themselves against threats to their self-esteem and confidence and to protect groups, intergroups, and organizations to which they belong against fundamental, disruptive change.
”
”
Chris Argyris (Organizational Traps: Leadership, Culture, Organizational Design)
“
I am no feminist. Even though the term "feminism" is founded upon the basic principle of gender equality, it possesses its own fundamental gender bias, which makes it inclined towards the wellbeing of women, over the wellbeing of the whole society. And if history has shown anything, it is that such fundamental biases in time corrupt even the most glorious ideas and give birth to prejudice, bigotry and differentiation.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality (Humanism Series))
“
When people feel like they are a part of a team, they are more likely to act in ways that benefit everyone, and less likely to engage in destructive behavior.
”
”
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Business Leadership: The Key Elements)
“
Human behavior is only unpredictable and dangerous if you don’t start from humanity in the first place.
”
”
Stan Slap
“
What should a brand leader advertise? Brand leadership, of course. Leadership is the single most important motivating factor in consumer behavior.
”
”
Al Ries (The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand)
“
Don't let Deepak Chopra manage your change program.
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”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
The best way to encourage out of the box thinking is to draw the box correctly in the first place.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
The essence of extended rationality is to know when you are being irrational.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
That which a team does not want to discuss, it most needs to discuss.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Just stamping out anti-science and bad science will eliminate an enormous amount of business waste
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Leadership must evolve into a “science-based craft”, like surgery.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
There was nothing scientific about Scientific Management (Taylorism), and neither was it good management.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Your behavior will guide the behavior of the other members of your team or the people in your organization.
”
”
Brian Tracy (Leadership (The Brian Tracy Success Library))
“
We have minds that are equipped for certainty, linearity and short-term decisions, that must instead make long-term decisions in a non-linear, probabilistic world.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
We live in a world where people believe they have full control of
their choices and decisions, but rarely have the holistic knowledge to effectively wield such power.
”
”
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
“
Having an understanding of the human mind and how it functions is probably the single most important thing anyone who wants to be successful can do
”
”
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
“
We have two choices when it comes to creating impactful change in
people’s decision-making process. We can create technology to prohibit or create rules to follow
”
”
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
“
Observe the behavior of your environment carefully for clues as to what is acceptable and rewarded.
”
”
Bonnie Marcus (The Politics of Promotion: How High-Achieving Women Get Ahead and Stay Ahead)
“
Certain emotions drive certain thoughts and actions. Knowing your emotional drivers is essential to regulate behavior.
”
”
Krishna Saagar Rao
“
Structure significantly influences behavior, thereby dramatically impacting results.
”
”
Chris Hutchinson (Ripple: A Field Manual for Leadership that Works)
“
The change "grief cycle", for some people, may be excitement, enthusiasm, engagement, effort, and excellence.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
We need leadership books that offer information as well as inspiration. Pop leadership is one of the most destructive forces today.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Creating change-agile businesses will eliminate the need for what we today call change management.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Leadership reveals itself in the big moments, but is forged in the small. It is the exponential and compounding product of our many incremental behaviors and actions; all of which arise out of our choices in values, beliefs & emotions. Choices all. Not a one is thrust upon us.
”
”
Christopher Babson (Breakout Presentations: "WOW!" People in Business and Life)
“
The greatest leaders in the world fight cognitive bias by developing 'rules to live by' and carefully following predetermined routines to maximize efficiency and control of their environment
”
”
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
“
To recognize this situation is not to call for a less calculated kind of leadership: It is always the cunning, not the naïve, who rise to power, and leaders must use artfulness to make any organization whatsoever work well. Yet they must never be guided by cynical and self-serving counsels. If they don’t call upon their higher selves, they will descend further into petty egotism and tyrannical behavior.
”
”
Xenophon (Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War)
“
Craving for power, titles and promotion to high places is not a tool for carving impacts in the heart the world. High positions polluted by bad character are the poisons that dehydrate the world of positive virtues.
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Watchwords)
“
Many of the cataclysmic leadership failures were failures of rationality. The pendulum of leadership development needs to swing back toward the rational: strategy, creativity, foresight, decision-making, and analytics.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
A healthy community can have differences, Chip says, but not division. “Differences are a product of ideas. Division is a product of behavior. A community means we live together with differences, but we can’t be divided.
”
”
Raymond M. Kethledge (Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude)
“
As everything we do in this world, be it work, business, politics or relationships, it is through humans, and we may still be successful if we understand and use the basic laws governing human nature and behavior to our advantage.
”
”
Abhishek Ratna (small wins BIG SUCCESS: A handbook for exemplary success in post Covid19 Outbreak Era)
“
Joel Bakan, author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power argues that if corporations have 'person hood' under the law, then it makes sense to question what kind of people they are. He posits that corporations behave with all the classical signs of sociopathy: they are inherently amoral, they elevate their own interests above all others', and they disregard moral and sometimes legal limits on their behavior in pursuit of their own advancement. Organizations of this type would thrive under the leadership of people who have the same traits: sociopaths.
”
”
M.E. Thomas (Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight)
“
Some choices are better than others and we, as mortal humans, cannot be expected to always choose the best ones. What we can control is how we evaluate past decisions. Our readiness to reflect and realize that we were wrong. Our ability to admit our wrongs and move forward. To say we are sorry or make amends for mistakes. To apply what we’ve learned from past follies and choose wiser in the present. I contend that in a random and often chaotic world of choices, that is what we can control.
”
”
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
“
Imagine a world full of people who take their choices seriously, carefully weighing the options presented to them. I wonder where we would be if people put as much thought into their decision-making process as they do so many other things in their lives.
”
”
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
“
If you can give the wisdom of life to a child; teach to love all regardless of what they believe in, that life is a precious gift to all, judgments of hell and heaven are manmade concept and that every one's purpose in life is to serve Humanity at large...
”
”
Husam Wafaei (Honourable Defection)
“
It is literally true, Burke’s groundbreaking arguments suggests, that if people change their words (or, more accurately, their words and their words’ relationships to one another), they change their perception of reality. As they change their reality their behavior changes automatically. Instead of people using their words, they are used by their words, and this fact is unrecognized.
”
”
Dave Logan (Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization)
“
Even in an age where the answer to almost all of life’s questions is a simple Google search away, we often don’t take the time to read the entire article for the answer. We don’t make time to actively seek out the truth, only the first or most relevant result.
”
”
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
“
What we value and our priorities in life make us who we are. We are unique not only because of our outward differences, but arguably more importantly, our inward differences. Our values steer our personal and professional lives and have a distinct imprint on the decisions we make.
”
”
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
“
if you are aware of a problem, it’s your responsibility to make a concerted effort to create a positive change. Quit pointing your finger and making excuses, and try being a catalyst by demonstrating and initiating the appropriate behavior. Determine not to be a reactor but an initiator.
”
”
John C. Maxwell (Be a People Person: Effective Leadership Through Effective Relationships)
“
Facebook users have higher levels of total narcissism, exhibitionism, and leadership than Facebook nonusers,” the study’s authors wrote. “In fact, it could be argued that Facebook specifically gratifies the narcissistic individual’s need to engage in self-promoting and superficial behavior.
”
”
Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2013)
“
How do tyrants hold on to power for so long? For that matter, why is the tenure of successful democratic leaders so brief? How can countries with such misguided and corrupt economic policies survive for so long? Why are countries that are prone to natural disasters so often unprepared when they happen? And how can lands rich with natural resources at the same time support populations stricken with poverty? Equally, we may well wonder: Why are Wall Street executives so politically tone-deaf that they dole out billions in bonuses while plunging the global economy into recession? Why is the leadership of a corporation, on whose shoulders so much responsibility rests, decided by so few people? Why are failed CEOs retained and paid handsomely even as their company’s shareholders lose their shirts? In
”
”
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics)
“
We are all skyscrapers, continually adding rooms and floors to who we are. Once one floor is done, the next begins and the result is a constant work in progress. The best business leaders treat their companies like projects never to be completed, only improved and refined, so why shouldn’t we also treat ourselves as such?
”
”
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
“
The issue of respect is also useful in guiding parents’ interpretation of given behavior. First, they should decide whether an undesirable act represents a direct challenge to their authority . . . to their leadership position as the father or mother. The form of disciplinary action they take should depend on the result of that evaluation.
”
”
James C. Dobson (The New Dare to Discipline)
“
The things that are celebrated as human decency, true heroism, true self-sacrifice, and with a kind of leadership that was completely iconoclastic during the first half of the twentieth century are nearly forgotten. All of a sudden we started looking inward and becoming obsessed with behavior, idiosyncrasies, human flaws, and all this stuff. Some great accomplishments happened in the second half of the twentieth century, don’t get me wrong, but in the process we lost a template of what truly being human looks like.
”
”
Ron Perlman (Easy Street: The Hard Way)
“
I am going to be pretty intolerant of behavior that demonstrates an absence of trust, or a focus on individual ego. I will be encouraging conflict, driving for clear commitments, and expecting all of you to hold each other accountable. I will be calling out bad behavior when I see it, and I’d like to see you doing the same. We don’t have time to waste.
”
”
Patrick Lencioni (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable)
“
Behavior that is rewarded is behavior that will continue.
”
”
John C. Maxwell (Be a People Person: Effective Leadership Through Effective Relationships)
“
Just because everyone else does, it doesn't mean you have to. Break the repetitive cycle and excel beyond the norm.
”
”
Torron-Lee Dewar
“
Leadership is not a position. It’s a behavior. And you don’t get to decide if you’re doing it well.
”
”
Rich Diviney (The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance)
“
Being consistent in your behavior is a great way to build trust.
”
”
Germany Kent
“
you get the kind of behavior you reward. You don’t get what you hope for, ask for, wish for, or beg for. You get what you reward.
”
”
John C. Maxwell (Be a People Person: Effective Leadership Through Effective Relationships)
“
A+B=C
Action + Behaviour = Character
”
”
Janna Cachola
“
Whimsy is the ability to laugh, make light of, or downplay the words, behaviors, and worldview of Sojourners that might offend.
”
”
Hugh Halter (The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community (Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series Book 36))
“
The notion of "business as usual" is a harmful myth.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
It is time to euthanize change management.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Yesterday’s decision-making strategies are ill-equipped to deal with petabyte information flows.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Humanity can not afford to have 21st Century businesses run on 20th Century science, and (worse) pseudoscience.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Business is the most important institution on the planet for furthering human flourishing.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Behaviorism was a busted flush, but neo-behaviorist theories, especially choice architecture, achieve behavioral change without coercion or the downsides of carrots and sticks.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
21st century leaders will be growers, not knowers.
”
”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Never underestimate the power of a tweet.
”
”
Germany Kent (You Are What You Tweet: Harness the Power of Twitter to Create a Happier, Healthier Life)
“
When the leader goes wayward, the organization goes wayward.
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts)
“
Titles are granted, but it's your behavior that earns you respect.
”
”
James M. Kouzes (The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations (J-B Leadership Challenge: Kouzes/Posner))
“
A bad attitude is like moths, it will eat everything good you have in your life.
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D.J. Kyos
“
Sometimes your fall is not caused by your enemies, but it is caused by your stupid actions, behavior, and bad attitude.
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”
D.J. Kyos
“
And don’t forget, if you are very intelligent but load yourself with bad characters, nobody will follow you.
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Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts)
“
Competence comes when successful outcomes are produced by values-driven, purposeful behaviors.
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Aubrey C. Daniels (Measure of a Leader: The Legendary Leadership Formula That Inspires Initiative and Builds Commitment in Your Organization)
“
It is the leader’s job to model and enforce the values and behaviors that make up the company culture. “Model” the behaviors is key. “Do as I say” only breeds contempt from others.
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Beth Ramsay (#Networking is people looking for people looking for people)
“
21st Century Managers must change their thinking because they are now in the business of managing Mindsets & thinking, which impacts actions and behaviors.
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Tony Dovale
“
It is not enough to believe. Believe must lead to change of attitude and conduct.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
“
Titles are granted, but it’s your behavior that earns you respect.
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James M. Kouzes (The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations)
“
Leaders need to consider three types of hardwiring—Behaviors, Abilities, Motivations—that work together to describe the unique gifts, talents, and spin that you can bring to work.
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Marc A. Pitman (The Surprising Gift of Doubt: Use Uncertainty to Become the Exceptional Leader You Are Meant to Be)
“
A leader's behavior, poise, appearance, vision, demeanor, "pressure", aura, his manner of speaking and listening - all reflect the person within, his principles and values.
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Hal Moore
“
You can still smile and greet your enemies.
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Mitta Xinindlu
“
To a leader, reputation is an option, but true character is a necessity!
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Watchwords)
“
Nobody thought the direct business model would work. But work it did, and spectacularly. Until it didn’t. And therein lies the tale.
”
”
Heather Simmons (Reinventing Dell)
“
The paradigms and behaviors of digital leaders are VERY different from traditional management.
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@rodrigolobos
“
Organizational culture is simply the response of an organization to its political influences, both internal and external.
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Larrie D. Ferreiro
“
I admire successful men and women who endured and overcome unusual circumstances to fulfill their dreams.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
“
Success comes only for those groups that overcome the all-too-human behavioral tendencies that corrupt teams and breed dysfunctional politics within them.
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Patrick Lencioni (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable)
“
One of the best ways to achieve clarity is to answer, in no uncertain terms, a series of basic questions pertaining to the organization: Why does the organization exist, and what difference does it make in the world? What behavioral values are irreplaceable and fundamental? What business are we in, and against whom do we compete? How does our approach differ from that of our competition? What are our goals this month, this quarter, this year, next year, five years from now? Who has to do what for us to achieve our goals this month, this quarter, this year, next year, five years from now?
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”
Patrick Lencioni (The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable)
“
Situational leadership articulates that effective leaders are the ones able to change their behavior according to the situation at hand. It identifies leadership styles relevant to specific situations.
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Michael Nir (Agile scrum leadership : Influence and Lead ! Fundamentals for Personal and Professional Growth (Leadership Influence Project and Team Book 2))
“
There is a theory about human behavior called the 10-80-10 principle. I speak of it often when I talk to corporate groups or business leaders. It is the best strategy I know for getting the most out of your team. Think of your team or your organization as a big circle. At the very center of it, the nucleus, are the top 10 percenters, people who give all they've got all the time, who are the essence of self-discipline, self-respect, and the relentless persuit of improvement.
They are the elite- the most powerful component of any organization.
They are the people I love to coach.
Outside the nucleus are the 80 percenters. They are the majority- people who go to work, do a good job, and are relatively reliable. The 80 percenters are for the most part trustworthy and dutiful, but they simply don't have the drive and the unbending will that the nucleus guys do. They just don't burn as hot.
The final 10 percenters are uninterested or defiant. They are on the periphery, mostly just coasting through life, not caring about reaching their potential or honoring the gifts they've been given. They are coach killers.
The leadership challenge is to move as many of the 80 percenters into the nucleus as you can.
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Urban Meyer (Above the Line: Lessons in Leadership and Life from a Championship Season)
“
I made a lot of mistakes along the way and wish I had access to the information in this book back then. Common traps were stepped in—like trying a top-down mandate to adopt Agile, thinking it was one size fits all, not focusing on measurement (or the right things to measure), leadership behavior not changing, and treating the transformation like a program instead of creating a learning organization (never done).
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”
Nicole Forsgren (Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations)
“
Map out lofty goals… include reasonable checkpoints along the way... refine, improve, and enhance your behavior in alignment with your goals…. that is the dynamic of true leadership and the formula for success.
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Steve Maraboli
“
Pop leadership abuts pop psychology, and is very destructive. In no other serious domain of human endeavor (surgery, playing the violin) is the subject distilled down to nice-sounding aphorisms that mean nothing.
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”
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
“
Leadership—in both the Service and the administration—often conveyed the message that bad behavior was truly bad only if it made headlines. I called it the Caesar mentality: Do as I say, not as I do, or off with your head.
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Gary J. Byrne (Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate)
“
And as Donald Capps so aptly points out, "Since our churches have taken on many of the characteristics of bureaucracies, it is not surprising that clergy are sometimes rewarded, not punished for their narcissistic behaviors.
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”
Ruth Haley Barton (Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry)
“
If you’re trying to predict human economic behavior—and you don’t include emotions in your
equation—your predictions will probably be way off. Emotions factor heavily into the algorithms that
produce our trade-off decisions.
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”
Tanya Mann (Five Frequencies: Leadership Signals that turn Culture into Competitive Advantage)
“
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)
“
Human Dignity has five characteristics : A playful curiosity,a capacity for dreams, a sense of humor to achieve and correct those dreams, a certain flexibility and spontaenity of behavior, a capacity to fight for and save those dreams !
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”
Abha Maryada Banerjee (Nucleus - Power Women: Lead from the Core)
“
Trump’s erratic behavior with respect to the NDAA and the Covid relief package came against the backdrop of his refusal to concede the election and his replacement of the top civilian leadership at the Pentagon with inexperienced loyalists.
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”
Liz Cheney (Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning)
“
The wise leader pays respectful attention to all behavior. Thus the group becomes open to more and more possibilities of behavior. People learn a great deal when they are open to everything and not just figuring out what pleases the teacher.
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John Heider (The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age)
“
coercive leaders are Adolf Hitler in Germany, the Taliban leaders in Afghanistan, Jim Jones in Guyana, and North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il, each of whom has used power and restraint to force followers to engage in extreme behaviors.
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Peter G. Northouse (Leadership: Theory and Practice)
“
ABERRANT GENIUSES—HIGH-PERFORMING BUT DIFFICULT TEAM MEMBERS—SHOULD BE TOLERATED AND EVEN PROTECTED, AS LONG AS THEIR BEHAVIOR ISN’T UNETHICAL OR ABUSIVE AND THEIR VALUE OUTWEIGHS THE TOLL THEIR BEHAVIOR TAKES ON MANAGEMENT, COLLEAGUES, AND TEAMS.
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Eric Schmidt (Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell)
“
It takes a willingness to be unpopular, however; independent thinking does, and leadership certainly does. Yet kids today are raised not only in an atmosphere of constant affirmation, but also amid the relentless inculcation of prosocial behavior.
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William Deresiewicz (Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life)
“
When you lead people through difficult change, you take them on an emotional roller coaster because you are asking them to relinquish something—a belief, a value, a behavior—that they hold dear. People can stand only so much change at any one time.
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Ronald A. Heifetz (Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading)
“
We live in an age where people pride themselves on individualism and the concept of living authentically. The human race strives towards self-help and desires nothing if not constant self-improvement both inward and outward. So, I ask you, what can be more authentic than learning the truth? How can one form their unique self without first knowing more possibilities? How can a person truly strive for such grandiose dreams of self-improvement without the ability to listen to the advice and knowledge of others?
”
”
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
“
Therefore, it is key that leaders demonstrate restraint when their people engage in conflict, and allow resolution to occur naturally, as messy as it can sometimes be. This can be a challenge because many leaders feel that they are somehow failing in their jobs by losing control of their teams during conflict. Finally, as trite as it may sound, a leader’s ability to personally model appropriate conflict behavior is essential. By avoiding conflict when it is necessary and productive—something many executives do—a team leader will encourage this dysfunction to thrive.
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Patrick Lencioni (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable)
“
So—why do we need a covenant? Because a written covenant makes our commitment real on a level that mere conversation does not. It provides a way for the group to claim shared ownership for their behavior because it contains detailed guidelines that help the group function together in agreed-upon ways.
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Ruth Haley Barton (Pursuing God's Will Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups (Transforming Resources))
“
It is always the cunning, not the naïve, who rise to power, and leaders must use artfulness to make any organization whatsoever work well. Yet they must never be guided by cynical and self-serving counsels. If they don’t call upon their higher selves, they will descend further into petty egotism and tyrannical behavior. As
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Xenophon (Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War)
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Your thoughts become your attitudes, which become your actions, which become your behavior, which become your habits, which become your lifestyle, and inevitably determine your outcomes. Utilize this circular truth by using positive thoughts to create positive outcomes. It is a choice you get to make every day. Choose wisely.
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Susan C. Young (The Art of Communication: 8 Ways to Confirm Clarity & Understanding for Positive Impact(The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #5))
“
We had better want the consequences of what we believe or disbelieve, because the consequences will come! . . .
But how can a society set priorities if there are no basic standards? Are we to make our calculations using only the arithmetic of appetite? . . .
The basic strands which have bound us together socially have begun to fray, and some of them have snapped. Even more pressure is then placed upon the remaining strands. The fact that the giving way is gradual will not prevent it from becoming total. . . .
Given the tremendous asset that the family is, we must do all we can within constitutional constraints to protect it from predatory things like homosexuality and pornography. . . .
Our whole republic rests upon the notion of “obedience to the unenforceable,” upon a tremendous emphasis on inner controls through self-discipline. . . .
Different beliefs do make for different behaviors; what we think does affect our actions; concepts do have consequences. . . .
Once society loses its capacity to declare that some things are wrong per se, then it finds itself forever building temporary defenses, revising rationales, drawing new lines—but forever falling back and losing its nerve. A society which permits anything will eventually lose everything!
Take away a consciousness of eternity and see how differently time is spent.
Take away an acknowledgement of divine design in the structure of life and then watch the mindless scurrying to redesign human systems to make life pain-free and pleasure-filled.
Take away regard for the divinity in one’s neighbor, and watch the drop in our regard for his property.
Take away basic moral standards and observe how quickly tolerance changes into permissiveness.
Take away the sacred sense of belonging to a family or community, and observe how quickly citizens cease to care for big cities.
Those of us who are business-oriented are quick to look for the bottom line in our endeavors. In the case of a value-free society, the bottom line is clear—the costs are prohibitive!
A value-free society eventually imprisons its inhabitants. It also ends up doing indirectly what most of its inhabitants would never have agreed to do directly—at least initially.
Can we turn such trends around? There is still a wealth of wisdom in the people of this good land, even though such wisdom is often mute and in search of leadership. People can often feel in their bones the wrongness of things, long before pollsters pick up such attitudes or before such attitudes are expressed in the ballot box. But it will take leadership and articulate assertion of basic values in all places and in personal behavior to back up such assertions.
Even then, time and the tides are against us, so that courage will be a key ingredient. It will take the same kind of spunk the Spartans displayed at Thermopylae when they tenaciously held a small mountain pass against overwhelming numbers of Persians. The Persians could not dislodge the Spartans and sent emissaries forward to threaten what would happen if the Spartans did not surrender. The Spartans were told that if they did not give up, the Persians had so many archers in their army that they would darken the skies with their arrows. The Spartans said simply: “So much the better, we will fight in the shade!
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Neal A. Maxwell
“
We know that negative reinforcement or punishment works well for behavior that should be eliminated. And we know from feedback theory that the best kind of feedback is descriptive because the client can then make the evaluation. These are valid guidelines but they don’t solve some of the subtle issues that can arise in the relationship.
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Edgar H. Schein (Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help (The Humble Leadership Series Book 1))
“
She explained. “Once we achieve clarity and buy-in, it is then that we have to hold each other accountable for what we sign up to do, for high standards of performance and behavior. And as simple as that sounds, most executives hate to do it, especially when it comes to a peer’s behavior, because they want to avoid interpersonal discomfort.
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Jossey-Bass (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable)
“
When you realize that people treat you according to how they see themselves rather than how you really are, you are less likely to be affected by their behavior. Your self-image will reflect who you are, not how you’re treated by others. You will not be riding an emotional roller roaster. This type of stability will have a tremendous effect on how you feel toward and deal with others. The key to successful relationships really gets down to responsibility. I am responsible for how I treat others. I may not be responsible for how they treat me, but I am responsible for my reaction to those who are difficult. I can’t choose how you’ll treat me, but I can choose how I will respond to you.
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John C. Maxwell (Be a People Person: Effective Leadership Through Effective Relationships)
“
If we ask a random orthodox religious person, what is the best religion, he or she would proudly claim his or her own religion to be the best. A Christian would say Christianity is the best, a Muslim would say Islam is the best, a Jewish would say Judaism is the best and a Hindu would say Hinduism is the best. It takes a lot of mental exercise to get rid of such biases.
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Abhijit Naskar (Neurons of Jesus: Mind of A Teacher, Spouse & Thinker)
“
Every morning I wake up to have the same hope, that mankind had survived its own greed, its own desire to self-destruct, its own monopoly to destroy the environment regardless of the consequences, its own religious and ideological dogma that kept it in turmoil since inception….I listen to the morning news to find out that nothing had changed, and realize more certainly that we are living on a barrowed time, and sometime in the future, if we wake up there will be fewer and fewer of us who will wonder but never learn what went wrong….this is human history, keep repeating itself in destruction, greed and chaos, at the best of times it is organized chaos….and at the worst of time it is mayhem, all to serve the few….who leaves crumbs for us to continue the cycle…
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Husam Wafaei (Honourable Defection)
“
Sonnet of Human Resources
There is no blue collar, no white collar, just honor.
And honor is defined by character not collar.
There is no CEO, no janitor, just people.
Person's worth lies, not in background, but behavior.
Designation is reference to expertise, not existence.
Respect is earned through rightful action, not label.
Designation without humanity is resignation of humanity,
For all labels without love cause nothing but trouble.
The term human resources is a violation of human rights.
For it designates people as possession of a company.
Computers are resources, staplers are resources, but people,
Aren't resources, but the soul of all company and society.
I'm not saying, you oughta rephrase it all in a civilized way.
But at the very least, it's high time with hierarchy we do away.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans)
“
And when it comes to the dangers of political autocracy and the rise of authoritarian behavior, people in the faith community must be among the first to raise the challenge. Our “Reclaiming Jesus” declaration concludes its proposition on our commitment to “Christ’s way of leadership” with this commitment: “We believe authoritarian political leadership is a theological danger threatening democracy and the common good—and we will resist it.
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Jim Wallis (Christ in Crisis: Why We Need to Reclaim Jesus)
“
You’ve probably also noted the impacts of virtual distraction on your own and others’ behaviors: memory loss, inability to concentrate, being asked to repeat what you just said, miscommunication the norm, getting lost online and wasting time you don’t have, withdrawing from the real world. The list of what’s being lost is a description of our best human capacities—memory, meaning, relating, thinking, learning, caring. There is no denying the damage that’s been done to humans as technology took over—our own Progress Trap. The impact on children’s behavior is of greatest concern for its present and future implications. Dr. Nicolas Kardaras, a highly skilled physician in rehabilitation, is author of Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids—and How to Break the Trance. He describes our children’s behavior in ways that I notice in my younger grandchildren: “We see the aggressive temper tantrums when the devices are taken away and the wandering attention spans when children are not perpetually stimulated by their hyper-arousing devices. Worse, we see children who become bored, apathetic, uninteresting and uninterested when not plugged in.”17 These very disturbing behaviors are not just emotional childish reactions. Our children are behaving as addicts deprived of their drug. Brain imaging studies show that technology stimulates brains just like cocaine does.
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Margaret J. Wheatley (Who Do We Choose to Be?: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity)
“
Measuring the wrong thing is often worse than measuring nothing, because you do get what you measure. So if the assessments focus on how much people “enjoy” the experience—be that reading a book, watching a talk, or going to a training session—those same books, talks, and trainings will respond to those measurements by prioritizing the wrong outcomes: making participants feel good and giving them a good time. Simply stated, measuring entertainment value produces great entertainment, not change; measuring the wrong things crowds out assessing other, more relevant indicators such as improvements in workplaces. Improvement comes from employing measurements that are appropriate, those that are connected to the areas in which we seek improvement. In the case of leadership, that appropriate measurement would include assessing the frequency of desirable leader behaviors; actual workplace conditions such as engagement, satisfaction, and
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Jeffrey Pfeffer (Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time)
“
We have no obligation to endure or enable certain types of certain toxic relationships. The Christian ethic muddies these waters because we attach the concept of long-suffering to these damaging connections. We prioritize proximity over health, neglecting good boundaries and adopting a Savior role for which we are ill-equipped.
Who else we'll deal with her?, we say. Meanwhile, neither of you moves towards spiritual growth. She continues toxic patterns and you spiral in frustration, resentment and fatigue.
Come near, dear one, and listen. You are not responsible for the spiritual health of everyone around you. Nor must you weather the recalcitrant behavior of others. It is neither kind nor gracious to enable. We do no favors for an unhealthy friend by silently enduring forever. Watching someone create chaos without accountability is not noble. You won't answer for the destructive habits of an unsafe person. You have a limited amount of time and energy and must steward it well. There is a time to stay the course and a time to walk away.
There's a tipping point when the effort becomes useless, exhausting beyond measure. You can't pour antidote into poison forever and expect it to transform into something safe, something healthy. In some cases, poison is poison and the only sane response is to quit drinking it.
This requires honest self evaluation, wise counselors, the close leadership of the Holy Spirit, and a sober assessment of reality. Ask, is the juice worth the squeeze here. And, sometimes, it is. You might discover signs of possibility through the efforts, or there may be necessary work left and it's too soon to assess. But when an endless amount of blood, sweat and tears leaves a relationship unhealthy, when there is virtually no redemption, when red flags are frantically waved for too long, sometimes the healthiest response is to walk away.
When we are locked in a toxic relationship, spiritual pollution can murder everything tender and Christ-like in us. And a watching world doesn't always witness those private kill shots. Unhealthy relationships can destroy our hope, optimism, gentleness. We can lose our heart and lose our way while pouring endless energy into an abyss that has no bottom. There is a time to put redemption in the hands of God and walk away before destroying your spirit with futile diligence.
”
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Jen Hatmaker (For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards)
“
Dr. Brown's book is able to make the subject matter interesting in a very pragmatic way, without losing the attractiveness and appeal of his academic writing and sound background. I would recommend the use of this book for teaching in leadership, management and organizational behavior courses knowing that it would make a great contribution to the learning experience of the reader."
Alberto DeFeo, Ph.D. (Law)
Chief Administrative Officer of Lake Country and Adjunct Professor of University of Northern British Columbia
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”
Asa Don Brown
“
Most people who haven’t had direct contact with the leadership of their own and other countries form their views based on what they learn in the media, and become quite naive and inappropriately opinionated as a result. That’s because dramatic stories and gossip draw more readers and viewers than does clinical objectivity. Also, in some cases “journalists” have their own ideological biases that they are trying to advance. As a result, most people who see the world through the lens of the media tend to look for who is good and who is evil rather than what the vested interests and relative powers are and how they are being played out. For example, people tend to embrace stories about how their own country is moral and the rival country is not, when most of the time these countries have different interests that they are trying to maximize. The best behaviors one can hope for come from leaders who can weigh the benefits of cooperation, and who have long enough time frames that they can see how the gifts they give this year may bring them benefits in the future.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
“
Joel Bakan, author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power argues that if corporations have 'person hood' under the law, then it makes sense to question what kind of people they are. He posits that corporations behave with all the classical signs of sociopathy: they are inherently amoral, they elevate their own interests above all others', and they disregard moral and sometimes legal limits on their behavior in pursuit of their own advancement. Organizations of this type would thrive under the leadership of people who have the same traits: sociopaths.
”
”
Nancy Tah (Confessions of a Sociopath)
“
Demographics 30 points based on manual Prospect review 0-8 points based on title Source and Offer Website leads source: +7 Thought leadership offer: -5 Behavioral Engagement: Visit any webpage or open any email: +1 Watch demos: +5 each Register for webinar: +5 Attend webinar: +5 Download thought leadership: +5 Download Marketo reviews: +12 More than 8 pages in one visit: +7 Visit website 2x in one week: +8 Search for “Marketo”: +15 Visit pricing pages: +5 Visit careers pages: -10 (I especially love this one!) No Activity in One Month: Score >30: -15 points Score 0 to 30: -5 points
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”
Aaron Ross (Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine With The $100 Million Best Practices Of Salesforce.com)
“
my advice is;
Let’s join the caravan of humanity, and ally ourselves with a conscious progress, let’s join the secular non-sectarian societies, lets distant ourselves from military tradition, and join the human race in benefiting humanity as a whole, let’s heal our environment, and adapt social justices, that will empower the poor and the oppressed to gain his or her fundamental human rights, let’s find mercy and compassion in our souls without reference to any religious fanaticism or national extremism…if we could do that, only then we can begin the return journey back to civilization….
”
”
Husam Wafaei (Honourable Defection)
“
How had Lincoln been able to lead these inordinately prideful, ambitious, quarrelsome, jealous, supremely gifted men to support a fundamental shift in the purpose of the war? The best answer can be found in what we identify today as Lincoln’s emotional intelligence: his empathy, humility, consistency, self-awareness, self-discipline, and generosity of spirit. “So long as I have been here,” Lincoln maintained, “I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man’s bosom.” In his everyday interactions with the team, there was no room for mean-spirited behavior, for grudges or personal resentments.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
“
On occasion, the leader may be intelligent and highly educated, but the possession of these qualities does him, as a rule, more harm than good. By showing how complex things are, by allowing of explanation and promoting comprehension, intelligence always renders its owner indulgent, and blunts, in a large measure, that intensity and violence of conviction needful for apostles. The great leaders of crowds of all ages, and those of the Revolution in particular, have been of lamentably narrow intellect; while it is precisely those whose intelligence has been the most restricted who have exercised the greatest influence.
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”
Gustave Le Bon (سيكولوجية الجماهير)
“
By November 2016, the affinities were clear. A substantial number of white evangelicals shared Trump’s nationalism, Islamophobia, racism, and nativism. They condoned his “nasty politics”: they agreed that injured protestors got what they deserved, that the country would be better off getting rid of “bad apples,” and that people were “too sensitive” about what was said in politics. Drawn to his populist appeals, white evangelicals demonstrated a preference for rejecting political compromise, for strong, solitary leadership, and for breaking the rules when necessary. These dispositions held whether white evangelicals were defined by affiliation, self-identification, or belief and behavior.
”
”
Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation)
“
When countries negotiate with one another, they typically operate as if they are opponents in a chess match or merchants in a bazaar in which maximizing one’s own benefit is the sole objective. Smart leaders know their own countries’ vulnerabilities, take advantage of others’ vulnerabilities, and expect the other countries’ leaders to do the same. Most people who haven’t had direct contact with the leadership of their own and other countries form their views based on what they learn in the media, and become quite naive and inappropriately opinionated as a result. That’s because dramatic stories and gossip draw more readers and viewers than does clinical objectivity. Also, in some cases “journalists” have their own ideological biases that they are trying to advance. As a result, most people who see the world through the lens of the media tend to look for who is good and who is evil rather than what the vested interests and relative powers are and how they are being played out. For example, people tend to embrace stories about how their own country is moral and the rival country is not, when most of the time these countries have different interests that they are trying to maximize. The best behaviors one can hope for come from leaders who can weigh the benefits of cooperation, and who have long enough time frames that they can see how the gifts they give this year may bring them benefits in the future.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
“
While we would like to believe otherwise, it is usually not the cream that rises to the top: our society rewards behaviors that are actually disadvantageous to everyone. Studies have shown that the traits long considered signs of strong leadership (like overconfidence and aggression) are in reality disastrous in both business and politics—not to mention the personal toll this style of leadership takes on the individuals around these leaders. These traits are broadly considered to be masculine, whereas characteristics often associated with weakness or lack of leadership (patience, accommodation, cooperation) are coded as feminine. This is a global phenomenon of counterproductive values that social scientists have long marveled over.
”
”
Ijeoma Oluo (Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male Power)
“
The first dysfunction is an absence of trust among team members. Essentially, this stems from their unwillingness to be vulnerable within the group. Team members who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation for trust. This failure to build trust is damaging because it sets the tone for the second dysfunction: fear of conflict. Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered and passionate debate of ideas. Instead, they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments. A lack of healthy conflict is a problem because it ensures the third dysfunction of a team: lack of commitment. Without having aired their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team members rarely, if ever, buy in and commit to decisions, though they may feign agreement during meetings. Because of this lack of real commitment and buy-in, team members develop an avoidance of accountability, the fourth dysfunction. Without committing to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven people often hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviors that seem counterproductive to the good of the team. Failure to hold one another accountable creates an environment where the fifth dysfunction can thrive. Inattention to results occurs when team members put their individual needs (such as ego, career development, or recognition) or even the needs of their divisions above the collective goals of the team.
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Patrick Lencioni (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable)
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POLLARD had known better, but instead of pulling rank and insisting that his officers carry out his proposal to sail for the Society Islands, he embraced a more democratic style of command. Modern survival psychologists have determined that this “social”—as opposed to “authoritarian”—form of leadership is ill suited to the early stages of a disaster, when decisions must be made quickly and firmly. Only later, as the ordeal drags on and it is necessary to maintain morale, do social leadership skills become important. Whalemen in the nineteenth century had a clear understanding of these two approaches. The captain was expected to be the authoritarian, what Nantucketers called a fishy man. A fishy man loved to kill whales and lacked the tendency toward self-doubt and self-examination that could get in the way of making a quick decision. To be called “fishy to the backbone” was the ultimate compliment a Nantucketer could receive and meant that he was destined to become, if he wasn’t already, a captain. Mates, however, were expected to temper their fishiness with a more personal, even outgoing, approach. After breaking in the green hands at the onset of the voyage—when they gained their well-deserved reputations as “spit-fires”—mates worked to instill a sense of cooperation among the men. This required them to remain sensitive to the crew’s changeable moods and to keep the lines of communication open. Nantucketers recognized that the positions of captain and first mate required contrasting personalities. Not all mates had the necessary edge to become captains, and there were many future captains who did not have the patience to be successful mates. There was a saying on the island: “[I]t is a pity to spoil a good mate by making him a master.” Pollard’s behavior, after both the knockdown and the whale attack, indicates that he lacked the resolve to overrule his two younger and less experienced officers. In his deference to others, Pollard was conducting himself less like a captain and more like the veteran mate described by the Nantucketer William H. Macy: “[H]e had no lungs to blow his own trumpet, and sometimes distrusted his own powers, though generally found equal to any emergency after it arose. This want of confidence sometimes led him to hesitate, where a more impulsive or less thoughtful man would act at once. In the course of his career he had seen many ‘fishy’ young men lifted over his head.” Shipowners hoped to combine a fishy, hard-driving captain with an approachable and steady mate. But in the labor-starved frenzy of Nantucket in 1819, the Essex had ended up with a captain who had the instincts and soul of a mate, and a mate who had the ambition and fire of a captain. Instead of giving an order and sticking with it, Pollard indulged his matelike tendency to listen to others. This provided Chase—who had no qualms about speaking up—with the opportunity to impose his own will. For better or worse, the men of the Essex were sailing toward a destiny that would be determined, in large part, not by their unassertive captain but by their forceful and fishy mate.
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Nathaniel Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (National Book Award Winner))
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The Earn Trust leadership principle exists in part to prevent this behavior from occurring. It states, “Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.” But these meetings, in the early days, clearly exemplified where we failed to live up to that principle. The original, well-intentioned meeting was set up to improve the software systems from one week to the next. But it gained a life of its own, and sometimes turned a roomful of smart people with probing questions into an angry mob, devouring those who could make a difference and robbing them of their very will to succeed.
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Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
“
People start to realize that nothing and no one is safe. In response, some instinctually behave as if they were switched to self-preservation mode. They may hoard information, hide mistakes and operate in a more cautious, risk-averse way. To protect themselves, they trust no one. Others double down on an only-the-fittest-survive mentality. Their tactics can become overly aggressive. Their egos become unchecked. They learn to manage up the hierarchy to garner favor with senior leadership while, in some cases, sabotaging their own colleagues. To protect themselves, they trust no one. Regardless of whether they are in self-preservation or self-promotion mode, the sum of all of these behaviors contributes to a general decline in cooperation across the company, which also leads to stagnation of any truly new or innovative ideas.
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Simon Sinek (The Infinite Game)
“
one of the hottest topics today is ethics—ethics discussions, ethics curriculum, ethics training, codes of ethics. This book shows that while ethics is fundamentally important and necessary, it is absolutely insufficient. It shows that the so-called soft stuff is hard, measurable, and impacts everything else in relationships, organizations, markets, and societies. Financial success comes from success in the marketplace, and success in the marketplace comes from success in the workplace. The heart and soul of all of this is trust. This work goes far beyond not only my work, but also beyond anything I have read on the subject of trust. It goes beyond ethical behavior in leadership, beyond mere “compliance.” It goes deep into the real “intent” and agenda of a person’s heart, and then into the kind of “competence” that merits consistent public confidence.
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Stephen M.R. Covey (The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything)
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When it comes to assessment, the traditional model of assessment is assessment for learning. What people like to talk about now is that the twenty-first-century model is assessment of learning. But if assessment is merely the way we are able to determine how much learning has occurred, then the ultimate goal is assessment as learning, where assessment occurs in real time and is the process by which people reflect on their own thinking and diagnose how they’ve changed. There are schools that do this. There’s a remarkable school in New Hampshire that, for them, the thing that matters the most is that people who graduate from their school have seventeen specific habits of mind and work—everything from collaboration and leadership to curiosity and wonder. They’ve developed these really thoughtful behavioral rubrics that break down each of those habits by subskills.
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Ken Robinson (Creative Schools: Revolutionizing Education from the Ground Up)
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Source credibility is one contributing factor that seems to influence change. People have a tendency to look up to authority figures for knowledge and direction. Expert opinion is effective in establishing the legitimacy of change and is tied to information control. Once a source is accepted on one issue, another issue may be established as well on the basis of prior acceptance of the source. The analyst looks for an audience's perceived image of the source. How does the audience regard the source? Are the people deferential, and do they accept the message on the basis of leadership alone? Is the propaganda agent a hero? Does the audience model its behavior after the propagandist's? How does the propagandist establish identification with the audience? Does she or he establish familiarity with the audience's locality, use local incidents, and share interests, hopes, hatreds, and so on?
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Garth S. Jowett (Propaganda and Persuasion)
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Take It Easy Trying too hard produces unexpected results: The flashy leader lacks stability. Trying to rush matters gets you nowhere. Trying to appear brilliant is not enlightened. Insecure leaders try to promote themselves. Impotent leaders capitalize on their position. It is not very holy to point out how holy you are. All these behaviors come from insecurity. They feed insecurity. None of them helps the work. None contributes to the leader’s health. The leader who knows how things happen does not do these things. Consider: When you think that you are so good, what are you comparing yourself with? God? Or your own insecurities? Do you want fame? Fame will complicate your life and compromise simplicity in your comings and goings. Is it money? The effort of trying to get rich will steal your time. Any form of egocentricity, of selfishness, obscures your deeper self and blinds you to how things happen.
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John Heider (The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age)
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Why Westerners are so obsessed with "saving" Africa, and why this obsession so often goes awry? Western countries should understand that Africa’s development chances and social possibilities remain heavily hindered due to its overall mediocre governance.
Africa rising is still possible -- but first Africans need to understand that the power lies not just with the government, but the people. I do believe, that young Africans have the will to "CHANGE" Africa. They must engage their government in a positive manner on issues that matters -- I also realize that too many of the continent’s people are subject to the kinds of governments that favor ruling elites rather than ordinary villagers and townspeople. These kind of behavior trickles down growth.
In Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe is the problem.
In South Africa the Apartheid did some damage. The country still wrestles with significant racial issues that sometimes leads to the murder of its citizens.
In Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya the world’s worst food crisis is being felt.
In Libya the West sends a mixed messages that make the future for Libyans uncertain. In Nigeria oil is the biggest curse. In Liberia corruption had make it very hard for the country to even develop.
Westerners should understand that their funding cannot fix the problems in Africa. African problems can be fixed by Africans. Charity gives but does not really transform. Transformation should come from the root, "African leadership." We have a PHD, Bachelors and even Master degree holders but still can't transform knowledge. Knowledge in any society should be the power of transformation. Africa does not need a savior and western funds, what Africa needs is a drive towards ownership of one's destiny. By creating a positive structural system that works for the majority. There should be needs in dealing with corruption, leadership and accountability.
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Henry Johnson Jr
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To tear down silos, leaders must go beyond behaviors and address the contextual issues at the heart of departmental separation and politics. The purpose of this book is to present a simple, powerful tool for addressing those issues and reducing the pain that silos cause. And that pain should not be underestimated. Silos—and the turf wars they enable—devastate organizations. They waste resources, kill productivity, and jeopardize the achievement of goals. But beyond all that, they exact a considerable human toll too. They cause frustration, stress, and disillusionment by forcing employees to fight bloody, unwinnable battles with people who should be their teammates. There is perhaps no greater cause of professional anxiety and exasperation—not to mention turnover—than employees having to fight with people in their own organization. Understandably and inevitably, this bleeds over into their personal lives, affecting family and friends in profound ways.
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Patrick Lencioni (Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues Into Competitors (J-B Lencioni Series))
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Qualities such as honesty, determination, and a cheerful acceptance of stress, which can all be identified through probing questionnaires and interviews, may be more important to the company in the long run than one's college grade-point average or years of "related experience."
Every business is only as good as the people it brings into the organization. The corporate trainer should feel his job is the most important in the company, because it is.
Exalt seniority-publicly, shamelessly, and with enough fanfare to raise goosebumps on the flesh of the most cynical spectator. And, after the ceremony, there should be some sort of permanent display so that employees passing by are continuously reminded of their own achievements and the achievements of others.
The manager must freely share his expertise-not only about company procedures and products and services but also with regard to the supervisory skills he has worked so hard to acquire. If his attitude is, "Let them go out and get their own MBAs," the personnel under his authority will never have the full benefit of his experience. Without it, they will perform at a lower standard than is possible, jeopardizing the manager's own success.
Should a CEO proclaim that there is no higher calling than being an employee of his organization? Perhaps not-for fear of being misunderstood-but it's certainly all right to think it. In fact, a CEO who does not feel this way should look for another company to manage-one that actually does contribute toward a better life for all.
Every corporate leader should communicate to his workforce that its efforts are important and that employees should be very proud of what they do-for the company, for themselves, and, literally, for the world. If any employee is embarrassed to tell his friends what he does for a living, there has been a failure of leadership at his workplace.
Loyalty is not demanded; it is created.
Why can't a CEO put out his own suggested reading list to reinforce the corporate vision and core values? An attractive display at every employee lounge of books to be freely borrowed, or purchased, will generate interest and participation. Of course, the program has to be purely voluntary, but many employees will wish to be conversant with the material others are talking about. The books will be another point of contact between individuals, who might find themselves conversing on topics other than the weekend football games. By simply distributing the list and displaying the books prominently, the CEO will set into motion a chain of events that can greatly benefit the workplace. For a very cost-effective investment, management will have yet another way to strengthen the corporate message.
The very existence of many companies hangs not on the decisions of their visionary CEOs and energetic managers but on the behavior of its receptionists, retail clerks, delivery drivers, and service personnel.
The manager must put himself and his people through progressively challenging courage-building experiences. He must make these a mandatory group experience, and he must lead the way.
People who have confronted the fear of public speaking, and have learned to master it, find that their new confidence manifests itself in every other facet of the professional and personal lives. Managers who hold weekly meetings in which everyone takes on progressively more difficult speaking or presentation assignments will see personalities revolutionized before their eyes.
Command from a forward position, which means from the thick of it. No soldier will ever be inspired to advance into a hail of bullets by orders phoned in on the radio from the safety of a remote command post; he is inspired to follow the officer in front of him. It is much more effective to get your personnel to follow you than to push them forward from behind a desk.
The more important the mission, the more important it is to be at the front.
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Dan Carrison (Semper Fi: Business Leadership the Marine Corps Way)
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Being psychological means that one will need to find the new, the personal myth from within. It will not be found in an external ideology or institution, however benignly intended it may be, for those sources which may have served the past have too often grown self-perpetuating, preserving their own priesthood or corporate leadership, and rigidifying an original primal experience into dogma and formal principles. One will find, sooner or later, that the pneuma, or spirit, has long departed those ideas and places. Nor will right thinking or rational principles of conduct and behavior satisfy the soul. We will not be spared our anxieties, moments of deep despair, and appointments with the fellow with the scythe at the door. No amount of ritual prayer, healthful practices, or salutary motives will plumb the soul’s depths. Quite likely, the soul will speak to us at least some of the time in ways we do not want to hear. But it is speaking, always, and tells of us of that invisible world, which informs, moves, and shapes the visible world.
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James Hollis (Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up)
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What, then, does submission and respect look like for a woman in a dating relationship? Here are some guidelines:
1. A woman should allow the man to initiate the relationship. This does not mean that she does nothing. She helps! If she thinks there is a good possibility for a relationship, she makes herself accessible to him and helps him to make conversation, putting
him at ease and encouraging him as opportunities arise (she does the opposite when she does not have interest in a relationship with a man). A godly woman will not try to manipulate the start of a relationship, but will respond to the interest and approaches of a man in a godly, encouraging way.
2. A godly woman should speak positively and respectfully about her boyfriend, both when with him and when apart.
3. She should give honest attention to his interests and respond to his attention and care by opening up her heart.
4. She should recognize the sexual temptations with which a single man will normally struggle. Knowing this, she will dress attractively but modestly, and will avoid potentially compromising situations. She must resist the temptation to encourage sexual liberties as a way to win his heart.
5. The Christian woman should build up the man with God's Word and give encouragement to godly leadership. She should allow and seek biblical encouragement from the man she is dating.
6. She should make "helping" and "respecting" the watchwords of her behavior toward a man. She should ask herself, "How can I encourage him, especially in his walk with God?" "How can I provide practical helps that are appropriate to the current place in our relationship?" She should share with him in a way that will enable him to care for her heart, asking, "What can I do or say that will help him to understand who I really am, and how can I participate in the things he cares about?"
7. She must remember that this is a brother in the Lord. She should not be afraid to end an unhealthy
relationship, but should seek to do so with charity and grace. Should the relationship not continue forward, the godly woman will ensure that her time with a man will have left him spiritually blessed.
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Richard D. Phillips (Holding Hands, Holding Hearts: Recovering a Biblical View of Christian Dating)
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It’s my proof that others are as blameworthy as I’ve claimed them to be — and that I’m as innocent as I claim myself to be. The behavior I complain about is the very behavior that justifies me.” Bud placed both hands on the table and leaned toward me. “So simply by being in the box,” he said slowly and earnestly, “I provoke in others the very behavior I say I hate in them. And they then provoke in me the very behavior they say they hate in me.” Bud turned and added another sentence to the principles about self-betrayal: “Self-betrayal” 1. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is called an act of “self-betrayal.” 2. When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal. 3. When I see the world in a self-justifying way, my view of reality becomes distorted. 4. So—when I betray myself, I enter the box. 5. Over time, certain boxes become characteristic of me, and I carry them with me. 6. By being in the box, I provoke others to be in the box. 7. In the box, we invite mutual mistreatment and obtain mutual justification. We collude in giving each other reason to stay in the box.
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Arbinger Institute (Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box)
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Imagine the following. Three groups of ten individuals are in a park at lunchtime with a rainstorm threatening. In the first group, someone says: “Get up and follow me.” When he starts walking and only a few others join in, he yells to those still seated: “Up, I said, and now!” In the second group, someone says: “We’re going to have to move. Here’s the plan. Each of us stands up and marches in the direction of the apple tree. Please stay at least two feet away from other group members and do not run. Do not leave any personal belongings on the ground here and be sure to stop at the base of the tree. When we are all there . . .” In the third group, someone tells the others: “It’s going to rain in a few minutes. Why don’t we go over there and sit under that huge apple tree. We’ll stay dry, and we can have fresh apples for lunch.” I am sometimes amazed at how many people try to transform organizations using methods that look like the first two scenarios: authoritarian decree and micromanagement. Both approaches have been applied widely in enterprises over the last century, but mostly for maintaining existing systems, not transforming those systems into something better. When the goal is behavior change, unless the boss is extremely powerful, authoritarian decree often works poorly even in simple situations, like the apple tree case. Increasingly, in complex organizations, this approach doesn’t work at all. Without the power of kings and queens behind it, authoritarianism is unlikely to break through all the forces of resistance. People will ignore you or pretend to cooperate while doing everything possible to undermine your efforts. Micromanagement tries to get around this problem by specifying what employees should do in detail and then monitoring compliance. This tactic can break through some of the barriers to change, but in an increasingly unacceptable amount of time. Because the creation and communication of detailed plans is deadly slow, the change produced this way tends to be highly incremental. Only the approach used in the third scenario above has the potential to break through all the forces that support the status quo and to encourage the kind of dramatic shifts found in successful transformations. (See figure 5–1.) This approach is based on vision—a central component of all great leadership.
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John P. Kotter (Leading Change)
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Christopher Lasch explains the process by which the therapeutic segment of the managerial elite win moral acceptance. Despite the fact that its claims to be providing “mental health” where always self-serving and highly subjective, the theapeutic class offered ethical leadership in the absence of shared principles. By defining emotional well-being as both a social good and the overcoming of what is individually and collectively dangerous, the behavioral scientists have been able to impose their absolutes upon the culturally fluid society. In “The True and Only Heaven” Lasch explores the implications for postwar politics of the “Authoritarian Personality.” A chief contributor to this anthology, Theodro Adorno, abandoned his earlier work as a cultural critic to become a proponent of governmentally imposed social therapy. According to Lasch, Adorno condemns undesirable political attitudes as “prejudice” and “by defining prejudice as a ‘social disease’ substituted a medical for a political idiom. In the end, Adorno and his colleagues “relegated a broad range of controversial issues to the clinic – to scientific study as opposed to philosophical and political debate.
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Paul Edward Gottfried (After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State)
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Luck plays such an overpowering role in some lives that the thoughtful person must ask: ‘Why have I been cursed with bad luck while another is blessed with so much good luck?’ Believe me, the fortunate person who receives the favorable breaks also wonders about his favored situation. In my case, I have no explanation. I was hardworking; I had a tough character; I was a good student; and I acknowledged the leadership of my superiors. But no amount of hard work or high standard of behavior could have brought the many good things that happened to me; pure chance dictated most of them. The only generalization I can offer is that in an irrational world if a prudent course has been followed, you make yourself eligible to capitalize on luck if it happens to strike. If you have not made yourself eligible, you may never be aware that luck is at hand. By all this I mean: learn typing, master math, learn to draft a convincing letter, broaden the mind, and do not evade challenges. Making oneself eligible to seize the breaks if and when they come is the only sensible strategy I know. Be prepared to make full use of any stroke of luck, and even if it never comes, the preparation in itself will be a worthy effort.”
—Chapter VIII, “Writing”, page 289
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James A. Michener (The World Is My Home: A Memoir)
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This book festival...grew to attract thousands of visitors every year. Now they felt like they needed a new purpose. The festival’s continuing existence felt assured. What was it for? What could it do? How could it make itself count?
The festival’s leadership reached out to me for advice on these questions. What kind of purpose could be their next great animating force? Someone had the idea that the festival’s purpose could be about stitching together the community. Books were, of course, the medium. But couldn’t an ambitious festival set itself the challenge of making the city more connected? Couldn’t it help turn strong readers into good citizens? That seemed to me a promising direction—a specific, unique, disputable lodestar for a book festival that could guide its construction...We began to brainstorm.
I proposed an idea: Instead of starting each session with the books and authors themselves, why not kick things off with a two-minute exercise in which audience members can meaningfully, if briefly, connect with one another? The host could ask three city- or book-related questions, and then ask each member of the audience to turn to a stranger to discuss one of them. What brought you to this city—whether birth or circumstance?
What is a book that really affected you as a child? What do you think would make us a better city? Starting a session with these questions would help the audience become aware of one another. It would also break the norm of not speaking to a stranger, and perhaps encourage this kind of behavior to continue as people left the session. And it would activate a group identity—the city’s book lovers—that, in the absence of such questions, tends to stay dormant.
As soon as this idea was mentioned, someone in the group sounded a worry. “But I wouldn’t want to take away time from the authors,” the person said. There it was—the real, if unspoken, purpose rousing from its slumber and insisting on its continued primacy. Everyone liked the idea of “book festival as community glue” in theory. But at the first sign of needing to compromise on another thing in order to honor this new something, alarm bells rang. The group wasn’t ready to make the purpose of the book festival the stitching of community if it meant changing the structure of the sessions, or taking time away from something else. Their purpose, whether or not they admitted it, was the promotion of books and reading and the honoring of authors. It bothered them to make an author wait two minutes for citizens to bond. The book festival was doing what many of us do: shaping a gathering according to various unstated motivations, and making half-hearted gestures toward loftier goals.
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Priya Parker (The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters)
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Which would seem to be a good thing—proposing a solution to a problem that people are hungry to solve—except that my view of silos might not be what some leaders expect to hear. That’s because many executives I’ve worked with who struggle with silos are inclined to look down into their organizations and wonder, “Why don’t those employees just learn to get along better with people in other departments? Don’t they know we’re all on the same team?” All too often this sets off a well-intentioned but ill-advised series of actions—training programs, memos, posters—designed to inspire people to work better together. But these initiatives only provoke cynicism among employees—who would love nothing more than to eliminate the turf wars and departmental politics that often make their work lives miserable. The problem is, they can’t do anything about it. Not without help from their leaders. And while the first step those leaders need to take is to address any behavioral problems that might be preventing executive team members from working well with one another—that was the thrust of my book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team—even behaviorally cohesive teams can struggle with silos. (Which is particularly frustrating and tragic because it leads well-intentioned and otherwise functional team members to inappropriately question one another’s trust and commitment to the team.) To tear
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Patrick Lencioni (Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues Into Competitors (J-B Lencioni Series))
“
The most intriguing correlations obtained by the Minnesota study were also among the most unexpected. Social and political attitudes between twins reared apart were just as concordant as those between twins reared together: liberals clustered with liberals, and orthodoxy was twinned with orthodoxy. Religiosity and faith were also strikingly concordant: twins were either both faithful or both nonreligious. Traditionalism, or “willingness to yield to authority,” was significantly correlated. So were characteristics such as “assertiveness, drive for leadership, and a taste for attention.” Other studies on identical twins continued to deepen the effect of genes on human personality and behavior. Novelty seeking and impulsiveness were found to have striking degrees of correlation. Experiences that one might have imagined as intensely personal were, in fact, shared between twins. “Empathy, altruism, sense of equity, love, trust, music, economic behavior, and even politics are partially hardwired.” As one startled observer wrote, “A surprisingly high genetic component was found in the ability to be enthralled by an esthetic experience such as listening to a symphonic concert.” Separated by geographic and economic continents, when two brothers, estranged at birth, were brought to tears by the same Chopin nocturne at night, they seemed to be responding to some subtle, common chord struck by their genomes.
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Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Gene: An Intimate History)
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But as people become anxious to be accepted by the group, their personal values and behaviors are exchanged for more negative ones. We can too easily become more intense, abusive, fundamentalist, fanatical—behaviors strange to our former selves, born out of our intense need to belong. This may be one explanation for why the Internet, which gave us the possibility of self-organizing, is devolving into a medium of hate and persecution, where trolls6 claiming a certain identity go to great efforts to harass, threaten, and destroy those different from themselves. The Internet, as a fundamental means for self-organizing, can’t help but breed this type of negative, separatist behavior. Tweets and texts spawn instant reactions; back and forth exchanges of only a few words quickly degenerate into comments that push us apart. Listening, reflecting, exchanging ideas with respect—gone. But this is far less problematic than the way the Internet has intensified the language of threat and hate. People no longer hide behind anonymity as they spew hatred, abominations, and lurid death threats at people they don’t even know and those that they do. Trolls, who use social media to issue obscene threats and also organize others to deluge a person with hateful tweets and emails, are so great a problem for people who come into public view that some go off Twitter, change their physical appearance, or move in order to protect their children.7 Reporters admit that they refuse to publish about certain issues because they fear the blowback from trolls.
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Margaret J. Wheatley (Who Do We Choose to Be?: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity)
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Situation awareness means possessing an explorer mentality A general never knows anything with certainty, never sees his enemy clearly, and never knows positively where he is. When armies are face to face, the least accident in the ground, the smallest wood, may conceal part of the enemy army. The most experienced eye cannot be sure whether it sees the whole of the enemy’s army or only three-fourths. It is by the mind’s eye, by the integration of all reasoning, by a kind of inspiration that the general sees, knows, and judges. ~Napoleon 5 In order to effectively gather the appropriate information as it’s unfolding we must possess the explorer mentality. We must be able to recognize patterns of behavior. Then we must recognize that which is outside that normal pattern. Then, you take the initiative so we maintain control. Every call, every incident we respond to possesses novelty. Car stops, domestic violence calls, robberies, suspicious persons etc. These individual types of incidents show similar patterns in many ways. For example, a car stopped normally pulls over to the side of the road when signaled to do so. The officer when ready, approaches the operator, a conversation ensues, paperwork exchanges, and the pulled over car drives away. A domestic violence call has its own normal patterns; police arrive, separate involved parties, take statements and arrest aggressor and advise the victim of abuse prevention rights. We could go on like this for all the types of calls we handle as each type of incident on its own merits, does possess very similar patterns. Yet they always, and I mean always possess something different be it the location, the time of day, the person you are dealing with. Even if it’s the same person, location, time and day, the person you’re dealing who may now be in a different emotional state and his/her motives and intent may be very different. This breaks that normal expected pattern. Hence, there is a need to always be open-minded, alert and aware, exploring for the signs and signals of positive or negative change in conditions. In his Small Wars journal article “Thinking and Acting like an Early Explorer” Brigadier General Huba Wass de Czege (US Army Ret.) describes the explorer mentality: While tactical and strategic thinking are fundamentally different, both kinds of thinking must take place in the explorer’s brain, but in separate compartments. To appreciate this, think of the metaphor of an early American explorer trying to cross a large expanse of unknown terrain long before the days of the modern conveniences. The explorer knows that somewhere to the west lies an ocean he wants to reach. He has only a sketch-map of a narrow corridor drawn by a previously unsuccessful explorer. He also knows that highly variable weather and frequent geologic activity can block mountain passes, flood rivers, and dry up desert water sources. He also knows that some native tribes are hostile to all strangers, some are friendly and others are fickle, but that warring and peace-making among them makes estimating their whereabouts and attitudes difficult.6
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Fred Leland (Adaptive Leadership Handbook - Law Enforcement & Security)
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You have to eat the shit," he repeated over and over during one of our first sessions. He had the tone and zeal of a boxing trainer. "Shit tastes good!"
"What does that even mean?" I chuckled.
"Don't laugh," he said sternly. Marshall told me that my job wasn't to cook food. It wasn't about looking at numbers or commanding people, either. My company would live or die based on my capacity to eat shit and like it. "I am going to watch you eat as many bowls of shit as our time will allow," he said. We had plenty of time.
Eating shit meant listening. Eating shit meant acknowledging my errors and shortcomings. Eating shit meant facing confrontations that made me uncomfortable. Eating shit meant putting my cell phone away when someone was talking to me. Eating shit meant not fleeing. Eating shit meant being grateful. Eating shit meant controlling myself when people fell short of expectations. Eating shit meant putting others before myself.
This last detail was important. With Dr. Eliot, I got away with describing my MO as self-destructive--my managerial tendencies were harmful, but only to me. Now, according to Marshall, I was using that assessment as cover for my poor behavior. In my mind, all the people who had left Momofuku were leaving me. When they failed at their jobs, they were betraying me. Marshall pointed out the ugly truth that this belied. I believed that the people at Momofuku were there to serve me.
I had always wielded my dedication to Momofuku with great arrogance. Friendships could crumble, hearts could break, cooks could fall to their knees and cry: all collateral damage in the noble pursuit of bringing good food to more people. I believed that I was Momofuku and that everything I did was for Momofuku. Therefore, whatever was good for me was good for Momofuku.
”
”
David Chang (Eat a Peach)
“
Effective off-sites provide executives an opportunity to regularly step away from the daily, weekly, even monthly issues that occupy their attention, so they can review the business in a more holistic, long-term manner. Topics for reflection and discussion at a productive Quarterly Off-Site Review might include the following: Comprehensive Strategy Review: Executives should reassess their strategic direction, not every day as so many do, but three or four times a year. Industries change and new competitive threats emerge that call for different approaches. Reviewing strategies annually or semiannually is usually not often enough to stay current. Team Review: Executives should regularly assess themselves and their behaviors as a team, identifying trends or tendencies that may not be serving the organization. This often requires a change of scenery so that executives can interact with one another on a more personal level and remind themselves of their collective commitments to the team. Personnel Review: Three or four times a year, executives should talk, across departments, about the key employees within the organization. Every member of an executive team should know whom their peers view as their stars, as well as their poor performers. This allows executives to provide perspectives that might actually alter those perceptions based on different experiences and points of view. More important, it allows them to jointly manage and retain top performers, and work with poor performers similarly. Competitive and Industry Review: Information about competitors and industry trends bleeds into an organization little by little over time. It is useful for executives to step back and look at what is happening around them in a more comprehensive way so they can spot trends that individual nuggets of information might not make clear. Even the best executives can lose sight of the forest for the trees when inundated with daily responsibilities.
”
”
Patrick Lencioni (Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business)
“
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.
”
”
Rachel Hollis (Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals (Girl, Wash Your Face))
“
Between the extreme limits of this series would find a place all the forms of prestige resulting from the different elements composing a civilisation -- sciences, arts, literature, &c. -- and it would be seen that prestige constitutes the fundamental element of persuasion. Consciously or not, the being, the idea, or the thing possessing prestige is immediately imitated in consequence of contagion, and forces an entire generation to adopt certain modes of feeling and of giving expression to its thought. This imitation, moreover, is, as a rule, unconscious, which accounts for the fact that it is perfect. The modern painters who copy the pale colouring and the stiff attitudes of some of the Primitives are scarcely alive to the source of their inspiration. They believe in their own sincerity, whereas, if an eminent master had not revived this form of art, people would have continued blind to all but its naïve and inferior sides. Those artists who, after the manner of another illustrious master, inundate their canvasses with violet shades do not see in nature more violet than was detected there fifty years ago; but they are influenced, "suggestioned," by the personal and special impressions of a painter who, in spite of this eccentricity, was successful in acquiring great prestige. Similar examples might be brought forward in connection with all the elements of civilisation.
It is seen from what precedes that a number of factors may be concerned in the genesis of prestige; among them success was always one of the most important.
Every successful man, every idea that forces itself into recognition, ceases, ipso facto, to be called in question. The proof that success is one of the principal stepping-stones to prestige is that the disappearance of the one is almost always followed by the disappearance of the other. The hero whom the crowd acclaimed yesterday is insulted to-day should he have been overtaken by failure. The re-action, indeed, will be the stronger in proportion as the prestige has been great. The crowd in this case considers the fallen hero as an equal, and takes its revenge for having bowed to a superiority whose existence it no longer admits.
”
”
Gustave Le Bon (سيكولوجية الجماهير)
“
In conclusion, the American century is not over, if by that we mean the extraordinary period of American pre-eminence in military, economic, and soft power resources that have made the United States central to the workings of the global balance of power, and to the provision of global public goods. Contrary to those who proclaim this the Chinese century, we have not entered a post-American world. But the continuation of the American century will not look like it did in the twentieth century. The American share of the world economy will be less than it was in the middle of the last century, and the complexity represented by the rise of other countries as well as the increased role of non-state actors will make it more difficult for anyone to wield influence and organize action. Analysts should stop using clichés about unipolarity and multipolarity. They will have to live with both in different issues at the same time. And they should stop talking and worrying about poorly specified concepts of decline that mix many different types of behavior and lead to mistaken policy conclusions. Leadership is not the same as domination. America will have to listen in order to get others to enlist in what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called a multipartner world. It is important to remember that there have always been degrees of leadership and degrees of influence during the American century. The United States never had complete control. As we saw in Chapter 1, even when the United States had preponderant resources, it often failed to get what it wanted. And those who argue that the complexity and turmoil of today’s entropic world is much worse than the past should remember a year like 1956 when the United States was unable to prevent Soviet repression of a revolt in Hungary, French loss of Vietnam, or the Suez invasion by our allies Britain, France, and Israel. One should be wary of viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses. To borrow a comedian’s line, “hegemony ain’t what it used to be, but then it never was.” Now, with slightly less preponderance and a much more complex world, the United States will need to make smart strategic choices both at home and abroad if it wishes to maintain its position. The American century is likely to continue for a number of decades at the very least, but it will look very different from how it did when Henry Luce first articulated it.
”
”
Joseph S. Nye Jr. (Is the American Century Over? (Global Futures))
“
She thought she was getting out of the Water Rising clean, because she didn’t see her father anywhere around: there was only Ash and Lillian sitting at a table, and a few other patrons at as much of a distance from Ash and Lillian as they could get. She made for the door, at which point Lillian caught her arm.
“Where are you going?”
“Uh,” said Kami, eyeballing her wildly. “I’m going to buy some drugs.”
Lillian stared. “I beg your pardon?”
“This is a really stressful time for everyone,” said Kami. “So I thought maybe I could buy a little weed, take the edge off. I might be a while. This is a very clean-living town, apart from all the murders, so I don’t actually know any drug dealers. I realize Jared kind of looks like one, but he’s not, which is a shame because I think the drug dealer’s girlfriend gets her drugs free.”
“I realize you are attempting to be humorous,” said Lillian, after a pause during which she stared some more. “I don’t understand it.”
“Hey, you’re not the only family with a legacy. ‘Glass’ rhymes with ‘sass.’ Have you met my dad?”
“I have had that dubious pleasure,” said Lillian. “He is, in fact, meant to be meeting me in order to, and I quote, ‘teach me to integrate better with society, display leadership skills, win over the populace, and stop acting like a robot princess from space.’ I admit that the humor in his humor escapes me as well.” She paused and suddenly looked determined. “I’m going to start without him.”
She climbed off the stool and headed toward the group of people in the corner. Kami and Ash watched as they collectively shrank away.
“Come on, quick,” said Kami, and as if summoned by some spirit warning him of his child’s intended reckless behavior, her dad appeared through the inn doors.
He looked distracted. “Where’s Lillian?’
Kami checked over her shoulder. “Appears to be trying to wrest a screaming baby from the arms of her frightened mother in order to kiss it.”
“Oh no no no,” murmured Jon, and raised his voice as he made his way over. “Libba, we’ve talked about this!”
“The good news is the grown-ups are distracted by politics,” said Kami.
You mean that your poor father is distracted by my awful mother, said Ash, who was far too polite to say such a thing out loud and looked vaguely embarrassed to be thinking it.
Kami grinned. “Why quibble when we have the results we want!”
I wish I could ask you what you’re planning, but I know what you’re planning, said Ash. Lucky me. I know this is important information, but going to Aurimere at all is a huge risk.
“See, the thing is, if I ran a business it would probably be called Risky Business,
”
”
Sarah Rees Brennan (Unmade (The Lynburn Legacy, #3))