Progressive Leadership Quotes

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History, too, has a penchant for giving birth to itself over and over again, and those whom it appoints agents of change and progress do not always accept their destinies willingly.
Aberjhani (Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays)
The job facing production managers focuses on how to help their team maintain hope while also addressing the sometimes brutal or dismal facts of their situation. If the truth of their position remains unseen, they will never grow the skills necessary to resolve it.
Raymond Wheeler (Lift: Five Practices Great Managers Do Consistently: Raise Performance and Morale - See Your Employees Thrive)
When you give an assignment, don’t take it back!
Raymond Wheeler (Lift: Five Practices Great Managers Do Consistently: Raise Performance and Morale - See Your Employees Thrive)
Progress and motion are not synonymous.
Tim Fargo
Managing activities, not results, requires a comprehensive application of the skills inherent in gained ownership. It is the true test of your management abilities and will cause you the greatest amount of personal growth and satisfaction.
Raymond Wheeler (Lift: Five Practices Great Managers Do Consistently: Raise Performance and Morale - See Your Employees Thrive)
As you become more present in your own life, you will begin to enlighten others by your example.
Germany Kent
If climate drives business results, what drives climate? 50-70% of how employees perceive their organization’s climate corresponds to the actions of one person: their manager.
Raymond Wheeler (Lift: Five Practices Great Managers Do Consistently: Raise Performance and Morale - See Your Employees Thrive)
The female brain itself is a highly intuitive emotion-processing machine, which when put to practice in the progress of the society, would do much more than any man can with all his analytical perspectives.
Abhijit Naskar (The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality (Humanism Series))
Working harder to achieve results usually results in frustration and failure. The focus of work is the activities that generate results, not the results themselves.
Raymond Wheeler (Lift: Five Practices Great Managers Do Consistently: Raise Performance and Morale - See Your Employees Thrive)
Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.
Harry Truman
The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. That sums up the progress of an artful leader.
Max DePree
Only the foolish would think that wisdom is something to keep locked in a drawer. Only the fearful would feel empowerment is something best kept to oneself, or the few, and not shared with all.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Where there’s no progress, there’s no growth. If there’s no growth, there’s no life. Environments void of change are eventually void of life.
Andy Stanley (Next Generation Leader: 5 Essentials for Those Who Will Shape the Future)
Rhetorical question: Did you get to where you are by accepting the status quo? I didn't.
Richie Norton
All the managers I interviewed had the same sense of identity and self-assurance. None of them were arrogant. Instead, they were clear about who they were and what needed accomplishing. They used that sense of self to engage their team and learn each team member’s strengths and contributions. Their courage and confidence were infectious to their team and to anyone who crossed their paths.
Raymond Wheeler (Lift: Five Practices Great Managers Do Consistently: Raise Performance and Morale - See Your Employees Thrive)
One cannot measure a manager’s knowledge and performance in a vacuum. It involves their participation in business activities while bringing all of themselves to the process of development, including their spiritual, personal, and skill & ability development.
Raymond Wheeler (Lift: Five Practices Great Managers Do Consistently: Raise Performance and Morale - See Your Employees Thrive)
Pain is a part of progress. Anything that grows experiences some pain. If I avoid all pain, I’m avoiding growth.
Samuel R. Chand (Leadership Pain: The Classroom for Growth)
Urging an organization to be inclusive is not an attack. It's progress.
DaShanne Stokes
Life without making progress is dead. What is life if you don't embrace new truths that scare you, meet people who intimidate you, and so on.
Assegid Habtewold (The 9 Cardinal Building Blocks: For continued success in leadership)
Sometimes, as in a game of chess, we must strategically regress so that we might progress toward our ultimate objective.
Crystal Woods (Write like no one is reading 2)
Don`t turn around in circles for making circles do not equate making progress.
Jaachynma N.E. Agu
Anyaele Sam Chiyson Leadership Law of Development: Surpassing leaders progress advancely from a lower to a higher state of leadership through leading other leaders the right way.
Anyaele Sam Chiyson (The Sagacity of Sage)
The art of questioning is to ignite innovative thinking; the science of questioning is to frame system thinking, with the progressive pursuit of better solutions.
Pearl Zhu (Leadership Master: Five Digital Trends to Leap Leadership Maturity (Digital Masters Book 5))
Remember, for a society to truly progress we don't need woman or man, we need a fully-fledged human - nothing short of that would do.
Abhijit Naskar (The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality (Humanism Series))
Success is a process, not an event.
Richie Norton
Anyaele Sam Chiyson Leadership Law of Advancement: Notable leaders chart the course of action that causes other leaders to progress toward reaching a goal and raising the status of power.
Anyaele Sam Chiyson (The Sagacity of Sage)
If you keep people down so they dont become better than you, you gotta stay there to keep them down so you dont progress yourself. What kind of wahala (Suffering) is that ? Leave them to progress so you can expand.
Myles Munroe
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)
The speed at which progress rolls is not determined by the number of people who started pushing it, but by the number of people who are passionate to hold on doing so.
Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Ladder)
One of the most significant barriers to progress is the lack of effective leadership.
Ken Jennings (The Serving Leader: Five Powerful Actions to Transform Your Team, Business, and Community)
Move forward for forward is progress but circles are movement.
Jaachynma N.E. Agu
The penalty for excessive ambition – what the Greeks called hubris – is exhaustion, while the price for resting on one’s laurels is progressive insignificance and eventual decay.
Henry Kissinger (Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy)
Get this; without a continuous struggle, your previous struggles will become a waste. Stay on and hold on until the success become evident.
Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts)
It's excellence in leadership when everyone wants to manufacture a black shoe and you manufacture a designer black shoe with gold medal on top. Do something new; do something better!
Israelmore Ayivor
When leaders in an organization have responsibility without authority, they're unable to direct progress and they're unable to achieve results. When we delegate responsibility, we need to delegate the appropriate authority to go along with that.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Men make history, and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.               --Harry S Truman
Michael Nir (Silent Influencing - Employing Powerful Techniques for Influence and Leadership)
democracy should be understood not as the answer to the question “Who should rule?” (namely, “The People”), but as a solution to the problem of how to dismiss bad leadership without bloodshed.
Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
Our schools will not improve if we continue to focus only on reading and mathematics while ignoring the other studies that are essential elements of a good education. Schools that expect nothing more of their students than mastery of basic skills will not produce graduates who are ready for college or the modern workplace. *** Our schools will not improve if we value only what tests measure. The tests we have now provide useful information about students' progress in reading and mathematics, but they cannot measure what matters most in education....What is tested may ultimately be less important that what is untested... *** Our schools will not improve if we continue to close neighborhood schools in the name of reform. Neighborhood schools are often the anchors of their communities, a steady presence that helps to cement the bond of community among neighbors. *** Our schools cannot improve if charter schools siphon away the most motivated students and their families in the poorest communities from the regular public schools. *** Our schools will not improve if we continue to drive away experienced principals and replace them with neophytes who have taken a leadership training course but have little or no experience as teachers. *** Our schools cannot be improved if we ignore the disadvantages associated with poverty that affect children's ability to learn. Children who have grown up in poverty need extra resources, including preschool and medical care.
Diane Ravitch (The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education)
Today I will work when others procrastinate, I will confront my fears when others hide from theirs, and I will create solutions when others find excuses; today I refuse to allow my enemies to out work me.
Noel DeJesus
There are two powerful fuels, two forces; motivation and inspiration. To be motivated you need to know what your motives are. Over time - and to sustain you through it - your motivation must become an inner energy; a 'motor' driving you forward, passionately, purposefully, wisely and compassionately... come what may, every day. Inspiration is an outer - worldly - energy that you breathe and draw in. It may come from many places, faces, spaces and stages - right across the ages. It is where nature, spirit, science, mind and time meet, dance, play and speak. It keeps you outward facing and life embracing. But you must be open-minded and open-hearted to first let it in and then let it out again. Together - blended, combined and re-entwined - motivation and inspiration bring connectivity, productivity, creativity and boundless possibilities that is not just 'self' serving but enriching to all humanity and societies...just as it should be.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Bricks could be used to promote social progress. If we could amass enough bricks to build a prison big enough to cage every citizen, then everybody would be equal. And I think our current political leadership is savvy enough to see this, and is taking steps to implement this as soon as possible. 

Jarod Kintz (Brick and Blanket Test in Brick City (Ocala) Florida)
People do not resist change, per se. People resist loss. You appear dangerous to people when you question their values, beliefs, or habits of a lifetime. You place yourself on the line when you tell people what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. Although you may see with clarity and passion a promising future of progress and gain, people will see with equal passion the losses you are asking them to sustain.
Martin Linsky (Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading)
Page holds Musk up as a model he wishes others would emulate—a figure that should be replicated during a time in which the businessmen and politicians have fixated on short-term, inconsequential goals. “I don’t think we’re doing a good job as a society deciding what things are really important to do,” Page said. “I think like we’re just not educating people in this kind of general way. You should have a pretty broad engineering and scientific background. You should have some leadership training and a bit of MBA training or knowledge of how to run things, organize stuff, and raise money. I don’t think most people are doing that, and it’s a big problem. Engineers are usually trained in a very fixed area. When you’re able to think about all of these disciplines together, you kind of think differently and can dream of much crazier things and how they might work. I think that’s really an important thing for the world. That’s how we make progress.
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: Inventing the Future)
Reject anything advice, which does not lead to your personal progress.
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
Nothing in this World is Static...Everything is Kinetic.. If there is no 'progression'...there is bound to be 'regression'...
Abha Maryada Banerjee
progressive social change cannot be made without a leadership ready to take risks.
Jane F. McAlevey (Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement)
You are your own leader. Where are you driving yourself to now? You can't afford to go wayward! Rise up and break new territories and live life so well.
Israelmore Ayivor
Being a solution and not a problem proves progression.
Unarine Ramaru
Success = Wisdom + Courage + Discipline. KNOW what to do, be BRAVE enough to do it, and LEAD YOURSELF to doing it again and again.
Ryan Lilly
We'd still be living in caves if a few crazy individuals didn't push things forward - change is scary but it's necessary for the progress of a species.
Abhijit Naskar (Build Bridges not Walls: In the name of Americana)
You appear dangerous to people when you question their values, beliefs, or habits of a lifetime. You place yourself on the line when you tell people what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. Although you may see with clarity and passion a promising future of progress and gain, people will see with equal passion the losses you are asking them to sustain.
Martin Linsky (Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading)
If you want to be drunk, become drunk with an idea. If you want pleasure, have pleasure from the pursuit of your passion. If you want to be indoctrinated, then be so by the natural law of humanism.
Abhijit Naskar (Wise Mating: A Treatise on Monogamy (Humanism Series))
The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. That sums up the progress of an artful leader. Concepts
Max DePree (Leadership Is an Art)
He was not ill-fitted to be the head and representative of a community which owed its origin and progress, and its present state of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of manhood and the sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so little.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)
Leadership is a moving target, and it always will be. If you desire to become a better leader, get comfortable with change. And if you want to lead up, learn to think like a leader. Think people, think progress, and think intangibles.
John C. Maxwell (The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization)
No true individual has existed yet, able to live, able to die. Only diseased, tragic, or dismal and ludicrous fools who sometimes hoped to achieve some ideal by fiat, by their great desire for it. But usually by bullying all mankind into believing them.
Saul Bellow (Herzog)
Johnson insisted, “I don’t want this symposium to come here and spend two days talking about what we have done, the progress has been much too small. We haven’t done nearly enough. I’m kind of ashamed of myself that I had six years and couldn’t do more than I did.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
Don’t strive to be a well-rounded leader. Instead, discover your zone and stay there. Then delegate everything else. Admitting a weakness is a sign of strength. Acknowledging weakness doesn’t make a leader less effective. Everybody in your organization benefits when you delegate responsibilities that fall outside your core competency. Thoughtful delegation will allow someone else in your organization to shine. Your weakness is someone’s opportunity. Leadership is not always about getting things done “right.” Leadership is about getting things done through other people. The people who follow us are exactly where we have led them. If there is no one to whom we can delegate, it is our own fault. As a leader, gifted by God to do a few things well, it is not right for you to attempt to do everything. Upgrade your performance by playing to your strengths and delegating your weaknesses. There are many things I can do, but I have to narrow it down to the one thing I must do. The secret of concentration is elimination. Devoting a little of yourself to everything means committing a great deal of yourself to nothing. My competence in these areas defines my success as a pastor. A sixty-hour workweek will not compensate for a poorly delivered sermon. People don’t show up on Sunday morning because I am a good pastor (leader, shepherd, counselor). In my world, it is my communication skills that make the difference. So that is where I focus my time. To develop a competent team, help the leaders in your organization discover their leadership competencies and delegate accordingly. Once you step outside your zone, don’t attempt to lead. Follow. The less you do, the more you will accomplish. Only those leaders who act boldly in times of crisis and change are willingly followed. Accepting the status quo is the equivalent of accepting a death sentence. Where there’s no progress, there’s no growth. If there’s no growth, there’s no life. Environments void of change are eventually void of life. So leaders find themselves in the precarious and often career-jeopardizing position of being the one to draw attention to the need for change. Consequently, courage is a nonnegotiable quality for the next generation leader. The leader is the one who has the courage to act on what he sees. A leader is someone who has the courage to say publicly what everybody else is whispering privately. It is not his insight that sets the leader apart from the crowd. It is his courage to act on what he sees, to speak up when everyone else is silent. Next generation leaders are those who would rather challenge what needs to change and pay the price than remain silent and die on the inside. The first person to step out in a new direction is viewed as the leader. And being the first to step out requires courage. In this way, courage establishes leadership. Leadership requires the courage to walk in the dark. The darkness is the uncertainty that always accompanies change. The mystery of whether or not a new enterprise will pan out. The reservation everyone initially feels when a new idea is introduced. The risk of being wrong. Many who lack the courage to forge ahead alone yearn for someone to take the first step, to go first, to show the way. It could be argued that the dark provides the optimal context for leadership. After all, if the pathway to the future were well lit, it would be crowded. Fear has kept many would-be leaders on the sidelines, while good opportunities paraded by. They didn’t lack insight. They lacked courage. Leaders are not always the first to see the need for change, but they are the first to act. Leadership is about moving boldly into the future in spite of uncertainty and risk. You can’t lead without taking risk. You won’t take risk without courage. Courage is essential to leadership.
Andy Stanley (Next Generation Leader: 5 Essentials for Those Who Will Shape the Future)
Anyone starting out to research for a doctorate degree should remember that hours of self centered work has the ability to be the spark for others to progress. All research is potentially useful to open doors or show others that door does not lead anywhere useful. Advancements happen by building on others research.
Ian R. McAndrew, PhD
If Roosevelt were given another chance to lead the country, he intended to make the Republican Party once more the progressive party of Abraham Lincoln, to restore “the fellow feeling, mutual respect, the sense of common duties and common interests which arise when men take the trouble to understand one another, and to associate for a common object.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
All the progress in science can’t be used to build a smell receptor as capable as the one that a true leader possesses—to smell trouble or just something fishy.
Pawan Mishra (Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy)
Preferring steady progress, slow and imperfect, is a good philosophy for the defeated.
Fred Lowe Soper (Anopheles Gambiae in Brazil, 1930 to 1940)
If you're determined to stand, nothing can move you. If you're determined to move, nothing can stop you. Determination is the key!
Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Ladder)
His was the strong soul, gentle, but tempered with fire, fervent, heroic and good, the helper and friend of mankind. It is such as he who make progress possible.
Thomas W. Martin (Doctor William Crawford Gorgas Of Alabama And The Panama Canal)
Leaders don’t try to make people unhappy. However, leaders just know, progress is always preceded by change.” “And some people don’t like change,
Mark Miller (The Heart of Leadership: Becoming a Leader People Want to Follow)
The New Economy brings the need to tap people’s curiosity, quest for knowledge and understanding, in order to develop a sustainable society.
Miguel Reynolds Brandao (The Sustainable Organisation - a paradigm for a fairer society: Think about sustainability in an age of technological progress and rising inequality)
MERIT IS A PRODUCT OF KNOWLEDGE AND TRANSPARENCY
Miguel Reynolds Brandao (The Sustainable Organisation - a paradigm for a fairer society: Think about sustainability in an age of technological progress and rising inequality)
All progress begins with a decision. Effective leadership requires decisive action. Embrace the process of deciding, yet recognize when you have reached a choice point.
Angie Morgan
Leaders are lovers of change. Without change, growth is static. To lead, you have to appreciate change; else change will depreciate you!
Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Ladder)
Destiny is a right destination for every nation with a mission of destiny.
Oscar Auliq-Ice
Learn to operate in the duality of owning your brilliance and your imperfections
Sope Agbelusi
Precision is more important than speed
David Sikhosana
Unity is not a myth. It's a progressive action.
Mitta Xinindlu
One challenge is that our ability to progress in our career is often determined by our effectiveness in responding to near-term needs. When high value is placed on solving these kinds of problems, it creates a culture in which leaders spend little or no time thinking about what could be done because they receive more accolades for simply doing what needs to be done.
Tom Rath (Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow)
People do not resist change, per se. People resist loss. You appear dangerous to people when you question their values, beliefs, or habits of a lifetime. You place yourself on the line when you tell people what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. Although you may see with clarity and passion a promising future of progress and gain, people will see with equal passion the losses you are asking them to sustain.
Tod Bolsinger (Leadership for a Time of Pandemic: Practicing Resilience)
Progress requires sacrifice of security. And the only reason, humanity keeps on progressing, despite the fact that most of the human population do not sacrifice their security, is that, on behalf of the whole humanity, a handful of bravehearts do all the sacrificing and pain- bearing, yet people can’t manage to comprehend that we couldn’t have become the masters of this planet by living a comfortable and secure life. To have great progress, one must sacrifice small pleasures.
Abhijit Naskar (The Constitution of The United Peoples of Earth)
Leaders instill courage in the hearts of those who follow. This rarely happens through words alone. It generally requires action. It goes back to what we said earlier: Somebody has to go first. By going first, the leader furnishes confidence to those who follow. As a next generation leader, you will be called upon to go first. That will require courage. But in stepping out you will give the gift of courage to those who are watching. What do I believe is impossible to do in my field, but if it could be done would fundamentally change my business? What has been done is safe. But to attempt a solution to a problem that plagues an entire industry - in my case, the local church - requires courage. Unsolved problems are gateways to the future. To those who have the courage to ask the question and the tenacity to hang on until they discover or create an answer belongs the future. Don’t allow the many good opportunities to divert your attention from the one opportunity that has the greatest potential. Learn to say no. There will always be more opportunities than there is time to pursue them. Leaders worth following are willing to face and embrace current reality regardless of how discouraging or embarrassing it might be. It is impossible to generate sustained growth or progress if your plan for the future is not rooted in reality. Be willing to face the truth regardless of how painful it might be. If fear causes you to retreat from your dreams, you will never give the world anything new. it is impossible to lead without a dream. When leaders are no longer willing to dream, it is only a short time before followers are unwilling to follow. Will I allow my fear to bind me to mediocrity? Uncertainty is a permanent part of the leadership landscape. It never goes away. Where there is no uncertainty, there is no longer the need for leadership. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the need for leadership. Your capacity as a leader will be determined by how well you learn to deal with uncertainty. My enemy is not uncertainty. It is not even my responsibility to remove the uncertainty. It is my responsibility to bring clarity into the midst of the uncertainty. As leaders we can afford to be uncertain, but we cannot afford to be unclear. People will follow you in spite of a few bad decisions. People will not follow you if you are unclear in your instruction. As a leader you must develop the elusive skill of leading confidently and purposefully onto uncertain terrain. Next generation leaders must fear a lack of clarity more than a lack of accuracy. The individual in your organization who communicates the clearest vision will often be perceived as the leader. Clarity is perceived as leadership. Uncertainty exposes a lack of knowledge. Pretending exposes a lack of character. Express your uncertainty with confidence. You will never maximize your potential in any area without coaching. It is impossible. Self-evaluation is helpful, but evaluation from someone else is essential. You need a leadership coach. Great leaders are great learners. God, in His wisdom, has placed men and women around us with the experience and discernment we often lack. Experience alone doesn’t make you better at anything. Evaluated experience is what enables you to improve your performance. As a leader, what you don’t know can hurt you. What you don’t know about yourself can put a lid on your leadership. You owe it to yourself and to those who have chosen to follow you to open the doors to evaluation. Engage a coach. Success doesn’t make anything of consequence easier. Success just raises the stakes. Success brings with it the unanticipated pressure of maintaining success. The more successful you are as a leader, the more difficult this becomes. There is far more pressure at the top of an organization than you might imagine.
Andy Stanley
Behind this manufactured political dereliction, time knocked at our doorstep on several occasions to decide whether to enter the progressive world or to remain confined in a medievalist belief which serves only the feudal class and their monstrous egos.
Qamar Rafiq
The central theme of this book is that America’s present dilemma resulted substantially and directly from choices made by the Baby Boomers. Their collective, pathological self-interest derailed a long train of progress, while exacerbating and ignoring existential threats like climate change. The Boomers’ sociopathic need for instant gratification pushed them to equally sociopathic policies, causing them to fritter away an enormous inheritance, and when that was exhausted, to mortgage the future. When the consequences became troubling, Boomer leadership engaged in concealment and deception in a desperate effort to hold the system together just long enough for their generational constituencies to pass from the scene. The story of the Boomers is, in other words, the story of a generation of sociopaths running amok.
Bruce Cannon Gibney (A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America)
The recognition of Black citizenship progressed unevenly during Reconstruction and after, stymied by domestic terrorists, by high-ranking public officials who betrayed democracy, and by statesmen whose leadership proved to be politically indefensible and morally reprehensible.
Peniel E. Joseph (The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century)
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)
To generate an enduring peace, we will each have to continue to make progress as Christ conscious leaders, becoming increasingly aware of our unity with others and expanding our ability to receive Divine Love and be a vehicle for Divine Love. We will each have to detach from any impediments in our tribes, our families, and our own self-will that deter us from a commitment to fulfill God’s purpose in our lives, to do our work, and to continue our lifelong transformation as Christ conscious leaders. And we will have to come to realize that, in partnership with the Eternal Absolute, we each have the power – and the calling – to build the kingdom of God on earth.
Barbara Benjamin (Christ Conscious Leadership)
Goals Must Have a Time Limit Goals without a time limit are unable to be broken down into micro goals to measure your progress, to observe your traction. You might say, “I want to write a book.” Great, when? In twenty years? In twenty months? If you don’t put a deadline on the goal it will never happen and you will get to eat the bitter fruit of regret.
Dave Ramsey (EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches)
Real-Time Agenda Once the lightning round and progress review are complete (usually no more than fifteen minutes into the meeting), now it is time to talk about the agenda. That’s right. Counter to conventional wisdom about meetings, the agenda for a weekly tactical should not be set before the meeting, but only after the lightning round and regular reporting activities have taken place.
Patrick Lencioni (Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business)
The unknown is the hardest obstacle of all. When we don’t know what to expect, we lose the feeling of control. This is what really scares us the most—the loss of control. Kids are afraid of the dark because they don’t know what might be hiding from sight. Similarly, when we don’t know what to expect at the end of the rope, we feel the need to pull away from it. It is this fear of the unknown that stops our progress. Over
Jill Morgenthaler (The Courage to Take Command: Leadership Lessons from a Military Trailblazer)
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.
Margaret J. Wheatley (Who Do We Choose to Be?: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity)
Throughout his political career, Roosevelt’s conception of leadership had been built upon a narrative of the embattled hero (armed with courage, spunk, honor, and truth) who sets out into the world to prove himself. It was a dragon-slaying notion of the hero-leader, and Roosevelt had the good fortune to strike the historical moment in which he could prove his mettle. Under the banner of “the Square Deal,” he would lead his country in a different kind of war, a progressive battle designed to restore fairness to America’s economic and social life.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
Work is simply, “force x distance” or the product of a force applied to an object and the displacement of the object in the direction of the applied force…holding an object in the air does not involve any work, no matter how painful your hand will be after a few minutes… reflect on your daily activities and the results from them. Are you really working or just increasing your potential without progress or desired results? Your work must produce some movement, progress and change, by effectively using all your energies whether intellectual or physical.
Archibald Marwizi (Making Success Deliberate)
1-Leadership does not mean domination. The world is always well supplied with people who wish to rule and dominate others. The true leader is a different sort; he seeks effective activity which has a truly beneficient purpose. He inspires others to follow in his wake, and holding aloft the torch of wisdom, leads the way for society to realize its genuinely great aspirations”. 2-The progress of science can be said to be harmful to religion only in so far as it is used for evil aims and not because it claims a priority over religion in its revelation to man. It is important that spiritual advancement must keep pace with material advancement”. — 3-Education is a means of sharpening the mind of man both spiritually and intellectually. It is a two-edged sword that can be used either for the progress of mankind or for its destruction. That is why it has been Our constant desire and endeavor to develop our education for the benefit of mankind”. 4-It is no less important that we know whence we came. An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans”. —
Haile Selassie
Leadership expert Michael Hyatt reflected on Karnazes’s life and drew three conclusions about why we should embrace discomfort: 1. Comfort is overrated. It doesn’t lead to happiness. It makes us lazy—and forgetful. It often leads to self-absorption, boredom, and discontent. 2. Discomfort can be a catalyst for growth. It makes us yearn for something more. It forces us to change, stretch, and adapt. 3. Discomfort is often a sign we’re making progress. You’ve heard the expression, “no pain, no gain.” It’s true! When you push yourself to grow, you will experience discomfort.
Samuel R. Chand (Leadership Pain: The Classroom for Growth)
The democratic gospel of the French Revolution rested upon the glorification of man rather than God. The Church of Rome recognized this and struck back at the heresy as she had always done. She saw more clearly than did most Protestant churches that the devil, when it is to his advantage, is democratic. Ten thousand people telling a lie do not turn the lie into truth. That is an important lesson from the Age of Progress for Christians of every generation. The freedom to vote and a chance to learn do not guarantee the arrival of utopia. The Christian faith has always insisted that the flaw in human nature is more basic than any fault in man’s political or social institutions. Alexis de Tocqueville, a visitor in the United States during the nineteenth century, issued a warning in his classic study, Democracy in America. In the United States, he said, neither aristocracy nor princely tyranny exist. Yet, asked de Tocqueville, does not this unprecedented “equality of conditions” itself pose a fateful threat: the “tyranny of the majority”? In the processes of government, de Tocqueville warned, rule of the majority can mean oppression of the minority, control by erratic public moods rather than reasoned leadership.
Bruce L. Shelley (Church History in Plain Language)
Often these approaches reflect the inverse of the habits of effective people. In fact, my brother, John Covey, who is a master teacher, sometimes refers to them as the seven habits of ineffective people: Be reactive: doubt yourself and blame others. Work without any clear end in mind. Do the urgent thing first. Think win/lose. Seek first to be understood. If you can’t win, compromise. Fear change and put off improvement. Just as personal victories precede public victories when effective people progress along the maturity continuum, so also do private failures portend embarrassing public failures when ineffective people regress along an
Stephen R. Covey (Principle-Centered Leadership)
Lippmann was a major figure in many domains, including political theory. The main collection of his political essays is called “political philosophy for liberal democracy.” In these essays he explains that the “public must be put in its place” so that “the intelligent minorities” may live free of “the trampling and roar of the bewildered herd,” the public. Members of the bewildered herd are supposed to be “spectators of action,” not “participants.” They do have a function, however. Their function is to show up periodically to push a button to vote for a selected member of the leadership class. Then they are to go away and leave us alone. That’s progressive democratic theory. I
Noam Chomsky (Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance)
Black women have long been the backbone of our political progressive past: the strategists and protesters and organizers and volunteers, the women who've gotten out the vote and licked the envelopes, pioneered the thinking that led to the revolutions. Yet they've been only barely represented in leadership of the political parties they've bolstered, their policy priorities have often gone unaddressed and unrecognized; their participation has long been taken for granted. And when white women have caught up to where black women have been for a long time, the work of the black women has often been appropriated, ignored, and uncredited by those with greater economic, cultural, and racial advantage.
Rebecca Traister (Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger)
A week before the election Roosevelt had sufficiently recovered to deliver his final speech of the campaign at Carnegie Hall. In contrast to the caustic tone toward opponents that had marked his campaign, he now focused solely on the principles for which the Progressive Party stood. He believed, he told his spellbound audience, that “perhaps once in a generation” the time comes for the people to enter the battle for social justice. If the continuing problems created by the Industrial Age were not addressed, he warned, the country would eventually be “sundered by those dreadful lines of division” that set “the haves” and the “have-nots” against one another. “Win or lose I am glad beyond measure that I am one of the many who in this fight have stood ready to spend and be spent.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
The emphasis here will be on strength, not pathology; on challenge, not comfort; on self-differentiation, not herding for togetherness. This is a difficult perspective to maintain in a “seatbelt society” more oriented toward safety than adventure. This book is not, therefore, for those who prefer peace to progress. It is not for those who mistake another’s well-defined stand for coercion. It is not for those who fail to see how in any family or institution a perpetual concern for consensus leverages power to the extremists. And it is not for those who lack the nerve to venture out of the calm eye of good feelings and togetherness and weather the storm of protest that inevitably surrounds a leader’s self-definition. For, whether we are considering a family, a work system, or an entire nation, the resistance that sabotages a leader’s initiative usually has less to do with the “issue” that ensues than with the fact that the leader took initiative.
Edwin H. Friedman (A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix)
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.
Dan Carrison (Semper Fi: Business Leadership the Marine Corps Way)
The essence of Roosevelt’s leadership, I soon became convinced, lay in his enterprising use of the “bully pulpit,” a phrase he himself coined to describe the national platform the presidency provides to shape public sentiment and mobilize action. Early in Roosevelt’s tenure, Lyman Abbott, editor of The Outlook, joined a small group of friends in the president’s library to offer advice and criticism on a draft of his upcoming message to Congress. “He had just finished a paragraph of a distinctly ethical character,” Abbott recalled, “when he suddenly stopped, swung round in his swivel chair, and said, ‘I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit.’ ” From this bully pulpit, Roosevelt would focus the charge of a national movement to apply an ethical framework, through government action, to the untrammeled growth of modern America. Roosevelt understood from the outset that this task hinged upon the need to develop powerfully reciprocal relationships with members of the national press. He called them by their first names, invited them to meals, took questions during his midday shave, welcomed their company at day’s end while he signed correspondence, and designated, for the first time, a special room for them in the West Wing. He brought them aboard his private railroad car during his regular swings around the country. At every village station, he reached the hearts of the gathered crowds with homespun language, aphorisms, and direct moral appeals. Accompanying reporters then extended the reach of Roosevelt’s words in national publications. Such extraordinary rapport with the press did not stem from calculation alone. Long before and after he was president, Roosevelt was an author and historian. From an early age, he read as he breathed. He knew and revered writers, and his relationship with journalists was authentically collegial. In a sense, he was one of them. While exploring Roosevelt’s relationship with the press, I was especially drawn to the remarkably rich connections he developed with a team of journalists—including Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White—all working at McClure’s magazine, the most influential contemporary progressive publication. The restless enthusiasm and manic energy of their publisher and editor, S. S. McClure, infused the magazine with “a spark of genius,” even as he suffered from periodic nervous breakdowns. “The story is the thing,” Sam McClure responded when asked to account for the methodology behind his publication. He wanted his writers to begin their research without preconceived notions, to carry their readers through their own process of discovery. As they educated themselves about the social and economic inequities rampant in the wake of teeming industrialization, so they educated the entire country. Together, these investigative journalists, who would later appropriate Roosevelt’s derogatory term “muckraker” as “a badge of honor,” produced a series of exposés that uncovered the invisible web of corruption linking politics to business. McClure’s formula—giving his writers the time and resources they needed to produce extended, intensively researched articles—was soon adopted by rival magazines, creating what many considered a golden age of journalism. Collectively, this generation of gifted writers ushered in a new mode of investigative reporting that provided the necessary conditions to make a genuine bully pulpit of the American presidency. “It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the progressive mind was characteristically a journalistic mind,” the historian Richard Hofstadter observed, “and that its characteristic contribution was that of the socially responsible reporter-reformer.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)
Letter to the tech giants: When fame and abundance kiss somebody’s feet before that person is wise enough, he or she is very likely to lose track of what’s necessity and what’s luxury. And modern society is filled with examples of such intelligent stupidity – stupidity that is carried out by apparently smart humans. Because being smart is not the same as being wise. The world has enough smartness, but not enough wisdom to bring that smartness into proper productive practice – and I mean productive practice not sophisticated practice – there is a difference. A person smart enough to visualize a Falcon rocket engine can easily pinpoint the locations of various organizations that spread terrorism, yet the person chooses to explore the space further instead of prioritizing the technological advantages to first fix real issues of the human society that inflict harm to the humans every walk of the way. The world is a miserable place not because we have lack of resources, but because those who have an abundance of resources do not have the slightest idea of true human need. The resources needed for colonizing Mars if put to proper practice can fix the world’s global warming issues – it can fix the world’s climate change issues – it can fix the world’s terrorism issues, yet people are more interested in the pompous idea of living in Mars for whatever reason, instead of paying attention to improving human condition on earth. I am not against technological advancement, for I am a scientist, but my soul aches when I see smart people are dumb enough to chase after illusory glory of doing something different and innovative instead of focusing the powers of their soul on cleaning up the misery business on earth. You can, yet you don’t. Why? Smartness without wisdom is stupidity. You are smart – yes indeed – but I am sorry – you are stupid at the same time. How can you dream of having a cheese burger on Mars when your own kind on Earth is suffering! How can you think of taking rich kids into the orbit just so they can admire the beauty of earth from the heavens, when that very earth is infested with the primordial evils of human character! Awaken the human within you my friend, and pay attention. Awaken the human within and let it consume all the miseries from the world that you live in. Say a member of your family falls ill, would you ignore his or her misery completely just because you want to make life more comfortable for others than it already is, or would you first try everything in your capacity in order to heal your loved one! Be wise my friend, for it is not enough to be smart. You are smart – there is no doubt about that – so utilize that smartness for humanity and heal your own kind. Heal your kind with your capacity my friend. It is wailing for healers – not some delusional faith healers, but real tangible healers. Would you not do anything! Would you not give your soul to fix the broken soul of this world! Arise my friend, Awake my friend and work for humanity, not to make it sophisticated, but to make it peaceful first. Remember, humanity first, then everything else. Peace first, sophistication later. Harmony first, luxury later.
Abhijit Naskar
The information in this topic of decision making and how to create and nurture it, is beneficial to every cop in their quest to mastering tactics and tactical decision making and are a must read for every cop wanting to be more effective and safe on the street. My purpose is to get cops thinking about this critical question: In mastering tactics shouldn’t we be blending policy and procedure with people and ideas? It should be understandable that teaching people, procedures helps them perform tasks more skillfully doesn’t always apply. Procedures are most useful in well-ordered situations when they can substitute for skill, not augment it. In complex situations, in the shadows of the unknown, uncertain and unpredictable and complex world of law enforcement conflict, procedures are less likely to substitute for expertise and may even stifle its development. Here is a different way of putting it as Klein explains: In complex situations, people will need judgment skills to follow procedures effectively and to go beyond them when necessary.3 For stable and well-structured tasks i.e. evidence collection and handling, follow-up investigations, booking procedures and report writing, we should be able to construct comprehensive procedure guides. Even for complex tasks we might try to identify the procedures because that is one road to progress. But we also have to discover the kinds of expertise that comes into play for difficult jobs such as, robbery response, active shooter and armed gunman situations, hostage and barricade situations, domestic disputes, drug and alcohol related calls and pretty much any other call that deals with emotionally charged people in conflict. Klein states, “to be successful we need both analysis (policy and procedure) and intuition (people and ideas).”4 Either one alone can get us into trouble. Experts certainly aren’t perfect, but analysis can fail. Intuition isn’t magic either. Klein defines intuition as, “ways we use our experience without consciously thinking things out”. Intuition includes tacit knowledge that we can’t describe. It includes our ability to recognize patterns stored in memory. We have been building these patterns up all our lives from birth to present, and we can rapidly match a situation to a pattern or notice that something is off, that some sort of anomaly is warning us to be careful.5
Fred Leland (Adaptive Leadership Handbook - Law Enforcement & Security)