Sole Leadership Quotes

I want to see an elephant hunt down a man for the sole purpose of collecting his teeth, while a chorus of typewriters sings songs that praises the bananas for their wisdom, leadership, and their high levels of potassium.

You can't succeed in any endeavor if your motive is solely selfish- feeding your ego, seeking recognition, fame, etc. Find a lasting motivation...

You can't get what you want, if the intentions are solely directed for self-benefits.

To lead solely on the behalf of those being led is the utter pinnacle of fatherhood, and it is sad that so few ever stand on the summit.

Do not confuse democracy, anarchy and monarchy. Because the bees are happy and democratically assigned to their posts despite having the queen as their sole leader.

It would not do to be Lord of a universe inhabited solely by serfs.

the doorframes were about six feet, seven inches high. To navigate, I would discreetly bob my head down as if nodding to an unseen companion as I walked. I had no idea how finely calibrated my ducking was until I got new soles and heels on a pair of dress shoes during the George W. Bush administration. Apparently, this refurbished footwear made me about a half-inch taller than usual. Rushing so as not to be late to a Situation Room meeting with the president, I did the usual bob and smacked my head so hard that I rocked backward, stunned. A Secret Service agent asked me if I was okay. I said yes, and continued walking, stars in my eyes. As I sat at the table with the president and his national security team, I began to feel liquid on my scalp and realized I was bleeding. So I did the obvious thing: I kept tilting my head in different directions to keep the running blood inside my hairline. Heaven only knows what President Bush thought was wrong with me, but he never saw my blood.

Humble leaders trust more easily because they realize that the world does not rest solely on their shoulders.

We must never lose sight of the fact that we are only as good as the men and women who follow us; alone we are no more than an individual who solely possesses a vision.

The Flint water crisis illustrates how the challenges in America's shrinking cities are not a crisis of local leadership - or, at least, not solely that - but a crisis of systems. Paternalism, even if it is well meaning, cannot transcend the political, economic, and social obstacles that relegate places such as Flint to the bottom. The chronic underfunding of American cities imperils the health of citizens. It also stunts their ability to become full participants in a democratic society, and it shatters their trust in the public realm. Communities that are poor and communities of color - and especially those that are both - are hurt worst of all.

It is the sole responsibility of the leader to instill these values by constant preaching and persuasion. It is the leader’s role to lift followers out of their everyday selves up to a higher level of awareness, motivation, and commitment.

The lesson is that thriving is not actually about the leader, it’s about the whole flock. Everyone has the potential to lead, and leadership is about listening and being attuned to everyone else. It’s about flexibility. It’s about humility. It’s about trust. It’s about having fun along the way. It is more about holding space for others’ brilliance than being the sole source of answers, more about flexible shape-shifting to meet the oncoming challenges than holding fast to a five-year strategic plan.

The purpose of today’s civil-rights establishment is not to seek justice, but to seek power for blacks in American life based on the presumption that they are still, in a thousand subtle ways, victimized by white racism,” wrote Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institution in the aftermath of the Zimmerman verdict. The civil-rights leadership rallied to Trayvon’s cause (and not to the cause of those hundreds of black kids slain in America’s inner cities this very year) to keep alive a certain cultural “truth” that is the sole source of the leadership’s dwindling power. Put bluntly, this leadership rather easily tolerates black kids killing other black kids. But it cannot abide a white person (and Mr. Zimmerman, with his Hispanic background, was pushed into a white identity by the media over his objections) getting away with killing a black person without undermining the leadership’s very reason for being.33

Furthermore, Ivarsson had the natural self-confidence that many misinterpret as a leadership quality. In his case, this confidence was based solely on being blessed with a total blindness to his own shortcomings, a quality which would inevitably take him to the top and one day make him–in one way or another–Harry’s superior. Initially, Harry saw no reason to complain about mediocrity being kicked upwards, out of the way of investigations, but the danger with people like Ivarsson was that they could easily get it into their heads that they should intervene and dictate to those who really understood detection work.

The fears of militarization Holbrooke had expressed in his final, desperate memos, had come to pass on a scale he could have never anticipated. President Trump had concentrated ever more power in the Pentagon, granting it nearly unilateral authority in areas of policy once orchestrated across multiple agencies, including the State Department. In Iraq and Syria, the White House quietly delegated more decisions on troop deployments to the military. In Yemen and Somalia, field commanders were given authority to launch raids without White House approval. In Afghanistan, Trump granted the secretary of defense, General James Mattis, sweeping authority to set troop levels. In public statements, the White House downplayed the move, saying the Pentagon still had to adhere to the broad strokes of policies set by the White House. But in practice, the fate of thousands of troops in a diplomatic tinderbox of a conflict had, for the first time in recent history, been placed solely in military hands. Diplomats were no longer losing the argument on Afghanistan: they weren’t in it. In early 2018, the military began publicly rolling out a new surge: in the following months, up to a thousand new troops would join the fourteen thousand already in place. Back home, the White House itself was crowded with military voices. A few months into the Trump administration, at least ten of twenty-five senior leadership positions on the president’s National Security Council were held by current or retired military officials. As the churn of firings and hirings continued, that number grew to include the White House chief of staff, a position given to former general John Kelly. At the same time, the White House ended the practice of “detailing” State Department officers to the National Security Council. There would now be fewer diplomatic voices in the policy process, by design.

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.

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

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.

Warren Bennis, one of today’s leading thinkers on the art of leadership, spent years studying groundbreaking groups such as the Walt Disney Studios (while Walt was still alive), Xerox PARC, and Lockheed’s Skunk Works. Here are some of the highlights from his study of groups: • Great groups believe they are on a mission from God. Beyond mere financial success, they genuinely believe they will make the world a better place. • Great groups are more optimistic than realistic. They believe they can do what no one else has done before. “And the optimists, even when their good cheer is unwarranted, accomplish more,” says Warren. • Great groups ship. “They are places of action, not think tanks or retreat centers devoted solely to the generation of ideas.” Warren characterized the successful collaborations he studied as “dreams with deadlines.” Part

It grows more and more clear that his purpose is simply to use the National Socialist party as a springboard for his own immoral purposes, and to seize the leadership in order to force the Party onto a different track at the psychological moment. This is most clearly shown by an ultimatum which he sent to the Party leaders a few days ago, in which he demands, among other things, that he shall have a sole and absolute dictatorship of the Party, and that the Committee, including the locksmith Anton Drexler, the founder and leader of the Party, should retire…. And how does he carry on his campaign? Like a Jew. He twists every fact… National Socialists! Make up your minds about such characters! Make no mistake. Hitler is a demagogue… He believes himself capable… of filling you up with all kinds of tales that are anything but the truth.21 Although

David Brooks, “Our Founding Yuppie,” Weekly Standard, Oct. 23, 2000, 31. The word “meritocracy” is an argument-starter, and I have employed it sparingly in this book. It is often used loosely to denote a vision of social mobility based on merit and diligence, like Franklin’s. The word was coined by British social thinker Michael Young (later to become, somewhat ironically, Lord Young of Darlington) in his 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy (New York: Viking Press) as a dismissive term to satirize a society that misguidedly created a new elite class based on the “narrow band of values” of IQ and educational credentials. The Harvard philosopher John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 106, used it more broadly to mean a “social order [that] follows the principle of careers open to talents.” The best description of the idea is in Nicholas Lemann’s The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), a history of educational aptitude tests and their effect on American society. In Franklin’s time, Enlightenment thinkers (such as Jefferson in his proposals for creating the University of Virginia) advocated replacing the hereditary aristocracy with a “natural aristocracy,” whose members would be plucked from the masses at an early age based on “virtues and talents” and groomed for leadership. Franklin’s idea was more expansive. He believed in encouraging and providing opportunities for all people to succeed as best they could based on their diligence, hard work, virtue, and talent. As we shall see, his proposals for what became the University of Pennsylvania (in contrast to Jefferson’s for the University of Virginia) were aimed not at filtering a new elite but at encouraging and enriching all “aspiring” young men. Franklin was propounding a more egalitarian and democratic approach than Jefferson by proposing a system that would, as Rawls (p. 107) would later prescribe, assure that “resources for education are not to be allotted solely or necessarily mainly according to their return as estimated in productive trained abilities, but also according to their worth in enriching the personal and social life of citizens.” (Translation: He cared not simply about making society as a whole more productive, but also about making each individual more enriched.)

The biggest fear for homeschooled children is that they will be unable to relate to their peers, will not have friends, or that they will otherwise be unable to interact with people in a normal way. Consider this: How many of your daily interactions with people are solely with people of your own birth year?  We’re not considering interactions with people who are a year or two older or a year or two younger, but specifically people who were born within a few months of your birthday. In society, it would be very odd to section people at work by their birth year and allow you to interact only with persons your same age. This artificial constraint would limit your understanding of people and society across a broader range of ages. In traditional schools, children are placed in grades artificially constrained by the child’s birth date and an arbitrary cut-off day on a school calendar. Every student is taught the same thing as everyone else of the same age primarily because it is a convenient way to manage a large number of students. Students are not grouped that way because there is any inherent special socialization that occurs when grouping children in such a manner. Sectioning off children into narrow bands of same-age peers does not make them better able to interact with society at large. In fact, sectioning off children in this way does just the opposite—it restricts their ability to practice interacting with a wide variety of people. So why do we worry about homeschooled children’s socialization?  The erroneous assumption is that the child will be homeschooled and will be at home, schooling in the house, all day every day, with no interactions with other people. Unless a family is remotely located in a desolate place away from any form of civilization, social isolation is highly unlikely. Every homeschooling family I know involves their children in daily life—going to the grocery store or the bank, running errands, volunteering in the community, or participating in sports, arts, or community classes. Within the homeschooled community, sports, arts, drama, co-op classes, etc., are usually sectioned by elementary, pre-teen, and teen groupings. This allows students to interact with a wider range of children, and the interactions usually enhance a child’s ability to interact well with a wider age-range of students. Additionally, being out in the community provides many opportunities for children to interact with people of all ages. When homeschooling groups plan field trips, there are sometimes constraints on the age range, depending upon the destination, but many times the trip is open to children of all ages. As an example, when our group went on a field trip to the Federal Reserve Bank, all ages of children attended. The tour and information were of interest to all of the children in one way or another. After the tour, our group dined at a nearby food court. The parents sat together to chat and the children all sat with each other, with kids of all ages talking and having fun with each other. When interacting with society, exposure to a wider variety of people makes for better overall socialization. Many homeschooling groups also have park days, game days, or play days that allow all of the children in the homeschooled community to come together and play. Usually such social opportunities last for two, three, or four hours. Our group used to have Friday afternoon “Park Day.”  After our morning studies, we would pack a picnic lunch, drive to the park, and spend the rest of the afternoon letting the kids run and play. Older kids would organize games and play with younger kids, which let them practice great leadership skills. The younger kids truly looked up to and enjoyed being included in games with the older kids.

The more the State of Israel relied on force to manage the occupation, the more compelled it was to deploy hasbara. And the more Western media consumers encountered hasbara, the more likely they became to measure Israel’s grandiose talking points against the routine and petty violence, shocking acts of humiliation, and repression that defined its relationship with the Palestinians. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a professional explainer who spent the early years of his political career as a frequent guest on prime time American news programs perfecting the slickness of the Beltway pundit class, the Israeli government invested unprecedented resources into hasbara. Once the sole responsibility of the Israeli foreign ministry, the task of disseminating hasbara fell to a special Ministry of Public Diplomacy led by Yuli Edelstein, a rightist settler and government minister who called Arabs a “despicable nation.” Edelstein’s ministry boasted an advanced “situation room,” a paid media team, and coordination of a volunteer force that claimed to include thousands of volunteer bloggers, tweeters, and Facebook commenters fed with talking points and who flood social media with hasbara in five languages. The exploits of the propaganda soldiers conscripted into Israel’s online army have helped give rise to the phenomenon of the “hasbara troll,” an often faceless, shrill and relentless nuisance deployed on Twitter and Facebook to harass public figures who expressed skepticism of official Israeli policy or sympathy for the Palestinians.

Led by the party’s founder, Anton Drexler, they drew up an indictment of the would-be dictator and circulated it as a pamphlet. It was the most drastic accusation Hitler was ever confronted with from the ranks of his own party—from those, that is, who had firsthand knowledge of his character and how he operated.   A lust for power and personal ambition have caused Herr Adolf Hitler to return to his post after his six weeks’ stay in Berlin, of which the purpose has not yet been disclosed. He regards the time as ripe for bringing disunion and schism into our ranks by means of shadowy people behind him, and thus to further the interests of the Jews and their friends. It grows more and more clear that his purpose is simply to use the National Socialist party as a springboard for his own immoral purposes, and to seize the leadership in order to force the Party onto a different track at the psychological moment. This is most clearly shown by an ultimatum which he sent to the Party leaders a few days ago, in which he demands, among other things, that he shall have a sole and absolute dictatorship of the Party, and that the Committee, including the locksmith Anton Drexler, the founder and leader of the Party, should retire….   And how does he carry on his campaign? Like a Jew. He twists every fact … National Socialists! Make up your minds about such characters! Make no mistake. Hitler is a demagogue … He believes himself capable … of filling you up with all kinds of tales that are anything but the truth.21     Although weakened by a silly anti-Semitism (Hitler acting like a Jew!), the charges were substantially true, but publicizing them did not get the rebels as far as might be supposed. Hitler promptly brought a libel suit against the authors of the pamphlet, and Drexler himself, at a public meeting, was forced to repudiate it.

circuitry. Studies of neurological patients with damaged prefrontal–limbic circuitry confirm that their cognitive capacities may remain intact, while their emotional intelligence abilities are impaired. 11 This neurological fact clearly separates these competencies from purely cognitive abilities like intelligence, technical knowledge, or business expertise, which reside in the neocortex alone. Biologically speaking, then, the art of resonant leadership interweaves our intellect and our emotions. Of course, leaders need the prerequisite business acumen and thinking skills to be decisive. But if they try to lead solely from intellect, they’ll miss a crucial piece of the equation. Take, for example, the new CEO of a global company who tried to change strategic directions. He failed, and was fired after just one year on the job. “He thought he could

The spies, sent to search out the Promised Land, could be likened to a Baptist committee. Instead of looking to God’s promises, they fed on one another’s perception of the impossibility before them—conquering the land God had promised. God’s great works have not come through committees but through leaders who were totally surrendered to Him. While ten of the twelve committee members were fearful of the giants and battle, Joshua fixed his focus on God. He had the pure vision to focus on God’s clearly revealed will rather than on the obstacles to fulfilling it. “And Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes: And they spake unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying, The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land. If the LORD delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey. Only rebel not ye against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and the LORD is with us: fear them not. But all the congregation bade stone them with stones. And the glory of the LORD appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel.”—NUMBERS 14:6–10 A pattern oft repeated in the lives of leaders who make a difference is the opposition that comes as they edge closer to being used of God. It’s as if the devil senses the potential for God’s power to flow through their surrendered lives and plants doubts in their minds and accusations in the minds of others. “You’re not good enough,” “You can’t do it,” “You’ll never see people saved,” “It can’t be done,” “No one wants to hear what you have to say”—these thoughts are common darts of discouragement the devil hurls at leaders. The person who places confidence in personal ability, education, friendships, allegiances, or alliances, will fail indeed. But while there will always be the naysayers who insist that God’s will cannot be done, a Spirit-filled leader will place his confidence solely in God Almighty and press forward. Joshua knew the victory would not come through his sword, his ingenuity, or his military skill. But he also knew that if God was in it, God would do it. This knowledge gave him the confidence to insist, against the voice of his peers, “If the LORD delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us” (Numbers 14:8). In a world of ideals, such leadership would be appreciated and readily followed. But the results in Joshua’s life were not quite so rosy. For believing God and trying to lead others to do the same, Joshua became a target. The people wanted to take the life of this faith-filled man of God! If you will be a spiritual leader where you work—a man of God who doesn’t laugh at improper jokes or join in ungodly conversation—if you will be distinct and stand for what is right, not everyone will applaud. You may be mocked, criticized, and ostracized. Standing for Christ may be difficult at times, but it does make a difference. Like Joshua, we must understand the importance of vision and be willing to make sacrifices to lead others. For “where there is no vision, the people perish…” (Proverbs 29:18).

But these self-appointed teachers lack personal experience, and do not even listen when others speak to them. Relying solely on their own self-assurance, they order their brethren to wait on them like slaves. They glory in this one thing: to have many disciples. Their main objective is to ensure that, when they go about in public, their retinue of followers is no smaller than those of their rivals. They behave like mountebanks rather than teachers. They think nothing of giving orders, however burdensome, but they fail to teach others by their own conduct. Thus they make their purpose obvious to all: they have insinuated themselves into a position of leadership, not for the benefit of their disciples, but to promote their own pleasure.

Poverty I am too beautiful to be like you. Sickness from the crown of my head to the sole of my feet, I belong to God.

By 1928, with only $20 million in partnership capital and either sole or joint control over funds worth $500 million, this created a devastating level of exposure on the eve of the October 1929 stock market crash. John Kenneth Galbraith used phrases such as “gargantuan insanity” and “madness … on a heroic scale” to describe GTSC’s strategy.21 When the crash came, GTSC shares fell from their high of $326 to less than $2 per share. The ensuing debacle and damage to Goldman’s reputation, leadership, and clients caused Goldman to stay away from the asset management business.

2. “Development that is solely defined in terms of external presence or absence of infrastructure is an: “Arrested/Provisional Development”. Its only goal is to mitigate immediate sufferings. The people’s emotions are played on, their current sufferings and hardship retards their vision, their sense of worth as humans and ultimately their expectations are miniaturized and capped. Development in other places we regard as developed nations actually is a crystallization of the collectively shared thoughts of the people on their Health, Education, Shelter, Security, Intelligence etc. We should really be asking ourselves these questions whenever we notice any so called developmental projects going on; What is our definition of schooling; what kind of schooling experience befits Humans who are Nigerians? What kind of facilities, facilitators befits Humans, Nigerians? What Objective and content should we as a people pursue? What is our definition of Market; what kind of market befits Humans, Nigerians; do you think a market should have functional drains, recycling plants, water facilities, paved parking lots, lighting facilities? Do you think Humans, Nigerians deserve these and more?

Does innocence mean not being implicated in wrongdoing such as torture of prisoners or the “collateral damage” to hapless civilians? And is it that the citizens are innocent but not their leaders? If that is the case, isn’t the system closer to the dictatorships whose horrendous crimes were attributed solely, or overwhelmingly, to the leadership and not to the followers?

We are taught that the sole purpose of business is to maximize shareholder value. I dispute this premise. Yes, businesses need to be profitable to survive. Without profitability, the business dies. Profitable businesses help communities and the economy. But conscious businesses with conscious cultures include focusing on sustainability, not profitability alone. Conscious and sustainable organizations are those companies that include making a difference for the community at large and being purpose-driven as primary values. This can only be driven by REAL leaders. Robertson, Susan. Real Leadership: Waken To Wisdom. The Books Factory. Kindle Edition.

Stone that whenever the president “gave the word,” the governor should formally request federal troops, thus triggering the sole constitutional

Religion, as it is generally taught all over the world, is said to be based upon faith and belief, and, in most cases, consists only of different sets of theories, and that is the reason why we find all religions quarreling with one another. These theories, again, are based upon belief. One man says there is a Supreme Being sitting above the clouds governing the whole universe, and he asks me to believe that solely on the authority of his assertion. But if you actually attempt to realize what Christ realized, the entire structure of the Church would collapse.

(a) Nationalism, in the form of the historicist idea that the state is the incarnation of the Spirit (or now, of the Blood) of the state-creating nation (or race); one chosen nation (now, the chosen race) is destined for world domination. (b) The state as the natural enemy of all other states must assert its existence in war. (c) The state is exempt from any kind of moral obligation; history, that is, historical success, is the sole judge; collective utility is the sole principle of personal conduct; propagandist lying and distortion of the truth is permissible. (d) The ‘ethical’ idea of war (total and collectivist), particularly of young nations against older ones; war, fate and fame as most desirable goods. (e) The creative rôle of the Great Man, the world-historical personality, the man of deep knowledge and great passion (now, the principle of leadership). (f) The ideal of the heroic life (‘live dangerously’) and of the ‘heroic man’ as opposed to the petty bourgeois and his life of shallow mediocrity.

Great leaders work closely with their followers because their sole mandate is to know the needs of their followers and address those needs accordingly.

The Iroquois Nation presumably understood the transformative power of war when they developed parallel systems of government that protected civilians from warriors and vice versa. Peacetime leaders, called sachems, were often chosen by women and had complete authority over the civil affairs of the tribe until war broke out. At that point war leaders took over, and their sole concern was the physical survival of the tribe. They were not concerned with justice or harmony or fairness, they were concerned only with defeating the enemy. If the enemy tried to negotiate an end to hostilities, however, it was the sachems, not the war leaders, who made the final decision. If the offer was accepted, the war leaders stepped down so that the sachems could resume leadership of the tribe.

PREPARE YOURSELF—CHECKLIST If you have been promoted, what are the implications for your need to balance breadth and depth, delegate, influence, communicate, and exhibit leadership presence? If you are joining a new organization, how will you orient yourself to the business, identify and connect with key stakeholders, clarify expectations, and adapt to the new culture? What is the right balance between adapting to the new situation and trying to alter it? What has made you successful so far in your career? Can you succeed in your new position by relying solely on those strengths? If not, what are the critical skills you need to develop? Are there aspects of your new job that are critical to success but that you prefer not to focus on? Why? How will you compensate for your potential blind spots? How can you ensure that you make the mental leap into the new position? From whom might you seek advice and counsel on this? What other activities might help you do this?

By leaving a power vacuum in the world’s darkest hour, the United States has bequeathed China ample room to overreach—and to demonstrate that it is unqualified for a position of sole global leadership.”12

Being a true leader, as opposed to a competent manager, requires a willingness to get your hands dirty. I have said before that I do not expect anyone to do a job I cannot do myself. While this is clearly unrealistic as a company grows and expands, the perception of being willing to step in and assist must remain. The weight of leadership includes staying calm while others panic and coming up with solutions rather than joining the chorus of complaints. The Covid-19 pandemic has certainly helped distinguish the leaders from the managers. Leaders are prepared to take responsibility when things go wrong, even if the true responsibility lies with someone else. Leaders are visible. Leaders have a vision, even if it is only short term. I don’t really believe in long-term planning. I make up the rules of the game based on one-year plans. This means I always retain visibility and control. Five years is too long a time to have any certainty that the objectives will be met. Leadership is not a popularity contest, but it also should not inspire fear. Leaders earn respect and loyalty, recognising that these take a long time to earn and a second to lose. A leader is not scared of collaboration and listening to the opinions of others, as well as accepting help when it’s needed. Leadership is not a quality that you are born with, it is something that you learn over time. I was not a leader in my Coronation days, and I am the first to admit that I made a lot of mistakes. Even at African Harvest, as much as I achieved financial success and tried different techniques to earn respect, I never truly managed to deal with the unruly investment team. But, having built on years of experience, by the time I hit my stride at Sygnia, I was a leader. Within any organisation of substantial size, there is space for more than one leader, whether they head up divisions or the organisation itself. There are several leaders across Sygnia weaving the fabric of our success. I am no longer the sole leader, having passed the baton on to others in pursuit of my own dreams. To quote the Harvard Business Review, ‘The competencies most frequently required for success at the top of any sizable business include strategic orientation, market insight, results orientation, customer impact, collaboration and influence, organisational development, team leadership, and change leadership.’ That is what I looked for in my successor, and that is what I found in David. I am confident that all the leaders I have groomed are more than capable of taking the company forwards.

Great leaders work closely with their followers, because their sole mandate is to know the needs of their followers and address those needs accordingly.

We, as citizens, cannot delegate or offload these responsibilities to the state or to markets. Sarkaar cannot and should not be the sole arbiter of peace and justice; and the Bazaar cannot and should not be the sole provider of community goods and services. For true equity and justice to prevail, it should be elements within Samaaj that assert moral leadership and maintain harmony; that unleash social innovation; and that sustain an atmosphere of respectful social association.

People [are] always in the habit of setting up one man as their special champion, nurturing him and making him great? ... It’s clear that when a tyrant arises, this special leadership is the sole root from which he sprouts.

This has a debilitating effect on the local church. A church that sees its own appointed leaders, staff, or majority vote as the sole source of spiritual leadership becomes an increasingly inward-looking church.

26. Caution about Instigators of Dissension: Division and disunion in society is created by elements that follow their doubts and pursue misdirected passions.  Such people solely rely on their personal opinions and vested interests rather than on reliable sources and consider their own judgment superior to that of their leader.[29]

Mindful leaders are more than what they do, and not limited by it. Intention completes the picture. That is the reason why behaviour should not be the sole basis for judgment.

Mike tells me that two key factors promote excellence in individuals and in teams: “deep and rich support and relentless challenge to improve.” When he says that, a lightbulb goes on in my head. Supportive and demanding parenting is psychologically wise and encourages children to emulate their parents. It stands to reason that supportive and demanding leadership would do the same. I begin to get it. For this professional football team, it’s not solely about defeating other teams, it’s about pushing beyond what you can do today so that tomorrow you’re just a little bit better. It’s about excellence. So, for the Seahawks, Always compete means Be all you can be, whatever that is for you. Reach for your best.

The problem is not isolated to Southern Baptist churches; it is rampant. Unbalanced power in the church—caused by strict gender roles and a dearth of women leaders—is widespread and firmly rooted in most evangelical churches. The unsettling irony of complementarians favoring a male-dominated structure for church and society is that Jesus worked against such a structure during his ministry. In the story of the woman who crashed the Pharisee’s dinner party to anoint Jesus, Luke highlights how Jesus reverses the positions of the powerful, religious man and the shamed, sinful woman. He lifts up the faith and worth of the woman and demotes the leader from his position of honor and power. This, of course, was not the only time Jesus set men and women on equal footing. When he delayed a healing request from Jairus to speak and restore dignity to the bleeding woman of faith (Mark 5, Matt 9, Luke 8), Jesus gave a religious, male leader and a poor, female outcast equal attention in the kingdom (and equal access to health care). When he commended Mary as a disciple/rabbi in training (Luke 10), Jesus opened religious education and leadership to women. When he revealed his messianic identity first to the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4, a story we will study later), Jesus confirmed that women have equal access to the truth. When he entrusted the message of the resurrection to Mary Magdalene (John 20), Jesus demonstrated that the gospel message of the kingdom should be preached by women and men. In these and many other teaching moments, Jesus dismantles the idea that men should have the sole claim to authority and leadership in society.

In terms of overall transformation plan ownership, we recommend a sole accountable party.

It is nothing new that there is a lot of money to be made in religion. The sixth-century Quraysh knew this as well as any modern televangelist. In the equivalent of a Wall Street bull market, the elite of Mecca ran the city as a kind of oligarchy, with power in the hands of the wealthy few. Access was always mediated, and always for a fee. Selling the special ihram clothing was part of the business of pilgrimage, as was the provision of water and food for the pilgrims, and the sale of fodder for their camels and donkeys and horses. Which clans controlled which franchises was determined by the Quraysh leadership, who essentially parceled out monopolies (Muhammad’s own clan, the Hashims, held the one on providing water, thanks to Abd al-Muttalib’s ownership of the treasured Zamzam well). Every aspect of the pilgrimage had been carefully calculated down to the last gram of silver or gold or its equivalent in trade. Fees for the right to set up a tent, for entry to the Kaaba precinct, for the officials who cast arrows in front of Hubal or cut the throats of sacrificial animals and divided up the meat—all these and more were predetermined, and to the sole profit of the Quraysh. Their business was faith, and their faith was in business.

Don't worry about that, young one. Within the intricate web of life's tapestry, there is always someone perched upon a higher rung of power. Never forget that true strength lies not solely in one's position, but in how that power is wielded. It is the compassionate and wise who rise above, inspiring unity and lifting others toward greatness. So long as you remember to strive, not just for power and lofty positions, but for the noble character that defines true leadership, you'll be just fine. -A.

The Klan, alone, supplies this leadership….The blood which produces human leadership must be protected from inferior blood….You are of this superior blood. You are more—you are leaders in the only movement in the world, at present, which exists solely to establish a civilization that will insure these things. Klansmen and Klanswomen are verily ‘the salt of the earth,’ upon whom depends the future of civilization.” Anxiety about the new, about the unknown, was pervasive. “We are a movement of the plain people, very weak in the matter of culture, intellectual support and trained leadership,” Evans once said. “We demand a return of power into the hands of the everyday, not highly cultured, not overly intellectualized but entirely unspoiled and not de-Americanized average citizens of the old stock.

The US administration constantly sought to advance its misplaced messianic quest for a magical peace via “courageous” acts on the part of Israel’s leaders, even if these acts meant political suicide. Would American presidents consider taking “courageous actions,” such as, to use a historical example, far-reaching concessions to the Soviet Union if Congress could remove them from office the next day? Of course not. Yet this didn’t prevent American presidents and their envoys from attempting to tutor Israeli prime ministers, especially me, about the need for “courage” and “leadership.” I was being lectured about courage from people who had neither risked their own lives in war nor their political lives. When such “leadership” wasn’t forthcoming from me, this was proof of a clear failure of character by a politician guided solely by cynical and personal interests. The conflict between national necessity and political survival is as old as democracy itself, but it didn’t apply here. What stood in the way of the concessions I was pressed to make was simply my belief that they would greatly endanger Israel. So why make them? This too has eluded many American pundits. They might have noted that when I did believe certain measures were vital for Israel’s future, I didn’t hesitate to take them.

Greatness is an unforgiving taskmaster. It demands that I discard all notions of self-preservation, that I lay aside the privilege of this existence and all of the assorted things that this existence affords me, and that in doing so I embrace the understanding that I was given this life for the sole purpose of giving it over to others. And greatness is unforgiving in all of this because greatness can only arise out of all of this.

Don't worry about that, young one. Within the intricate web of life's tapestry, there is always someone perched upon a higher rung of power. Never forget that true strength lies not solely in one's position, but in how that power is wielded. It is the compassionate and wise who rise above, inspiring unity and lifting others toward greatness. So long as you remember to strive, not just for power and lofty positions, but for the noble character that defines true leadership, you'll be just fine.

During the modern period and particularly in the last two centuries in most Western countries there has developed a broad consensus in favor of the political philosophy known as “liberalism.” The main tenets of liberalism are political democracy, limitations on the powers of government, the development of universal human rights, legal equality for all adult citizens, freedom of expression, respect for the value of viewpoint diversity and honest debate, respect for evidence and reason, the separation of church and state, and freedom of religion. These liberal values developed as ideals and it has taken centuries of struggle against theocracy, slavery, patriarchy, colonialism, fascism, and many other forms of discrimination to honor them as much as we do, still imperfectly, today. . . . However, we have reached a point in history where the liberalism and modernity at the heart of Western civilization are at great risk on the level of the ideas that sustain them. The precise nature of this threat is complicated, as it arises from at least two overwhelming pressures, one revolutionary and the other reactionary, that are waging war with each other over which illiberal direction our societies should be dragged. Far-right populist movements claiming to be making a last desperate stand for liberalism and democracy against a rising tide of progressivism and globalism are on the rise around the world. They are increasingly turning toward leadership in dictators and strongmen who can maintain and preserve “Western” sovereignty and values. Meanwhile, far-left progressive social crusaders portray themselves as the sole and righteous champions of social and moral progress without which democracy is meaningless and hollow. These, on our furthest left, not only advance their cause through revolutionary aims that openly reject liberalism as a form of oppression, but they also do so with increasingly authoritarian means seeking to establish a thoroughly dogmatic fundamentalist ideology regarding how society ought to be ordered.

Edward IV’s policy of ‘Regional Governance’ (1461–71): During Edward IV’s first reign, Somerset politics was still influenced by the Stourton and Hungerford affinities which may have sought the patronage of Edward’s courtier, Humphrey Stafford. He was the only son of the Beaufort-Stourton client William Stafford by Katherine Chideock, and it was because of his Chideock inheritance (principally focussed in Somerset, Dorset, and Wiltshire) that he was destined to be a leading member of the Somerset gentry. In the later 1450s, Stafford may have been associated with the earl of Wiltshire whose first wife was his cousin (pp. 192–3). The Bonville-FitzWaryn alliance had dominated Devon politics throughout the 1440s and 1450s (see Chapter 5) but on Bonville’s death in 1461, his sole heir was his infant great-granddaughter, Cecily. Naturally, a child could not provide adequate leadership to the Bonville-FitzWaryn connection. Moreover, Bonville’s allies, Lord FitzWaryn and Sir Philip Courtenay, were also both entering their sixties (both were deceased before 1470), and similarly could not provide the dynamic direction that was required. Into this leadership void, stepped Lord Stafford (p. 207). …[Humphrey, Lord] Stafford [of Southwick] became a crucial national–regional power-broker–one of the pillars upon which rested the pediment of Yorkist government (p. 210). It seems clear that Lord Stafford’s land-holding, office-holding, and clientele suggest that he acted as a political core for the south-west region. Stafford’s inheritances already made him a significant figure in Somerset and Dorset but, favoured by Edward IV, he was granted extensive lands forfeited by Lancastrians throughout the south-west, such as the estates of the earldom of Devon. In addition to his own properties, Stafford was showered with many offices in Somerset and Dorset, as well as other positions of immense significance in the region–in particular, his endowment with the most important duchy of Cornwall offices ensured that he dominated Cornwall (p. 221). It seems quite understandable to find that, as a figure of local, regional, and national importance, Lord Stafford’s associations were regional in nature: he was connected to major figures from each county… (pp. 221–2).

Americans will not and should not respond to a political creed that cherishes the past solely because it offers an excuse for shutting out the hard facts and difficult tasks of the present.

No institutional arrangement will ever contain all that they church is. Don't look for it institutionally; look for it relationally. Certainly the New Testament talks about the priorities of that church -- Jesus as its sole head and focus, daily encouragement among believers, plural and lateral leadership, open participation, and an environment of freedom so people can grow in him.

In Moscow, the events in Ukraine were seen as a textbook example of the popular overthrow of a kleptocratic ruler that could be duplicated in Russia. The regime in Ukraine was almost identical to what had been created in Russia, with the sole difference being that Ukraine, with a nationalist west and center and a pro-Russian east, was more pluralistic. Under these circumstances, it was essential to the Russian leadership that the Ukrainian revolution be discredited. The regime chose the method traditionally used to distract the Russian population from their rulers’ abuses. They started a war.

Servant-leadership holds that the primary purpose of a business should be to create a positive impact on its employees and community, rather than using profit as the sole motive.

Approximately 40 percent of CEOs are MBAs.2 Many large-scale studies have found that leadership based solely on MBA-trained logic is not enough for delivering long-term sustainable financial and cultural results, and that it often is detrimental to an organization’s productivity. In one study, researchers compared the organizational performance of 440 CEOs who had been celebrated on the covers of magazines like BusinessWeek, Fortune, and Forbes. The researchers split the CEOs into two groups—those with an MBA and those without an MBA—and then monitored their performance for seven years. Surprisingly, the performance of those with an MBA was significantly worse.3 Another study published in the Journal of Business Ethics looked at the results of more than five thousand CEOs and came to a similar conclusion.4