“
A man can only lead when others accept him as their leader, and he has only as much authority as his subjects give to him. All of the brilliant ideas in the world cannot save your kingdom if no one will listen to them.
”
”
Brandon Sanderson (The Well of Ascension (Mistborn, #2))
“
Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him once long ago. "Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.
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Frank Herbert (Dune (Dune, #1))
“
When you put together deep knowledge about a subject that intensely matters to you, charisma happens. You gain courage to share your passion, and when you do that, folks follow.
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Jerry Porras (Success Built to Last: Creating a Life That Matters)
“
To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group--a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project. This kind of critical and democratic sensibility flies in the face of any policing of borders and boundaries of "blackness", "maleness", "femaleness", or "whiteness".
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Cornel West (Race Matters)
“
Teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. As they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators.
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Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)
“
Forgiveness is the subjective and fertile ground the acorn falls upon when gifted to ourselves and others.
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Gillian Johns (Demons And Dangers: Magic And Mayhem - Book 4)
“
Giving birth without possessing,
animating without subjecting,
fostering without dominating.
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Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)
“
Servitude of any sort is distasteful to all men, but especially objectionable is subjection to others in the case of those who ought to rule.
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Ulrich von Hutten (Ulrich von Hutten and the German Reformation)
“
Sometimes a controversial statement can be used to determine where the loyalty of the subject lies.
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Don Santo
“
Since the war I have stressed altogether five main objectives. The true union of Europe; the union of government with science; the power of government to act rapidly and decisively, subject to parliamentary control; the effective leadership of government to solve the economic problem by use of the wage-price mechanism at the two key-points of the modern industrial world; and a clearly defined purpose for a movement of humanity to ever higher forms.
”
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Oswald Mosley
“
Different subjects and different affairs are arranged in my head as in a cupboard,” he once said. “When I wish to interrupt one train of thought, I shut that drawer and open another. Do I wish to sleep? I simply close all the drawers, and there I am—asleep.
”
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Andrew Roberts (Leadership in War: Essential Lessons from Those Who Made History)
“
The most important subject in the curriculum in the future years will be how to love ourselves and be content.
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Abhysheq Shukla (Feelings Undefined: The Charm of the Unsaid Vol. 1)
“
When the qualities that now confer leadership have become universal, there will no longer be leaders and followers, and democracy will have been realized at last.
”
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Bertrand Russell (Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects)
“
A dream conceived from the inside-out eventually becomes reality. But a dream desired from the outside-in is subject to spoil and tragedy.
”
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T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
“
He was the subject of a little respectful ribbing. But he was, of course, the captain, which meant he had to do lots of the ribbing himself.
”
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Geoff Dyer (Another Great Day at Sea: Life Aboard the USS George H.W. Bush)
“
Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.
”
”
William Zinsser
“
[The wives of powerful noblemen] must be highly knowledgeable about government, and wise – in fact, far wiser than most other such women in power. The knowledge of a baroness must be so comprehensive that she can understand everything. Of her a philosopher might have said: "No one is wise who does not know some part of everything." Moreover, she must have the courage of a man. This means that she should not be brought up overmuch among women nor should she be indulged in extensive and feminine pampering. Why do I say that? If barons wish to be honoured as they deserve, they spend very little time in their manors and on their own lands. Going to war, attending their prince's court, and traveling are the three primary duties of such a lord. So the lady, his companion, must represent him at home during his absences. Although her husband is served by bailiffs, provosts, rent collectors, and land governors, she must govern them all. To do this according to her right she must conduct herself with such wisdom that she will be both feared and loved. As we have said before, the best possible fear comes from love.
When wronged, her men must be able to turn to her for refuge. She must be so skilled and flexible that in each case she can respond suitably. Therefore, she must be knowledgeable in the mores of her locality and instructed in its usages, rights, and customs. She must be a good speaker, proud when pride is needed; circumspect with the scornful, surly, or rebellious; and charitably gentle and humble toward her good, obedient subjects. With the counsellors of her lord and with the advice of elder wise men, she ought to work directly with her people. No one should ever be able to say of her that she acts merely to have her own way. Again, she should have a man's heart. She must know the laws of arms and all things pertaining to warfare, ever prepared to command her men if there is need of it. She has to know both assault and defence tactics to insure that her fortresses are well defended, if she has any expectation of attack or believes she must initiate military action. Testing her men, she will discover their qualities of courage and determination before overly trusting them. She must know the number and strength of her men to gauge accurately her resources, so that she never will have to trust vain or feeble promises. Calculating what force she is capable of providing before her lord arrives with reinforcements, she also must know the financial resources she could call upon to sustain military action.
She should avoid oppressing her men, since this is the surest way to incur their hatred. She can best cultivate their loyalty by speaking boldly and consistently to them, according to her council, not giving one reason today and another tomorrow. Speaking words of good courage to her men-at-arms as well as to her other retainers, she will urge them to loyalty and their best efforts.
”
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Christine de Pizan (The Treasure of the City of Ladies)
“
If you see a poor man come into your majlis, try to speak to him before you speak to the other people,” the king told his son. “Never make a decision on the spot. Say you will give your decision later. Never sign a paper sending someone to prison unless you are 100 percent convinced. And once you’ve signed, don’t change your mind. Be solid. You will find that people try to test you.” Fahd was delivering his basic course in local leadership—Saudi Governance 101.
“If you don’t know anything about a subject, be quiet until you do. Recruit some older people who can give you advice. And if a citizen comes with a case against the government, take the citizen’s side to start with and give the officials a hard time the government will have no shortage of people to speak for them.
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Robert Lacey (Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia)
“
We seek to uncover
behind the events changes in the collective consciousness. We reject wholesale references to the “spontaneity” of the movement, references which in most cases
explain nothing and teach nobody. Revolutions take place according to certain laws. This does not mean that the masses in action are aware of the laws of revolution, but it does mean that the changes in mass consciousness are not accidental, but are subject to an objective necessity which is capable of theoretic explanation, and thus makes both prophecy and leadership possible.
”
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Leon Trotsky (History of the Russian Revolution)
“
In this first foray into politics, Lincoln also pledged that if his opinions on any subject turned out to be erroneous, he stood “ready to renounce them.” With this commitment, Lincoln revealed early on a quality that would characterize his leadership for the rest of his life—a willingness to acknowledge errors and learn from his mistakes.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
“
For within the very structure of family life, in families that do or did embrace the male religions, are the almost invisibly accepted social customs and life patterns that reflect the one-time strict adherence to the biblical scriptures. Attitudes towards double-standard premarital virginity, double-standard marital fidelity, the sexual autonomy of women, illegitimacy, abortion, contraception, rape, childbirth, the importance of marriage and children to women, the responsibilities and role of women in marriage, women as sex objects, the sexual identification of passivity and aggressiveness, the roles of women and men in work or social situations, women who express their ideas, female leadership, the intellectual activities of women, the economic activities and needs of women and the automatic assumption of the male as breadwinner and protector have all become so deeply ingrained that feelings and values concerning these subjects are often regarded, by both women and men, as natural tendencies or even human instinct.
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Merlin Stone (When God Was a Woman)
“
Our investigation required us to answer two questions. The first question was whether classified documents were moved outside of classified systems or whether classified topics were discussed outside of a classified system. If so, the second question was what the subject of the investigation was thinking when she mishandled that classified information.
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James Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
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Yes. Oh no! I don't subject myself to a leadership that does not break new territories! It is the job of leadership to succeed in landing its limbs on new grounds.
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Israelmore Ayivor
“
Much of life is ambiguous and subject to interpretation, but there are things that are objectively, verifiably either true or false.
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James Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
“
Superficial and emotional subject might sway undecided voters.
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Harold Holzer (Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion)
“
I know well the three main subjects that always stir people's minds: politics, religion and sport.
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Mwanandeke Kindembo (Destiny of Liberty)
“
Wherever there is human intervention, there is subjective prejudice. Systems implementation is the only solution for efficiency.
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Krishna Saagar Rao
“
Principles, unlike values, are objective and external. They operate in obedience to natural laws, regardless of conditions. Values are subjective and internal. Values are like maps
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Stephen R. Covey (Principle-Centered Leadership)
“
In the heat of leadership, with the adrenaline pumping, it is easy to convince yourself that you are not subject to the normal human frailties that can defeat ordinary mortals. You begin to act as if you are indestructible. But the intellectual, physical, and emotional challenges of leadership are fierce. So, in addition to getting on the being and assess the tolls those changes are taking. If you don't, your seemingly indestructible self can self-destruct. This, by the way, is an ideal outcome for your foes-and even friends who oppose your initiative- because no one has to feel responsible for your downfall.
_________
When you take "personal" attacks personally, you unwittingly conspire in one of the common ways you can be taken out of action-you make yourself the issue.
Attacks may be personal, understand that they are basically attacks on positions you represent and the role you are seeking to play
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Ronald A. Heifetz
“
Pop leadership abuts pop psychology, and is very destructive. In no other serious domain of human endeavor (surgery, playing the violin) is the subject distilled down to nice-sounding aphorisms that mean nothing.
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Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
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The key to unlocking potential is to embrace your highest competitive advantage: you are the only one who has the full story of your life. YOU are the one subject about which there will never be a greater expert in the world.
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Matt Higgins (Burn the Boats: Toss Plan B Overboard and Unleash Your Full Potential)
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A true leader is not meant to be greeted with unanimous praise by his people. A leader is meant to be questioned, to be suspect, to be hated. If he is not, then one can easily assume that either he has not challenged his abilities as a leader by making a decision that creates a split between the people, or he is forcing his subjects to bow before him.
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Evan Meekins (The Black Banner)
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If Captain Jean-Luc Picard asked you to serve him aboard the starship Enterprise, you'd likely be happy to. You would recognise him as a great leader and a good man, and so you wouldn't have any problem following his orders. This is basically the relationship God wants with us - not slaves, not pets, not possessions, we would be co-workers and friends.
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Lewis N. Roe (From A To Theta: Taking The Tricky Subject Of Religion And Explaining Why It Makes Sense In A Way We Can All Understand)
“
Mostly we think of people with great authority as higher up, far away, hard to reach. But spiritual authority comes from compassion and emerges from deep inner solidarity with those who are 'subject' to authority. The one who is fully like us, who deeply understands our joys and pains or hopes and desires, and who is willing and able to walk with us, that is the one to whom we gladly give authority and whose 'subjects' we are willing to be.
It is the compassionate authority that empowers, encourages, calls forth hidden gifts, and enables great things to happen. True spiritual authorities are located in the point of an upside-down triangle, supporting and holding into the light everyone they offer their leadership to.
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Henri J.M. Nouwen (Bread for the Journey)
“
The Knights of Labor originated in the late 1860s and early 1870s in Philadelphia, but slowly expanded into the rest of Pennsylvania and finally became a national organization with 750,000 members. It encompassed many trade unions and was organized geographically rather than by occupation. “The Knights attempted to organize all American productive workers into ‘one big union’ regardless of skill, trade, industry, race or sex and were divided into local, district and national assemblies, with a centralized structure”155—although substantial autonomy was granted to local assemblies, which took the initiative in establishing hundreds of cooperative stores and factories. The national leadership was less energetic on this score than local leadership. The overarching purpose of the organization was, as its longtime leader Terence Powderly said, “to associate our own labors; to establish co-operative institutions such as will tend to supersede the wage-system, by the introduction of a co-operative industrial system.”156 To this end, the Knights lobbied politically, engaged in numerous strikes, lent their support to other radical social movements, and, of course, organized co-ops. Masses of workers genuinely believed that they could rise from being “rented slaves” to become cooperators in control of their work and wages, living in revitalized and stabilized communities, no longer subject to periods of unemployment. Cooperation was a religion for some of them.
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Chris Wright (Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States)
“
„Hitler´s dictatorship“, he said, „differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. It was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical developement, a dicttorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man....Earlier dictators needed highly qualified assistants even at the lowest level – men who could think and act independently. The totalirian system in the period of modern technical development can dispense with such men; thanks to modern methods of communication, i tis possible to mechanize the lower leadership. As a result of this there has arisen the new type of uncritical recipient of orders.“ (Albert Speer)
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Aldous Huxley (Brave New World Revisited)
“
There are a number of subjective and objective criteria that I use as a way to rank players. The subjective ones include their ability with both feet; their sense of balance; the disciplined fashion in which they take care of their fitness; their attitude towards training; the consistency between games and over multiple seasons; their demonstrated mastery in several different positions; and the way they add flair to any team for which they play. The objective ones that are impossible to dispute are: the number of goals they have scored; the games they have played for several of the best club teams in the world; the number of League championship and cup medals they have won, and their appearances in World Cups. When you employ this sort of measurement approach, it becomes far easier to define the very highest levels of performance. The people who are least confused about this are other players.
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Alex Ferguson (Leading: Lessons in leadership from the legendary Manchester United manager)
“
Consider the following: “Will Mindik be a good leader? She is intelligent and strong…” An answer quickly came to your mind, and it was yes. You picked the best answer based on the very limited information available, but you jumped the gun. What if the next two adjectives were corrupt and cruel? Take note of what you did not do as you briefly thought of Mindik as a leader. You did not start by asking, “What would I need to know before I formed an opinion about the quality of someone’s leadership?” System 1 got to work on its own from the first adjective: intelligent is good, intelligent and strong is very good. This is the best story that can be constructed from two adjectives, and System 1 delivered it with great cognitive ease. The story will be revised if new information comes in (such as Mindik is corrupt), but there is no waiting and no subjective discomfort. And there also remains a bias favoring the first impression.
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Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
“
In June 1789 some congressmen wanted Washington to have to gain senatorial approval to fire as well as hire executive officers—the Constitution was silent on the subject; the House duly approved that crippling encroachment on executive authority. When the Senate vote ended in a tie, Vice President Adams cast the deciding vote to defeat the measure, thereby permitting the president to exert true leadership over his cabinet and, for better or worse, preventing the emergence of a parliamentary democracy.
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Ron Chernow (Washington: A Life)
“
Lincoln’s ambition.
He would read out loud to memorize and speak.
He continued to read and learn despite his fathers wishes.
Eventually, he developed a skill to master one subject after another despite losing his mother, managing his negative emotions and his fathers wishes.
He developed an increasing belief in his own strength and powers. He began to trust, that he was going to be something.
Slowly creating a vision of an alternative future.
“I’ll study and get ready, and the chance will come
”
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
“
Dr. Brown's book is able to make the subject matter interesting in a very pragmatic way, without losing the attractiveness and appeal of his academic writing and sound background. I would recommend the use of this book for teaching in leadership, management and organizational behavior courses knowing that it would make a great contribution to the learning experience of the reader."
Alberto DeFeo, Ph.D. (Law)
Chief Administrative Officer of Lake Country and Adjunct Professor of University of Northern British Columbia
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Asa Don Brown
“
The local leadership class clearly saw tickets and citations as a convenient source of cash that would fill the city’s treasury without their having to do the politically difficult work of raising taxes. The problem with raising, say, property taxes is that the most engaged, empowered citizens will revolt against it. So instead, why not just squeeze all you can out of a smaller, less powerful group of citizens by raising the revenue through enforcement? The citizens receive municipal services, and the subjects have to pay for them.
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Chris Hayes (A Colony in a Nation)
“
And the time was also coming when the great purges, long in blueprint, could no longer be postponed. The whole subject of the slaughter by a revolution of its children is mysterious. But it is clear that the group warfare, by the ‘logic of things,’ had opened into the next stage: the fanatical idealists of the 1880's and 1890's needed to be destroyed by the realists now in control of the Party, their younger fanatics of the apparatus, and their Calibans (a new breed). Some of the original revolutionaries had become disillusioned, and there is nothing worse than an ex-believer. Some were haunted by old romantic notions of ‘freedom,’ and therefore opposed the rough measures needed to forge a modern totalitarian state. Some probably still dreamed they could change the balance, and leadership, of the Party.
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Dan Levin (Stormy Petrel: The Life and Work of Maxim Gorky)
“
During his first week on the job, McNamara sat down with the Pentagon’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG), which had just completed an intensive study, known as WSEG Report #50, that found that a Soviet surprise attack on only five locations—the White House, the Pentagon, Camp David, Raven Rock, and Mount Weather—would likely destroy all of the nation’s command structure. Even simply hitting the first two would likely wipe out the military command structure, since Raven Rock and Mount Weather weren’t normally manned with senior personnel. “Both the Presidential and the SecDef-JCS levels of command are presently subject to operational incapacitation by the same events,” the report explained. Hitting all the nation’s major military commands and leadership sites would involve attacking just fourteen installations—a
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Garrett M. Graff (Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die)
“
There has been so much misinformation spread about the nature of this interview that the actual events that took place merit discussion. After being discreetly delivered by the Secret Service to the FBI’s basement garage, Hillary Clinton was interviewed by a five-member joint FBI and Department of Justice team. She was accompanied by five members of her legal team. None of Clinton’s lawyers who were there remained investigative subjects in the case at that point. The interview, which went on for more than three hours, was conducted in a secure conference room deep inside FBI headquarters and led by the two senior special agents on the case. With the exception of the secret entry to the FBI building, they treated her like any other interview subject. I was not there, which only surprises those who don’t know the FBI and its work. The director does not attend these kinds of interviews. My job was to make final decisions on the case, not to conduct the investigation. We had professional investigators, schooled on all of the intricacies of the case, assigned to do that. We also as a matter of procedure don’t tape interviews of people not under arrest. We instead have professionals who take detailed notes. Secretary Clinton was not placed under oath during the interview, but this too was standard procedure. The FBI doesn’t administer oaths during voluntary interviews. Regardless, under federal law, it would still have been a felony if Clinton was found to have lied to the FBI during her interview, whether she was under oath or not. In short, despite a whole lot of noise in the media and Congress after the fact, the agents interviewed Hillary Clinton following the FBI’s standard operating procedures.
”
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James Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
“
one of the hottest topics today is ethics—ethics discussions, ethics curriculum, ethics training, codes of ethics. This book shows that while ethics is fundamentally important and necessary, it is absolutely insufficient. It shows that the so-called soft stuff is hard, measurable, and impacts everything else in relationships, organizations, markets, and societies. Financial success comes from success in the marketplace, and success in the marketplace comes from success in the workplace. The heart and soul of all of this is trust. This work goes far beyond not only my work, but also beyond anything I have read on the subject of trust. It goes beyond ethical behavior in leadership, beyond mere “compliance.” It goes deep into the real “intent” and agenda of a person’s heart, and then into the kind of “competence” that merits consistent public confidence.
”
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Stephen M.R. Covey (The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything)
“
A leader who fails to live amongst his folk will be like a blind man that does not know the light from darkness. Yet a leader who fails to serve but waits to be served will toil endlessly in his rule and he will find no meaning in his leadership. Yet a leader who aspires for glory and fame will be like a cub that can't learn the tricks of hunting. Yet a leader that seeks wars and warmongers will cause depression among his countrymen. A leader that seeks wealth rather leading will make his countrymen corrupt. A corrupt leader will make the country poorer and corrupt because it is his law to be corrupt. A leader must live like his people. A leader will be known by his deeds and not by his name and a great leader will not govern. A leader is an example for all his subjects. A great leader will not serve while the country is getting hungrier and starving but a leader will become hungry like his hungry citizens.
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David Ssembajjo (Servants of the Underground)
“
Why Westerners are so obsessed with "saving" Africa, and why this obsession so often goes awry? Western countries should understand that Africa’s development chances and social possibilities remain heavily hindered due to its overall mediocre governance.
Africa rising is still possible -- but first Africans need to understand that the power lies not just with the government, but the people. I do believe, that young Africans have the will to "CHANGE" Africa. They must engage their government in a positive manner on issues that matters -- I also realize that too many of the continent’s people are subject to the kinds of governments that favor ruling elites rather than ordinary villagers and townspeople. These kind of behavior trickles down growth.
In Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe is the problem.
In South Africa the Apartheid did some damage. The country still wrestles with significant racial issues that sometimes leads to the murder of its citizens.
In Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya the world’s worst food crisis is being felt.
In Libya the West sends a mixed messages that make the future for Libyans uncertain. In Nigeria oil is the biggest curse. In Liberia corruption had make it very hard for the country to even develop.
Westerners should understand that their funding cannot fix the problems in Africa. African problems can be fixed by Africans. Charity gives but does not really transform. Transformation should come from the root, "African leadership." We have a PHD, Bachelors and even Master degree holders but still can't transform knowledge. Knowledge in any society should be the power of transformation. Africa does not need a savior and western funds, what Africa needs is a drive towards ownership of one's destiny. By creating a positive structural system that works for the majority. There should be needs in dealing with corruption, leadership and accountability.
”
”
Henry Johnson Jr
“
It was Hitler’s style, his oratorical talents and his remarkable ability to transmit emotions and feelings in his speeches, that took him to the leadership of the ragtag party of misfits and adventurers that he joined in Munich in 1919 and that called itself the German Workers’ Party. The ideas he and the party spouted were all tattered; they were nothing but jargon inherited from the paranoid Austro-German border politics of the pre-1914 era, which saw “Germanness” threatened with inundation by “subject nationalities.” Even the combination “national socialist,” which Hitler added to the party’s name when he became leader in 1920, was borrowed from the same era and same sources. It was not the substance—there was no substance to the frantic neurotic tirades—that allowed the party to survive and later to grow. It was the style and the mood. It was above all the theater, the vulgar “art,” the grand guignol productions of the beer halls and the street.
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Modris Eksteins (Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age)
“
And in a major speech to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939, Hitler uttered an unmistakable threat to any Jews who did choose to remain behind in his Germany: I have very often been a prophet in my lifetime and I have usually been laughed at for it. During my struggle for power, it was primarily the Jewish people who just laughed when they heard me prophesy that one day I would become head of state and thereby assume the leadership of the entire people, and that I would then among other things subject the Jewish problem to a solution. I expect that the howls of laughter that rose then from the throats of German Jewry have by now died to a croak. Today I'm going to turn prophet yet again: if international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed once more in plunging our peoples into a world war, then the outcome will not be a Bolshevization of the world and therewith the victory of Jewry, but the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe! When
”
”
David Irving (The War Path)
“
For a patrimonial state to be stable over time, it is best ruled with consent, at least with consent from the largest minority, if not from the majority. Instinctive obedience must be the norm, otherwise too much effort needs to be put into suppressing disaffection for the regime's wider aims to be achievable. Consent is, however, not always easy to obtain. The collective view of most societies is rather conservative: in the main people prefer to see the social arrangements of their youth perpetuated into their old age; they prefer that things be done in the time-honoured way; they are suspicious of novelty and resistant to change. Thus when radical action must be taken, for whatever reason, a great burden falls on the ruler, the father-figure, who has to overcome this social inertia and persuade his subjects to follow his lead. In order that his will shall prevail, he needs to generate huge respect, preferably adulation, and if at all possible sheer awe among his people.
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Paul Kriwaczek (Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization)
“
This point is underlined in the well-known parable which Jotham told the men of Shechem: ‘Once upon a time the trees went out to anoint a king over them; and they said … to the vine, “Come and reign over us.” And the vine said to them: “Should I leave my wine, which cheers God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?”’ Similarly, the fig-tree declined because of its sweetness, and the olive because of its own good qualitites. Then a bramble, a barren plant full of thorns, accepted the sovereignty which they offered, though it possessed neither a special good quality of its own, nor those of the trees that were to be subject to it (cf. Judg. 9 : 7–15). Now in this parable the trees which sought a ruler were not cultivated but wild. The vine, the fig-tree and the olive refused to rule over the wild trees, preferring to bear their own fruits rather than to occupy a position of authority. Likewise, those who perceive in themselves some fruit of virtue and feel its benefit, refuse to assume leadership even when pressed by others, because they prefer this benefit to receiving honour from men.
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Kallistos Ware (The Philokalia Vol 1)
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He seemed a little surprised that writers in America do not get together, do not associate with one another very much. In the Soviet Union writers are very important people. Stalin has said that writers are the architects of the human soul. We explained to him that writers in America have quite a different standing, that they are considered just below acrobats and just above seals. And in our opinion this is a very good thing. We believe that a writer, particularly a young writer, too much appreciated, is as likely to turn as heady as a motion-picture actress with good notices in the trade journals. And we believe that the rough-and-tumble critical life an American writer is subject to is very healthy for him in the long run. It seems to us that one of the deepest divisions between the Russians and the Americans or British, is in their feeling toward their governments. The Russians are taught, and trained, and encouraged to believe that their government is good, that every part of it is good, and that their job is to carry it forward, to back it up in all ways. On the other hand, the deep emotional feeling among Americans and British is that all government is somehow dangerous, that there should be as little government as possible, that any increase in the power of government is bad, and that existing government must be watched constantly, watched and criticized to keep it sharp and on its toes. And later, on the farms, when we sat at table with farming men, and they asked how our government operated, we would try to explain that such was our fear of power invested in one man, or in one group of men, that our government was made up of a series of checks and balances, designed to keep power from falling into any one person’s hands. We tried to explain that the people who made our government, and those who continue it, are so in fear of power that they would willingly cut off a good leader rather than permit a precedent of leadership. I do not think we were thoroughly understood in this, since the training of the people of the Soviet Union is that the leader is good and the leadership is good. There is no successful argument here, it is just the failure of two systems to communicate one with the other.
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John Steinbeck (A Russian Journal)
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Christopher Lasch explains the process by which the therapeutic segment of the managerial elite win moral acceptance. Despite the fact that its claims to be providing “mental health” where always self-serving and highly subjective, the theapeutic class offered ethical leadership in the absence of shared principles. By defining emotional well-being as both a social good and the overcoming of what is individually and collectively dangerous, the behavioral scientists have been able to impose their absolutes upon the culturally fluid society. In “The True and Only Heaven” Lasch explores the implications for postwar politics of the “Authoritarian Personality.” A chief contributor to this anthology, Theodro Adorno, abandoned his earlier work as a cultural critic to become a proponent of governmentally imposed social therapy. According to Lasch, Adorno condemns undesirable political attitudes as “prejudice” and “by defining prejudice as a ‘social disease’ substituted a medical for a political idiom. In the end, Adorno and his colleagues “relegated a broad range of controversial issues to the clinic – to scientific study as opposed to philosophical and political debate.
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Paul Edward Gottfried (After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State.)
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we have much to learn from the struggles in Alabama and Mississippi in the early 1960s. In the spring of 1963 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. King launched a “fill the jails” campaign to desegregate downtown department stores and schools in Birmingham. But few local blacks were coming forward. Black adults were afraid of losing their jobs, local black preachers were reluctant to accept the leadership of an “Outsider,” and city police commissioner Bull Connor had everyone intimidated. Facing a major defeat, King was persuaded by his aide, James Bevel, to allow any child old enough to belong to a church to march. So on D-day, May 2, before the eyes of the whole nation, thousands of schoolchildren, many of them first graders, joined the movement and were beaten, fire-hosed, attacked by police dogs, and herded off to jail in paddy wagons and school buses. The result was what has been called the “Children’s Miracle.” Inspired and shamed into action, thousands of adults rushed to join the movement. All over the country rallies were called to express outrage against Bull Connor’s brutality. Locally, the power structure was forced to desegregate lunch counters and dressing rooms in downtown stores, hire blacks to work downtown, and begin desegregating the schools. Nationally, the Kennedy administration, which had been trying not to alienate white Dixiecrat voters, was forced to begin drafting civil rights legislation as the only way to forestall more Birminghams. The next year as part of Mississippi Freedom Summer, activists created Freedom Schools because the existing school system (like ours today) had been organized to produce subjects, not citizens. People in the community, both children and adults, needed to be empowered to exercise their civil and voting rights. A mental revolution was needed. To bring it about, reading, writing, and speaking skills were taught through discussions of black history, the power structure, and building a movement. Everyone took this revolutionary civics course, then chose from more academic subjects such as algebra and chemistry. All over Mississippi, in church basements and parish halls, on shady lawns and in abandoned buildings, volunteer teachers empowered thousands of children and adults through this community curriculum. The Freedom Schools of 1964 demonstrated that when Education involves young people in making community changes that matter to them, when it gives meaning to their lives in the present instead of preparing them only to make a living in the future, young people begin to believe in themselves and to dream of the future.
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Grace Lee Boggs (The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century)
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What is it like to be made vice-president?
On one level, it's a nearly hallucinatory degree of success. I was barely forty years old, and a shaky, sixty-three-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the entire Western world.
It was also like throwing up in convention-hall bathrooms before giving speeches, and after. It was sitting through dinners with men and women with whom I had nothing in common. Spending an enormous amount of time on trains. Promising thins and agreeing to things as advised by people I had barely met, on very little sleep. Huge sums of money were changing hands and everything happening on the grandest scale imaginable while still in most moments remaining pointless and usually outright seedy. I pretended to learn to fly-fish; I watched sporting events. In Maine I was assaulted by a lobster; it seized my lapel in a threatening manner. I tasted local foods and admired factories,farms, department stores, hotels, and (unless I'm misremembering) several empty plots of land....
It was like being given what was almost the nation's highest honor by a man you held in infinite esteem and regarded with perhaps a certain amount of terrified suspicion, a man who disliked you and clearly wanted nothing to do with you, who would scowl and change the subject at the mention of your name. And then being given a very important and very nasty job by that person, and despised for it, almost as much as you despised yourself.
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Austin Grossman (Crooked)
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Patronising women is another manoeuvre, an infamous example being then British prime minister David Cameron’s ‘Calm down, dear’ to Labour MP Angela Eagle in 2011.48 In the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s (IPU) 2016 global study on sexism, violence and harassment against female politicians, one MP from a European parliament said ‘if a woman speaks loudly in parliament she is “shushed” with a finger to the lips, as one does with children. That never happens when a man speaks loudly’.49 Another noted that she is ‘constantly asked – even by male colleagues in my own party – if what I want to say is very important, if I could refrain from taking the floor.’ Some tactics are more brazen. Afghan MP Fawzia Koofi told the Guardian that male colleagues use intimidation to frighten female MPs into silence – and when that fails, ‘The leadership cuts our microphones off’.50 Highlighting the hidden gender angle of having a single person (most often a man) in charge of speaking time in parliament, one MP from a country in sub-Saharan Africa (the report only specified regions so the women could remain anonymous) told the IPU that the Speaker had pressured one of her female colleagues for sex. Following her refusal, ‘he had never again given her the floor in parliament’. It doesn’t necessarily even take a sexual snub for a Speaker to refuse women the floor: ‘During my first term in parliament, parliamentary authorities always referred to statements by men and gave priority to men when giving the floor to speakers,’ explained one MP from a country in Asia. The IPU report concluded that sexism, harassment and violence against female politicians was a ‘phenomenon that knew no boundaries and exists to different degrees in every country’. The report found that 66% of female parliamentarians were regularly subjected to misogynistic remarks from their male colleagues, ranging from the degrading (‘you would be even better in a porn movie’) to the threatening (‘she needs to be raped so that she knows what foreigners do’).
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Caroline Criado Pérez (Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men)
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A veritable pacifist when it comes to social guilds or luncheon clubs, I turn into something of a militant on the subject of the only true and living Church on the face of the earth. . . .
Setting aside for a time the heavenly host we hope one day to enjoy, I still choose the church of Jesus Christ to fill my need to be needed--here and now, as well as there and then. When public problems or private heartaches come--as surely they do come--I will be most fortunate if in that hour I find myself in the company of Latter-day Saints. . . .
When asked "What can I know?" a Latter-day Saint answers, "All that God knows." When asked "What ought I to do?" his disciples answer, "Follow the Master." When asked "What may I hope?" an entire dispensation declares, "Peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come" (D&C 59:23), indeed ultimately for "all that [the] Father hath" (D&C 84:38). Depressions and identity crises have a hard time holding up under that response. . . .
We cannot but wonder what frenzy the world would experience if a chapter of the Book of Mormon or a section of the Doctrine and Covenants or a conference address by President Spencer W. Kimball were to be discovered by some playful shepherd boy in an earthen jar near the Dead Sea caves of Qumran. The beneficiaries would probably build a special shrine in Jerusalem to house it, being very careful to regulate temperatures and restrict visitors. They would undoubtedly protect against earthquakes and war. Surely the edifice would be as beautiful as the contents would be valuable; its cost would be enormous, but its worth would be incalculable. Yet for the most part we have difficulty giving away copies of sacred scripture much more startling in their origin. Worse yet, some of us, knowing of the scriptures, have not even tried to share them, as if an angel were an every-day visitor and a prophet just another man in the street. We forget that our fathers lived for many centuries without priesthood power or prophetic leadership, and "dark ages" they were indeed.
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Jeffrey R. Holland
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Experienced investigators always avoid conducting interviews with subjects who know more about the facts than they do. That knowledge imbalance favors the subject, not the investigator. Especially in white-collar crime cases, investigators prefer to master all of the facts before questioning the subject, so that interrogators can ask smart questions and so the subject can be confronted, as necessary, with documents or statements made by other witnesses.
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James Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
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There are no individual solutions to collective problems. Nonetheless, it is individuals who must come together and figure out what to do. In all of this, there is the unaddressed question of leadership. The anarchist in me genuinely believes rotating leadership is a solution: people take turns taking the lead in the areas of their greatest competence, interest, or desire. Another similar collaborative idea might be: best idea wins. But art is so subjective, and for five different people five different ideas might each seem best. It has always been my thinking that if someone in the group feels strongly that we should do something, then we should do it, their strong desire shouldn’t be watered or sanded down by the democratic entropy of the group. I want the projects to be open enough to welcome the strongest impulses of each of the participants. This is my ideal, and like all ideals it is something I often fall short of achieving. Perhaps this ideal is not even best for every collaborative situation. In a sense, it is just another way of saying that I want to work in ways that are deeply collaborative while at the same time keeping our most intense individual artistic differences more alive than alive.
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Jacob Wren (Authenticity is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART)
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Some use Salesforce. Others use Excel. Others use analytics tools. Each leader has their own scorecard. Enablement professionals need to be part of the conversation about what is working and what is not. We need to connect the dots between the great work we do and the results. We want to be able to walk into our leadership’s office and show the correlation between performance by seller and by team and enablement activity. We need to be able to turn a subjective dialogue into a fact-based and analytical conversation. We need to be able to provide answers to the most important question: What can we do to improve performance and achieve our go-to-market goals?
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Elay Cohen (Enablement Mastery: Grow Your Business Faster by Aligning Your People, Processes, and Priorities)
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DONALD J. TRUMP WAS inaugurated the forty-fifth president of the United States on January 20, 2017, before a crowd whose number immediately and famously came into dispute. The new president was determined to demonstrate that the number of spectators who turned out for him, which was sizable, surpassed the number of people present for Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration. They did not. No evidence, photographic or otherwise, would move him off his view, which, as far as everyone but his press team seemed to agree, was simply false. This small moment was deeply disconcerting to those of us in the business of trying to find the truth, whether in a criminal investigation or in assessing the plans and intentions of America’s adversaries. Much of life is ambiguous and subject to interpretation, but there are things that are objectively, verifiably either true or false. It was simply not true that the biggest crowd in history attended the inauguration, as he asserted, or even that Trump’s crowd was bigger than Obama’s. To say otherwise was not to offer an opinion, a view, a perspective. It was a lie.
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James Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
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place: the credibility of the institutions of justice was at stake. Assuming, as nearly everyone did, that Hillary Clinton would be elected president of the United States in less than two weeks, what would happen to the FBI, the Justice Department, or her own presidency if it later was revealed, after the fact, that she was still a subject of an FBI investigation?
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James B. Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
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Remember how shocked I was to discover Amazon had over 8,000 branding books? Well this I know: when a specific discipline has that many opinions on one subject, something fundamental is always missing. Always. The omitted fundamental? A definition and a universal reason for branding. And it came down to four words:
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David Brier (Brand Intervention: 33 Steps to Transform the Brand You Have into the Brand You Need)
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A vision should be attainable subject to current times and its ability to adapt to changing times.
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Pearl Zhu (Leadership Master: Five Digital Trends to Leap Leadership Maturity (Digital Masters Book 5))
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In 1929 the leadership replaced institutions for long-term prisoners with work camps, designed to extract minerals in Siberia and other remote areas of the USSR where it was difficult to attract free labour. The Gulag soon expanded rapidly with the collectivization campaigns, as hundreds of thousands of kulaks, priests and other ‘enemies’ were imprisoned. By World War II, they had become subjects of an enormous slave state, and a central part of the Soviet economy, with a shocking 4 million people in the whole Gulag system.
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David Priestland (The Red Flag: A History of Communism)
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When Eisenhower arrived in London in his new role, the first thing he did was organize his staff, clearly articulating to them what his expectations were. He told them Allied unity was critical and that problems would be solved through objective rather than nationalistic perspectives. He preferred to do business informally, and his door was always open. If he didn’t understand something, he asked for their indulgence, and that they should make the subject understandable to him, since they were the experts. He wanted them to be honest and candid with him, as he would be with them. If he had an idea that had already been considered and rejected, he wanted to be told, not humored. Eisenhower told them no commander could possibly know everything, which is why he had a staff.
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Brian W. Clark (Eisenhower's Leadership: Executive Lessons from West Point to the White House)
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In their beaver-like work to enforce the Reich's emigration policies on the Jewish community, the SS had hitherto tried hard to keep a low profile, and to avoid any kind of spectacular outrage to international opinion. Göring thus found himself on the side of the SS, in alliance against the radical Goebbels, and on January 24 he formally instructed the ministry of the interior to set up a central emigration office under Heydrich to regulate and organize the deportation of the Jews. Hitler's personal part in this anti-Jewish programme was one of passive observation. Talking with Colonel Jósef Beck, the Polish foreign minister, on January 5 he rather speciously regretted that the western powers had not entertained Germany's colonial demands: ‘If they had, I might have helped solve the Jewish problem by making a territory available in Africa for resettlement of not only the German but the Polish Jews as well.’ On the twenty-first, he uttered to the Czech foreign minister Chvalkovský these ominous words: ‘The Jews here are going to be destroyed.’ The Czech replied sympathetically, and Hitler continued: ‘Help can only come from the others, like Britain and the United States, who have unlimited areas that they could make available for the Jews.’ And in a major speech to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939, Hitler uttered an unmistakable threat to any Jews who did choose to remain behind in his Germany: I have very often been a prophet in my lifetime and I have usually been laughed at for it. During my struggle for power, it was primarily the Jewish people who just laughed when they heard me prophesy that one day I would become head of state and thereby assume the leadership of the entire people, and that I would then among other things subject the Jewish problem to a solution. I expect that the howls of laughter that rose then from the throats of German Jewry have by now died to a croak. Today I'm going to turn prophet yet again: if international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed once more in plunging our peoples into a world war, then the outcome will not be a Bolshevization of the world and therewith the victory of Jewry, but the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe!
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David Irving (The War Path)
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From Switzerland in the south, throughout central Europe and Germany, and as far north and west as England, where Henry VIII burned a dozen Anabaptists at the stake, thousands of men and women were subjected to the most terrible persecution. Many of the more moderate leaders who abjured violence were martyred, leaving a gap in the leadership that was often filled by men of little education but much passion.
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Anthony Arthur (The Tailor-King: The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Muenster)
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The King... was so good and kind, that although he could do whatever he wished and had whatever he could desire-riches, joy, the love of those around him-he was not satisfied to have these good things for himself alone. He wanted his subjects to be happy, too.
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Mary Loyola
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Wikipedia: Amity-enmity complex
The amity-enmity complex theory was introduced by Sir Arthur Keith in his work, A New Theory of Human Evolution (1948). He posited that humans evolved as differing races, tribes, and cultures, exhibiting patriotism, morality, leadership and nationalism. Those who belong are part of the in-group, and tolerated; all others are classed as out-group, and subject to hostility…
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Wikipedia Contributors
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first foray into politics, Lincoln also pledged that if his opinions on any subject turned out to be erroneous, he stood “ready to renounce them.” With this
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
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hospitalization data away from the CDC and set up the new system, many in the media would almost reflexively cite the incident as support for a dominant narrative that the CDC was seeing its role obstructed and reduced by the political leadership at HHS and the White House.25 US senator Patty Murray sent HHS an oversight letter in which she argued that the new system was wasteful and “duplicates existing CDC work.”26 It was alleged that the Trump administration had taken the hospital reporting away from the CDC and given it to TeleTracking with a political not a public health goal in mind—political officials wanted to fudge the data to give a false rosy picture of the pandemic. Or so the narrative went. While the CDC was certainly subject to some deeply unfortunate and ultimately damaging political intrusions into its work, this wasn’t one of those instances. Some of the frustrations with the CDC’s execution had merit, and the CDC’s method for reporting COVID hospitalizations was one of those moments.
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Scott Gottlieb (Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic)
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In the NGO universe, which has evolved a strange anodyne language of its own, everything has become a “subject”, a separate, professionalised, special-interest issue. Community development, leadership development, human rights, health, education, reproductive rights, AIDS, orphans with AIDS—have all been hermetically sealed into their own silos with their own elaborate and precise funding brief. Funding has fragmented solidarity in ways that repression never could.
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Arundhati Roy (Capitalism: A Ghost Story)
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(1) create a company-approved project that will force you to learn new skills and introduce you to new people within your company; (2) take on leadership positions in the hobbies and outside organizations that interest you; (3) join your local alumni club and spend time with people who are doing the jobs you’d like to be doing; (4) enroll in a class at a community college on a subject that relates to either the job you’re doing now or a job you see yourself doing in the future.
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Keith Ferrazzi (Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time)
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There are several plausible reasons I’ve been able to ascertain over the years as to why I wasn’t taught about dinosaurs from a biblical viewpoint — and how to defend it. Here are the top three: 1. My parents were unaware that I was being brainwashed with the secular humanistic view about dinosaurs, so they never even bothered to look into the subject to help me. My parents (like many parents) were under the impression that schools were “neutral” (neutrality is a myth by the way, Matthew 12:3010), and they figured schools wouldn’t teach something contrary to Christianity in schools. 2. The church leadership (e.g., Sunday School teachers, elders, deacons, and pastors) didn’t know we were being taught a secular religion at school — ideas like the big bang, millions of years, and evolution, which are subsets of the religion of secular humanism and naturalism. 3. Even if the church leadership knew about the secular indoctrination happening at school, I doubt some of them would have known how to respond themselves, mainly due to their own lack of knowledge about dinosaurs from a biblical viewpoint.
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Bodie Hodge (Dinosaurs, Dragons, and the Bible)
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The closer you get to subjectivity, the further you get from objectivity
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Samuel R. Young Jr.
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Janet, a chemist and a team leader at a pharmaceutical company, received glowing comments from her peers and superiors during her 360-degree review but was surprised by the negative feedback she got from her direct reports. She immediately concluded that the problem was theirs: “I have high standards, and some of them can’t handle that,” she remembers thinking. “They aren’t used to someone holding their feet to the fire.” In this way, she changed the subject from her management style to her subordinates’ competence, preventing her from learning something important about the impact she had on others.
Eventually the penny dropped, Janet says. “I came to see that whether it was their performance problem or my leadership problem, those were not mutually exclusive issues, and both were worth solving.” She was able to disentangle the issues and talk to her team about both. Wisely, she began the conversation with their feedback to her, asking, “What am I doing that’s making things tough? What would improve the situation?
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Susan David (Self-Awareness (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series))
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We cannot separate our submission to God’s inherent authority from our submission to His delegated authority. All authority originates from Him! Hear what the Scripture admonishes: Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. (Rom. 13:1–2)
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John Bevere (Under Cover: Why Your Response to Leadership Determines Your Future)
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Good leaders ought to be good followers, as much as masters have to be subjects too. One can never demand what he doesn't offer anywhere or anytime.
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Lucas D. Shallua
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Lincoln had talked individually with each member of his cabinet. His views were not subject to change; emancipation, he was certain, was indispensable to victory in the war. While Chase considered graduated emancipation by the generals a safer course, he was now “fully” satisfied, he told the president, “that you have given to every proposition which has been made, a kind and candid consideration.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
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Teaching others the topic you want to master is a sure key to becoming an expert on the subject matter.
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Master Del Pe (8 Types of Leaders: Every Leader Should Know)
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For more than a century America has occupied a position of scientific leadership and has gradually come to take it for granted. Although neither war nor economic depression nor political conflict has been able to threaten it, I now fear that that is about to change, for something has arisen that may indeed signal a change in our national character. That something is most visible in the debate over evolution, but it extends far beyond the teaching of a single subject in the curriculum of a single scientific discipline. It reveals a deep and profound split in the American psyche, an unease that threatens the way we think of ourselves as a people, the place we hold for science in our lives, and the way in which we will move into the twenty-first century.
What is at stake, I am convinced, is nothing less than America’s scientific soul.
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Kenneth R. Miller (Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul)
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Self-deception actually determines one’s experience in every aspect of life. The extent to which it does that—and in particular the extent to which it determines the nature of one’s influence on, and experience of, others—is the subject of this book.
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Arbinger Institute (Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box)
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I explained a leadership philosophy to her that had been drilled into me for years; and that I firmly believed in. “Julie, my military training has included the study of leadership. I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject but I have tried to learn from some very smart people. For example, let me ask you this: What would you say the definition of ‘leadership’ is?” One of the things I liked about Julie is that she was always up for an intellectual challenge. After thinking for a moment she responded, “Being in a position where other people have to do what you tell them.” “Ok,” I replied. “That’s one type of leadership; it’s called Authoritarian or Rank-Based Leadership and the military and Corporate America are definitely based on it but there’s another type that’s more powerful... “It’s called Influential Leadership.” “This type of leadership is used by those that build churches or lead volunteer organizations or lead movements. There is no boss with rank or authority; people follow because they choose to. The definition of leadership that I believe in most is simply the word ‘influence’ – and if you accept that then I have another question for you…” She nodded for me to continue. “I first heard a brilliant man named John Maxwell ask this question; What is the difference between leadership and manipulation?” Julie started to respond but then paused in thought. I thought it was a great question and I remember the impact it had held on me the first time I’d heard it. She finally answered, “One is good and one is bad.” “Agreed,” I said. “Here is how I would say it though… There is no physical difference in leadership and manipulation – they are both exercising influence. The only difference is intent. “For example; if I’m trying to influence someone to do something that benefits both of us and maybe others we call it leadership. If I’m trying to influence someone to do something that benefits only myself we call it manipulation.
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William Lee Gordon (Emergence (Here Comes Earth #1))
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The author defines professionalism as exemplified by his subjects in their mutual unwillingness to take expected opposition personally. They would not allow grudges to get in the way of more important business.
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Chris Matthews (Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked)
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even organizational leaders who did go to business school aren’t necessarily fully equipped to make the best decisions and manage as effectively as they are capable of doing. The reason is that most business schools teach subjects separately— finance, accounting, marketing, and so on—rather than integrating them to mimic the realities of day-to-day leadership and management.
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David Goldsmith (Paid to Think: A Leader's Toolkit for Redefining Your Future)
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Connect by listening well and speaking relevantly without being prejudiced or sarcastic. Learn to listen with your eyes as much as you listen with your ears. Generate interest in the person and subject, that way people will become more interested in you.
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Archibald Marwizi (Making Success Deliberate)
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If one has never personally experienced war, one cannot understand in what the difficulties constantly mentioned really consist, nor why a commander should need any brilliance and exceptional ability. Everything looks simple; the knowledge required does not look remarkable, the strategic options are so obvious that by comparison the simplest problem of higher mathematics has an impressive scientific dignity. Once war has actually been seen the difficulties become clear; but it is extremely hard to describe the unseen, all-pervading element that brings about this change of perspective. ~Carl von Clausewitz 1 - Why did you make that decision officer? - Why did you go in the front door, instead of the back or side? - Why did you not have the subject come outside to you? - Why instead did you not set up a perimeter, containing the adversary and attempt to negotiate? - Why did you do a face to face negotiation, with the subject armed with a knife, you know that is dangerous, don’t you? - Did you have to take him down with force? - Why didn’t you talk him out, use OC spray or taser him instead? - Why didn’t you take a passenger side approach on that car stop? - Why did you walk up on the vehicle to engage instead of having the subject walk back to you? - Why didn’t you see the gun, weren’t you watching deadly hands? - Couldn’t you have chosen another option? - What in the hell were you thinking? - The bad guy had a gun why didn’t you shoot? - Why didn’t you wait for back-up? - You knew something bad was happening there, why, did you wait, for back-up? - Why didn’t you do this or do that? These are all questions anyone who has been in law enforcement for any amount of time and has experienced a violent encounter has been asked or has even asked himself. We law enforcement professionals what/if, if/then, or when/then ourselves so much in an effort to prepare and become more effective on the streets you cannot help but question the decisions we make. This questioning and reviewing of our decisions is, in the aftermath of an encounter helpful to us. This process of review known as an AAR or decision making critique teaches us valuable lessons helping us to adapt more effective methods and tactics to apply on the street. BUT when in the heat of the moment, face to face with an adversary second guessing ourselves can be dangerous and risk lives, our own, and to those we are there to assist.
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Fred Leland (Adaptive Leadership Handbook - Law Enforcement & Security)
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In spite of the variety of definitions of mentoring (and the variety of names it is given, from coaching or counselling to sponsorship) all the experts and communicators appear to agree that it has its origins in the concept of apprenticeship, when an older, more experienced individual passed down his knowledge of how the task was done and how to operate in the commercial world. I’m afraid I disagree. The effect of coaching is not dependent on “an older, more experienced individual passing down his knowledge.” Coaching requires expertise in coaching but not in the subject at hand. That is one of its great strengths.
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John Whitmore (Coaching for Performance Fifth Edition: The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership UPDATED 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION)
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An old grandfather puts his young grandson on the family donkey and begins the long journey to town. As they travel along the well-used pathway, passersby say, “Look at that selfish, spoiled kid riding the donkey while the old man is walking.” Not wanting people to criticize his grandson, the old man trades places with the boy. Soon people begin to say, “Look at that lazy man making the child walk.” Not wanting to be called lazy, the grandfather gets off the donkey and walks alongside it. Observers then begin to remark, “Look at those two stupid people walking when they could be riding the donkey.” Acting on their criticism, the grandfather seats both himself and his grandson on the donkey. As they continue along, the next people watching them comment, “Look how they’re brutalizing that donkey. They’re going to break its back.” In response, they get off the donkey. They put the donkey on their backs, and carry it the rest of the way into town, arriving bedraggled, exhausted, and still the subject of bystander criticism. The point of this fable is that if you try to please everyone, you, too, will quickly feel that you have a donkey on your back. Fortunately, being a people pleaser is not the ultimate goal of leadership.
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Dale Galloway (On-Purpose Leadership: Multiplying Your Ministry by Becoming a Leader of Leaders)
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In the closing years of John Wesley’s life, he became a friend of William Wilberforce. In England, Wilberforce was a great champion of freedom for slaves before the American Civil War. He was subjected to a vicious campaign by slave traders and others whose powerful commercial interests were threatened. Rumors were spread that he was a wife-beater. His character, morals, and motives were repeatedly smeared during some twenty years of pitched battles. From his deathbed, John Wesley wrote to Wilberforce, “Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be won out by the opposition of men and devils; but if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? Be not weary in well-doing.” William Wilberforce never forgot those words of John Wesley. They kept him going even when all the forces of hell were arrayed against him. The
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John C. Maxwell (Be a People Person: Effective Leadership Through Effective Relationships)
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Center and Ground The leader who is centered and grounded can work with erratic people and critical group situations without harm. Being centered means having the ability to recover one’s balance, even in the midst of action. A centered person is not subject to passing whims or sudden excitements. Being grounded means being down-to-earth, having gravity or weight. I know where I stand, and I know what I stand for: that is ground. The centered and grounded leader has stability and a sense of self. One who is not stable can easily get carried away by the intensity of leadership and make mistakes of judgment or even become ill.
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John Heider (The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age)
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How insightful of Finland to devise a topic-based curriculum in their schools! This means that dicreet "subjects" that are taught may cross-fertilise each other, and the possibilities in this are amazing!
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Suzy Davies
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difficult situation, the Iraqi civilian trying to care for a family amid chaos and violence. They are the people who pay every day with blood and tears for the failures of high officials and powerful institutions. The run-up to the war is particularly significant because it also laid the shaky foundation for the derelict occupation that followed, and that constitutes the major subject of this book. While the Bush administration—and especially Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and L. Paul Bremer III—bear much of the responsibility for the mishandling of the occupation in 2003 and early 2004, blame also must rest with the leadership of the U.S. military, who didn’t prepare the U.S. Army for the challenge it faced, and then wasted a year by using counterproductive tactics that were employed in unprofessional ignorance of the basic tenets of counter-insurgency warfare. The undefeated Saddam Hussein of 1991 The 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq can’t be viewed in isolation. The chain of events began more than a decade earlier with the botched close of the 1991 Gulf War and then it continued in the U.S. effort to contain Saddam Hussein in the years that followed.
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Thomas E. Ricks (Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005)
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Leaders, no matter what their religious or philosophical convictions are, feel the promptings of the natural moral law, compelling them to do good and avoid evil. Leaders are, of course, as subject to sinful inclinations as anyone else. But they know that if they habitually practice virtue, they will strengthen their character and overcome their flaws.
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Alexandre Havard (Virtuous Leadership: An Agenda for Personal Excellence)
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In any profession, you will be respected if you are good at your job – not because you are good at talking about your beliefs. It may be quite irrational, but the fact is that, if you are recognized as being outstanding on one thing, you will be listened to on all sorts of subjects in no way related to it... and so, if you are going to be really effective [for your cause] in your place of work, you must set out to be the best man at your job.
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Douglas Arnold Hyde (Dedication and Leadership)
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Pick the paper off the floor, throw it in the trash, study—even if you think you already know the subject, say thank you for an act of kindness, and be the support you want to receive. You want to become a master of the mundane, making it easier to be a sorcerer of success.
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K. Abernathy Can You Action Past Your Devil's Advocate
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Mastering speed is the essence of war. Take advantage of a large enemy’s inability to keep up. Use a philosophy of avoiding difficult situations. Attack the area where he doesn’t expect you.” ~Sun Tzu the Art of War1 In handling dynamic encounters, the phrase "time criticality" is often discussed. In this discussion there is often a miss-conception that to put time on your side, you must force the issue or, force the subject into action and always advance your position by moving forward. Speed is the essence of conflict, but speed does not always mean moving fast physically. It means preparing so you are in a position of advantage, which gives you time, hence speed.
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Fred Leland (Adaptive Leadership Handbook - Law Enforcement & Security)
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EXPERIENCE empowers or disempowers..
All 'experience' however, is SUBJECTIVE!
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Abha Maryada Banerjee (Nucleus - Power Women: Lead from the Core)