Surprising Leadership Quotes

It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.

Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

You're bored, aren't you.' 'I need constant distraction. Shall we go?' 'Uh, aren't you supposed to delegate responsibility or something? If you're not here, who's in charge?' Skulduggery looked around and pointed to a sorcerer at the far side of the cemetery. 'He is.' 'Who is he?' 'Don't know. He looks like leadership material, though, doesn't he?' 'Does he?' 'He's wearing a hat.' 'And that means he's a leader?' 'Leaders wear hats. It's to keep the rain off while we make important decisions. He'll do fine.' 'Shouldn't you tell him that he's in charge?' 'And spoil the surprise?

People of the hundred," he said, using an ancient Herrani phrase Arin was surprised he knew, "who leads you?" So many cried Arin's name that it no longer sounded like his name.

If you don’t know the men at your back by name, don’t be surprised if they won’t follow you into battle. On the other hand, don’t be surprised if they will, either, because there are countless other factors you must take into account. Leadership is a slippery commodity, not easily manufactured or understood.

If you are not taking the time to set your own goals, chances are pretty high someone else is doing it for you. So don't be surprised someday when you end up someplace you never hoped to be.

That's why I wanted to use Supper at Six to teach chemistry. Because when women understand chemistry, they begin to understand how things work." Roth looked confused. "I'm referring to atoms and molecules, Roth," she explained. "The real rules that govern the physical world. When women understand these basic concepts, they can begin to see the false limits that have been created for them." "You mean by men." "I mean by artificial cultural and religious policies that put men in the highly unnatural role of single-sex leadership. Even a basic understanding of chemistry reveals the danger of such a lopsided approach." "Well," he said, realizing he'd never seen it that way before, "I agree that society leaves much to be desired, but when it comes to religion, I tend to think it humbles us--teaches us our place in the world." "Really?" she said, surprised. "I think it lets us off the hook. I think it teachers us that nothing is really our fault; that something or someone else is pulling the strings; that ultimately, we're not to blame for the way things are; that to improve things, we should pray. But the truth is, we are very much responsible for the badness of the world. And we have the power to fix it.

Even Satan can quote scripture out of context why are we surprised when men do it.

Among men who rise to fame and leadership two types are recognizable-those who are born with a belief in themselves and those in whom it is a slow growth dependent on actual achievement. To men of the last type their own success is a constant surprise, and its fruits the more delicious, yet to be tested cautiously with a haunting sense of doubt whether it is not all a dream. In that doubt lies true modesty, not the sham of insincere self-depreciation but the modesty of "moderation," in the Greek sense. It

The enemy doesn't warn its target. Emergencies do not make appointments, and the greatest battles of life are often surprises.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

Find answers in your weakness and surprise in your strength and always remember the golden rule every failure has HOPES

The Sun Tzu School (which wrote the Art of War) surely never imagined that their antiwar, pro-empire treatise would become known and accepted after the fall of the first empire as a text on military tactics. Likewise, they would have been surprised to see the Ping-fa military metaphor—an inspired teaching device—come to be seen as the message and not the medium.

MY FIVE DOS FOR GETTING BACK INTO THE GAME: 1. Do expect defeat. It’s a given when the stakes are high and the competition is working ferociously to beat you. If you’re surprised when it happens, you’re dreaming; dreamers don’t last long. 2. Do force yourself to stop looking backward and dwelling on the professional “train wreck” you have just been in. It’s mental quicksand. 3. Do allow yourself appropriate recovery—grieving—time. You’ve been knocked senseless; give yourself a little time to recuperate. A keyword here is “little.” Don’t let it drag on. 4. Do tell yourself, “I am going to stand and fight again,” with the knowledge that often when things are at their worst you’re closer than you can imagine to success. Our Super Bowl victory arrived less than sixteen months after my “train wreck” in Miami. 5. Do begin planning for your next serious encounter. The smallest steps—plans—move you forward on the road to recovery. Focus on the fix. MY FIVE DON’TS: 1. Don’t ask, “Why me?” 2. Don’t expect sympathy. 3. Don’t bellyache. 4. Don’t keep accepting condolences. 5. Don’t blame others.

The overwhelming consensus is that the traditions contained within the epistle can confidently be traced to James the Just. That would make James’s epistle arguably one of the most important books in the New Testament. Because one sure way of uncovering what Jesus may have believed is to determine what his brother James believed. The first thing to note about James’s epistle is its passionate concern with the plight of the poor. This, in itself, is not surprising. The traditions all paint James as the champion of the destitute and dispossessed; it is how he earned his nickname, “the Just.” The Jerusalem assembly was founded by James upon the principle of service to the poor. There is even evidence to suggest that the first followers of Jesus who gathered under James’s leadership referred to themselves collectively as “the poor.

When surprise occurs, such as when the economy enters an unexpected recession or a conflict begins seemingly out the blue, the natural reaction is to immediately ask who made the “obvious” mistake. It is much easier to believe that our leaders are incompetent than to accept the less pleasant reality that ours is a world where uncertainty and surprise are the norm, not the exception.

Further, in the modern story, reality is that which is observable, measurable, and repeatable - the kinds of phenomena available, accessible, and verifiable to the five senses. Thus, reality comes to equal the scientific method. It should come as no surprise that in such a world the life of the spirit is ignored or marginalized (as well as a great many other nonmaterial things.) This view of life subsequently birthed in human beings a ravenous materialism as matters of the soul were ignored or reinterpreted within this tightly controlled version of reality. When the life of the spirit is ignored, people will seek to feed the hunger of a neglected soul with the only nourishment available: in our context, the consumptive acquisition of material goods.

When you accept a position of responsibility, don’t be surprised by the troubles, problems, disappointments, and misunderstandings that go with it. Such trials are the penalties of leadership. Far from being disheartened by hardship, regard it as a badge of honor. It is usually the best possible proof that you are on the right track.

To avoid surprises later, spend enough time to know people initially. Don't just ask the obvious. Go the extra mile... Be creative and unconventional...

Applying the right procedures and policies to asset management allows IT to create a realistic budget with few surprises, and keep best practices to adapt to “continuous changes.

Love is the surprising emotion that company builders cannot ignore.

Disloyal people, you don't know when they gona hit you with grave surprises and betrayals...

Trust that as you learn to learn about yourself, you’re developing skills that will catapult your leadership and make you invaluable to your organization and those you lead.

Leaders need to consider three types of hardwiring—Behaviors, Abilities, Motivations—that work together to describe the unique gifts, talents, and spin that you can bring to work.

Part of the pursuit of excellence involves eliminating as many surprises as possible because life is full of the unexpected.

USE EMOTIONS AS INFORMATION. Horses use emotion as information to engage surprisingly agile responses to environmental stimuli and relationship challenges: (a) Feel the emotion in its purest form (b) Get the message behind the emotion (c) Change something in response to the message (d) Go back to grazing. In other words, let the emotion go, and either get back on task or relax, so you can enjoy life fully. Horses don’t hang on to the story, endlessly ruminating over the details of uncomfortable situations -- from an October 30, 2013 article on the Intelligent Optimist magazine

Your hardwiring helps you discover your unique way of interacting with and making sense of the world. And it gives you perspective, an ability to see why other people seem to interpret work so differently.

We have created trouble for ourselves in organizations by confusing control with order. This is no surprise, given that for most of its written history, leadership has been defined in terms of its control functions.

At some point, you’ll stop seeing pain as the enemy and make peace with it. Like Paul, you’ll see pain as a surprising source of strength. God’s power, Paul learned, “is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Real growth comes only after the dark night of the soul, when they feel they don’t have what it takes and choose to persist, to reflect on themselves, learn from their mistakes, and struggle to apply what they’ve learned.

And as Donald Capps so aptly points out, "Since our churches have taken on many of the characteristics of bureaucracies, it is not surprising that clergy are sometimes rewarded, not punished for their narcissistic behaviors.

Industries don’t die by surprise. It’s not as if you didn’t know it was coming. It’s not as if you didn’t know whom to call (or hire). What was missing was leadership—an individual (a heretic) ready to describe the future and build the coalitions necessary to get there. This isn’t about having a great idea (it almost never is). The great ideas are out there, for free, on your neighborhood blog. Nope, this is about taking initiative and making things happen.

A definite pessimist believes the future can be known, but since it will be bleak, he must prepare for it. Perhaps surprisingly, China is probably the most definitely pessimistic place in the world today. When Americans see the Chinese economy grow ferociously fast (10% per year since 2000), we imagine a confident country mastering its future. But that’s because Americans are still optimists, and we project our optimism onto China. From China’s viewpoint, economic growth cannot come fast enough. Every other country is afraid that China is going to take over the world; China is the only country afraid that it won’t. China can grow so fast only because its starting base is so low. The easiest way for China to grow is to relentlessly copy what has already worked in the West. And that’s exactly what it’s doing: executing definite plans by burning ever more coal to build ever more factories and skyscrapers. But with a huge population pushing resource prices higher, there’s no way Chinese living standards can ever actually catch up to those of the richest countries, and the Chinese know it. This is why the Chinese leadership is obsessed with the way in which things threaten to get worse. Every senior Chinese leader experienced famine as a child, so when the Politburo looks to the future, disaster is not an abstraction. The Chinese public, too, knows that winter is coming. Outsiders are fascinated by the great fortunes being made inside China, but they pay less attention to the wealthy Chinese trying hard to get their money out of the country. Poorer Chinese just save everything they can and hope it will be enough. Every class of people in China takes the future deadly seriously.

She committed her energies to the Labour Party in 1944 but expressed disappointment with its leaders, complaining to David Hicks in May of ‘the usual lack of unity and intelligent leadership on the left’. To her surprise and delight, however, the Labour Party swept to victory in July 1945.

The army leadership, taking these wishes of Hitler on board and also bearing in mind the outcome of the war games, had already adjusted its strategic thinking when, on 18 February, Hitler spoke of the favourable impression he had gained of Manstein’s plan the day before.42 The die was now cast. By chance, the basic thoughts of the amateur had coincided with the brilliantly unorthodox planning of the professional strategist. Further refined by the OKH, the Manstein plan gave Hitler what he wanted: a surprise assault in the most unexpected area which, though not without risk, had the boldness of genius. The

Economist Henry Siu said, “People who switch jobs more frequently early in their careers tend to have higher wages and incomes in their prime-working years. Job-hopping is actually correlated with higher incomes, because people have found better matches—their true calling.” And changing roles is far more likely to get you to a leadership position:

When you get obsessed about yourself and remain busy in promoting yourself, you will quickly learn that people forgot about you the moment you were out of their sight. On the other hand, when you put other’s interest in your heart and give your best to serve them wholeheartedly, prepare to be surprised that you earned a special and lasting place in their heart.

You'd be surprised how many times what you believe warrants criticism of another person is actually an opportunity for you to gain new understanding of a broader issue - and you can then use that new understanding to improve the business. Go in seeking understanding rather than seeking to condemn someone and it could lead to a breakthrough moment for all involved.

In abdicating responsibility throughout God's kingdom at large, Christians have created a cultural vacuum of labor, influence, and leadership which the ungodly have come in to fill. The fact of the matter is, someone is going to exercise rulership in the earth. If not the godly, then the ungodly. If the righteous retreat completely, they have no reason to be surprised when they wake up one day to find their inheritance usurped by those who do not know God.

We were surprised, shocked really, to discover the type of leadership required for turning a good company into a great one. Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.

Differentiation is the courage to lead people to a difficult place while still being deeply connected. Connected to yourself and your conviction, connected to the people you are leading, and remaining nonanxious in the face of anxious responses. It is the ability to walk into an anxious situation and lead people into a new reality while maintaining caring connection to them even when they are sabotaging your efforts. Jesus, not surprisingly, is a model of differentiated leadership.

Among men who rise to fame and leadership two types are recognizable—those who are born with a belief in themselves and those in whom it is a slow growth dependent on actual achievement. To the men of the last type their own success is a constant surprise, and its fruits the more delicious, yet to be tested cautiously with a haunting sense of doubt whether it is not all a dream. In that doubt lies true modesty, not the sham of insincere self-depreciation but the modesty of “moderation,” in the Greek sense. It is poise, not pose.

In the conventional war, the aggressor who has prepared for it within the confines of his national territory, channeling his resources into the preparation, has much to gain by attacking suddenly with all his forces. The transition from peace to war is as abrupt as the state of the art allows; the first shock may be decisive. This is hardly possible in the revolutionary war because the aggressor-the insurgent-lacks sufficient strength at the outset. Indeed, years may sometimes pass before he has built up significant political, let alone military, power. So there is usually little or no first shock, little or no surprise, no possibility of an early decisive battle. In fact, the insurgent has no interest in producing a shock until he feels fully able to withstand the enemy's expected reaction. By delaying the moment when the insurgency appears as a serious challenge to the counterinsurgent, the insurgent delays the reaction. The delay may be further prolonged by exploiting the fact that the population realizes the danger even later than the counterinsurgent leadership.

What interested these gnostics far more than past events attributed to the “historical Jesus” was the possibility of encountering the risen Christ in the present.49 The Gospel of Mary illustrates the contrast between orthodox and gnostic viewpoints. The account recalls what Mark relates: Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene … She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.50 As the Gospel of Mary opens, the disciples are mourning Jesus’ death and terrified for their own lives. Then Mary Magdalene stands up to encourage them, recalling Christ’s continual presence with them: “Do not weep, and do not grieve, and do not doubt; for his grace will be with you completely, and will protect you.”51 Peter invites Mary to “tell us the words of the Savior which you remember.”52 But to Peter’s surprise, Mary does not tell anecdotes from the past; instead, she explains that she has just seen the Lord in a vision received through the mind, and she goes on to tell what he revealed to her. When Mary finishes, she fell silent, since it was to this point that the Savior had spoken with her. But Andrew answered and said to the brethren, “Say what you will about what she has said. I, at least, do not believe that the Savior has said this. For certainly these teachings are strange ideas!”53 Peter agrees with Andrew, ridiculing the idea that Mary actually saw the Lord in her vision. Then, the story continues, Mary wept and said to Peter, “My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I thought this up myself in my heart? Do you think I am lying about the Savior?” Levi answered and said to Peter, “Peter, you have always been hot-tempered … If the Savior made her worthy, who are you to reject her?”54 Finally Mary, vindicated, joins the other apostles as they go out to preach. Peter, apparently representing the orthodox position, looks to past events, suspicious of those who “see the Lord” in visions: Mary, representing the gnostic, claims to experience his continuing presence.55 These gnostics recognized that their theory, like the orthodox one, bore political implications. It suggests that whoever “sees the Lord” through inner vision can claim that his or her own authority equals, or surpasses, that of the Twelve—and of their successors. Consider the political implications of the Gospel of Mary: Peter and Andrew, here representing the leaders of the orthodox group, accuse Mary—the gnostic—of pretending to have seen the Lord in order to justify the strange ideas, fictions, and lies she invents and attributes to divine inspiration. Mary lacks the proper credentials for leadership, from the orthodox viewpoint: she is not one of the “twelve.” But as Mary stands up to Peter, so the gnostics who take her as their prototype challenge the authority of those priests and bishops who claim to be Peter’s successors.

One of Sherman’s biographers summarized the man and his unique accomplishments in a remarkable passage. It is why he serves as our model in this phase of our ascent. Among men who rise to fame and leadership two types are recognizable—those who are born with a belief in themselves and those in whom it is a slow growth dependent on actual achievement. To the men of the last type their own success is a constant surprise, and its fruits the more delicious, yet to be tested cautiously with a haunting sense of doubt whether it is not all a dream. In that doubt lies true modesty, not the sham of insincere self-depreciation but the modesty of “moderation,” in the Greek sense. It is poise, not pose.

A group of pastors was attending a conference at our church, and at the end of the first morning session, they headed to the fellowship center for lunch. Several minutes later I followed, expecting that they would already be seated. Much to my surprise, all one hundred fifty of them were lined up outside the door. Then I saw why. At the head of the line stood Joel, my then six-year-old, with both hands raised, giving orders. “It will be a couple more minutes and then they’ll be ready for you!” Joel had no clue what was going on, but he gave directions with the greatest of confidence and these pastors did as they were told. Confidence is contagious even if it’s the confidence of a six-year-old. The

Spontaneous order is self-contradictory. Spontaneity connotes the ebullition of surprises. It is highly entropic and disorderly. It is entrepreneurial and complex. Order connotes predictability and equilibrium. It is what is not spontaneous. It includes moral codes, constitutional restraints, personal disciplines, educational integrity, predictable laws, reliable courts, stable money, trustworthy finance, strong families, dependable defense, and police powers. Order requires political guidance, sovereignty, and leadership. It normally entails religious beliefs. The entire saga of the history of the West conveys the courage and sacrifice necessary to enforce and defend these values against their enemies.

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

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.

It will place a high value on communal life, more open leadership structures, and the contribution of all the people of God. It will be radical in its attempts to embrace biblical mandates for the life of locally based faith communities without feeling as though it has to reconstruct the first-century church in every detail. We believe the missional church will be adventurous, playful, and surprising. Leonard Sweet has borrowed the term “chaordic” to describe the missional church’s inclination toward chaos and improvisation within the constraints of broadly held biblical values. It will gather for sensual-experiential-participatory worship and be deeply concerned for matters of justice-seeking and mercy-bringing. It will strive for a type of unity-in-diversity as it celebrates individual differences and values uniqueness, while also placing a high premium on community.

There were also plenty of times when I saw a player out of the corner of my eye who came as a complete, but pleasant, surprise. In 2003 I had gone to watch a young Petr Čech play in France. Didier Drogba, whom I had not heard of, was playing in the same game. He was a dynamo – a strong, explosive striker with a true instinct for goal – though he ultimately slipped through our fingers. That didn’t happen with Ji-sung Park. I had gone to get the measure of Lyon’s Michael Essien in the Champions League in 2005 during their quarter-final ties with PSV Eindhoven, and saw this ceaseless bundle of energy buzz about the field like a cocker spaniel. It was Ji-sung Park. The following week I sent my brother, Martin, who was a scout for United, to watch him, to see what his eyes told him. They told him the same thing and we signed him. Ji-sung was one of those rare players who could always create space for himself.

That’s why I wanted to use Supper at Six to teach chemistry. Because when women understand chemistry, they begin to understand how things work.” Roth looked confused. “I’m referring to atoms and molecules, Roth,” she explained. “The real rules that govern the physical world. When women understand these basic concepts, they can begin to see the false limits that have been created for them.” “You mean by men.” “I mean by artificial cultural and religious policies that put men in the highly unnatural role of single-sex leadership. Even a basic understanding of chemistry reveals the danger of such a lopsided approach.” “Well,” he said, realizing he’d never seen it that way before, “I agree that society leaves much to be desired, but when it comes to religion, I tend to think it humbles us—teaches us our place in the world.” “Really?” she said, surprised. “I think it lets us off the hook. I think it teaches us that nothing is really our fault; that something or someone else is pulling the strings; that ultimately, we’re not to blame for the way things are; that to improve things, we should pray.

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.

The most intriguing correlations obtained by the Minnesota study were also among the most unexpected. Social and political attitudes between twins reared apart were just as concordant as those between twins reared together: liberals clustered with liberals, and orthodoxy was twinned with orthodoxy. Religiosity and faith were also strikingly concordant: twins were either both faithful or both nonreligious. Traditionalism, or “willingness to yield to authority,” was significantly correlated. So were characteristics such as “assertiveness, drive for leadership, and a taste for attention.” Other studies on identical twins continued to deepen the effect of genes on human personality and behavior. Novelty seeking and impulsiveness were found to have striking degrees of correlation. Experiences that one might have imagined as intensely personal were, in fact, shared between twins. “Empathy, altruism, sense of equity, love, trust, music, economic behavior, and even politics are partially hardwired.” As one startled observer wrote, “A surprisingly high genetic component was found in the ability to be enthralled by an esthetic experience such as listening to a symphonic concert.” Separated by geographic and economic continents, when two brothers, estranged at birth, were brought to tears by the same Chopin nocturne at night, they seemed to be responding to some subtle, common chord struck by their genomes.

Because when women understand chemistry, they begin to understand how things work.” Roth looked confused. “I’m referring to atoms and molecules, Roth,” she explained. “The real rules that govern the physical world. When women understand these basic concepts, they can begin to see the false limits that have been created for them.” “You mean by men.” “I mean by artificial cultural and religious policies that put men in the highly unnatural role of single-sex leadership. Even a basic understanding of chemistry reveals the danger of such a lopsided approach.” “Well,” he said, realizing he’d never seen it that way before, “I agree that society leaves much to be desired, but when it comes to religion, I tend to think it humbles us—teaches us our place in the world.” “Really?” she said, surprised. “I think it lets us off the hook. I think it teaches us that nothing is really our fault; that something or someone else is pulling the strings; that ultimately, we’re not to blame for the way things are; that to improve things, we should pray. But the truth is, we are very much responsible for the badness in the world. And we have the power to fix it.” “But surely you’re not suggesting that humans can fix the universe.” “I’m speaking of fixing us, Mr. Roth—our mistakes. Nature works on a higher intellectual plane. We can learn more, we can go further, but to accomplish this, we must throw open the doors. Too many brilliant minds are kept from scientific research thanks to ignorant biases like gender and race. It infuriates me and it should infuriate you. Science has big problems to solve: famine, disease, extinction. And those who purposefully close the door to others using self-serving, outdated cultural notions are not only dishonest, they’re knowingly lazy.

That’s why I wanted to use Supper at Six to teach chemistry. Because when women understand chemistry, they begin to understand how things work.” Roth looked confused. “I’m referring to atoms and molecules, Roth,” she explained. “The real rules that govern the physical world. When women understand these basic concepts, they can begin to see the false limits that have been created for them.” “You mean by men.” “I mean by artificial cultural and religious policies that put men in the highly unnatural role of single-sex leadership. Even a basic understanding of chemistry reveals the danger of such a lopsided approach.” “Well,” he said, realizing he’d never seen it that way before, “I agree that society leaves much to be desired, but when it comes to religion, I tend to think it humbles us—teaches us our place in the world.” “Really?” she said, surprised. “I think it lets us off the hook. I think it teaches us that nothing is really our fault; that something or someone else is pulling the strings; that ultimately, we’re not to blame for the way things are; that to improve things, we should pray. But the truth is, we are very much responsible for the badness in the world. And we have the power to fix it.” “But surely you’re not suggesting that humans can fix the universe.” “I’m speaking of fixing us, Mr. Roth—our mistakes. Nature works on a higher intellectual plane. We can learn more, we can go further, but to accomplish this, we must throw open the doors. Too many brilliant minds are kept from scientific research thanks to ignorant biases like gender and race. It infuriates me and it should infuriate you. Science has big problems to solve: famine, disease, extinction. And those who purposefully close the door to others using self-serving, outdated cultural notions are not only dishonest, they’re knowingly lazy. Hastings Research Institute is full of them.

investigations and reported the completion of significant investigations without charges. Anytime a special prosecutor is named to look into the activities of a presidential administration it is big news, and, predictably, my decision was not popular at the Bush White House. A week after the announcement, I substituted for the attorney general at a cabinet meeting with the president. By tradition, the secretaries of state and defense sit flanking the president at the Cabinet Room table in the West Wing of the White House. The secretary of the treasury and the attorney general sit across the table, flanking the vice president. That meant that, as the substitute for the attorney general, I was at Vice President Dick Cheney’s left shoulder. Me, the man who had just appointed a special prosecutor to investigate his friend and most senior and trusted adviser, Scooter Libby. As we waited for the president, I figured I should be polite. I turned to Cheney and said, “Mr. Vice President, I’m Jim Comey from Justice.” Without turning to face me, he said, “I know. I’ve seen you on TV.” Cheney then locked his gaze ahead, as if I weren’t there. We waited in silence for the president. My view of the Brooklyn Bridge felt very far away. I had assured Fitzgerald at the outset that this was likely a five- or six-month assignment. There was some work to do, but it would be a piece of cake. He reminded me of that many times over the next four years, as he was savagely attacked by the Republicans and right-leaning media as some kind of maniacal Captain Ahab, pursuing a case that was a loser from the beginning. Fitzgerald had done exactly as I expected once he took over. He investigated to understand just who in government had spoken with the press about the CIA employee and what they were thinking when they did so. After careful examination, he ended in a place that didn’t surprise me on Armitage and Rove. But the Libby part—admittedly, a major loose end when I gave him the case—

If there was any politician in America who reflected the Cold War and what it did to the country, it was Richard Nixon—the man and the era were made for each other. The anger and resentment that were a critical part of his temperament were not unlike the tensions running through the nation as its new anxieties grew. He himself seized on the anti-Communist issue earlier and more tenaciously than any other centrist politician in the country. In fact that was why he had been put on the ticket in the first place. His first congressional race in 1946, against a pleasant liberal incumbent named Jerry Voorhis, was marked by red-baiting so savage that it took Voorhis completely by surprise. Upon getting elected, Nixon wasted no time in asking for membership in the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was the committee member who first spotted the contradictions in Hiss’s seemingly impeccable case; in later years he was inclined to think of the case as one of his greatest victories, in which he had challenged and defeated a man who was not what he seemed, and represented the hated Eastern establishment. His career, though, was riddled with contradictions. Like many of his conservative colleagues, he had few reservations about implying that some fellow Americans, including perhaps the highest officials in the opposition party, were loyal to a hostile foreign power and willing to betray their fellow citizens. Yet by the end of his career, he became the man who opened the door to normalized relations with China (perhaps, thought some critics, he was the only politician in America who could do that without being attacked by Richard Nixon), and he was a pal of both the Soviet and Chinese Communist leadership. If he later surprised many long-standing critics with his trips to Moscow and Peking, he had shown his genuine diplomatic skills much earlier in the way he balanced the demands of the warring factions within his own party. He never asked to be well liked or popular; he asked only to be accepted. There were many Republicans who hated him, particularly in California. Earl Warren feuded with him for years. Even Bill Knowland, the state’s senior senator and an old-fashioned reactionary, despised him. At the 1952 convention, Knowland had remained loyal to Warren despite Nixon’s attempts to help Eisenhower in the California delegation. When Knowland was asked to give a nominating speech for Nixon, he was not pleased: “I have to nominate the dirty son of a bitch,” he told friends. Nixon bridged the gap because his politics were never about ideology: They were the politics of self. Never popular with either wing, he managed to negotiate a delicate position acceptable to both. He did not bring warmth or friendship to the task; when he made attempts at these, he was, more often than not, stilted and artificial. Instead, he offered a stark choice: If you don’t like me, find someone who is closer to your position and who is also likely to win. If he tilted to either side, it was because that side seemed a little stronger at the moment or seemed to present a more formidable candidate with whom he had to deal. A classic example of this came early in 1960, when he told Barry Goldwater, the conservative Republican leader, that he would advocate a right-to-work plank at the convention; a few weeks later in a secret meeting with Nelson Rockefeller, the liberal Republican leader—then a more formidable national figure than Goldwater—Nixon not only reversed himself but agreed to call for its repeal under the Taft-Hartley act. “The man,” Goldwater noted of Nixon in his personal journal at the time, “is a two-fisted four-square liar.

There’s another level at which attention operates, this has to do with leadership, I argue that leaders need three kinds of focus, to be really effective, the first is an inner focus, let me tell you about a case that’s actually from the annals of neurology, there was a corporate lawyer, who unfortunately had a small prefrontal brain tumour, it was discovered early, operated successfully, after the surgery though it was a very puzzling picture, because he was absolutely as smart as he had been before, a very high IQ, no problem with attention or memory, but he couldn’t do his job anymore, he couldn’t do any job, in fact he ended up out of work, his wife left him, he lost his home, he’s living in his brother spare bedroom and in despair he went to see a famous neurologist named Antonio Damasio. Damasio specialized in the circuitry between the prefrontal area which is where we consciously pay attention to what matters now, where we make decisions, where we learn and the emotional centers in the midbrain, particularly the amygdala, which is our radar for danger, it triggers our strong emotions. They had cut the connection between the prefrontal area and emotional centers and Damasio at first was puzzled, he realized that this fellow on every neurological test was perfectly fine but something was wrong, then he got a clue, he asked the lawyer when should we have our next appointment and he realized the lawyer could give him the rational pros and cons of every hour for the next two weeks, but he didn’t know which is best. And Damasio says when we’re making a decision any decision, when to have the next appointment, should I leave my job for another one, what strategy should we follow, going into the future, should I marry this fellow compared to all the other fellows, those are decisions that require we draw on our entire life experience and the circuitry that collects that life experience is very base brain, it’s very ancient in the brain, and it has no direct connection to the part of the brain that thinks in words, it has very rich connectivity to the gastro- intestinal tract, to the gut, so we get a gut feeling, feels right, doesn’t feel right. Damasio calls them somatic markers, it’s a language of the body and the ability to tune into this is extremely important because this is valuable data too - they did a study of Californian entrepreneurs and asked them “how do you make your decisions?”, these are people who built a business from nothing to hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, and they more or less said the same strategy “I am a voracious gatherer of information, I want to see the numbers, but if it doesn’t feel right, I won’t go ahead with the deal”. They’re tuning into the gut feeling. I know someone, I grew up in farm region of California, the Central Valley and my high school had a rival high school in the next town and I met someone who went to the other high school, he was not a good student, he almost failed, came close to not graduating high school, he went to a two-year college, a community college, found his way into film, which he loved and got into a film school, in film school his student project caught the eye of a director, who asked him to become an assistant and he did so well at that the director arranged for him to direct his own film, someone else’s script, he did so well at that they let him direct a script that he had written and that film did surprisingly well, so the studio that financed that film said if you want to do another one, we will back you. And he, however, hated the way the studio edited the film, he felt he was a creative artist and they had butchered his art. He said I am gonna do the film on my own, I’m gonna finance it myself, everyone in the film business that he knew said this is a huge mistake, you shouldn’t do this, but he went ahead, then he ran out of money, had to go to eleven banks before he could get a loan, he managed to finish the film, you may have seen

Let’s try to get our folks reasoning together and reasoning with Congress and with the Cabinet! Reason with the leadership and with the President!…And you don’t need to start off by saying he is terrible—because he doesn’t think he’s terrible. Start talking about how you believe that he wants to do what’s right and how you believe this is right, and you’ll be surprised how many who want to do what’s right will try to help you.

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?

Surprisingly, this divergence continues despite the deep influence of Agile and Lean thinking on general—that is, non-IT—management. The disciplines continue to evolve separately even though corporate strategy is increasingly about both agility and IT strategy. The two worlds do not converge, even though IT leadership books advise CIOs to pull themselves closer to strategy formulation and claim a “seat at the table.” But while the other C-level executives around the table are discussing the need for agility, senior IT leaders, eager to gain or retain a seat at the strategy table, are pursuing the path of demonstrating the value of IT ... by locking in old-school practices that encourage rigidity.

crops. These “Midianites” or “Ishmaelites”, as they are called in the biblical record, would have made life impossible for the Israelites; but an Israelite man named Gideon, from the tribe of Manasseh, took leadership and led a small and mobile band against the invaders, took them by surprise, pursued them across the Jordan and killed many of them. The grateful tribesmen invited Gideon to become their king and to found a hereditary monarchy, but he refused.

Master the Art of 'Strategic Disengagement': This might sound counterintuitive, but sometimes the best thing a leader can do is step back. No, this isn't negligence; it's strategic disengagement. There are moments when your involvement can actually stifle your team's growth or limit their problem-solving capabilities. Recognize those moments and give your team the space to take ownership. This doesn’t mean you’re off the hook or aloof. You're still monitoring progress and available for guidance, but you’re not micromanaging every decision. You'll be surprised how often the best solutions come when you're not breathing down someone's neck.

What’s Slipping Under Your Radar? Word Count: 1096 Summary: Ben, a high-level leader in a multi-national firm, recently confessed that he felt like a bad father. That weekend he had messed up his Saturday daddy duties. When he took his son to soccer practice, Ben stayed for a while to support him. In the process, though, he forgot to take his daughter to her piano lesson. By the time they got to the piano teacher’s house, the next student was already playing. This extremely successful businessman felt like a failure. Keywords: Dr. Karen Otazo, Global Executive Coaching, Leadership Article Body: Ben, a high-level leader in a multi-national firm, recently confessed that he felt like a bad father. That weekend he had messed up his Saturday daddy duties. When he took his son to soccer practice, Ben stayed for a while to support him. In the process, though, he forgot to take his daughter to her piano lesson. By the time they got to the piano teacher’s house, the next student was already playing. This extremely successful businessman felt like a failure. At work, one of Ben’s greatest strengths is keeping his focus no matter what. As a strategic visionary, he keeps his eyes on the ongoing strategy, the high-profile projects and the high-level commitments of his group. Even on weekends Ben spends time on email, reading and writing so he can attend the many meetings in his busy work schedule. Since he is so good at multi-processing in his work environment, he assumed he could do that at home too. But when we talked, Ben was surprised to realize that he is missing a crucial skill: keeping people on his radar. Ben is great at holding tasks and strategies in the forefront of his mind, but he has trouble thinking of people and their priorities in the same way. To succeed at home, Ben needs to keep track of his family members’ needs in the same way he tracks key business commitments. He also needs to consider what’s on their radar screens. In my field of executive coaching, I keep every client on my radar screen by holding them in my thinking on a daily and weekly basis. That way, I can ask the right questions and remind them of what matters in their work lives. No matter what your field is, though, keeping people on your radar is essential. Consider Roger, who led a team of gung-ho sales people. His guys and gals loved working with him because his gut instincts were superb. He could look at most situations and immediately know how to make them work. His gut was great, almost a sixth sense. But when Sidney, one of his team of sales managers, wanted to move quickly to hire a new salesperson, Roger was busy. He was managing a new sales campaign and wrangling with marketing and headquarters bigwigs on how to position the company’s consumer products. Those projects were the only things on his radar screen. He didn’t realize that Sidney was counting on hiring someone fast. Roger reviewed the paperwork for the new hire. It was apparent to Roger that the prospective recruit didn’t have the right background for the role. He was too green in his experience with the senior people he’d be exposed to in the job. Roger saw that there would be political hassles down the road which would stymie someone without enough political savvy or experience with other parts of the organization. He wanted an insider or a seasoned outside hire with great political skills. To get the issue off his radar screen quickly, Roger told Human Resources to give the potential recruit a rejection letter. In his haste, he didn’t consult with Sidney first. It seemed obvious from the resume that this was the wrong person. Roger rushed off to deal with the top tasks on his radar screen. In the process, Sidney was hurt and became angry. Roger was taken by surprise since he thought he had done the right thing, but he could have seen this coming.

the tactics of divide and rule were fairly successful until the mid-1930s, the six-month general strike of 1936 constituted a popular and spontaneous explosion from the bottom up that took the British, the Zionists, and the elite Palestinian leadership by surprise, and that obliged the latter to put aside its divisions, at least nominally. The result was the creation of the Arab Higher Committee, which was set up to lead and represent the entire Arab majority, although the British never recognized the AHC as representative

perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.

Machine learning modeling and testing on sample data and going through the business user acceptance test can surprise you! And it will definitely make you to rethink on your feature selection and data sampling methods.

Lauer then asked the rest of the group: “Ladies, you complained to the U.S. Soccer Federation in the past. What’s been their response when you talk about these equal pay issues?” “You know, Matt, I’ve been on this team for a decade and a half,” said Hope Solo. “I’ve been through numerous CBA negotiations and, honestly, not much has changed. We continue to be told we should be grateful just to have the opportunity to play professional soccer and to be paid for doing it.” Officials from U.S. Soccer braced themselves for the appearance. The Today show had reached out to head of communications Neil Buethe the night before to get a statement. Lauer read the statement on air: “While we have not seen this complaint and can’t comment on the specifics of it, we are disappointed about this action. We have been a world leader in women’s soccer and are proud of the commitment we have made to building the women’s game in the United States over the past 30 years.” With the short heads-up, the federation arranged a conference call with a small, select group of trusted reporters to take place after the Today show aired. They sent information to those reporters showing how the men’s team brought in more revenue and more value to the federation. The men’s team had higher gate receipts and higher TV ratings, which made the men more attractive to sponsors, the federation said. Sunil Gulati—the U.S. Soccer president who had avoided some of the very public fights of his predecessors with the women’s national team—told reporters he was surprised by the filing. “I’m cordial with Sunil, and this wasn’t to spite him,” Lloyd says now. “We just knew we had to step up as a leadership group to make things better for the future. The only way that was going to happen was if we spoke our minds.” Meanwhile, the reaction to the Today show appearance was already spreading quickly on social media—and it was largely in the favor of the women. After all, a record audience had watched them win the World Cup not even a year earlier. Many fans surely assumed the women were being treated like champions. “The

The ugly truth about democracy is that it breeds anxiety. The responsibility for the government is shifted onto the body of the citizenry, who often lack the awareness and knowledge necessary to make informed decisions. They are tasked with electing their officials, they stress over it, they fall into despair when their side loses and act like their lives are over, and then when the government they elected inevitably does something they don’t want, they feel betrayed. There is no constancy in leadership, the policies vary wildly from one administration to the next, and one never knows where the nation shall be in ten years’ time. It is chaos.” Nice try. “Democracy protects the rights of an individual. Tyranny protects only the select few and not very well.” “Tyranny provides stability and rules. Follow the rules, and you will be safe,” she said. “At the cost of personal freedoms,” I said. “You would be surprised how many beings will gladly trade their freedom for safety.” “Not me,” I told her. This wasn’t the first time Caldenia and I had clashed over politics. I had seen a lot of the galaxy, and I’d witnessed the kind of horrors a tyrannical government brought. I would take chaos and freedom over stable shackles any day. Yes, it was messy and inefficient at times, but I could vote, I could run for office, I could criticize our government without fear of persecution, and that was priceless. Caldenia shrugged. “As paradoxical as it is, authoritarian displays tend to stabilize the public. The citizens find a strong, frightening leader reassuring. The tyrant is a monster, but it is their monster, and they take pride in their power.” “To be fair, the Supremacy practices a limited tyranny. The Parliament of the Supremacy is also an elected body,” Kosandion told me. “Sometimes they murder incompetent tyrants.” Caldenia shrugged. “Well, one has to throw the rabble a bone, Dina.” This was the strangest conversation. They were both talking to me without acknowledging the other person existed.

Aimee Mullins, the president of the Women's Sports Foundation, told me recently that 84% of women business leaders in this country say that they were athletes. I'm not surprised: athletics breeds a level of confidence and leadership that can be hard for girls to find elsewhere. Parents act like they want their daughters to be as strong as their sons, but they're much tougher on the boys. Sports, on the other hand, doesn't discriminate. There's no opportunity to cover up anything on the court: you either get it done, or you don't.

Hunter-gatherers are generally spared opportunistic leadership because the gap between rich and poor is so narrow—not surprising in economies that don't use currency or stockpile food. As soon as food can be monopolized, though, hunter-gatherers become just as unfair and stratified as everyone else. Archaeological evidence from across the Pacific Northwest indicates that some Native communities figured out how to restrict access to riverine salmon fisheries and quickly institute a powerful elite that built large houses, kept slaves, and passed wealth from generation to generation. But most Native peoples lived off the land in a way that could not be monopolized. A survey of several hundred tribes native to North America found that nearly 90 percent of the ones with no large food surpluses also had no political inequality. Conversely, social stratification was found in almost 90 percent of tribes that did stockpile food or monopolize its production.

She surprised me when she said, “Jaster, I know it’s hard to be left behind. The story of two fit, young warriors successfully completing leadership training is fine, but it’s nothing compared to your story. Don’t ever hang your head. Women like me want to see you succeed more than you know and more than we can tell you. You go, mamma. Now get the fuck out of my face.

Before scientists began researching the Leadership LAB’s technique, few studies supported the possibility that campaigns could change voters’ views on polarized, partisan, politically controversial issues, especially not with door-to-door canvassing. The academic literature in political science is aggressively pessimistic in this regard. In their book Get Out the Vote! , political scientists Donald Green and Alan Gerber examined more than one hundred published papers detailing attempts to influence voters’ opinions with mailouts, canvassing, phone calls, and television ads. Green and Gerber concluded it was highly unlikely any of them made any impact. Zero. In the rare instances in which a communication technique did alter people’s opinions, people tended to revert back to their original position within a few days after their social networks reasserted their influence. Fleischer paid Donald Green a visit at Columbia University and showed him what the LAB had been up to over the last few years. After seeing some of the videos, Green was astonished. “One day, Dave announced to me that he thought that he had had this insight,” Green told me. “He had found what was lying behind resistance to same-sex marriage and what kinds of things could encourage a change of opinion. I, being the skeptical sort that I am, said that you really need to test it rigorously before I, or anyone else, is going to believe you.

I am not surprise why we always disappointed. We worship to much a man than his work or actions. We forget that we only see what the man want us to see , Yet we still give him credit to what he pretends to be than on what or who he is. That is why we become a member of a member. We are not following protocols, but we are following the man. Our loyalty is not with the part but with the man of the party .

At the outbreak of the war, the Ukrainian military leadership might have been taken aback by the American capabilities. But their surprise didn’t last long. Even before the invasion, Ukraine was known as one of the most tech-savvy nations in Eastern Europe.

Emotional intelligence is born largely in the neurotransmitters of the brain’s limbic system, which governs feelings, impulses, and drives. Research indicates that the limbic system learns best through motivation, extended practice, and feedback. Compare this with the kind of learning that goes on in the neocortex, which governs analytical and technical ability. The neocortex grasps concepts and logic. It is the part of the brain that figures out how to use a computer or make a sales call by reading a book. Not surprisingly—but mistakenly—it is also the part of the brain targeted by most training programs aimed at enhancing emotional intelligence.

That’s why, when it comes to generating business ideas, customers come first. Before the product or service. Even before the idea. To build a business, you need someone to sell to. I can’t tell you how many times someone has emailed me saying, “What do you think of this business idea?” My auto-reply? “Have you asked what the customer thinks?” Steve Jobs said, “You have to start with the customer experience and work backwards.” Jeff Bezos, too, insists everyone at Amazon use a Customer First Approach to generate ideas and decide which to develop. The first of his sixteen Leadership Principles—Customer Obsession—starts by saying, “Leaders start with the customer and work backwards.” Working backwards prioritizes access to a group of customers (a group you probably belong to) and focuses on an aspect of a customer’s life that doesn’t work. If you do it this way, you’re assured of nailing the three Ws of business right from the start: Who you are selling to What problem you’re solving Where they are Your goals in this chapter are to use the Customer First Approach, to narrow in on three markets that you’ll target, to use your knowledge and experience of these markets to generate lots of ideas, and then to choose the three you think are the most likely to succeed. It’s the first step in the three-part Million Dollar Weekend process, in which you’ll learn to sell ideas to a small early adopter group before you’ve built the product (or spent a cent) in order to validate that there is a market that will pay. Repeat, fast and cheap, until it hits. Experiment, experiment, experiment—BOOM!

Good. I’ve come because the Orders request your help.” I blinked, refusing to allow myself to look surprised even though a wild hope leapt to my skin. This had to be good… didn’t it? “For what?” “Lord Savoi’s son in Tairn is refusing to abdicate power, even though his family has been removed from leadership. It’s merely a tantrum. But we need bodies to march upon the city gates and scare him out of his hideout, and I would like for you to join. It will not turn to bloodshed. He simply needs to be scared.” “The Guard doesn’t have enough people to do this as is?” Max cut in. “One Fragmented girl will make all the difference?” “One Fragmented girl and one ill-tempered, moderately famous Solarie, if you’re cooperative.

Albany is not an easy environment, and anyone who thinks they can enter as a bomb thrower is in for a real surprise. The leadership will chew up junior legislators who cannot play well and follow their hierarchy. The only candidates who have a chance to get anything are those who really know the players and manage to negotiate them through skill and loyalty.

It should come as no surprise that Berra, or any athlete who makes it to the highest levels of sports, was unusually determined. But the brand of perseverance Berra, Shelford, Puyol, and the other Tier One captains showed is peculiar, even among the elite. The main point of difference is that their natural ability seemed to bear no relation to the size of their accomplishments. Something enabled them to set aside their limitations and tune out the skepticism from their critics. But what was it? What allows some people to press on until they achieve mastery? —

In 1913, Ringelmann conducted an experiment in which he asked his students to pull on a rope, both individually and in groups, while he measured the force they exerted. The conventional view was that people in a group would have more power collectively than they did alone—in other words, adding people to the pulling group would have a multiplying effect on the force. But the results showed something surprising. While the force applied did grow with every new person added, the average force applied by each person fell. Rather than amplifying the power of individuals, the act of pulling as a team caused each person to pull less hard than they had when pulling alone. Later researchers coined a name for this phenomenon. They called it social loafing.

On the way out the door, I told Kathy Ruemmler how surprised I was by the interesting discussion, telling her, “I can’t believe someone with such a supple mind actually got elected president.

The Life of Lies. The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. Loyalty oaths. An us-versus-them worldview. Lying about things, large and small, in service to some warped code of loyalty. These rules and standards were hallmarks of the Mafia, but throughout my career I’d be surprised how often I’d find them applied outside of it.

Like many others, I was surprised when Donald Trump was elected president. I had assumed from media polling that Hillary Clinton was going to win. I have asked myself many times since if I was influenced by that assumption. I don’t know. Certainly not consciously, but I would be a fool to say it couldn’t have had an impact on me. It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in all polls.

You know, this is really hard,” he said to no one in particular. “Normally I can figure these things out, but this one is really hard.” I had two reactions to the comment, both of which I kept to myself. “No kidding” was the first reaction. A whole lot of smart people had been banging on this incredibly complicated issue for years. My second reaction was to be struck by the president’s breathtaking confidence. To my eye, at least, he wasn’t puffing or trying to show off. He also wasn’t being self-deprecating or sarcastic in the way President Bush might have. He really did believe that he, Barack Obama, could always figure out the hardest stuff. He couldn’t figure this one out, which surprised him. Wow, I thought. I really didn’t know what to make of it.

awkward televised hug from the new president of the United States. My curtain call worked. Until it didn’t. Still speaking in his usual stream-of-consciousness and free-association cadence, the president moved his eyes again, sweeping from left to right, toward me and my protective curtain. This time, I was not so lucky. The small eyes with the white shadows stopped on me. “Jim!” Trump exclaimed. The president called me forward. “He’s more famous than me.” Awesome. My wife Patrice has known me since I was nineteen. In the endless TV coverage of what felt to me like a thousand-yard walk across the Blue Room, back at our home she was watching TV and pointing at the screen: “That’s Jim’s ‘oh shit’ face.” Yes, it was. My inner voice was screaming: “How could he think this is a good idea? Isn’t he supposed to be the master of television? This is a complete disaster. And there is no fricking way I’m going to hug him.” The FBI and its director are not on anyone’s political team. The entire nightmare of the Clinton email investigation had been about protecting the integrity and independence of the FBI and the Department of Justice, about safeguarding the reservoir of trust and credibility. That Trump would appear to publicly thank me on his second day in office was a threat to the reservoir. Near the end of my thousand-yard walk, I extended my right hand to President Trump. This was going to be a handshake, nothing more. The president gripped my hand. Then he pulled it forward and down. There it was. He was going for the hug on national TV. I tightened the right side of my body, calling on years of side planks and dumbbell rows. He was not going to get a hug without being a whole lot stronger than he looked. He wasn’t. I thwarted the hug, but I got something worse in exchange. The president leaned in and put his mouth near my right ear. “I’m really looking forward to working with you,” he said. Unfortunately, because of the vantage point of the TV cameras, what many in the world, including my children, thought they saw was a kiss. The whole world “saw” Donald Trump kiss the man who some believed got him elected. Surely this couldn’t get any worse. President Trump made a motion as if to invite me to stand with him and the vice president and Joe Clancy. Backing away, I waved it off with a smile. “I’m not worthy,” my expression tried to say. “I’m not suicidal,” my inner voice said. Defeated and depressed, I retreated back to the far side of the room. The press was excused, and the police chiefs and directors started lining up for pictures with the president. They were very quiet. I made like I was getting in the back of the line and slipped out the side door, through the Green Room, into the hall, and down the stairs. On the way, I heard someone say the score from the Packers-Falcons game. Perfect. It is possible that I was reading too much into the usual Trump theatrics, but the episode left me worried. It was no surprise that President Trump behaved in a manner that was completely different from his predecessors—I couldn’t imagine Barack Obama or George W. Bush asking someone to come onstage like a contestant on The Price Is Right. What was distressing was what Trump symbolically seemed to be asking leaders of the law enforcement and national security agencies to do—to come forward and kiss the great man’s ring. To show their deference and loyalty. It was tremendously important that these leaders not do that—or be seen to even look like they were doing that. Trump either didn’t know that or didn’t care, though I’d spend the next several weeks quite memorably, and disastrously, trying to make this point to him and his staff.

I have spent a great deal of time looking back at 2016. And even though hindsight doesn’t always offer a perfect view, it offers a unique and valuable perspective. Like many others, I was surprised when Donald Trump was elected president. I had assumed from media polling that Hillary Clinton was going to win. I have asked myself many times since if I was influenced by that assumption. I don’t know. Certainly not consciously, but I would be a fool to say it couldn’t have had an impact on me. It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in all polls. But I don’t know.

I was surprised. Maybe it was because I had become so hardened to the tribal loyalties of Washington, D.C., that it was difficult to believe a Democrat would choose someone who had been a political appointee of his Republican predecessor for such an important post. I also was on record as having financially contributed to President Obama’s political opponents.

spend more time comforting and hugging infant girls and more time watching infant boys play by themselves.22 Other cultural messages are more blatant. Gymboree once sold onesies proclaiming “Smart like Daddy” for boys and “Pretty like Mommy” for girls.23 The same year, J. C. Penney marketed a T-shirt to teenage girls that bragged, “I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me.”24 These things did not happen in 1951. They happened in 2011. Even worse, the messages sent to girls can move beyond encouraging superficial traits and veer into explicitly discouraging leadership. When a girl tries to lead, she is often labeled bossy. Boys are seldom called bossy because a boy taking the role of a boss does not surprise or offend. As someone who was called this for much of my childhood, I know that it is not a compliment. The stories of my childhood bossiness are told (and retold) with great amusement. Apparently, when I was in elementary school, I taught my younger siblings, David and Michelle, to follow me around, listen to my monologues, and scream the word “Right!” when I concluded. I was the eldest of the neighborhood children and allegedly spent my time organizing shows that I could direct and clubs that I could run. People laugh at these accounts, but to this day I always feel slightly ashamed of my behavior

If we are going to make any sense out of all this confusion around us, we have to find a way to organize it in our minds, so that we can start to understand what is actually happening in the world and then try to do something about it. My way of doing this is to accept that there are never any simple or right answers to life, that life is full of contradictions and surprises, that it is, in fact, full of paradoxes. But if we can learn to understand and accept these paradoxes, then I believe that we can eventually find pathways through them. We can live with them and manage them.

If Xi personally accepts Maoism, we should not be surprised he believes his Maoist campaign is popular across Chinese society. “Today’s Chinese leadership—under pressure from rising expectations, social dislocation, and popular discontent—again finds itself trying to bridge a credibility gap with the Chinese public,” write Evan Feigenbaum and Damien Ma in Foreign Affairs.

Though I am not pleased with the responses regarding another factor in leadership development, integrity demands that I report it. Only three out of ten of those we interviewed indicated that college or seminary training positively impacted their leadership development. And four out of ten told us the influence was slight or not a factor at all.

As Jesus said, our chief purpose and mission in life is not to defend and protect our own rights, privileges, and comforts. Rather, our chief purpose and mission is to deny ourselves daily, take up a cross, and follow Jesus—even to the death if called upon to do so—all the while taking every opportunity to surprise our neighbors, especially those who do not believe as we do, with a life-giving, otherworldly love.

The additional R is that of resistance. When you bring in changes there is opposition from those who do not want to have change. This is to be expected, and yet we continue to be surprised by this resistance when it occurs.

Have you noticed how prejudice still exists today? For instance, now they challenge famous people for their past achievements: People like Christopher Columbus and now even Vince Lombardi. Nothing surprises me. I never grew-up with prejudices against anyone. I don't care what color you are or where you came from. This sort of stuff to me never made sense. You see I grew up in an "educated family." Education teaches you not to be so ignorant.

The fraternity’s leadership did a membership review, interviewing every member and weeding out any brothers who were deemed unfit to be a part of the house. Evan and Reggie were picked as two bad apples and kicked out of the fraternity. Reggie’s expulsion came as no surprise to anyone who’d been paying attention. He was known principally for getting wasted, breaking things, and leaving a mess in the kitchen. His room, which reeked of weed and tobacco, was filled with cups and plates from the house’s kitchen that he hadn’t bothered to return. He never showed up for house meetings or lent a hand on house cleans or party setups. Although he was very book smart and super friendly to everyone, he was a downright nuisance to live with. Evan’s case was not so clear-cut—ask ten people why he got kicked out and you’ll get ten different answers. Some say he was a willing scapegoat, volunteering to be kicked out because he knew he wouldn’t have the house for his senior year anyway. Others say he was scapegoated because he had angered younger guys by pushing for parties while the house was on probation. Others say Evan deserved to be kicked out because he didn’t want to fight hard enough get the house back, and he had been taking too cavalier an attitude toward the trouble the fraternity faced. No matter the reason, Evan was out. Guys in the fraternity blamed him for their house being taken away. Friends who he thought would have his back didn’t. Bad news came in threes for Evan. He had already lost Future Freshman. He lost the fraternity. Then, his girlfriend Lily told him she’d had enough and dumped him after two-plus years of dating.

The Atlanta International Airport, power outage of 2017, its economic impact in terms of losses and inconveniences to the travelling public with more than 1,000 flights grounded just days before the start of the Christmas travel rush, was a good lesson. Not, to mention a reminder of the importance of Business Continuity Planning-BCP to aviation as an industry. What is surprising is, nobody seems to have learned anything from it. BCP is still where it was before the debacle, largely unheard off since the international sectoral leadership, as well as airports continue to feign selective amnesia, the regulators- CAA’s are even worse off, as many pretend to have never, heard of it, since the industrial gospel is yet to begin propagating for it !

When you get obsessed about yourself and remain busy in promoting yourself, you will quickly learn to that people forgot about you the moment you were out of their sight. On the other hand, when you put other’s interest in your heart and give your best to serve them wholeheartedly, prepare to be surprised that you earned a special and lasting place in their heart.

The ability of the Malay political leadership through UMNO to mobilize Malay public opinion caught the British by surprise. A people who only a decade earlier had seemed docile and apathetic were suddenly making their views known through mass demonstrations. The strength and emotion of the Malay reaction convinced the British that they had miscalculated. The British sat down with the Malay political leadership to come up with an alternative to the Malayan Union.