Valid Leadership Quotes

Most of the time, we see only what we want to see, or what others tell us to see, instead of really investigate to see what is really there. We embrace illusions only because we are presented with the illusion that they are embraced by the majority. When in truth, they only become popular because they are pounded at us by the media with such an intensity and high level of repetition that its mere force disguises lies and truths. And like obedient schoolchildren, we do not question their validity and swallow everything up like medicine. Why? Because since the earliest days of our youth, we have been conditioned to accept that the direction of the herd, and authority anywhere — is always right.

People need to remember that a man who is deceptive deceives by hiding that he is deceptive. He is not going to openly validate that he is deceiving you because his aim is to deceive you.

Although there is validity, I believe, in leaving a church where the leadership consistently presents false doctrine, I also see people who are offended by one remark from the pulpit or one perceived hurt flit to the next church to look for fault there. It's like the cartoon I saw of a skeleton dressed in women's clothes and sitting on a park bench; the caption read, 'Waiting for the perfect man.' There is no perfect church either.

In the era of globalization, everything is interconnected. A problem in one part of the world will definitely impact on other parts of the globe. Such phenomenon is also valid for defense and security context. A conflict in a state will bring implications in its neighboring countries or other countries extended in the same region. Therefore, collaborative efforts in tackling common defense and security problems are essentially required.

I state in my book Put Your Dream to the Test that the more valid reasons a person has to achieve their dream, the higher the odds are that they will. Valid reasons also increase the odds that a person will follow through with personal growth.

There are so many ways the fixed mindset creates groupthink. Leaders are seen as gods who never err. A group invests itself with special talents and powers. Leaders, to bolster their ego, suppress dissent. Or workers, seeking validation from leaders, fall into line behind them.

We know that negative reinforcement or punishment works well for behavior that should be eliminated. And we know from feedback theory that the best kind of feedback is descriptive because the client can then make the evaluation. These are valid guidelines but they don’t solve some of the subtle issues that can arise in the relationship.

There are many instances in history of people who allow their skepticism to cut the nerve of moral effort, and there are numerous people, on the other hand, who are fierce crusaders at the price of fanaticism. In his political commitments the fanatic makes claims for his particular case which cannot be validated by either a transcendent Providence or a neutral posterity.

Now, everybody is searching for managers with a little dose of leadership (not too much but it should be clearly there). Some “bosses” say that their employees either have leadership skills or they don’t, that this is an innate ability. Others think leadership can be learned and they train their employees through various courses on this topic. The main aspect to observe here is that the majority of employers do not train or want their employees to become “distinct” leaders and follow their path in the world. They want and train them to stay in their company and successfully deliver more to the company. Of course, the rule is validated by exceptions, so there are companies that give birth, from their environment and trainings, to great and very influential leaders.

You “burn” your way into the mind by narrowing the focus to a single word or concept. It’s the ultimate marketing sacrifice. Federal Express was able to put the word overnight into the minds of its prospects because it sacrificed its product line and focused on overnight package delivery only. In a way, the law of leadership—it’s better to be first than to be better—enables the first brand or company to own a word in the mind of the prospect. But the word the leader owns is so simple that it’s invisible. The leader owns the word that stands for the category. For example, IBM owns computer. This is another way of saying that the brand becomes a generic name for the category. “We need an IBM machine.” Is there any doubt that a computer is being requested? You can also test the validity of a leadership claim by a word association test. If the given words are computer, copier, chocolate bar, and cola, the four most associated words are IBM, Xerox, Hershey’s, and Coke. An astute leader will go one step further to solidify its position. Heinz owns the word ketchup. But Heinz went on to isolate the most important ketchup attribute. “Slowest ketchup in the West” is how the company

The cause of this state of affair is undoubtedly complex. In my Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed (2011), I argue that the challenge to truth comes from three complementary sources: (l) increased knowledge about the wide range of cultures around the globe, many of which hold apparently incompatible views about the world; (2) the postmodern critique of such traditional notions as truth, according to which claims to truth are seen as simple assertions of power; and (3) the human tendency, particularly during adolescence and early adulthood, to adopt relativistic stances (“you’ve got the right to your opinion, just like I have the right to my opinion”). Whatever the relative contributions of these and other factors, it seems clear that leadership becomes more difficult when everyone’s story is considered equally valid, independent of corroborating evidence.

As the human species flirts with its own self-extinction, whether through weapons of mass destruction or environmental degradation, the world urgently needs this global institution to be rational, historically minded, pluralistically respectful, committed to peace, a tribune of justice, and a champion of the equality of women. That Vatican II occurred at all is enough to validate, if not in belief in the Holy Spirit, the hope that this great institution can survive the temporary moral collapse of its leadership.

Insecure leaders are dangerous - to themselves, their followers, and the organizations they lead. That's because a leadership position becomes an amplifier of personal flaws. Whatever negative baggage you have in life only gets heavier when you're trying to lead others. Unsure leaders have several common traits: 1. They don't provide security for others - To become an effective leader, you need to make your followers feel good about themselves. 2. They take more from people than they give - Insecure people are on a continual quest for validation, acknowledgment, and love. Because of that, their focus is on finding security, not instilling it in others. 3. They continually limit their best people - Show me an insecure leader, and I'll show you someone who cannot genuinely celebrate victories. The leader might even take credit personally for the best work of the team. 4. They continually limit their organization - When followers are undermined and receive no recognition, they become discouraged and eventually stop performing at their potential. And when that happens, the entire organization suffers.

Yet the deepest and most enduring forms of cultural change nearly always occurs from the “top down.” In other words, the work of world-making and world-changing are, by and large, the work of elites: gatekeepers who provide creative direction and management within spheres of social life. Even where the impetus for change draws from popular agitation, it does not gain traction until it is embraced and propagated by elites. The reason for this, as I have said, is that culture is about how societies define reality—what is good, bad, right, wrong, real, unreal, important, unimportant, and so on. This capacity is not evenly distributed in a society, but is concentrated in certain institutions and among certain leadership groups who have a lopsided access to the means of cultural production. These elites operate in well-developed networks and powerful institutions. Over time, cultural innovation is translated and diffused. Deep-rooted cultural change tends to begin with those whose work is most conceptual and invisible and it moves through to those whose work is most concrete and visible. In a very crude formulation, the process begins with theorists who generate ideas and knowledge; moves to researchers who explore, revise, expand, and validate ideas; moves on to teachers and educators who pass those ideas on to others, then passes on to popularizers who simplify ideas and practitioners who apply those ideas. All of this, of course, transpires through networks and structures of cultural production. Cultural change is most enduring when it penetrates the structure of our imagination, frameworks of knowledge and discussion, the perception of everyday reality. This rarely if ever happens through grassroots political mobilization though grassroots mobilization can be a manifestation of deeper cultural transformation.

Endorsement of the ordination of women is not the final step in the process, however. If we look at the denominations that approved women’s ordination from 1956–1976, we find that several of them, such as the United Methodist Church and the United Presbyterian Church (now called the Presbyterian Church–USA), have large contingents pressing for (a) the endorsement of homosexual conduct as morally valid and (b) the approval of homosexual ordination. In fact, the Episcopal Church on August 5, 2003, approved the appointment of an openly homosexual bishop.16 In more liberal denominations such as these, a predictable sequence has been seen (though so far only the Episcopal Church has followed the sequence to point 7): 1. abandoning biblical inerrancy 2. endorsing the ordination of women 3. abandoning the Bible’s teaching on male headship in marriage 4. excluding clergy who are opposed to women’s ordination 5. approving homosexual conduct as morally valid in some cases 6. approving homosexual ordination 7. ordaining homosexuals to high leadership positions in the denomination17 I am not arguing that all egalitarians are liberals. Some denominations have approved women’s ordination for other reasons, such as a long historical tradition and a strong emphasis on gifting by the Holy Spirit as the primary requirement for ministry (as in the Assemblies of God), or because of the dominant influence of an egalitarian leader and a high priority on relating effectively to the culture (as in the Willow Creek Association). But it is unquestionable that theological liberalism leads to the endorsement of women’s ordination. While not all egalitarians are liberals, all liberals are egalitarians. There is no theologically liberal denomination or seminary in the United States today that opposes women’s ordination. Liberalism and the approval of women’s ordination go hand in hand.

When we’re trying to prove ourselves, we are our own biggest roadblocks to being powerful. How powerful can we be, after all, if we feel like we need to prove something? Because if we need to prove ourselves, then that means that we need someone else to validate our worth. Why put that in someone else’s hands? The more we try to prove, the less powerful we feel.

Rich helped me contemplate, create, and commit to a Leadership Constitution through the following guidance and focus: A constitution is an articulation of the core qualities that you are. It’s not the roles you play. It’s what you bring to the roles you play. A constitution is always expressed in the positive. There are no negative traits in a Leadership Constitution. If negative traits have found their way into your constitution, it’s a function of allowing the intellect to hijack the process. Don’t let it do that. A constitution is not aspirational. It’s not what you want or hope or strive to be “one day.” It’s who you are committed to being. In every moment. There are no qualifiers, mollifiers, softeners of any kind in a constitution. None. A constitution is not based on sentiment, past behavior, or even current behavior. Often, we have core attributes that we are not living true to. When this occurs, we experience suffering—or cause suffering for those around us. Consider that there are two valid ways to arrive at core attributes: the contemplative way—simply looking deep within and noticing—and through observing any area in which you experience suffering. Where we suffer can nearly always be traced back to a core attribute that our actions and behavior are not lining up with. A constitution is what you stand for. It’s the qualities that you are, that matter most to you, because you say so. It’s not merely what you think of yourself, and it has nothing to do with opinions you may have of yourself or judgments you may hold against yourself. It’s a bold, audacious statement of your core. A constitution, once articulated, is practiced through the act of declaring with witnesses who will hold you accountable. Rich

June Brought, a leadership collaborator of mine, works in corporate wellness for the successful women’s clothing company Eileen Fisher. The company has flourished since its founding in 1984, currently earning revenue of more than $300 million a year. What truly sets the company apart, however, is its early adoption of conscious capitalism and a sincere desire to enhance the lives of all its stakeholders. Eileen Fisher was one of the first clothing companies that insisted on using sustainable materials such as organic cotton, and implemented programs to reduce fabric and fiber waste. Eileen Fisher’s philanthropic efforts focus on business leadership grants to develop and benefit the careers of young women around the world. The company is also committed to enhancing the well-being of its own employees at every level, which is why June was hired. According to June, “Eileen Fisher is not just another company that claims to care about the well-being of its employees but really only cares about how they can contribute to the well-being of the bottom line. Eileen Fisher truly is concerned with its staff as human beings first.” One of the tools June uses to help individuals at Eileen Fisher and elsewhere find a healthy balance between life and work involves what she calls “completing your own circuit.” She believes it is essential that we plug into our own beings first in order to feel empowered, fulfilled, and complete. As June explains, when we outsource our power to a job, a romantic relationship, or any external condition, “we compromise our emotional welfare and risk having someone cut off our power.” She says that completing our own circuit involves a deep internal knowing that “we are fully charged and complete unto ourselves without any need for outside support or validation.

A star business is the leader in its market niche To be the leader simply means that it is bigger intheniche than any other firm. We measure size by sales value (also known as revenues or turnover). If the venture has sales of $1 million and there is nobody whose sales in the same niche reach $1 million, then it is the leader. Note that ‘leadership’ is objectively defined by sales, and has nothing to do with competing claims about ‘being the best’ or being most highly rated by customers, which are difficult to judge and not as important anyway. The thing that matters most is how customers in the niche vote with their money. Has a question just popped up in your mind? ‘Ah,’ you may say, ‘but how do you define what the market niche is?’ That is indeed a profound question, and I will answer it with several examples throughout the book. It is possible to get the definition of the niche wrong - as I sometimes have. But the basic idea is very simple. For a niche to be a separate market, it must have different customers, different products or services and a different way of doing business from the main market or other market niches. Finally, the ranking of competitors is different in a valid market niche - the leader in the niche is different from the leader in the main market. If there is no difference in how competitors fare in the niche versus the main market, the niche is not really different.

You can't invalidate all and expect to be validated.

But in 1497, pressure from the Roman Church and Spain led the Portuguese crown to abandon this tolerance. Some seventy thousand Jews were forced into a bogus but nevertheless sacramentally valid baptism. In 1506, Lisbon saw its first pogrom, which left two thousand “converted” Jews dead. (Spain had been doing as much for two hundred years.) From then on, the intellectual and scientific life of Portugal descended into an abyss of bigotry, fanaticism, and purity of blood.* The descent was gradual. The Portuguese Inquisition was installed only in the 1540s and burned its first heretic in 1543; but it did not become grimly unrelenting until the 1580s, after the union of the Portuguese and Spanish crowns in the person of Philip II. In the meantime, the crypto-Jews, including Abraham Zacut and other astronomers, found life in Portugal dangerous enough to leave in droves. They took with them money, commercial know-how, connections, knowledge, and—even more serious—those immeasurable qualities of curiosity and dissent that are the leaven of thought. That was a loss, but in matters of intolerance, the persecutor’s greatest loss is self-inflicted. It is this process of self-diminution that gives persecution its durability, that makes it, not the event of the moment, or of the reign, but of lifetimes and centuries. By 1513, Portugal wanted for astronomers; by the 1520s, scientific leadership had gone. The country tried to create a new Christian astronomical and mathematical tradition but failed, not least because good astronomers found themselves suspected of Judaism.12 (Compare the suspicious response to doctors in Inquisition Spain.)

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!

The way leadership gurus try to demonstrate their legitimacy is not through their scientific knowledge or accomplishments but rather by achieving public notoriety—be it the requisite TED talks, blog posts, Twitter followers, or books filled with leadership advice that might or might not be valid and useful.

Braves win! Braves win!" is a much appreciated validation of the principles and policies that I have adopted, nurtured, and implemented both with the uniformed personnel and the club's administration throughout my tenure as general manager. ... It rewards the leadership concept of supporting the staff, providing them with a vision and with clear goals, and infusing them with the self-confidence and pride to execute that blueprint at a championship level. It smoothes over the missteps, the disappointments, the crises that we overcome together.

EXPERIMENT That our beliefs about the capability of others have a direct impact on their performance has been adequately demonstrated in a number of experiments from the field of education. In these tests teachers are told, wrongly, that a group of average pupils are either scholarship candidates or have learning difficulties. They teach a set curriculum to the group for a period of time. Subsequent academic tests show that the pupils’ results invariably reflect the false beliefs of their teachers about their ability. It is equally true that the performance of employees will reflect the beliefs of their managers. For example, Fred sees himself as having limited potential. He feels safe only when he operates well within his prescribed limit. This is like his shell. His manager will only trust him with tasks within that shell. The manager will give him task A, because he trusts Fred to do it and Fred is able to do it. The manager will not give him task B, because he sees this as beyond Fred’s capability. He sees only Fred’s performance, not his potential. If he gives the task to the more experienced Jane instead, which is expedient and understandable, the manager reinforces or validates Fred’s shell and increases its strength and thickness. He needs to do the opposite, to help Fred venture outside his shell, to support or coach him to success with task B. To use coaching successfully we have to adopt a far more optimistic view than usual of the dormant capability of all people. Pretending we are optimistic is insufficient because our genuine beliefs are conveyed in many subtle ways of which we are not aware.

Mission (if it is biblically informed and validated) means our committed participation as God's people, at God's invitation and command, in God's own mission within the history of God's world for the redemption of God's creation."4

he exuded those two most important of leadership characteristics: passion and certainty. Too bad people readily accepted that combination as a valid replacement for competence. History is littered with the fallen empires of kings, dictators, and fools who were passionate, certain, and wrong.

Ultimately, where the vision comes from is less important than ensuring that it is the correct one. As product management guru Rich Mironov says, “It’s not important to me who has the good idea, but it is my job to make sure it’s the best one, that it’s still validated, and that we have people who are going to pay for it. The process has to continually validate the vision. If we do that, I don’t care whose vision it is.

Charles Du designed NASA’s first iPhone app, an award winner and a huge hit with more than 10 million downloads. But he also faced challenges from NASA brass who tried to water down his vision for the app. In a guest blog for Aha!, he laid out a basic principle: Maintaining your product vision is just as important as getting buy-in for that vision. After I got buy-in for the NASA app, a project manager was assigned to our team . . . a project manager is not the same as a product manager. Since my project manager didn’t understand the difference between the two roles and had seniority over me, we fought many battles. The vision of the app was user-driven. So, I validated my product hypothesis by talking to users and looking at our website metrics — a user-centered design approach. The project manager took a different approach. She saw this app as an opportunity to get more resources for our local center . . . She was advocating for politics-centered design that was divorced from any customer conversations. To me, this is a clear case of why product vision should drive everything you do as a product manager. I had clearly communicated why the vision for this app would achieve NASA’s high-level goals. This allowed senior leadership to see that I was working to help grow the whole organization. And it prevented politics from entering the picture. . . . We ended up launching a pure product designed 100 percent for our users — and it was a huge success.11

Once you understand that self-leadership is the answer, the only answer, and that’s all there ever is to it, there is no turning back. Your excuses are no longer valid. They are no longer believable. You can’t fake your way to buying into them because your mentor, your inner guidance system, already knows the truth.

So while our ever-evolving opposition movement made some progress in drawing attention to the undemocratic reality of Putin’s Russia, we were in a losing position from the start. The Kremlin’s domination of the mass media and ruthless persecution of all opposition in civil society made it impossible to build any lasting momentum. Our mission was also sabotaged by democratic leaders embracing Putin on the world stage, providing him with the leadership credentials he so badly needed in the absence of valid elections in Russia. It is difficult to promote democratic reform when every television channel and every newspaper shows image after image of the leaders of the world’s most powerful democracies accepting a dictator as part of their family. It sends the message that either he isn’t really a dictator at all or that democracy and individual freedom are nothing more than the bargaining chips Putin and his ilk always say they are. In the end, it took the invasion of Ukraine to finally get the G7 (I always refused to call it the G8) to expel Putin’s Russia from the elite club of industrial democracies.

While Christians do have a general duty to be soft-hearted, forgiveness is dependent on repentance. To forgive in the absence of repentance is to validate sinful behaviour. And even when someone does genuinely repent, and forgiveness is appropriate, there should be no obligation to remain under their leadership – nor for them to remain in leadership.

Authentic leaders do not lead for the sake of validation. They are validated by the impact of their contribution.

The virtually static trench fronts tied down millions for months on end, creating a new collective consciousness of a separate society, a warrior group partially isolated from the rest of the nation and from normal experiences, bonded by a prolonged camaraderie and a new sense of collective identity, a consciousness made more deep and lasting by common suffering and self-sacrifice. This sense of collective identity and mission would survive the war and help to create a new sense of nationalist identity, mission, and purpose among many veterans. It produced the sense of a perceived new “civilian military class” that would play a special role of militance and leadership in postwar nationalism, and in the political endeavors of the 1920s and 1930s. It made concepts of “blood socialism” and “trenchocracy” valid in the thinking of hundreds of thousands of veterans.

dialogue is only possible when we can learn to distinguish feelings from opinions and recognize that the background or personality of a person is totally irrelevant to the validity of what he or she is saying.

Additionally, as identified by Tuckman (1965) and widely accepted by scholars who study team development and empirically validated by my own personal experience, all teams go through the following four stages: Forming – initial introductions and a honeymoon period of discovery. Storming – a period during which team members learn about each other and their various opinions, strengths and weaknesses. This period is usually accompanied by constructive conflict and arguments. This is normal and should be expected. It is vital for team members to express themselves or they will never get to the next stage. They could be vying for roles as the right people for each role is yet to be determined. Norming – after the constructive debates, team members adjust to each other and their roles which may be an outcome of the storming period. The rules of team engagement are established during this phase and the team is well on its way to the next stage of development. Performing – this is the coveted phase that every team which has successfully gone through the previous three phases get to. There is significant interdependence and trust between team members. Everyone knows who is covering for whom. Mentor/mentee relationships are well established and the team is a consistent winner.

And an Executive Business Review? An executive business review (EBR) should present information at a much higher level, with a focus on executive leadership. It is one of the most influential meetings you will have with your customer all year, yet it’s the one most organizations tend to forget. QBRs happen frequently, across the industry, but EBRs? Not so much. Less tactical and less operational than a QBR, an EBR is typically reserved for your customer’s executive leadership team because it’s a high-level review of the value your product is providing the customer. When you draft an EBR, you should be thinking along the lines of, Who is my stakeholder’s boss? How do I co-present to my stakeholder and their boss the value my product has offered and will continue to offer them? An EBR is a way to move up the value chain, promote your stakeholder’s brand inside their own company, and share wins with the executive leader. It’s a strategic meeting that should focus on reinforcing the value in your customer ROI. It should also validate the goals of the organization, because like you did with your QBRs, you’re building a partnership through open dialogue. The only difference is now you’re doing it at an executive level. EBRs should be scheduled twice a year. I typically recommend scheduling one at least three months before the customer’s renewal because if the meeting goes well, it may help move the renewal along faster. I have seen executives stop pushing on price when they’re negotiating terms, and I’ve even seen some CSMs contact a stakeholder’s executive directly to ask for their help. “We’re having trouble with this renewal. Can you step in and assist?” More often than not, the executive will call whoever they need to call and say, “Just get it done.” Plus, when you reach out and ask for help, you’re engaging executive-level advocates, which is always a good thing.

MINE-SETS ARE LONELY AND COSTLY.

We cannot change what we don’t acknowledge. We cannot conquer what we don’t confront. If we don’t deal with it, it is certain to deal with us. This is where many often get derailed, disabled, and eventually defeated.

To many playing the game of blame, lying in shame refusing to tame the flame of the lame, what is its name? (PRIDE)

DevOps requires potentially new cultural and management norms and changes in our technical practices and architecture. This requires a coalition that spans business leadership, Product Management, Development, QA, IT Operations, Information Security, and even Marketing, where many technology initiatives originate. When all these teams work together, we can create a safe system of work, enabling small teams to quickly and independently develop and validate code that can be safely deployed to customers. This results in maximizing developer productivity, organizational learning, high employee satisfaction, and the ability to win in the marketplace.

Unmasking a counterfeit mindset cannot and will not take place by merely going with the flow.

Challenging ourselves to learn is only half of the battle. Disciplining ourselves to live out what we learned is the other half.

I know time is limited and pain is unwanted, however time is required, and pain is inevitable.

In order for something to change, someone must change.

Although a measure of change is known and needed, it isn’t necessarily wanted.

My beliefs are those things I trust and place my confidence in.

Learning requires us to be both reachable and teachable. If I’m unable to reach you, I’m unable to teach you.

Status quo and mediocrity are not your friends, nor are they mine.

Value cannot always be measured by how loud one speaks or the prominence of their stage.

Could it be that the best way to help myself is to stop “Excusing Myself?” Only you and I know the answer.

I am convinced much of what is viewed as beneficial is far from essential. Yet, everything deemed essential will sooner or later prove to be beneficial.

One of the most healing things you can do is recognize where in your life you are your own poison. -Steve Maraboli

We can too easily become infatuated with the flashing lights, popularity adrenaline and sideline fan and foe voices.

Dreaming is not typically something we do after the remodeling has been completed.

Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway. – John Wayne

One of the benefits in making a bold move to initiate and facilitate change in your life is in knowing you are not alone.

When the sting of pride begins to register mentally or emotionally, it is often met with a deliberate denial intended to camouflage and avoid the guilt.

Our sacred routines have become ruts and our life default settings are rarely ever challenged or changed.

Attempting to minimize or excuse a poor conscious choice that produced unpleasant fruit will not cease mistakenly.

We must qualify our choices and reinforce the determination to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do.

Take a voluntary look in the mirror before it becomes mandatory. Do it willingly prior to it becoming necessary.

Remove the “cruise control” before you really do lose control.

Some things that appear to be fixed just may need to be broken.

Critical thinking is not always negative thinking, nor should it be quickly confused with a tone of arrogance or condemnation.

The moment when what is most familiar to you is contested, the safety net of justification comes to the rescue.

Becoming defensive without active evaluation is self-deflating and self-defeating.

Start be’leaving the old patterns and MINE-sets and boldly step into the new. I believe in you friend.

IF IT’S NOT BROKE, BREAK IT!

or foreign-relations policies, I usually offer no opinion. I don’t have enough valid information about those things to have an authoritative opinion. Ask me about some moral or ethical question, however, and that’s another matter. Why? Because I know what Scripture says about those things. I have authority for my opinions on such matters. And when given the opportunity, I always point to my source of authority. I don’t like giving mere opinion.

Authentic leaders do not lead for the sake of validation. They are validated by the impact of their contributions.

His followers, who are also typically his disciples, freely accept his leadership because they perceive him to be the possessor of extraordinary qualities or powers; and this “recognition” of his special qualification is seen by Weber as decisive for the validity of charisma.[

is necessary to remember that the issue of school segregation and the harm it inflicted on black children did not first come to the Court’s attention in the Brown litigation: blacks had been attacking the validity of these policies for 100 years. Yet, prior to Brown, black claims that segregated public schools were inferior had been met by orders requiring merely that facilities be made equal. What accounted, then, for the sudden shift in 1954 away from the separate but equal doctrine and towards a commitment to desegregation? The decision in Brown to break with the Court’s long-held position on these issues cannot be understood without some consideration of the decision’s value to whites, not simply those concerned about the immorality of racial inequality, but also those whites in policymaking positions able to see the economic and political advances at home and abroad that would follow abandonment of segregation. First, the decision helped to provide immediate credibility to America’s struggle with Communist countries to win the hearts and minds of emerging third world peoples. Advanced by lawyers for both the NAACP and the federal government, this point was not lost on the news media. Time magazine, for example, predicted that the international impact of Brown would prove scarcely less important than its effect on the education of black children: “In many countries, where U.S. prestige and leadership have been damaged by the fact of U.S. segregation, it will come as a timely reassertion of the basic American principle that ‘all men are created equal.’”5

More specifically, we follow leaders who connect us to a mission we believe in, who clarify what’s expected of us, who surround us with people who define excellence the same way we do, who value us for our strengths, who show us that our teammates will always be there for us, who diligently replay our winning plays, who challenge us to keep getting better, and who give us confidence in the future. This is not a list of qualities in a leader, but rather a set of feelings in a follower. When we say to ourselves that leadership is indeed a thing, because we know it when we see it, we’re not really seeing any definable characteristic of another human. What we are “seeing” is in fact our own feelings as a follower. As such, while we should not expect every good leader to share the same qualities or competencies, we can hold all good leaders accountable for creating these same feelings of followership in their teams. Indeed, we can use these feelings to help any particular leader know whether or not she is any good. Those eight items introduced in chapter 1 are a valid measure of a leader’s effectiveness. We need not dictate how each leader should behave, but we can define what all good leaders must create in their followers. And since we measure this by asking the followers to rate their own experiences, rather than rating the leader on a long list of abstract leader qualities, this measure of leader effectiveness is reliable. Leadership isn’t a thing, because it cannot be measured reliably. Followership is a thing, because it can.

(In diagnosing mental illness, all four diagnostic validators don’t have to be present; it is the preponderance of the evidence that counts. The more positive evidence there is, the more confident one can be in the diagnosis.)

The main mass-membership advocacy organizations of American Jewry — B’nai B’rith and its Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, the National Conference of Jewish Federations, and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations (a kind of steering group for the major organizations), to mention only a few — are not religious organizations but ethnic ones. It is not necessary to have any Jewish religious affiliation to be a member in good standing in these organizations, and their leaderships are composed mainly of people who are not religious or Jewishly learned Jews. We need not go into foundational texts and statements of purpose on the question of origins, for the answer is simple enough: organizations like B’nai B’rith and the American Jewish Committee were created to lobby for particular Jewish interests. … In time, these and most other Jewish organizations became explicitly or implicitly Zionist, and thereafter existed to one degree or another to support, first, a Jewish home in Palestine, and then, after 1948, the security and prosperity of the State of Israel. In other words, all these organizations have depended, and still depend, on the validity of their serving parochial Jewish ethnic interests that are simultaneously distinct from the broader American interest but not related directly to religion.

There is an answer to the age-old question of whether leaders are born or made. Obviously, some are born with natural leadership qualities, such as charisma, eloquence, sharp wit, a decisive mind, the willingness to accept risk when others might falter, or the ability to remain calm in chaotic, high-pressure situations. Others may not possess these qualities innately. But with a willingness to learn, with a humble attitude that seeks valid constructive criticism in order to improve, with disciplined practice and training, even those with less natural ability can develop into highly effective leaders. Others who were blessed with all the natural talent in the world will fail as leaders if they are not humble enough to own their mistakes, admit that they don’t have it all figured out, seek guidance, learn, and continuously grow.

As managers, we tend to focus on the problem at hand. What is the situation? What are the issues? What are the options? And so on. These are valid questions, but the coach’s instinct is to lead with a more fundamental one. Who was working on the problem? Was the right team in place? Did they have what they needed to succeed?

There is an answer to the age-old question of whether leaders are born or made. Obviously, some are born with natural leadership qualities, such as charisma, eloquence, sharp wit, a decisive mind, the willingness to accept risk when others might falter, or the ability to remain calm in chaotic, high-pressure situations. Others may not possess these qualities innately. But with a willingness to learn, with a humble attitude that seeks valid constructive criticism in order to improve, with disciplined practice and training, even those with less natural ability can develop into highly effective leaders. Others who were blessed with all the natural talent in the world will fail as leaders if they are not humble enough to own their mistakes, admit that they don’t have it all figured out, seek guidance, learn, and continuously grow. With a mind-set of Extreme Ownership, any person can develop into a highly effective leader.

Never sell your soul to buy their validation.

Pragmatically, there is an evident need for the continuation of many of the functions of the original apostles. This would include church planting, laying good foundations in churches, continuing to oversee those churches, appointing the leaders, giving ongoing fatherly care to leaders, and handling difficult questions that may arise from those churches. There are really only three ways for churches to carry out these functions: 1. Each church is free to act totally independently and to seek God’s mind for its own government and pastoral wisdom, without any help from outside, unless the church may choose to seek it at any particular time. When we started the church which I am still a part of, for example, we were so concerned to be ‘independent’ that we would not even join the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches, although we adopted their trust deed and constitution because that would prevent us being purely independent. We were at that time very proud of our ‘independence’! 2. Churches operate under some sort of structured and formal oversight, as in many denominations today, where local church leaders are appointed by and accountable to regional leadership, whether ‘bishops’, ‘superintendents’ or ‘overseers’. It is hard to justify this model from the pages of the New Testament, though we recognize that it developed very early in church history. Even the word episkopos, translated ‘bishop’ or ‘overseer’, which came to be used of those having wider authority and oversight over other leaders and churches, was used in the New Testament as a synonym for the local leaders or elders of a particular church. The three main forms of church government current in the institutional church are Episcopalianism (government by bishops), Presbyterianism (government by local elders) and Congregationalism (government by the church meeting). Each of these is only a partial reflection of the New Testament. Commenting on these forms of government without apostolic ministry, Phil Greenslade says, ‘We assert as our starting point what the other three viewpoints deny: that the apostolic role is as valid and vital today as ever before. This is to agree with the German charismatic theologian, Arnold Bittlinger, when he says “the New Testament nowhere suggests that the apostolic ministry was intended only for first-century Christians”.’39 3. We aim to imitate the New Testament practice of travelling ministries of apostles and prophets, with apostles having their own spheres of responsibility as a result of having planted and laid the foundations in the churches they oversee. Such ministries continue the connection with local churches as a result of fatherly relationships and not denominational election or appointment, recognizing that there will need to be new charismatically gifted and friendship-based relationships continuing into later generations. This is the model that the ‘New Apostolic Reformation’ (to use Peter Wagner’s phrase) is attempting to follow. Though mistakes have been made, including some quite serious ones involving controlling authority, and though those of us involved are still seeking to find our way with the Holy Spirit’s help, it seems to reflect more accurately the New Testament pattern and a present-day outworking of scriptures such as 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4. ‘Is the building finished? Is the Bride ready? Is the Body full-grown, are the saints completely equipped? Has the church attained its ordained unity and maturity? Only if the answer to these questions is “yes” can we dispense with apostolic ministry. But as long as the church is still growing up into Christ, who is its head, this ministry is needed. If the church of Jesus Christ is to grow faster than the twentieth century population explosion, which I assume to be God’s intention, then we will need to produce, recognize and use Pauline apostles.’40

Of the four validators of psychiatric diagnosis (symptoms, family history, course of illness, and treatment), psychobiographers focused on symptoms.