Helping Leaders Lead
Advancement—improvement in condition—is the order of things in a society of equals. As labor is the common burden of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the burden on to the shoulders of others is the great durable curse of the race.
~ Abraham Lincoln fragment; written circa July 1854. Edited by Meg Distinti, Leadership Lessons of Abraham Lincoln
Model the Way.
Titles are granted, but it’s your behavior that wins you respect. As Tom Brack, with Europe’s SmartTeam AG, told us, “Leading means you have to be a good example, and live what you say.” This sentiment was shared across all the cases that we collected. Exemplary leaders know that if they want to gain commitment and achieve the highest standards, they must be models of the behavior they expect of others. Leaders model the way.
~ James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, The Leadership Challenge
Facing Reality.
In Leadership Is an Art, Max Depree writes, “The leader’s first job is to define reality. The last is to say thank you.” Before you can lead your organization through a crisis, you have to acknowledge that you are indeed in one. Next, you have to get everyone else to acknowledge it as well. Only then can you define the problems accurately and develop plans to deal with them.
Why is this so difficult? Leaders often go into denial about the urgency and severity of the challenges they are facing. Or they tend to blame external events, or organizations for their problems. Without accepting that the problem is theirs to fix, they cannot understand what they are dealing with.
Often the hardest part is to acknowledge their responsibility, they may face significant resistance from their organizations in solving it because people have great difficulty in admitting their mistakes. This is why crises requires so much skill on the leaders’ part.
~ Bill George, 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis
Good attitudes among players do not guarantee a team’s success, but bad attitudes guarantee its failure. The following five truths about attitudes clarify how they affect teamwork and a leader’s team:
~ John C. Maxwell, Attitude 101
A person who can wait: It marks a great heart, endowed with patience, never to be in undue haste or excited. Be first the master of yourself, and then you will be the master of others. One must journey far through time to get to the core of anything. A prudent waiting brings season to accomplishment and ripeness to what is hidden. The crunch of time accomplishes more than the iron club of Hercules. Even God does not tame with a whip, but with time. A great truth this: Time, and I against any two. Fortune herself crowns patience with the grandest of garlands.
~ Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom
Leadership Can Be Learned
There has been substantial debate as to whether leaders are born or made. Another debate has asked whether leaders display any particular character traits that predispose them to leadership. Leadership is taught in institutions as diverse as teachers’ colleges and the armed forces, the latter of which actually stake the lives of their men and women on the notion that the academies can impart leadership skills to recruits. However, no matter how good the teaching, it’s clear that the best training for a leader is to be gained from practice.
~ Ian Jackman, The Leader’s Mentor
TAKE the principle of Divine Love, and quietly and diligently meditate upon it with the object of arriving at a thorough understanding of it. Bring its searching light to bear upon all your habits, your actions, your speech and intercourse with others, your every secret thought and desire. As you persevere in this course, the Divine Love will become more and more perfectly revealed to you, and your own shortcomings will stand out in more and more vivid contrast, spurring you on to renewed endeavor ; and having once caught a glimpse of the incomparable majesty of that imperishable principle, you will never again rest in your weakness, your selfishness, your imperfection, but will pursue that Love until you have relinquished every discordant element, and have brought yourself into perfect harmony with it.
Make no stay, no resting-place, until the inmost garment of your soul is bereft of every stain.
~ James Allen, Daily Meditations
The Personality Ethic tells me there must be something that will help me handle pressures in a more efficient way.
But is there a chance that efficiency is not the answer? Is getting more things done in less time going to make a difference—or will it just increase the pace at which I react to the people and circumstances that seem to control my life?
Could there be something I need to see in a deeper, more fundamental way—some paradigm within myself that affects the way I see my time, my life, and my own nature?
~ Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
The beginning of the universe is Tao,
It is the mother of all.
By knowing the Mother, we will know her creations.
By knowing the creation of all lives, one can then return to the origin and abide by the Mother.
It is in this way that although the body dies, the spiritual nature will not perish.
To abide by the Mother of Tao is to keep guard on one’s sensory desire and shut the doors of temptation so as to prevent one from pursuing outwards.
Thus, by doing so one’s whole life may be preserved from exhaustion and pains.
However, if on the contrary one indulges oneself in the pleasure of desire and opens the door of temptation to pursue outwards,
Then one’s true nature will be lost and hence is beyond rescuing.
Those who are aware of the essence of the original nature are said to be enlightened.
Those who abide by the gentleness of Tao are said to be strong.
Those who employ the glory of Tao,
And were able to return to the true nature, are ensured of no distress and is said to embrace the Nature Tao.
~ Lau Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Live in Blissipline.
Extraordinary minds understand that happiness comes from within. They begin with happiness in the now and use it as a fuel to drive all their other visions and intentions for themselves and the world.
~ Vishen Lakhiani, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind
