Helping Leaders Lead
A knowledge of the interaction of your conscious and subconscious minds will enable you to transform your whole life. In order to change external conditions and circumstances by working with conditions and circumstances. To remove discord, confusion, lack, and limitation, you must remove the cause, and the cause is the way you are using your conscious mind. In other words, the way you are thinking and picturing in your mind.
~ Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963)
Man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.
Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts. By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life. He also reveals, within himself, the laws of thought, and understands, with ever-increasing accuracy, how the thought-forces and mind elements operate in the shaping of his character, circumstances, and destiny.
~ James Allen – As A Man Thinketh (1903)
Occasionally you meet a business leader—he is ordinarily insecure emotionally—who falls into the habit of saying unkind things about one subordinate to another subordinate. It’s hard on morale, or course, because you never know when such a chief may say something about you in your absence. The point here is that the loyalties the leader practices or fails to practice are under steady surveillance. The wise leader therefore makes them worthy of imitation. The prompt leader, the neat leader, the persevering leader, the leader who keeps his promises and does his best to be just, practices the kind of loyalties he may expect his followers to practice also. This idea us to see the truth in the old adage that “An institution is but the lengthened shadow of its leader.”
~ James F. Bender, The Technique of Executive Leadership (1950)
Aesop was a Greek slave who lived at the court of Croesus and spun immortal fables six hundred years before Christ. Yet the truths he taught about human nature are just true in Boston and Birmingham now as they were twenty-six centuries ago in Athens. The sun can make you take off your coat more quickly than the wind; and kindliness, the friendly approach and appreciation can make people change their minds more readily than all the bluster and storming in the world.
Remember what Lincoln said: “A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.”
Principle 4: Begin in a friendly way.
~ Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, (1936)
Planning far ahead helps one get ahead.
~ Dr. Donald & Eleanor Laird, The Technique of Getting Things Done. (1947)
The Art of Living Forever.
No man stands alone. Though all the centuries of recorded time, men have set into motion influences that affect your life today…
You are the heir of the ages. Men reaching for the stars have created for you a world of wonder and challenge…
Living in you now are the ideals of the ragged soldiers of Valley Forge, the gallant Pilgrims, the daring explorers and pioneers, the fighters for freedom through all history…
On a more intimate note, you mother, father, teacher, clergyman, friend have built their influences into your character…
~ Wilferd A. Peterson, The Art of Living (1961)
“And the Lord, He it is that doth go before thee.” My Dominant mood of faith and confidence is that God’s Wisdom and Power always rule, guide, and govern me in all ways. This feeling is the Lord that goes before me. My conviction of God’s Presence is strong and mighty, and I know the Spiritual atmosphere in which I dwell goes before me, making straight.
~ Joseph Murphy – Pray Your Way Through It (1958)
Only by much searching and mining, are gold and diamonds obtained, and man can find every truth connected with his being, if he will dig deep into the mine of his soul; and that he is the maker of his character, the moulder of his life, and the builder of his destiny, he may unerringly prove, if he will watch, control, and alter his thoughts, tracing their effects upon himself, upon others, and upon his life and circumstances, linking cause and effect by patient practice and investigation, and utilizing his every experience, even to the most trivial, everyday occurrence, as a means of obtaining that knowledge of himself which is Understanding, Wisdom, Power. In this direction, as in no other, is the law absolute that “He that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened;” for only by patience, practice, and ceaseless importunity can a man enter the Door of the Temple of Knowledge.
~ James Allen – As A Man Thinketh (1903)
In all kinds of warfare, the direct approach is used for attack, but the oblique is what achieves victory. A general who understands the use of the oblique has a source of tactics as inexhaustible as Heaven and Earth, which, like the Rivers and the Oceans, will never run dry. Like the Sun and Moon, they diminish and then replenish; they constantly renew themselves like the cycle of the Four Seasons. There are only five basic notes in music, but their variations are infinite. There are only five primary colours, but when blended, their shades and hues are limitless. There are only five principal tastes, but their combinations produce more flavours than can ever be tasted. In military strategy, there is only the direct and oblique, but between them they offer and inexhaustible range of tactics. The direct and the oblique lead naturally one into the other, like an ever-turning wheel, so who can ever exhaust their resources? The surge of rolling flood-water washes away boulders: this is called momentum. The swoop of a falcon strikes and kills its prey: this is called timing. Thus a skilled warrior, his momentum must be irresistible and his timing precise. Momentum is the tension in a crossbow arm; timing is the pulling of the trigger.
~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Leaders get to the top because they have great capacity for loyalty. They stay on top by continuing to be loyal. Many a young man begins his ascent to leadership by being loyal to a leader of his choice. The young fellow hangs on to the leader’s coattails through thick and thin.
~ James F. Bender, The Technique of Executive Leadership (1950)
