Real life isn’t always going to be perfect or go our way, but the recurring acknowledgment of what is working in our lives can help us not only to survive but surmount our difficulties – Sarah Ban Breathnach
Your Real Life
The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all unpleasant things as interruptions of ones “own” or “real” life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life – the life God is sending one day by day. – C.S. Lewis
Tomorrow, A Hundred Years, a Thousand Years: All the same
The next moment is as much beyond our grasp and as much in God’s care as that a hundred years away. Care for the next minute is as foolish as care for a day in the next thousand years. In neither can we do anything, in both God is doing everything. -C.S. Lewis
Team Leadership
My philosophy of leadership is that four or five of us can come up with a much better decision than just I can alone. And if you follow that philosophy, you’ll probably have a very good, talented management group around you. People can always perform a whole lot better than how you think they’re going to perform. You need to really give them the opportunity to do that.
Shivan S. Subramaniam, chairman and CEO of FM Global
Humility, the Basic Leadership Virtue
Benedict believed the basic leadership virtue was humility. Leaders had to demonstrate competence and ambition, but their passion was to derive from a desire to improve and contribute to the health of the organization, not from individual ego. He believed that true humility was a skill one had to learn and practice.
John Mount, in a Forbes.com review of the book The Benedictine Rule of Leadership: Classic Management Secrets You Can Use Today
by Craig and Oliver Galbraith
Leaders Doing the Wrong Things Well
“Leadership guru Warren Bennis spent years researching leaders. He wrote in Why Leaders Can’t Lead: ‘Leaders do the right thing; managers do things right. Both roles are crucial, but differ profoundly. I often observe people in top positions doing the wrong thing well.'”
Harvey Mackey, “Uncommon Leadership: It Has Common Traits,”Leadership Excellence,” July 2010
The Best Executive
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it. – Theodore Roosevelt
Kotter: Great Leaders Have Emotional Impact
Great leaders tell stories that create pictures in our minds and have emotional impact. Martin Luther King Jr., had a dream, not a strategy or a goal, and he showed us his dream, his picture of the future. People change when they see something visual (the vision) that touches their feelings, challenges their thinking, and incites actions. People may realize the need for change, but not do anything differently because they lack the passion to break out of the routines or habit patterns. The momentum of ‘how we’ve done things’ tends to make our future look like our past.
The ability to move people emotionally is a special gift. Few of us are born with it, but we can learn it. John P. Kotter
Don’t Invite Them In
“We cannot control the parade of negative thoughts marching through our minds. But we can choose which ones we will give our attention to. Picture your thoughts as people passing by the front of your home. Just because they’re walking by doesn’t mean you have to invite them in.” Gladys Edmunds
Rise From the Pain
“I am responsible. Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude toward the inevitable misfortunes that darken life. Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.” – Walter Anderson