…is the capacity to feel respect in the right way toward the right people, and to feel awe towards the object that transcends particular human interests.
Paul Woodruff
Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue
Archives For Quotes
I love this. It challenged me, and I needed it.
Do more than exist: live.
Do more than touch: feel.
Do more than look: observe.
Do more than read: absorb.
Do more than hear: listen.
Do more than listen: understand.
Do more than think: reflect.
Do more than just talk: say something.
Author Unknown
In my final MACRR class, I’ve been reading The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner. It has been an incredible read and I anticipate reading it more than once. It is replete with profound thoughts that are essential to all leaders, both current and would be.
Trust is at the core of leadership. One might think he/she is a leader, but if they aren’t trusted by those under them they aren’t leaders. There’s no way around it. Followers, also, will not follow those who they don’t believe can trust, themselves. Let the following quote from The Leadership Challenge sink in a bit.
People who work for highly controlling managers are more likely to keep information to themselves, hide the truth, and be dishonest about what is going on.
No surprise, then, that controlling managers have low credibility. Highly controlling behaviors- inspecting, correcting, checking up- signal lack of trust. How do you respond to people who don’t trust you? You don’t trust them. And because trustworthiness is a key element of personal credibility, credibility diminishes. People are unlikely to believe someone who does not exhibit trust in them.
In business and organizations, controls are important. In highly personal interactive environments, though, there must also be significant trust for there to be internal healthiness. Trust and credibility must exist from to to bottom. If these aren’t present, dysfunction is inevitable.
The following Leo Tolstoy quote was found in Peter Steinke’s Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times: Being Calm and Courageous No Matter What. I wish I’d read this book several years ago.
“I know that most men…can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”
