Great Throughts Treasury

"No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings. " - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

"The leadership mind is spacious. It has ample room for the ambiguities of the world, for conflicting feelings, and for contradictory ideas." - Peter Koestenbaum

"The answers to leadership questions are in the inner world. But they are needed in the outer world. Leaders therefore understand both worlds. And they know how to bring what is in the inner world into the outer world. We call that 'crossing the line,' for leaders exist at this point of intersection. It is what gives leadership thinking its unique edge." - Peter Koestenbaum

"Unless we respect the reality of the inner world, commensurate in importance with that of the external world, we are not equipped to understand the full meaning of leadership nor are we able to improve it dramatically, radically. Seeing only half of reality makes us only half a leader. Acknowledging only fifty percent of what is true, gives us a maximum of fifty percent effectiveness as a leader." - Peter Koestenbaum

"Authentic leaders have absorbed the fundamental fact of existence -- that you can't get around life's inherent contradictions. The leadership mind is spacious. It has ample room for the ambiguities of the world, for conflicting feelings, and for contradictory ideas. I believe that the central leadership attribute is the ability to manage polarity." - Peter Koestenbaum

"Reflection doesn't take anything away from decisiveness, from being a person of action. In fact, it generates the inner toughness that you need to be an effective person of action -- to be a leader. Think of leadership as some of two vectors: competence. " - Peter Koestenbaum

"At its heart, the traditional view of leadership is based on assumptions of peoples’ powerlessness, their lack of personal vision and inability to master the forces of change, deficits which can be remedied only by a few great leaders." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge

"Our prevailing leadership myths are still captured by the image of the captain of the cavalry leading the charge to rescue the settlers from the attacking Indians. " - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge

"The fantasy that somehow organizations can change without personal change, and especially without change on the part of people in leadership positions, underlies why many change efforts are doomed from the start." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge

"Language is messy by nature, which is why we must be careful in how we use it. As leaders, after all, we have little else to work with. We typically don't use hammers and saws, heavy equipment, or even computers to do our real work. The essence of leadership -- what we do with 98 percent of our time -- is communication. To master any management practice, we must start by bringing discipline to the domain in which we spend most of our time, the domain of words." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge

"The dictionary -- which, unlike the computer, is an essential leadership tool -- contains multiple definitions of the word mission; the most appropriate here is, "purpose, reason for being." Vision, by contrast, is "a picture or image of the future we seek to create," and values articulate how we intend to live as we pursue our mission. Paradoxically, if an organization's mission is truly motivating it is never really achieved. Mission provides an orientation, not a checklist of accomplishments. It defines a direction, not a destination. It tells the members of an organization why they are working together, how they intend to contribute to the world. Without a sense of mission, there is no foundation for establishing why some intended results are more important than others." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge

"When I was born, humanity was 95 per cent illiterate. Since I've been born, the population has doubled and that total population is now 65 per cent literate. That's a gain of 130-fold of the literacy. When humanity is primarily illiterate, it needs leaders to understand and get the information and deal with it. When we are at the point where the majority of humans them-selves are literate, able to get the information, we're in an entirely new relationship to Universe. We are at the point where the integrity of the individual counts and not what the political leadership or the religious leadership says to do." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller

"Is Humanism a religion, perhaps, the next great religion? Yes, it must be so characterized, for the word, religion, has become a symbol for answers to that basic interrogation of human life, the human situation, and the nature of things---which every human being, in some degree and in some fashion, makes. What can I expect from life? What kind of universe is it? Is there, as some say, a friendly Providence in control of it? And, if not, what then? The universe of discourse of religion consists of such questions, and the answers relevant to them. Christian theism and Vedantic mysticism are but historic frameworks in relation to which answers have in the past been given to these poignant and persistent queries. But there is nothing sacrosanct and self-certifying about these frameworks. What Humanism represents is the awareness of another framework, more consonant with wider and deeper knowledge about man and his world. The Humanist movement is engaged in formulating answers, with what wisdom it can achieve, to these basic questions. It would be absurd to expect complete novelty in either framework or answers. Many people throughout the ages have had a shrewd suspicion that established beliefs were insecurely based. Humanism at its best represents a growth and a maturing of its perspective...I fear that the orthodox idea of religion is something static and given---once for all. The Humanist thinks of his answers as responsible ones, that is, responsible to the best thought and knowledge on the subjects involved. He [they are] is always ready for honest debate... I want to contrast the perspective of Humanism with that of traditional rationalism...There is no Humanist who does not appreciate with respect and admiration the moving story of the Gospels. Seen as one of the culminations of Judaism in the setting of the Roman Empire, it speaks to us of nobility of soul, human love, pity, and comradeship; and this among everyday people fired by moral and religious leadership of high quality. The heroic and the earthly touch meet, and mingle; and so it has been ever since... What have the intervening centuries made possible? The gradual disentangling of ethical principle and example from both the early framework of belief and the later ecclesiastical development of power and dogma which supervened. But the notes of love and self-sacrifice remain as perennial chords. This also, is greatly human. The older rationalism was on the defensive. And so it expressed itself too often in negative terms: not this; not that; not God; not revelation; not personal immortality. What Humanism signified was a shift from negation to construction. There came a time when naturalism no longer felt on the defensive. Rather, supernaturalism began, it its eyes, to grow dim and fade out despite all the blustering and rationalizations of its advocates." - R. W. Sellars, fully Roy Wood Sellars

"One of the ideas that I grapple with constantly is the idea that if that leadership doesn" - Richard Heinberg

"I refuse to make a decision that somebody else can make. The first rule of leadership is to save yourself for the big decision. Don't allow your mind to become cluttered." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"Never has so much military and economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively, and if after all of this time, and all of this sacrifice, and all of this support, there is still no end in sight, then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership not tied to the mistakes and policies of the past." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"I believe that the will of the people is resolved by a strong leadership. Even in a democratic society, events depend on a strong leadership with a strong power of persuasion, and not on the opinion of the masses." - Yitzhak Shamir, born Icchak Jaziernicki

"I Still Trust in The People. [engraved on his tombstone]" - Samuel Tilden, fully Samuel Jones Tilden

"It's difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn't available" - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I did not take the oath I have just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world's strongest economy." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"A leader who pushes the authority figure in an attempt to solve important problems should expect the authority figure to strike back, not necessarily from personal motivations but form the community’s pressure on him to maintain equilibrium." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"At an extreme, war has been used as a means to mobilize adaptive work. When Abraham Lincoln went to war with the South, he clearly had no authority, formal or informal, in the eyes of seceding Southerners. Indeed, in ten states he won no popular votes in 1860 because he was not even put on the ballot. He led across the newly formed boundary, challenging Southerners to solve rather than flee from the problems of reconciling differences within a union that their recent forebears had played dominant roles in producing." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"Contrary to common usage, an individual cannot ‘martyr’ himself, even though he sacrifices his life, unless that makes him into a martyr. Why is it lonely on the point? Because those who lead take responsibility for the holding environment of the enterprise. They themselves are not expected to be held. They do the holding, often quite alone." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"Even in retrospect, analysts seem to assume that Johnson’s tasks would be, first, to find a policy solution and, second, to persuade the public. This assumption reflects the constraint on leading from a position of authority. Even in our retrospective analyses, we cannot imagine a President raising hard questions to which he has no decisive answers." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"Exercising leadership is an expression of your aliveness... But when you cover yourself up, you risk losing something as well. In the struggle to save yourself, you can give up too many of those qualities that are the essence of being alive, like innocence, curiosity, and compassion." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"Finding a Sanctuary…To exercise leadership, one has to expect to get swept up in the music. One has to plan for it and develop scheduled opportunities that anticipate the need to regain perspective. Just as leadership demands a strategy of mobilizing people, it also requires a strategy of deploying and restoring one’s own spiritual resources." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"First, [the leaders] identified the adaptive challenge – the gap between aspirations and reality – and focused attention on the specific issues created by that gap. Recognizing that they were working with a problem that existing technical expertise could not solve satisfactorily, they shifted from giving authoritative solutions to a plan for managing people’s adaptive problem-solving." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"I suspect that they continued to experience leadership as an activity performed without authority, beyond expectations." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"If we assume that leadership must not only meet the needs of followers but also must elevate them, we render a different judgment. Hitler wielded power, but he did not lead." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"If we leave the value implications of our teaching and practice unaddressed, we encourage people, perhaps unwittingly, to aspire to great influence or high office, regardless of what they do there. We would be on safer ground were we to discard the loaded term leadership altogether and simply describe the dynamics of prominence, power, influence, and historical causation." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"Imagine the differences in behavior when people operate with the idea that ‘leadership means influencing the community to follow the leader’s vision’ versus ‘leadership means influencing the community to face its problems." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"In human societies, adaptive work consists of efforts to close the gap between reality and a host of values not restricted to survival." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"It should be obvious from reflecting on our daily lives that authority relationships are enormously productive. The human capacity for generating complex systems of authority is essential to our extraordinary adaptability and creativity as social creatures." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"Let us face it; to lead is to live dangerously. While leadership is often depicted as an exciting and glamorous endeavor, one in which you inspire others to follow you through good times and bad, such a portrayal ignores the dark side of leadership: the inevitable attempts to take you out of the game. Those attempts are sometimes justified. People in top positions must often pay the price for a flawed strategy or a series of bad decisions." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"Never get involved in the dark side of office politics, such as maligning associates, practicing deceit, manipulating others or withholding information to enhance your position. Although you may be successful in doing these things for a while, it will not take long for your colleagues to identify your true nature and turn against you. However, it is natural and normal to be an active participant in the political process that occurs in ever organization, which involves trying to influence others, networking, and exercising power." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"The point here is to provide a guide to goal formation and strategy. In selecting adaptive work as a guide, one considers not only the values that the goal represents, but also the goal’s ability to mobilize people to face, rather than avoid, tough realities and conflicts. The hardest and most valuable task of leadership may be advancing goals and designing strategy that promote adaptive work." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"The politics of inclusion are not faint-hearted efforts at making everybody happy enough. Inclusion means more than taking people’s views into account in defining the problem. Inclusion may mean challenging people, hard and steadily, to face new perspectives on familiar problems, to let go of old ideas and ways of life long held sacred." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"The second image of leadership – mobilizing people to tackle problems – is the image at the heart of this book. This conception builds upon, yet differs from, the culturally dominant views." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"The strategic challenge is to give the work back to people without abandoning them. Overload them and they will avoid learning. Underload them and they will grow too dependent, or complacent. Thus, an authority has to bear the weight of the problems, for a time." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"Thus, authoritative action will tend to reduce stress, while inaction will increase it. This may be true regardless of the content of the action." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"When [Gandhi] fasted for justice, people began to pay attention, not because another person was about to die of starvation but because Gandhi practiced what he preached." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"The masses are in reality their own leaders, dialectically creating their own development process." - Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"

"The Russo-Japanese War now gives to all an awareness that even war and peace in Europe – its destiny – isn’t decided between the four walls of the European concert, but outside it, in the gigantic maelstrom of world and colonial politics. And it’s in this that the real meaning of the current war resides for social-democracy, even if we set aside its immediate effect: the collapse of Russian absolutism. This war brings the gaze of the international proletariat back to the great political and economic connectedness of the world, and violently dissipates in our ranks the particularism, the pettiness of ideas that form in any period of political calm. The war completely rends all the veils which the bourgeois world – this world of economic, political and social fetishism – constantly wraps us in. The war destroys the appearance which leads us to believe in peaceful social evolution; in the omnipotence and the untouchability of bourgeois legality; in national exclusivism; in the stability of political conditions; in the conscious direction of politics by these statesmen or parties; in the significance capable of shaking up the world of the squabbles in bourgeois parliaments; in parliamentarism as the so-called center of social existence. War unleashes – at the same time as the reactionary forces of the capitalist world – the generating forces of social revolution which ferment in its depths." - Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"

"With whose imperfections will you bear, and what insult are you capable of enduring, if a thoughtless word from your own Superior is unbearable?" - Saint Vincent de Paul

"All animals except man know that the ultimate point of life is to enjoy it." - Samuel Ullman

"We have got to begin a vast reclamation project to revitalize religion for those to whom it means little or nothing. This can be done not by trying to persuade those outside the church to believe what we believe but by pointing out to them the presence of the unrecognized religion that already exists in their lives." - Theodore C. Speers

"As a mental discipline the reading of newspapers is hurtful. - What can be worse for the mind than to think of forty things in ten minutes." - Theodore T. Munger

"Ours is a government of liberty by, through, and under the law." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"The wild life of today is not ours to do with as we please. The original stock was given to us in trust for the benefit both of the present and the future. We must render an accounting of this trust to those who come after us." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"The essence of the leader as artist is consciousness-raising and unlocking the energies and talents of fellow associates. Leaders at their best are not involved in doing great deeds so much as getting their followers to believe they can do great deeds and excel. Leaders define and defend and promote values. Or they help redefine values, and understand when, in Lincoln’s phrase, the dogmas of the past are inadequate for the stormy present. They understand when new circumstances call for new vision. Leaders are skilled listeners and learners, carefully consulting their own and their colleagues’ values, beliefs, and passions. As important as anything else, a leader has to nurture trust and self-confidence. Associates and followers expect leaders to have bold visions and to pursue them with enthusiasm. People being led yearn for a mission or vision that is clearly stated." - Thomas Cronin, fully Thomas Edward Cronin