 Aggression only moves in one direction - it creates more aggression. |
| Whatever life we have experienced, if we can tell our story to someone who listens, we find it easier to deal with our circumstances. |
| When leaders take back power, when they act as heroes and saviors, they end up exhausted, overwhelmed, and deeply stressed. |
| Thinking is the place where intelligent actions begin. We pause long enough to look more carefully at a situation, to see more of its character, to think about why it's happening, to notice how it's affecting us and others. |
| We experience problem-solving sessions as war zones, we view competing ideas as enemies, and we use problems as weapons to blame and defeat opposition forces. No wonder we can't come up with real lasting solutions! |
| Hopelessness has surprised me with patience. |
| Probably the most visible example of unintended consequences, is what happens every time humans try to change the natural ecology of a place. |
| Too many problem-solving sessions become battlegrounds where decisions are made based on power rather than intelligence. |
| For example, I was discussing the use of email and how impersonal it can be, how people will now email someone across the room rather than go and talk to them. But I don't think this is laziness, I think it is a conscious decision people are making to save time. |
| For us, someone who is willing to step forward and help is much more courageous than someone who is merely fulfilling the role. |
| I think a major act of leadership right now, call it a radical act, is to create the places and processes so people can actually learn together, using our experiences. |
| When we can lay down our fear and anger and choose responses other than aggression, we create the conditions for bringing out the best in us humans. |
| Aggression is inherently destructive of relationships. People and ideologies are pitted against each other, believing that in order to survive, they must destroy the opposition. |
| Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don't have to do anything else. We don't have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen. |
| There are many benefits to this process of listening. The first is that good listeners are created as people feel listened to. Listening is a reciprocal process - we become more attentive to others if they have attended to us. |
| I'm sad to report that in the past few years, ever since uncertainty became our insistent 21st century companion, leadership has taken a great leap backwards to the familiar territory of command and control. |
| I think we have to notice that the business processes we use right now for thinking and planning and budgeting and strategy are all delivered on very tight agendas. |
| Listening moves us closer, it helps us become more whole, more healthy, more holy. Not listening creates fragmentation, and fragmentation is the root of all suffering. |
| We know from science that nothing in the universe exists as an isolated or independent entity. |
| Determination, energy, and courage appear spontaneously when we care deeply about something. We take risks that are unimaginable in any other context. |
