Enable Others to Act
Leaders know they can’t do it alone, teamwork is essential. The seventh leadership commitment is to foster collaboration: your tasks are to create a climate of trust and to facilitate relationships. Sharing information and promoting cooperative goals make it possible for others to contribute good work. The eighth commitment is to strengthen others by allowing them to choose, to make their own decisions and by holding them accountable. Educating others develops both their competence and their confidence.
“I am a mountain guide. It is my personal purpose to help others summit.”
Inspiring Quotes … from our collection. Will some suggest adjustments to your attitudes and behaviours?
“A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.
Father James Keller
Founder, the Christophers”
“Great leaders are like the best conductors - they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players.
Blaine Lee, The Power Principle ”
“Coming together is a beginning;
Keeping together is progress;
Working together is success.
Henry Ford”
“Hope is passion for what is possible.
Soren Kierkegaard
Danish Philosopher”
“Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.
Horace Mann”
“A different world cannot be built by indifferent people.
Chinese Fortune Cookie”
“Trust is the emotional glue that binds a team together.
Anonymous”
“I aspire to create an enterprise where at least 80% of everybody’s job consists of doing things that they love.
Dick Vague
Chairman & CEO of First USA, part of Banc One”
“If you view all the things that happen to you, both good and bad, as opportunities, then you operate out of a higher level of consciousness.
Les Brown”
“If we treat people as though they are what they should be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German Writer, Pictorial Artist, Biologist, Theoretical Physicist”
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson”
“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
George S. Patton, US Army Officer/Combat General”
“One cannot teach a man anything. One can only enable him to learn from within himself.
Galileo”
“Organization without cooperation Is like a fiddle with one string . . . some notes, but not much music.
Anonymous”
“I have no pride. I’ll do anything that’s necessary to get people involved. I am a dispenser of enthusiasm.
Benjamin Zander,
conductor, Boston Philharmonic”
“People always move toward someone who increases them and away from anyone who decreases them.
John Maxwell”
“Share information so your employees can see how to help - and they’ll improve the business.
Antonio Zarate”
“Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.
Dalai Lama”
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
Benjamin Franklin”
“The best executive is the one who has enough sense to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
Theodore Roosevelt”
“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.
Max Dupree - Leadership is an Art”
“The critical skill ... will be that of coordinating units that cannot be commanded but which have to work together.
Peter Drucker”
“The most important trip you may take in life is meeting people halfway.
Henry Boyle”
“The most important leadership quality, say America’s youth: being able to see a situation from someone else’s point of view.
Poll by Public Allies”
“There is one word which may serve as a rule for all one’s life — reciprocity.
Confucius”
“The paradox of power: we become most powerful when we give our own power away.
Kouzes & Posner”
“Leadership is a balance of character and competence, endorsed by courage.
Alistair McKnight”
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”
Goethe”
“We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill, British Politician and Statesman”
“You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by building a fire within.
Bob Nelson”
“There is just so much to learn
from so many people.
Paul Douglas”
Experiences, thoughts, insights, perspectives, personal stories/principles/maxims, different quotes … on Enable Others to Act are posted here. Want to comment and share your own? Hit the button, read the blogs, offer up some of your ‘self’! Here’s an example of what you can find on the post page:
Blog 1: Multiple Intelligences. On the point of strengthening others, it all begins with the right mindset:
As I was growing up in a household of highly-educated parents, I heard a lot about how important it was to be intelligent. And back then, there was one major measure of intelligence: the IQ, a single number indicator that you could either brag about or never mention. So imagine my delight when, in 1999, I had the great good fortune to experience Dr. Howard Gardner, Professor of Education @ Harvard, at the 8th International Conference on Thinking.
Here’s a snippet of his fascinating story:
while in grad studies in developmental psychology, he worked as a research assistant studying children’s artistic thinking
then after getting his doctorate, he worked with brain-damaged patients at the Boston Veterans’ Administration Hospital
so, every day, he worked with brain-damaged patients in the morning and with artistic kids in the afternoon. He came to realize that brain damage can be quite selective (e.g., language abilities disappear but the ability to produce music remains) and that some kids who were very good in music and dancing couldn’t write a coherent sentence
Long story short he used his experiences to develop his 1983 Theory of Multiple Intelligences, graphically depicted below:
And here’s the point about the ‘strengthening others’ mindset: imagine how you could put this theory to work as your base belief about others? Instead of asking yourself: “how smart is she?”, you teach yourself to ask: “how is she smart?” … and then by figuring out the answers to the better question, your assumptions about the person take a very constructive step forward into a relationship.