Encourage the Heart
On the difficult road to the better future, people can become exhausted, frustrated and disenchanted, so the ninth and tenth leadership commitments are intended to encourage constituents to carry on. One of your on-going challenges will be to recognize contributions, first by expecting people to perform at their best, then by personalizing your recognition and appreciation when they achieve individual excellence. You will also need to take the right opportunities to celebrate the shared values and the team victories. The resulting spirit of community will sustain your group over the long haul and your personal involvement is how you demonstrate your leadership.
“… and who was the author, why did it work so well and why has it been remembered so long?”
Inspiring Quotes … from our collection. Will some suggest adjustments to your attitudes and behaviours?
“A hundred times a day I remind myself that my life depends on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give, in the measure as I have received, and am still receiving.
Albert Einstein”
“A personal note to any machos out there who might think it’s wimpy to tell someone how proud you are of them: let me take you back 30 years to when I was in the army. My platoon had accomplished a particular task extremely well. Our sergeant (picture a 250-lb., bulldog-looking, tough-skinned ‘lifer’) called us together and said, “What you @$%&#s just did makes me PROUD to be in the same army.” I’ve never forgotten his words – especially the word ‘proud’.
Eric Harvey”
“Brains, like hearts, go where they are appreciated.
Robert McNamara”
“A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.”
Napoleon Buonaparte”
“I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big successes. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of human pride.
William James”
“I’ve never had a group that expressed more affection than it wanted.
Jodi Taylor, VP, CCL”
“Celebrate what you want to see more of.
Tom Peters”
“If I ran a school, I’d give the average grade to the ones who gave me all the right answers, for being good parrots. I’d give the top grades to those who made a lot of mistakes and told me about them, and then told me what they learned from them.
R. Buckminster Fuller”
“Listening: You can convey no greater honor than actually hearing what someone has to say.
Philip Crosby”
“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues . . . but it is the parent of all the others.
Cicero”
“My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people; those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there.
Indira Gandhi
Prime Minister of India”
“Nothing is more effective than sincere, concrete praise, and nothing is more lame than a cookie-cutter compliment.
Bill Walsh, NFL Coach”
“Nobody cares what you know until they know that you care.
Kouzes & Posner”
“Real leaders. . . are great because they demonstrate integrity, provide meaning, generate trust, and communicate values. In doing so, they energize their followers, humanely push people to meet challenging business goals, and all the while develop leadership skills in others. Real leaders, in a phrase, move the human heart.
Warren Bennis
Harvard Business Review
May - June, 2000”
“The good man does not grieve that other people do not recognize his merits. His only anxiety is lest he should fail to recognize theirs.
Confucius”
“Do you care about me? Can I trust you? Are you committed to the success of our team?
Lou Holtz
Veteran football coach
University of Notre Dame”
“The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important.
Abraham Maslow”
“The soft stuff is the hard stuff.
Richard J. Leider”
“You gotta wanna!
George Carlin”
“There is no box big enough to hold the human spirit.
Margaret Wheatley”
“There are many things that will catch my eye, but there are only a few things that will catch my heart.
Tim Redmond ”
“There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.
John A. Holmes”
“We’ve never had a policy manual. The way we pass along our values is to sit around the campfire and share stories.
Patrick Kelly
Founder, PSS”
“What we must decide is how we are valuable rather than how valuable we are.
Edgar Z. Friedenberg”
Experiences, thoughts, insights, perspectives, personal stories/principles/maxims, different quotes … on Encourage the Heart 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: Years ago, in preparation for what turned out to be an excellent leadership development course, I underwent a number of psychometric tests, including the FIRO-B (Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation - Behavior). This instrument was developed after the Korean War by American psychologist William Schutz to predict how military personnel would work together in groups.
The FIRO-B (which is still used today, check it out online) gave me profound insights into my character. It measures 3 elements of human behavior: inclusion, control and affection and it measures them on 2 levels: how much we express the personal need for these elements in our relationships and how much we really want (seek) them.
The maximum score is 9 in each case. Here are my scores:
My FIRO-B
Personal insights revealed:
re: Control: the interpretation document said “your results suggest a high preference to be in control and a reluctance to take direction”. Yikes! I would hate to work for me! But this is not the Encourage the Heart point of this blog … the next 2 are
re: Inclusion: this is such a strong interpersonal driver for me. Why would I only express 4 out of 9 and yet want 8 out of 9? Yes, that’s right, if I show you my real need, I make myself vulnerable and I have been hurt in the past by exclusion, so I have learned not to show it. The lesson here for me is to treat inclusion the way I treat encouragement: if I need it this much, what are the chances that others feel the same way? Probably high, so I try to keep it front-of-mind when dealing with others
re: Affection: right on the encouragement point. I remember reading some research indicating that affection expressed in an organization is felt 2 levels below the actual expression: now that’s a powerful force to bring to an organization! And I am personally relieved that my scores show me more genuine here …