World Vision Ministries International.
Faith in God
believing faith
We have seen that God has provided a marvellous salvation from all the consequences of man's rebellion. This salvation is to be received through repentance and faith. God expects us to change our allegiance. We must now love Him and serve Him - not our old selfish and corrupt desires. He wants to set us free from every oppression. But as well as this change of allegiance or repentance we need to believe God and His promises with a living faith. In this lesson we will consider what it means to have faith in God.
What is Faith?
What Faith is not
Faith is not religion. Many times people say "We have our faith"Faith in God - Through the Innocent Heart of a Child
One of God's main jobs is making people. He makes them to replace the ones that die, so there will be enough people to take care of things on earth. He doesn't make grown-ups, just babies. I think because they are smaller and easier to make. That way He doesn't have to take up His valuable time teaching them to talk and walk. He can just leave that to the mothers and fathers.
God's second most important job is listening to prayers. An awful lot of this goes on, since some people, like preachers and things, pray at times beside bedtime. God doesn't have time to listen to the radio or TV because of this.
God sees everything and hears everything and is everywhere, which keeps Him pretty busy. So you shouldn't go wasting His time by going over your Mom and Dad's head asking for something they said you couldn't have.
Atheists are people who don't believe in God. I don't think there are any in my town. At least there aren't any who come to our church.
Jesus is God's Son. He used to do all the hard work like walking on water and performing miracles and people finally got tired of Him preaching to them and they crucified Him. But He was good and kind, like His Father, and He told His Father that they didn't know what they were doing and to forgive them and God said, "O.K."
His Dad (God) appreciated everything that He had done and all His hard work on earth so He told Him He didn't have to go out on the road anymore. He could stay in heaven. So He did. And now He helps His Dad out by listening to prayers and seeing things which are important for God to take care of and which ones He can take care of Himself without having to bother God. (Like a secretary, only more important.) You can pray anytime you want and they are sure to help you because they got it worked out so one of them is on duty all the time.
You should always go to church on Sunday because it makes God happy, and if there's anybody you want to make happy, it's God. Don't skip church to do something you think will be more fun like going to the beach. This is wrong. And besides, the sun doesn't come out at the beach until noon anyway.
If you don't believe in God, besides being an atheist, you will be very lonely, because your parents can't go everywhere with you, like to camp, but God can. It is good to know He's around you when you're scared in the dark or when you can't swim and big kids throw you into real deep water.
But…you shouldn't just always think of what God can do for you. I figure God put me here and He can take me back anytime He pleases.
And…that's why I believe in God.
Faith in God - Christ's Perspective
The simple perspective of a child's faith in God is a key principle in Christ's teaching. We should constantly tap that wonderful innocence and purity of heart when approaching God through the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ.
At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, verily I say unto you, except you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever shall receive one such little child in my name receives me. (Matthew 18:1-5)
Grow More Now! Don't you try to change them." This is not the Biblical idea of faith.
Faith is not mental assent. It is not agreeing with your mind, "Yes, that is true." Many professing Christians believe mentally that the Bible is the Word of God, but this faith does not change the way they live. It is not a faith that can save. (James 2:14)
Even demons have that kind of faith. They know and believe that God exists (James 2:19) - and tremble. They have no loving confidence in God.
Faith is not a way to manipulate God. It is not a power by which we make God do what WE want when otherwise He would be unwilling to do that thing. It is not a kind of magic through which we make God into our servant!
Faith is not hope, nor positive desire. Hope is good, and relates to the future. Faith, however, takes the promise as done NOW. Many people have hope and are anxiously looking for results, but they lack the settled confidence and present assurance which faith has.
What Faith Is
In the general sense of the word, to have faith is to believe in something or someone, to fully trust, to be so confident that you base your actions on what you believe. To have faith is to be fully convinced of the truthfulness and reliability of that in which you believe.
Faith in God then, is having the kind of trust and confidence in God and in Christ that leads you to commit your whole soul to Him as Saviour (Justifier, Cleanser, Healer, Deliverer) and Lord (Master, King).
The NIV translation says, "Faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see." (Hebrews 11:1 NIV).
The NKJV of the Bible says, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1).
Faith is a spiritual substance. When you have this spiritual substance in you, it communicates to you a certain inner knowing that the thing you are hoping for is certainly established, even before you see any material evidence that it has happened.
Faith is a spiritual force. Faith in God is a response to God's Word which moves God to act. Jesus said in Mark 11:23, "For assuredly I say to you, whoever SAYS to this mountain, 'Be removed and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but BELIEVES that those things he SAYS will be done, he will HAVE whatever he SAYS." Words mixed with the real, pure faith can and will move mountains or any other problem that we face.
Faith in God must be from the heart. It is not merely intellectual. It is spiritual. "For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." (Romans 10:10)
Faith causes you to know in your heart before you see with your eyes. "For we walk by faith, not by sight." (2Cor 5.7)
Some say, "Seeing is believing." Once you see the thing hoped for already existing in the natural order, you don't need faith.
Hope is a condition for faith. Hope is "a positive unwavering expectation of good". Hope is for the mind (1 Thessalonians 5:8; Hebrews 6:19), an anchor for the soul. It keeps us in the place where we can believe, but it is not in itself "faith". Yet, without hope there are no "things hoped for", and therefore there cannot be faith.
Through faith we can know we have the answer to our prayer before we see anything change in the natural order (1 John 5:14,15). Jesus said, "Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them." (Mk 11:24). God expects us, even commands us, to believe that our petitions are answered by God AT THE MOMENT WE MAKE THEM. We must believe that the response is immediately sent WHEN we pray. Faith is like the confirmation slip in our hearts that the goods are on the way. We have that confirmation slip instantly from God. We sense it in our hearts. The manifestation of those goods, the answer received, comes later as long as we are patient and do not throw away our confidence. (Hebrews 10:35-39; Hebrews 6:12)
Faith is like a cheque. All you have to do is hold on to the cheque, go to the bank to present it and you can confidently expect the money to appear in your account after a certain time. If you throw the cheque away the money will not be put in your account. God is trustworthy and always has resources to back his promises.
Living faith always has corresponding actions. We talk what we really believe, and we act according to what we really believe. The heroes of faith like Abraham were considered men of faith because they acted on what God showed them. They acted on their faith. (Hebrews 11:17-38, James 2:21-23).
To live in faith means to do and say what you believe is right, without doubting.
Faith is a rest. It is compatible with inner peace. It is not "trying to believe". To say that you are "trying to believe" God is to say that you don't believe Him. The man who is "trying to believe" may be sincere, but he does not have faith in that area your faith
Why We Must Believe God
Why must we believe God? Hebrews 11:6 says, "But without faith it is impossible to please God, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him."
"Whatever is not of faith is sin" (Romans 14:23) and God hates sin. When we don't believe God, we treat Him like He is a liar. Remember that He is everywhere and sees all things. He is hurt when we act like He doesn't exist, or that He will not do what He promised to do. Only when we have confidence in God and His Word can we please Him.
Lack of faith leads to lack of obedience. God's commands can only really be fulfilled through faith. Without confidence in God's promises a man will never really do what God says. Lack of obedience in God's eyes is rebellion. Such lack of obedience dishonors God and surely deserves to be punished.
"The just shall live by faith" (Romans 1:17). We must live by faith in order to be considered by God "right" and "correct". Otherwise we stand condemned.
Those who don't believe God inevitably believe in something else. Either religious tradition, or their understanding of science, or what the women's magazine says, or what their next door neighbour tells them, the education system, the mass-media or a combination of all these things. God is not impressed. "Professing to be wise, they became fools." (Romans 1:22) In fact, those who don't fully believing God end up believing the devil somewhere along the track. It is very possible to believe what the devil says without even believing that he exists! Satan is speaking through so many philosophies and religions without openly declaring himself. Not too many actually know they are trusting the words of satan and his demons.
God is therefore righteous in expecting us to believe in Him and what He says. Who is better qualified to tell us the truth and help us to find answers for life and eternity?
Benefits of Faith.
The Bible teaches us that genuine faith is "more precious than gold that perishes" (1 Peter 1:7). Indeed such faith is going to be "tested by fire". You can expect difficulties and persecutions in your life of faith, as well as blessings. Therefore to encourage you to hold onto and develop your faith, we will consider some of the benefits of faith.
1. Faith brings salvation. (Ephesians 2:8,9). Whosever believes in Him has eternal life. (John 3:16), and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. (John 5:24). The just shall live by faith. (Romans 1:17)
2. Faith brings answers to prayer. "And whatever things you ask in prayer, really believing, you will receive." (Matthew 21:22). Since God tells us to pray for our daily bread (Matthew 6:11), faith is therefore a key to our material provision.
3. Faith brings all the benefits of salvation into our lives (Ephesians 2:8,9). This includes healing, prosperity, peace, love, joy (1 Peter 1:8), deliverance from demons and the curse, sanctification of the mind and emotions (the salvation of the soul) and any other benefit which the word of God promises to us.
4. Faith is a spiritual force through which our ministry for Christ becomes effective. (Mark 11:23; Matthew 17:19,20). Faith is a major key to ministry success. It brings to you what you need for your ministry, and by imparting it to others through your life and your ministry of God's Word, you enable them to receive the blessings of God's grace mentioned above.
5. In particular, faith is the major key for an effective healing and deliverance ministry. Jesus Christ "the same yesterday, today and forever" lives in the Christian (Hebrews 13:8, Galatians 2:20), and through the Christian wants to reveal the power of salvation to men in a way they can see and feel. In this way, our evangelism concerning the Kingdom of God will not be in talk, but in power (1 Corinthians 4:20).
How to Develop Faith
We see how important faith is. Yet some people despair here, thinking that they don't have faith. Yet faith comes (Romans 10:17), it can grow and develop. If you are not full of faith today, that doesn't mean you will be that way all your life. You can choose to be a person of faith!
Here are some keys to developing faith.
1. Listen to the Word of God as much as possible. "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God" (Romans 10:17). Constant attention to the Word of God produces faith, especially if we attend to it with an open heart and mind. The book of Proverbs encourages us to constantly keep the Word in our hearts and to keep our attention on it (Proverbs 4:20-22). Health is one of the benefits promised.
What we listen to affects what we believe. If we listen to the TV more than to the Word, we will believe the lies of the world more than we will believe what God says. Constant attention to lies produces deception. Eventually the mind will accept something if that thing is heard often enough and persuasively enough. That is why we should keep hearing the Word of God, through preaching, Christian tapes, confession of the Word, daily fellowship with godly Christians. This will cause us eventually to believe the truth from our hearts.
2. Realise that every believer has been given a measure of faith by God. (Romans 12:3). We just have to use and develop what God has given. We must put it into action.
3. Pray in tongues and be full of the Spirit (Jude 20). We will look at this later. If you have been baptised in the Spirit as the disciples were in the book of Acts, you should pray and praise in tongues often because through this you "edify yourself" (1 Corinthians 14:4) and "build yourself up in your most holy faith". Praying in tongues is a key to being full of the Spirit. Since faith is a fruit of the Spirit, all things things are related together.
4. Obey God and the conviction of the Holy Spirit. It is as you walk that you gain strength. God will not reveal greater things to you until you are faithful in the things He is showing you NOW. Therefore obedience to the Spirit and what He is showing you through the Word or through your conscience is important in the development of your faith. You cannot have living faith without taking some practical steps of obedience. Act on what God is saying!
5. Give thanks. Give thanks for the results before you see. Don't complain - that shows you doubt God's love and God's answer to your situation. Give thanks in all situations (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
6. Develop a life of praise and worship. Praise drives the powers of darkness away and brings the throne of God into your circumstances. Praising God is an act of faith and helps your faith to grow. It is commanded (Hebrews 13:15). Worship is admiring God through the Spirit. If you can perceive who is God, His power, faithfulness and love your trust and faith in Him will grow.
7. Spend as much time as you can with people of faith. The spirit of faith on them will touch your life also (Proverbs 13:20).
8. Speak the WORD. By saying with your mouth you exercise your faith, you hear the Word and you build it into your life. God's Word is anointed and has power when it is spoken to change the spiritual atmosphere (Joshua 1:8; Romans 10:10). Confession of God's Word (saying the same thing as God's word) brings you into the place where the Lord will move to fulfil it (Hebrews 3:1). The angels hearken to the voice of God's Word (Psalms 103:20)
9. Seek holiness, purity of heart. "Pursue peace with all men, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord." (Hebrews 12:14). It is with the heart that man believes (Romans 10:10). To the extent that the heart has uncleanness, unforgiveness and other bad conditions within, the man will lose the spiritual perception of the Lord which enables his heart to believe. Purity and faith feed each other.
10. Remember that faith works by love (Galatians 5:6). The centurion (Matthew 8:5-13) and the woman of Canaan (Matthew 15:21-28) were both motivated by their love for another in coming to Jesus. And both were described as having great faith. Let us believe God for others to be blessed, in a spirit of love, and as we give of our selves God will give blessings to us also (Luke 6:37). This is related to the idea of "seed-faith". Express your faith by planting a seed in terms of some form of giving. God will release a multiplied harvest in return if we endure and do not faint (Hebrews 10:36).
Confession and the Power of Words
"With the mouth confession is made unto salvation" (Romans 10:10). Confessing Christ as your Living Lord and Saviour with your mouth releases God's salvation into your life. Since salvation includes many benefits and blessings our right mouth confession is a major key to receiving what God has provided for us by his grace.
We should realise that "Death and life is in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit." (Proverbs 18:21). The power of the tongue is in the power of the words we speak. All our words have an effect on the spiritual atmosphere around us, either for good or bad. It is through words that covenants and promises are established. It is through words that our faith or our fears are expressed. Bad words open the door for bad spirits to work. Good words open the door for God and His angels to work.
Angels heed the VOICE of God's Word (Psalms 103:20). Words are spiritual seeds. Words of life produce life. Words of faith produce faith. Words of love produce love. Words of hope produce hope, and so on. Words of death attract spirits of death, words of doubt attract doubt, words of fear attract spirits of fear, and so on. Therefore we must guard carefully what we SAY. The Bible has much to say on this subject, especially in the Book of Proverbs (e.g. Proverbs 10:19, 20, 31, 32; 12:18, 22; 14:23, 33; 15:1, 4, 28). Jesus said, "But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it on the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. " (Matthew 12:36,37). Paul said, "And WHATEVER you do, IN WORD or deed, do ALL in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him." (Colossians 3:17)
Confession (Gk: homologeo) means literally "to say the same thing". To confess the Word of God then means to say the same thing as God's Word says. When you say it, it tends to produce faith because in saying it you must also hear it from your own mouth, and hearing the Word causes faith to come (Romans 10:17). In saying the Word yourself, you identify YOURSELF with the truth of God's Word. It is one thing to hear someone else say something, another to say that thing yourself. The more you say God's Word, the more you will believe it, and the more you believe it, the more you will say it.
"A man's belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth; and with the increase of his lips shall he be filled." (Proverbs 18:20, see Proverbs 12:14). This means that we feed on the words we speak. What we say comes back to affect our own heart and our own spiritual condition. That is another reason why confessing the Word and not negative things will greatly help our faith.
At times it is difficult to speak consistently with what the Bible says because our minds are not sufficiently renewed. We still have doubt in our souls. We must reprogram our subconscious minds to accept God's principles and God's promises without doubt (Romans 12:2). Meditation, repeated pondering, listening to good preaching, confession of the Scripture, as well as informed study will help here. The Word must enter deeply into us. This will change the way we are, the way we speak, the way we respond to difficulties and challenges. If it does not we have been too superficial in our treatment of the Word. We have substituted the mental knowledge and recognition of the words for real meditation and confession.
God talks in faith. God "gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did" (Romans 4:17). Through faith-filled words, God created the universe (Hebrews 11:3). As sons of God we are called to be imitators of God, filled with God's Spirit (Eph 5:1,18). When we are in Christ and we have the promise of God, we have the right to speak about something God has promised as if it existed even before our natural senses are conscious of it. It is our faith that gives substance to this confession of things not seen. For example, if we have believed God for a car, we can talk about our car before we see it. We should realise that God has already "given us all things that pertain to life and godliness" (2 Peter 1:3) and all spiritual blessings (Ephesians 1:3). But the effective receiving depends on our faith. Faith is confident of the faithfulness of God in His declared promises and talks and acts so, even before the natural eye sees.
Acting in Faith
Real faith has corresponding actions. Looking at Hebrews 11:4-37 we see that all those who are commended for their faith did something as well. It is possible to have actions, even religious actions, without real faith - but these actions are dead works. Without faith you can't please God. (Hebrews 11:6).
Sometimes confusion arises in this matter of faith and works. There is a radical difference between works or actions that spring from real faith, and works which spring from SELF in an effort to earn God's approval. The former cannot be separated from real faith. The latter are as filthy rags to God (Isaiah 64:6), and are wrong because the man occupied with them cannot understand or accept God's free grace - that it is by GRACE, by CHRIST that we are saved, and not by our own works.
Faith hears the word of God, the voice of God and acts in obedience with a trusting heart. God often speaks to us through our consciences by His Spirit, pressing us towards a particular kind of action which is based on God's Word. Real faith yields to God's suggestion and does it.
Jesus told the blind man to go to the pool to wash. The blind man, by acting in obedience to Jesus' words BEFORE he received healing, demonstrated the kind of faith which God required of him in that situation, and he was healed. (John 9:7). If he had not obeyed, he would not have been healed.
God told Abraham to offer his son Isaac up as a sacrifice. Abraham's obedience in this matter demonstrated the reality of his faith. (James 2:20-24). Even justifying faith is not passive. It does not rest in sin. Justifying faith works with repentance to open the door for the receiving of God's great salvation.
Overcoming the Enemies of faith
In closing this lesson we will consider some of the main enemies of faith and how they can be overcome.
1. Ignorance. You cannot believe a promise until you hear it or find it. Much unbelief rises out of the fact that people just don't know what the Bible says. The cure for this is study, meditation and consideration of the Word.
2. Unbelief. This is the sinful choice to not believe God. It is usually motivated by pride, rebellion and ignorance. The cure for this is therefore to humble oneself, change one's mind, choose to believe. Fasting puts done the flesh and is often very effective in destroying the power of unbelief, because it aids in humbling ourselves and in removing fleshly distractions to the voice of God. If done correctly it can help us to focus on God and will make the spiritual things more intense to us, thereby destroying unbelief.
3. Fear. Negative fear is a negative emotion based on the real expectation of bad things to come. It is rooted in anxiety and a lack of trust in God's fatherly protection and love. Perfect love casts out fear. (1Jn 4:18). God is perfect love. Therefore by seeking God, His presence and the fullness of His Spirit we will be set free from fear. When we are conscious of God's power it is very easy to be courageous and bold. We expect success when we are consciously full of God and know that we are doing what He is telling us to do. To overcome fear we must look to God and not to natural considerations which could cause our failure if God were not with us. Peter, looking to the wind and the waves, was overcome by a fear which paralysed his faith and caused him to sink. He needed to keep looking to Jesus. God says, "Fear not, FOR I AM WITH YOU." (Is. 43:5). God gives us a reason not to fear, and a commandment. To fear anyone or anything except the Lord is a sin. We can overcome this sin by being full of God and looking to Him. Also we must forgive all men if we want to be delivered from this form of torment. (Mt 18:34, I Jn 4:18)
4. Doubt. Doubt is an enemy to faith because it speaks with a voice that challenges the truth or the reliability of what we should be believing. To overcome doubt we must fill ourselves with the Word of God, meditating deeply and repetitively on it. Doubt is the evidence of an unconsecrated heart and mind. It is the evidence of lack of devotion to God's Word. Doubt, like fear, torments. We must forgive others and give our whole hearts to God. We must stop listening to the voice of demons or the voice of our own carnal mind trained from early days to resist God. This is a decision. It helps to hear the testimonies of others to overcome doubt. However, doubt will never be fully overcome until we treat the Bible as God's voice TO US.
5. Discouragement. Sometimes we feel discouraged because of physical or emotional weakness or tiredness. We may be disappointed by the behaviour of other Christians. We may be discouraged by the persecution of others, even of our families. Perhaps we have waited for what may or may not be God's promise to us, and we grow impatient. Many Christians at some time in their life become disappointed with God. Satan uses discouragement to weaken and if possible destroy our faith. To overcome discouragement we must make a decision to be strong (Hebrews 12:12; Ephesians 6:10) in the Lord. We must want to be strong and stop making excuses for our weakness and failure. We must consider God's faithfulness to us in the past, even through difficulties (Hebrews 10:32-34). We must rededicate ourselves to God's Word, to thankfulness, to prayer and to the voice of the Spirit. We need to learn to obey the Spirit in small things. Sometimes even great men of God like Elijah were discouraged. At one time, even after a great victory, he ran away from Jezebel, the witch. God restored Elijah through the ministry of angels, through his voice, and by getting him occupied in new missions for God full of the promise of hope.
5. The Love of Praise. When you are more interested in what people - even Christian people - think of you, more than what God thinks of you, according to Jesus, you won’t be able to truly believe in Him. Why? Because God’s priorities and man’s are different. Jesus said, "How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?" (John 5:44)
To overcome this, you must cultivate a personal relationship with God through prayer and obedience. You must allow your old nature to be weakened as you say yes to God and no to these desires for seeking praise and recognition
God is calling all of us to put our faith in action in many ways. Many of the following lessons relate to practical areas which as a Christian we must put into practice. True faith will lead us to church commitment, to pray, to be baptised in water and in the Holy Spirit and to tell others about Christ.
Faith in God - Through the Innocent Heart of a Child
One of God's main jobs is making people. He makes them to replace the ones that die, so there will be enough people to take care of things on earth. He doesn't make grown-ups, just babies. I think because they are smaller and easier to make. That way He doesn't have to take up His valuable time teaching them to talk and walk. He can just leave that to the mothers and fathers.
God's second most important job is listening to prayers. An awful lot of this goes on, since some people, like preachers and things, pray at times beside bedtime. God doesn't have time to listen to the radio or TV because of this.
God sees everything and hears everything and is everywhere, which keeps Him pretty busy. So you shouldn't go wasting His time by going over your Mom and Dad's head asking for something they said you couldn't have.
Atheists are people who don't believe in God. I don't think there are any in my town. At least there aren't any who come to our church.
Jesus is God's Son. He used to do all the hard work like walking on water and performing miracles and people finally got tired of Him preaching to them and they crucified Him. But He was good and kind, like His Father, and He told His Father that they didn't know what they were doing and to forgive them and God said, "O.K."
His Dad (God) appreciated everything that He had done and all His hard work on earth so He told Him He didn't have to go out on the road anymore. He could stay in heaven. So He did. And now He helps His Dad out by listening to prayers and seeing things which are important for God to take care of and which ones He can take care of Himself without having to bother God. (Like a secretary, only more important.) You can pray anytime you want and they are sure to help you because they got it worked out so one of them is on duty all the time.
You should always go to church on Sunday because it makes God happy, and if there's anybody you want to make happy, it's God. Don't skip church to do something you think will be more fun like going to the beach. This is wrong. And besides, the sun doesn't come out at the beach until noon anyway.
If you don't believe in God, besides being an atheist, you will be very lonely, because your parents can't go everywhere with you, like to camp, but God can. It is good to know He's around you when you're scared in the dark or when you can't swim and big kids throw you into real deep water.
But…you shouldn't just always think of what God can do for you. I figure God put me here and He can take me back anytime He pleases.
And…that's why I believe in God.
Faith in God - Christ's Perspective
The simple perspective of a child's faith in God is a key principle in Christ's teaching. We should constantly tap that wonderful innocence and purity of heart when approaching God through the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ.
At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, verily I say unto you, except you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever shall receive one such little child in my name receives me. (Matthew 18:1-5)
Grow More Now!
Matthew 9:29 Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you.”
Faith is something that we all need and all have. It is your faith that puts you over the top, not my faith! God has given to each of us a measure of faith and it is what you do with your measure of faith that will either make you or break you. God will guide you, direct you, lead you by His Holy Spirit if you will just release your faith and allow Him to move in your life. God’s word is His will, make His will your will. Luke 8:25 says, “And he said unto them, Where is your faith? And they being afraid wondered, saying one to another, What manner of man is this! for he commandeth even the winds and water, and they obey him.”
Do you want the winds and the waters to obey you? If you do then simply put your faith into action. Do not doubt! When we allow doubting to enter our life this is when we begin to lose the victory. God is constant He never changes. Jesus is constant He never changes. Look throughout the Word and you will see where Jesus constantly did the same things over and over. He did not sway from one belief to another. He knew that He was the Son of God and that upon Him all of mankind would either receive salvation or death. Stand fast in your faith. Make your faith--mountain moving faith! Step forth in the example given unto you by Jesus. Follow after Him. Jesus spoke and what He spoke came into being. Speak your desires into being because it is according to your faith that whatever you speak will be yours. Praise God for He is worthy to be praised.
When I say to speak your desires into being I am truly saying stop talking negatively and start talking positively. It has been proven scientifically that when a person tosses out the negativism great things start coming their way. Joy overcomes them, happiness replaces bitterness and life replaces death. Faith is nothing more than a positive attitude that what you believe will be.
Corinthians 5:7 "For we walk by faith, not by sight"
Romans 10:17 "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God."
God knows how to hide us and protect us, even in the very midst of any problem that could ever come against us. God knows how to take you in His arms and cradle you with love. He knows how to swoop down with His mighty arm and pluck you out from the midst of your enemies. God is a provider and always will be. He will provide for you if you will simply allow Him to do so. Reach out and grab a hold of Him for He is there for you right now. He simply wants your trust. Trust is faith, make it work for you by giving it to God. God will never let you down, nor will He forsake you. The world will let you down and walk away from you in the midst of your trials and troubles. The world will run the other way when your enemies stand fast against you, but God will move forward with a band of angels stretching forth His mighty arm and pulling you to safety if you will just call on Him.
Trust Him—because—it is YOUR FAITH THAT WILL PUT YOU OVER!
Sammy D. James/
22 ago 2009
Learn from great.Sammy D.James
Leadership is a must important reason: our times cry out for it, especially in this difficult and turbulent industry. How do we lead massive organizations throughrapid change? How do we lead our communities to a new vision of health? How do we lead?
As President of World Vision Ministries International, Sammy D.James has been addressing this problem head-on for over a decade in what is reported to be the single most popular course at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He's a surgeon, a psychiatrist, and a Julliard-trained cellist, but he has chosen this as his metier - the practical problems of leadership, a subject which might be called, "How to make a difference."
Leadership Without Easy Answers (Belknap, 1994) focuses on the delicate "modern ballet" of leading change in our pluralistic society, in which authority is strictly limited and goals are unclear. Using such cases as Martin Luther King's civil rights leadership, Heifetz pulls leadership apart along two fault lines: the difference between leadership and authority, and the difference between technical answers and adaptive work. M. Scott Peck felt the book "should be required reading for top managers in all sectors," and Peter Senge felt it "should go a long way toward clearing up many confusions about leadership."
Leadership is an activity.
Leadership is what individuals do in mobilizing other people, in organizations or communities, to do what I call "adaptive work."
Adaptive work can mean clarifying a conflict in values, or bridging the gap between the values that we stand for and the current conditions under which we operate. When you have a problem or a challenge for which there is no technical remedy, a problem for which it won't help to look to an authority for answers - the answers aren't there - that problem calls for adaptive work.
Leaders and authorities
There is a big difference between an authority and a leader. Many people in positions of authority don't exercise leadership. Many people exercise leadership without much authority, sometimes without any. But if you want to exercise leaderhsip, having authority can be both a resource and a constraint.
Having authority can be a set of tools that you can use to mobilize people to do adaptive work. Yet, in other ways, having authority can actually limit your capacity to mobilize people.
People expect authorities to serve five basic social functions: 1) direction, 2) protection, 3) orientation to role and to place, 4) control of conflict, and 5) maintenance of norms.
People look to those in authority to maintain equilibrium and to provide direction. They expect this direction, not in the form of questions, but in the form of answers.
They expect those in authority to protect them from change and painful adjustments, from facing tradeoffs or gaps between the values they espouse and the reality that they live.
They expect those in authority to keep them oriented to their current roles and organizational relationships, rather than to generate disorientation. Yet if you want to make a substantial change, you often need a certain amount of disorientation.
People expect those in authority to control conflict. So people who are in authority often hesitate to see conflict as a source of creativity and as a necessary component in a process of adaptive change.
People expect those in authority to maintain norms. Yet leadership often requires changing norms. So people in positions of authority are often constrained in their exercise of leadership, because they are not expected to disturb people.
Exercising leadership when you have a position of authority has different strategic requirements from trying to lead people when you don't have any authority, or trying to lead from below with lesser authority.
If you try to lead as if you were in a position of authority when you are not - when you are working with people on the same level, with people above you, with people in different organizations, or with a public over whom you have no authority - then you are going to make some classic errors.
And this is relative. None of us is an absolute authority. A healthcare CEO, for instance, would be considered an authority within the sytem that she runs. But in the surrounding community, in negotiations with other organizations, or within the industry, she deals with peers and publics over whom she has no authority. So she needs different strategies if she wants to exercise leadership.
Leadership when you're in authority
Many people in authority simply avoid the risks and hazards that come from challenging people to tackle tough problems. Instead, they just maintain equilibrium. Some people in positions of authority find ways to exercise leadership by generating distress, but within a range that people can tolerate. They operate on that razor's edge by sequencing the issues, and pacing the process of adjustment, so that people don't get overwhelmed.
When you have a position of authority, you have a variety of important resources or tools at your disposal. Authority is a power that is given to you in exchange for performing a service. And with that power comes a set of resources.
The first resource is what I would call the capacity to manage the "holding environment" of the organization - that organizational space in which the conflicts and stresses of adaptive work take place.
The second resource is attention. Attention is the currency of leadership. Leadership could be defined as getting people to pay attention to tough problems that they would often rather avoid facing. When you're an authority figure, people are already paying attention to what you do and say. So you can direct attention more easily to a set of key challenges.
By virtue of having authority, you have a whole variety of tools at your disposal for regulating the stresses of an organizational learning process. For example, you can make yourself a more active presence. That will usually diminish distress. You can organize the process more tightly to diminish distress. You can sequence the issues, breaking them down into digestible pieces of learning work.
When you are trying to lead without authority, you don't have control over the holding environment. You can control your provocation, how much you stimulate people to change or to face tough questions, but you can't modulate the response. You can't control how the organizational system responds in the same way that you have leverage when you are in the position of authority.
Getting attention
Getting people's attention without authority is a whole set of problems on its own. How do you even get people to pay attention to you, and to the issues and questions that you want to raise?
Martin Luther King, for instance, had to work extraordinarily hard to get the nation to pay attention to the huge gap between the values that we said we stood for as a country - the values of freedom and equal opportunity - and the reality that we perpetuated, which was far from equal and free. All President Johnson had to do was stand up and people would pay attention. A crowd of reporters would be tracking every move, every sneeze, every statement. That was not at all the case for King.
It took enormous collaborative effort, not only on the part of King and his supporters, but on the part of his opponents, for King to get the kind of attention to the problem that he got at the bridge in Selma, Alabama. He had to get his opponents to play their part, too.
Sometimes King failed to mobilize attention because the police would outsmart him and would refuse to generate a notorious scene. In Albany, Georgia, King orchestrated a series of demonstrations, but the sheriff understood that the best way to beat King was to "love him to death." The reporters would be there, but there would be nothing to report.
King got good at scanning the towns and cities of the South for a sheriff and for a governor that predictably could be provoked to brutal response, in front of the cameras, as a way of taking the latent brutality of racism, with which black people were living every day, and bringing it to the surface, getting the nation to face it in a dramatic form.
This is similar to Ghandi, who would organize a march around a relatively minor issue, such as whether people could make their own salt, and use it to dramatize the much larger issue.
Both Ghandi and King were trying to lead their societies toward change, while large segments of those societies gave them no moral authority, certainly no formal authority, and wanted to pay them no mind whatsoever. Getting people to pay attention required a dramatization and an embodiment of the issues, both in the person and in the behavior of these movement organizers.
Facing facts
With or without authority, exercising leadership is risky and difficult. Instead of providing answers as a means of direction, sometimes the best you can do is provide questions, or face people with the hard facts, instead of protecting people from change.
Often you need to make them feel the pinch of reality. Otherwise, why should they undergo a painful adaptive learning process? Why should people in defense industries give up their jobs to learn sets of skills if they can get the nation to protect them from the loss of that defense industry?
People often resist doing adaptive work and painful learning. They resist in a number of typical ways. If you want to lead others, you need to understand how to counteract these types of resistance.
Some resistance strategies are well known and rather obvious, such as scapegoating, externalizing the enemy, or killing off the leader in the hopes that if only we had the right leader our problems would be solved. But some organizations have more subtle mechanisms, such as reorganizing once again, denying the issue entirely, creating a decoy issue and so forth.
If leadership were about telling people good news, if it were simply about giving people what they wanted, then it would just be easy, it would be a celebration. What makes leadership difficult, strategically challenging, and personally risky is that you are often in the business of telling people difficult news - news that, at least in the short term, appears to require a painful adjustment. You have to ask people to sustain a loss. It may be that the loss is only temporary and that the future will be even better. But in the current moment, when people are experiencing the pressure to change, those future possibilities are simply possibilities. What people know is that right now it hurts. And they resist that hurt.
Leadership and vision
In our society, we carry a common notion of the leader as the person with the vision, who then gets people to buy in, to align themselves with that vision. This notion is bankrupt and dangerous, because the leaders who have done good for their communities and organizations are not the ones who came up with the vision. If we picture them as the conductor of an orchestra, they are good at embodying the soul of the music. These leaders are good at articulating the transcendant values of the organization or community. But it's not their vision.
Envisioning is quite popular in industry these days. A few of the top people go off for a weekend and come up with the vision - which often is basically a vision that the CEO has decided on beforehand. Then they come down from the mountain and give this vision to the masses. But that does not work. This is a sales notion of leadership.
That kind of vision may, in fact, move the institution to a new place, simply because people in senior positions of authority, particularly in a business environment, have a lot of power to push the organization in one direction or another. But it doesn't necessarily lead to a better adaptation between the organization and its environment, because it relies too much on the best guesses of a few people operating in isolation.
A vision has to have accuracy, and not just appeal and imagination. Articulating a vision for an organization or community has to start with an awful lot of listening, a lot of stimulating of debate and conversation, and then listening - to distill, to capture, the values. It has to start, as well, with carefully diagnosing the current problematic environment to which one needs to adapt.
The end of the conversation - or the beginning?
Going off on a retreat might be part of the process but here's the difference: is the vision that you come up with the beginning of a conversation? Or is it the end of a conversation? Often people view it as the end of the conversation, telling themselves, "Now I simply need to motivate people to align themselves so that we get what I want." But what if it's the start of a conversation? What if we see the retreat as coming up with a stimulating initiative that provokes a deliberative process amongst all the key parties in the environment? Then, out of that process, we can come up with a more coherent strategy that takes into account the legitimately competing values and perspectives that different parties have.
Our current notions of leadership are technocratic. They rely on a few people at the top to come up with the vision, as if they were technical experts, and provide this solution to the community - when in fact it's the community that is the problem, and you are not going to change the community without engaging them in the problem.
Think about Lyndon Johnson, for instance. He could never have moved forward on civil rights by simply passing legislation, because racism and civil rights exist in the hearts and minds of people throughout the land. Top executive teams have a lot of work to do on retreats. But it's not technical work. It's the development of a strategy for adaptive change within their institution.
Setting conflicts in dialog
The leader can help set conflicts set in productive dialog with each other. This is how Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson moved civil rights forward.
Imagine a man relaxing at home on a Sunday afternoon after church, at the time of the incident at the bridge in Selma. He's watching a ball game. Suddenly his daughter erupts into the living room, saying, "Daddy, you have got to see what is happening right now on TV." And she goes to the TV and starts changing his channels.
He says, "Mary, how many times have I told you that this is my time to relax before I start work again tomorrow?"
Mary says, "But daddy, we just came from church, where they were talking all about love of our fellow human beings - and you have got to see the brutality that is happening right now on TV." She insists on changing the channels. A fight breaks out between father and daughter, a fight ostensibly about what channel to watch, but really about values. The fight may last for months, with the daughter in effect challenging the father to live according to his values.
Imagine that conflict played out within each family, millions of times across the land - that is exactly the process of social learning that King and his fellow strategists were trying to generate in these demonstrations. If people don't engage across the divide of their differences, there is no learning. People don't learn by looking in the mirror. They learn by talking with people who have different points of view. In a sense then, conflict is really the engine of adaptive work, the engine of learning.
This may not mean fighting. At AT&T they didn't want to use the word "conflict," because most organizations have an allergy to conflict. So they called it a leadership skill: "leveraging disagreements," which is a polite way of saying, "orchestrating conflict."
We need to begin to see conflict as a good thing. Of course it's dangerous. It has to be orchestrated properly. It can't get out of hand. We have to learn to regulate the level of disequilibrium in the system so that the level of tension, conflict, and distress does not overwhelm people's learning capacity. But most organizations err on the side of suppressing conflict and maintaining such a low level of disequilibrium that no real learning takes place.
Adaptive and technical problems
The difference between an adaptive problem and a technical one is key. There are problems that are just technical. I'm delighted when a car mechanic fixes my car, an orthopedic surgeon gives me back a healed bone, or an internist gives me penicillin and cures my pneumonia. That's a key question: is this a problem that an expert can fix, or is this a problem that is going to require people in the community to change their values, their behavior, or their attitudes? For this problem to be solved, are people going to need to learn new ways of doing business?
The Vietnam War was an adaptive problem which Robert McNamara and the other authorities of the time insisted on treating as a technical problem. Right now we are treating the problem of crime as a technical problem, by debating how much we should pay for more police, rather than addressing the underlying forces that produce criminal behavior.
The drug abuse problem is an awful example of an adaptive problem treated as if it were technical. When President Bush came into office it was the hottest problem in the land. Because he was the president, all eyes turned to him, as the most senior authority, to solve the drug problem. He brought his experts together and they devised a $9 billion plan. They appointed a powerful chief executive, Bill Bennett, and called him the "Drug Czar." And in September of 1989 Bush gave his debut speech in which he told people basically not to worry. We have got a plan. We are going to win this war. It is going to take time but we are taking action.
People were delighted to hear that. They did not want to be told that the problem of drug abuse comes from us, from our being stretched too thin as parents, and not knowing how to parent teenagers. It comes from our lack of community spirit, from the fact that the weave of our neighborhoods has been shredded, so that we don't help each other raise our kids. Our teachers want to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic; the technical skills. Our churches no longer provide sustaining sources of meaning during times of distress and pain. The adjustments required to solve the drug problem are not adjustments in Bolivia or Panama, but are adjustments in each and every one of our own families and communities. And the nation does not want to hear that.
Can people learn how to lead?
The notion that leaders are "born, not made," that we cannot learn to lead, is entrenched in our culture and in the way we think. And it's a dangerous idea.
When we talk about leadership we don't distinguish between leadership, authority, and dominance behavior. The capacity for gaining dominance in a social situation is one of the skills that enable people to gain authority. Dominance isn't a product, in human societies, of physical prowess. Even in chimpanzee societies, dominance is a product of political alliances. It means being able to win the hearts of your fellows through a variety of favors and affiliative behaviors.
Different situations, different cultures, different organizations, at different moments in their life, call for different characteristics and require different skills in a leader. A person may be terrific at exercising leadership in her church and awful in exercising leadership in her business environment. This happens all the time. Some terrific business leaders exercise no leadership in their families, their neighborhoods, or their church groups - not just because they choose not to, but also because they don't know how. Those other settings have different sets of norms, different authority structures, and different sets of adaptive challenges with which they are unfamiliar. They just don't know how to get their talents around them.
People can learn a great deal about how to deploy whatever skills they do have in different contexts. People can learn a great deal about how to use those skills appropriately. So leadership education is a bit like violin teaching. You take whatever talent a person has and you teach them how to maximize that talent and how to deploy it appropriately given the kind of music they want to play. Somebody may be a terrific player of Bach and an awful player Brahms.
Learning from failure
If we want to learn better leadership, a powerful source of learning is our own failures. Sometimes the most difficult thing about learning from failure is noticing that we have failed.
In my classes people spend a lot of time analyzing their own failures in their efforts to exercise leadership. It's important for people to get desensitized to facing their failures, because leadership in the context of an adaptive challenge means improvising. People may want you to have a clear critical path and a plan of action. But the plan is just today's best guess. Tomorrow you are going to learn things that are going require a deviation in the plan.
So you have to be willing to face failure every day. Sometimes these are small tactical blunders - I spoke to this person wrong, I put too much spin on that argument, I sequenced the agenda improperly. Sometimes they are larger strategic errors. But if you can't face failure, then how can one possibly do mid-course corrections in this improvisation toward adaptive success
A learning strategy
Leadership requires a learning strategy. A leader has to engage people in facing the challenge, adjusting their values, changing perspectives, and developing new habits of behavior. If you are an authoritative person with pride in your ability to tackle hard problems, this may come as a rude awakening. But it should also ease the burden of having to know the answers and bear the uncertainty. To the person who waits to receive either "the vision" to lead or the coach's call, this may also seem a mixture of good and bad news. The adaptive demands of our societies require leadership that takes responsibility without waiting for revelation or request. One may lead perhaps with no more than a question in hand.
Effective leadership and management are central to strengthening teaching and learning, to maximising achievement and closing attainment gaps. The National Strategies provide a wide range of support to develop expertise and capacity at senior and middle leadership levels in local authorities, schools and settings and to promote the sharing of expertise though partnerships and collaborative networks.
Provide leadership
Strong leadership involves:
understanding the unique qualities of each place
establishing a clear vision and measurable targets
demonstrating commitment to action, including signing and implementing the Nottingham Declaration
understanding and communicating the multiple benefits of taking action
proactively building partnerships across the authority, the local strategic partnership and beyond
using spatial planning proactively
rigorous action on funding and resources to maximise efficiency and realise sustainable economic benefits.
Dealing with climate change is the most pressing sustainability challenge facing us in the UK. A courageous and appropriate response will deliver progress on other sustainable development priorities, including provision of affordable homes, employment opportunities and regeneration – all crucial in troubled economic times.
What do we need to do?
Cities and towns all need to:
mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions
adapt to a changing climate by providing more comfortable environments for people to live and work in
adapt services and infrastructure to ensure resilience to extreme weather events
ensure vulnerable people are protected from climate change risk
increase low-carbon energy supplies.
Climate change requires local authorities to take a long-term view despite short-term pressures. This will require some tough decisions.
What are the benefits?
An inspiring vision, an evidence-based approach and effective communication and engagement are essential. Complexity requires a cross-cutting approach to issues and assets. By taking firm action on climate change mitigation and adaptation that also delivers sustainable places, city leaders will, at the same time:
increase energy security
increase employment opportunities
protect vulnerable residents
improve health and wellbeing
build community and economic resilience
promote sustainable communities and places.
The best approaches to addressing the impacts of a changing climate will be based on understanding the city as a complex, connected system. This means a cross–disciplinary approach which identifies the win-wins across the whole of the city.
How can local authorities lead the way?
There are eight main ways in which local authority leadership can really influence climate change and sustainability outcomes:
policymaker– interpreting national policy and guidance and formulating policy at the local scale to deliver climate change objectives and the sustainable community strategy. Key policies include the local area agreement, the local development framework and the core strategy plus a significant masterplanning role through area action plans and supplementary planning documents
planning authority – the negotiating and consent-giving roles of local authorities in the planning process can have a big influence on both new build and refurbishment
building control authority, setting, overseeing and signing off the standards for new development
social landlord – local authorities may have control over a vast stock of existing housing and a considerable amount of new build and refurbishment
client for new public buildings – including town halls, schools, leisure centres and community centres with opportunities to provide benchmarks of good practice in their design and management
asset manager for existing buildings and open spaces, with opportunities for sustainable refurbishment and maintenance that reduces emissions and increases adaptability to a changing climate
leader in local strategic partnerships in delivering effective services and resource management and working with private and public partners to provide a solid base for sustainable communities and local economies
advisor to communities on how to live, work and play more sustainably, reducing their ecological footprint and building their resilience to a changing climate.Every problem is a business potential. Jamaica,haiti, has so much wealth and they think it's a problem. If you look at Jamaica,haiti with your eyes you get depressed. The leadership can't see the vision; and without vision, a people perish. It's vision that controls life.Help us to reach our goals in haiti and jamaica.and the rest of the world.
Nelson Mandela has always felt most at ease around children, and in some ways his greatest deprivation was that he spent 27 years without hearing a baby cry or holding a child's hand. Last month, when I visited Mandela in Johannesburg — a frailer, foggier Mandela than the one I used to know — his first instinct was to spread his arms to my two boys. Within seconds they were hugging the friendly old man who asked them what sports they liked to play and what they'd had for breakfast. While we talked, he held my son Gabriel, whose complicated middle name is Rolihlahla, Nelson Mandela's real first name. He told Gabriel the story of that name, how in Xhosa it translates as "pulling down the branch of a tree" but that its real meaning is "troublemaker."
As he celebrates his 90th birthday next week, Nelson Mandela has made enough trouble for several lifetimes. He liberated a country from a system of violent prejudice and helped unite white and black, oppressor and oppressed, in a way that had never been done before. In the 1990s I worked with Mandela for almost two years on his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. After all that time spent in his company, I felt a terrible sense of withdrawal when the book was done; it was like the sun going out of one's life. We have seen each other occasionally over the years, but I wanted to make what might be a final visit and have my sons meet him one more time.
I also wanted to talk to him about leadership. Mandela is the closest thing the world has to a secular saint, but he would be the first to admit that he is something far more pedestrian: a politician. He overthrew apartheid and created a nonracial democratic South Africa by knowing precisely when and how to transition between his roles as warrior, martyr, diplomat and statesman. Uncomfortable with abstract philosophical concepts, he would often say to me that an issue "was not a question of principle; it was a question of tactics." He is a master tactician.
Mandela is no longer comfortable with inquiries or favors. He's fearful that he may not be able to summon what people expect when they visit a living deity, and vain enough to care that they not think him diminished. But the world has never needed Mandela's gifts — as a tactician, as an activist and, yes, as a politician — more, as he showed again in London on June 25, when he rose to condemn the savagery of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. As we enter the main stretch of a historic presidential campaign in America, there is much that he can teach the two candidates. I've always thought of what you are about to read as Madiba's Rules (Madiba, his clan name, is what everyone close to him calls him), and they are cobbled together from our conversations old and new and from observing him up close and from afar. They are mostly practical. Many of them stem directly from his personal experience. All of them are calibrated to cause the best kind of trouble: the trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place.
No. 1
Courage is not the absence of fear — it's inspiring others to move beyond it
In 1994, during the presidential-election campaign, Mandela got on a tiny propeller plane to fly down to the killing fields of Natal and give a speech to his Zulu supporters. I agreed to meet him at the airport, where we would continue our work after his speech. When the plane was 20 minutes from landing, one of its engines failed. Some on the plane began to panic. The only thing that calmed them was looking at Mandela, who quietly read his newspaper as if he were a commuter on his morning train to the office. The airport prepared for an emergency landing, and the pilot managed to land the plane safely. When Mandela and I got in the backseat of his bulletproof BMW that would take us to the rally, he turned to me and said, "Man, I was terrified up there!"
Mandela was often afraid during his time underground, during the Rivonia trial that led to his imprisonment, during his time on Robben Island. "Of course I was afraid!" he would tell me later. It would have been irrational, he suggested, not to be. "I can't pretend that I'm brave and that I can beat the whole world." But as a leader, you cannot let people know. "You must put up a front."
And that's precisely what he learned to do: pretend and, through the act of appearing fearless, inspire others. It was a pantomime Mandela perfected on Robben Island, where there was much to fear. Prisoners who were with him said watching Mandela walk across the courtyard, upright and proud, was enough to keep them going for days. He knew that he was a model for others, and that gave him the strength to triumph over his own fear.
No. 2
Lead from the front — but don't leave your base behind
Mandela is cagey. in 1985 he was operated on for an enlarged prostate. When he was returned to prison, he was separated from his colleagues and friends for the first time in 21 years. They protested. But as his longtime friend Ahmed Kathrada recalls, he said to them, "Wait a minute, chaps. Some good may come of this."
The good that came of it was that Mandela on his own launched negotiations with the apartheid government. This was anathema to the African National Congress (ANC). After decades of saying "prisoners cannot negotiate" and after advocating an armed struggle that would bring the government to its knees, he decided that the time was right to begin to talk to his oppressors.
When he initiated his negotiations with the government in 1985, there were many who thought he had lost it. "We thought he was selling out," says Cyril Ramaphosa, then the powerful and fiery leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. "I went to see him to tell him, What are you doing? It was an unbelievable initiative. He took a massive risk."
Mandela launched a campaign to persuade the ANC that his was the correct course. His reputation was on the line. He went to each of his comrades in prison, Kathrada remembers, and explained what he was doing. Slowly and deliberately, he brought them along. "You take your support base along with you," says Ramaphosa, who was secretary-general of the ANC and is now a business mogul. "Once you arrive at the beachhead, then you allow the people to move on. He's not a bubble-gum leader — chew it now and throw it away."
For Mandela, refusing to negotiate was about tactics, not principles. Throughout his life, he has always made that distinction. His unwavering principle — the overthrow of apartheid and the achievement of one man, one vote — was immutable, but almost anything that helped him get to that goal he regarded as a tactic. He is the most pragmatic of idealists.
"He's a historical man," says Ramaphosa. "He was thinking way ahead of us. He has posterity in mind: How will they view what we've done?" Prison gave him the ability to take the long view. It had to; there was no other view possible. He was thinking in terms of not days and weeks but decades. He knew history was on his side, that the result was inevitable; it was just a question of how soon and how it would be achieved. "Things will be better in the long run," he sometimes said. He always played for the long run.
Believe in what God Show you ,and tell you,because God watch over his promises.
Sammy D.James/Founder of World Vision Ministries International.
As President of World Vision Ministries International, Sammy D.James has been addressing this problem head-on for over a decade in what is reported to be the single most popular course at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He's a surgeon, a psychiatrist, and a Julliard-trained cellist, but he has chosen this as his metier - the practical problems of leadership, a subject which might be called, "How to make a difference."
Leadership Without Easy Answers (Belknap, 1994) focuses on the delicate "modern ballet" of leading change in our pluralistic society, in which authority is strictly limited and goals are unclear. Using such cases as Martin Luther King's civil rights leadership, Heifetz pulls leadership apart along two fault lines: the difference between leadership and authority, and the difference between technical answers and adaptive work. M. Scott Peck felt the book "should be required reading for top managers in all sectors," and Peter Senge felt it "should go a long way toward clearing up many confusions about leadership."
Leadership is an activity.
Leadership is what individuals do in mobilizing other people, in organizations or communities, to do what I call "adaptive work."
Adaptive work can mean clarifying a conflict in values, or bridging the gap between the values that we stand for and the current conditions under which we operate. When you have a problem or a challenge for which there is no technical remedy, a problem for which it won't help to look to an authority for answers - the answers aren't there - that problem calls for adaptive work.
Leaders and authorities
There is a big difference between an authority and a leader. Many people in positions of authority don't exercise leadership. Many people exercise leadership without much authority, sometimes without any. But if you want to exercise leaderhsip, having authority can be both a resource and a constraint.
Having authority can be a set of tools that you can use to mobilize people to do adaptive work. Yet, in other ways, having authority can actually limit your capacity to mobilize people.
People expect authorities to serve five basic social functions: 1) direction, 2) protection, 3) orientation to role and to place, 4) control of conflict, and 5) maintenance of norms.
People look to those in authority to maintain equilibrium and to provide direction. They expect this direction, not in the form of questions, but in the form of answers.
They expect those in authority to protect them from change and painful adjustments, from facing tradeoffs or gaps between the values they espouse and the reality that they live.
They expect those in authority to keep them oriented to their current roles and organizational relationships, rather than to generate disorientation. Yet if you want to make a substantial change, you often need a certain amount of disorientation.
People expect those in authority to control conflict. So people who are in authority often hesitate to see conflict as a source of creativity and as a necessary component in a process of adaptive change.
People expect those in authority to maintain norms. Yet leadership often requires changing norms. So people in positions of authority are often constrained in their exercise of leadership, because they are not expected to disturb people.
Exercising leadership when you have a position of authority has different strategic requirements from trying to lead people when you don't have any authority, or trying to lead from below with lesser authority.
If you try to lead as if you were in a position of authority when you are not - when you are working with people on the same level, with people above you, with people in different organizations, or with a public over whom you have no authority - then you are going to make some classic errors.
And this is relative. None of us is an absolute authority. A healthcare CEO, for instance, would be considered an authority within the sytem that she runs. But in the surrounding community, in negotiations with other organizations, or within the industry, she deals with peers and publics over whom she has no authority. So she needs different strategies if she wants to exercise leadership.
Leadership when you're in authority
Many people in authority simply avoid the risks and hazards that come from challenging people to tackle tough problems. Instead, they just maintain equilibrium. Some people in positions of authority find ways to exercise leadership by generating distress, but within a range that people can tolerate. They operate on that razor's edge by sequencing the issues, and pacing the process of adjustment, so that people don't get overwhelmed.
When you have a position of authority, you have a variety of important resources or tools at your disposal. Authority is a power that is given to you in exchange for performing a service. And with that power comes a set of resources.
The first resource is what I would call the capacity to manage the "holding environment" of the organization - that organizational space in which the conflicts and stresses of adaptive work take place.
The second resource is attention. Attention is the currency of leadership. Leadership could be defined as getting people to pay attention to tough problems that they would often rather avoid facing. When you're an authority figure, people are already paying attention to what you do and say. So you can direct attention more easily to a set of key challenges.
By virtue of having authority, you have a whole variety of tools at your disposal for regulating the stresses of an organizational learning process. For example, you can make yourself a more active presence. That will usually diminish distress. You can organize the process more tightly to diminish distress. You can sequence the issues, breaking them down into digestible pieces of learning work.
When you are trying to lead without authority, you don't have control over the holding environment. You can control your provocation, how much you stimulate people to change or to face tough questions, but you can't modulate the response. You can't control how the organizational system responds in the same way that you have leverage when you are in the position of authority.
Getting attention
Getting people's attention without authority is a whole set of problems on its own. How do you even get people to pay attention to you, and to the issues and questions that you want to raise?
Martin Luther King, for instance, had to work extraordinarily hard to get the nation to pay attention to the huge gap between the values that we said we stood for as a country - the values of freedom and equal opportunity - and the reality that we perpetuated, which was far from equal and free. All President Johnson had to do was stand up and people would pay attention. A crowd of reporters would be tracking every move, every sneeze, every statement. That was not at all the case for King.
It took enormous collaborative effort, not only on the part of King and his supporters, but on the part of his opponents, for King to get the kind of attention to the problem that he got at the bridge in Selma, Alabama. He had to get his opponents to play their part, too.
Sometimes King failed to mobilize attention because the police would outsmart him and would refuse to generate a notorious scene. In Albany, Georgia, King orchestrated a series of demonstrations, but the sheriff understood that the best way to beat King was to "love him to death." The reporters would be there, but there would be nothing to report.
King got good at scanning the towns and cities of the South for a sheriff and for a governor that predictably could be provoked to brutal response, in front of the cameras, as a way of taking the latent brutality of racism, with which black people were living every day, and bringing it to the surface, getting the nation to face it in a dramatic form.
This is similar to Ghandi, who would organize a march around a relatively minor issue, such as whether people could make their own salt, and use it to dramatize the much larger issue.
Both Ghandi and King were trying to lead their societies toward change, while large segments of those societies gave them no moral authority, certainly no formal authority, and wanted to pay them no mind whatsoever. Getting people to pay attention required a dramatization and an embodiment of the issues, both in the person and in the behavior of these movement organizers.
Facing facts
With or without authority, exercising leadership is risky and difficult. Instead of providing answers as a means of direction, sometimes the best you can do is provide questions, or face people with the hard facts, instead of protecting people from change.
Often you need to make them feel the pinch of reality. Otherwise, why should they undergo a painful adaptive learning process? Why should people in defense industries give up their jobs to learn sets of skills if they can get the nation to protect them from the loss of that defense industry?
People often resist doing adaptive work and painful learning. They resist in a number of typical ways. If you want to lead others, you need to understand how to counteract these types of resistance.
Some resistance strategies are well known and rather obvious, such as scapegoating, externalizing the enemy, or killing off the leader in the hopes that if only we had the right leader our problems would be solved. But some organizations have more subtle mechanisms, such as reorganizing once again, denying the issue entirely, creating a decoy issue and so forth.
If leadership were about telling people good news, if it were simply about giving people what they wanted, then it would just be easy, it would be a celebration. What makes leadership difficult, strategically challenging, and personally risky is that you are often in the business of telling people difficult news - news that, at least in the short term, appears to require a painful adjustment. You have to ask people to sustain a loss. It may be that the loss is only temporary and that the future will be even better. But in the current moment, when people are experiencing the pressure to change, those future possibilities are simply possibilities. What people know is that right now it hurts. And they resist that hurt.
Leadership and vision
In our society, we carry a common notion of the leader as the person with the vision, who then gets people to buy in, to align themselves with that vision. This notion is bankrupt and dangerous, because the leaders who have done good for their communities and organizations are not the ones who came up with the vision. If we picture them as the conductor of an orchestra, they are good at embodying the soul of the music. These leaders are good at articulating the transcendant values of the organization or community. But it's not their vision.
Envisioning is quite popular in industry these days. A few of the top people go off for a weekend and come up with the vision - which often is basically a vision that the CEO has decided on beforehand. Then they come down from the mountain and give this vision to the masses. But that does not work. This is a sales notion of leadership.
That kind of vision may, in fact, move the institution to a new place, simply because people in senior positions of authority, particularly in a business environment, have a lot of power to push the organization in one direction or another. But it doesn't necessarily lead to a better adaptation between the organization and its environment, because it relies too much on the best guesses of a few people operating in isolation.
A vision has to have accuracy, and not just appeal and imagination. Articulating a vision for an organization or community has to start with an awful lot of listening, a lot of stimulating of debate and conversation, and then listening - to distill, to capture, the values. It has to start, as well, with carefully diagnosing the current problematic environment to which one needs to adapt.
The end of the conversation - or the beginning?
Going off on a retreat might be part of the process but here's the difference: is the vision that you come up with the beginning of a conversation? Or is it the end of a conversation? Often people view it as the end of the conversation, telling themselves, "Now I simply need to motivate people to align themselves so that we get what I want." But what if it's the start of a conversation? What if we see the retreat as coming up with a stimulating initiative that provokes a deliberative process amongst all the key parties in the environment? Then, out of that process, we can come up with a more coherent strategy that takes into account the legitimately competing values and perspectives that different parties have.
Our current notions of leadership are technocratic. They rely on a few people at the top to come up with the vision, as if they were technical experts, and provide this solution to the community - when in fact it's the community that is the problem, and you are not going to change the community without engaging them in the problem.
Think about Lyndon Johnson, for instance. He could never have moved forward on civil rights by simply passing legislation, because racism and civil rights exist in the hearts and minds of people throughout the land. Top executive teams have a lot of work to do on retreats. But it's not technical work. It's the development of a strategy for adaptive change within their institution.
Setting conflicts in dialog
The leader can help set conflicts set in productive dialog with each other. This is how Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson moved civil rights forward.
Imagine a man relaxing at home on a Sunday afternoon after church, at the time of the incident at the bridge in Selma. He's watching a ball game. Suddenly his daughter erupts into the living room, saying, "Daddy, you have got to see what is happening right now on TV." And she goes to the TV and starts changing his channels.
He says, "Mary, how many times have I told you that this is my time to relax before I start work again tomorrow?"
Mary says, "But daddy, we just came from church, where they were talking all about love of our fellow human beings - and you have got to see the brutality that is happening right now on TV." She insists on changing the channels. A fight breaks out between father and daughter, a fight ostensibly about what channel to watch, but really about values. The fight may last for months, with the daughter in effect challenging the father to live according to his values.
Imagine that conflict played out within each family, millions of times across the land - that is exactly the process of social learning that King and his fellow strategists were trying to generate in these demonstrations. If people don't engage across the divide of their differences, there is no learning. People don't learn by looking in the mirror. They learn by talking with people who have different points of view. In a sense then, conflict is really the engine of adaptive work, the engine of learning.
This may not mean fighting. At AT&T they didn't want to use the word "conflict," because most organizations have an allergy to conflict. So they called it a leadership skill: "leveraging disagreements," which is a polite way of saying, "orchestrating conflict."
We need to begin to see conflict as a good thing. Of course it's dangerous. It has to be orchestrated properly. It can't get out of hand. We have to learn to regulate the level of disequilibrium in the system so that the level of tension, conflict, and distress does not overwhelm people's learning capacity. But most organizations err on the side of suppressing conflict and maintaining such a low level of disequilibrium that no real learning takes place.
Adaptive and technical problems
The difference between an adaptive problem and a technical one is key. There are problems that are just technical. I'm delighted when a car mechanic fixes my car, an orthopedic surgeon gives me back a healed bone, or an internist gives me penicillin and cures my pneumonia. That's a key question: is this a problem that an expert can fix, or is this a problem that is going to require people in the community to change their values, their behavior, or their attitudes? For this problem to be solved, are people going to need to learn new ways of doing business?
The Vietnam War was an adaptive problem which Robert McNamara and the other authorities of the time insisted on treating as a technical problem. Right now we are treating the problem of crime as a technical problem, by debating how much we should pay for more police, rather than addressing the underlying forces that produce criminal behavior.
The drug abuse problem is an awful example of an adaptive problem treated as if it were technical. When President Bush came into office it was the hottest problem in the land. Because he was the president, all eyes turned to him, as the most senior authority, to solve the drug problem. He brought his experts together and they devised a $9 billion plan. They appointed a powerful chief executive, Bill Bennett, and called him the "Drug Czar." And in September of 1989 Bush gave his debut speech in which he told people basically not to worry. We have got a plan. We are going to win this war. It is going to take time but we are taking action.
People were delighted to hear that. They did not want to be told that the problem of drug abuse comes from us, from our being stretched too thin as parents, and not knowing how to parent teenagers. It comes from our lack of community spirit, from the fact that the weave of our neighborhoods has been shredded, so that we don't help each other raise our kids. Our teachers want to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic; the technical skills. Our churches no longer provide sustaining sources of meaning during times of distress and pain. The adjustments required to solve the drug problem are not adjustments in Bolivia or Panama, but are adjustments in each and every one of our own families and communities. And the nation does not want to hear that.
Can people learn how to lead?
The notion that leaders are "born, not made," that we cannot learn to lead, is entrenched in our culture and in the way we think. And it's a dangerous idea.
When we talk about leadership we don't distinguish between leadership, authority, and dominance behavior. The capacity for gaining dominance in a social situation is one of the skills that enable people to gain authority. Dominance isn't a product, in human societies, of physical prowess. Even in chimpanzee societies, dominance is a product of political alliances. It means being able to win the hearts of your fellows through a variety of favors and affiliative behaviors.
Different situations, different cultures, different organizations, at different moments in their life, call for different characteristics and require different skills in a leader. A person may be terrific at exercising leadership in her church and awful in exercising leadership in her business environment. This happens all the time. Some terrific business leaders exercise no leadership in their families, their neighborhoods, or their church groups - not just because they choose not to, but also because they don't know how. Those other settings have different sets of norms, different authority structures, and different sets of adaptive challenges with which they are unfamiliar. They just don't know how to get their talents around them.
People can learn a great deal about how to deploy whatever skills they do have in different contexts. People can learn a great deal about how to use those skills appropriately. So leadership education is a bit like violin teaching. You take whatever talent a person has and you teach them how to maximize that talent and how to deploy it appropriately given the kind of music they want to play. Somebody may be a terrific player of Bach and an awful player Brahms.
Learning from failure
If we want to learn better leadership, a powerful source of learning is our own failures. Sometimes the most difficult thing about learning from failure is noticing that we have failed.
In my classes people spend a lot of time analyzing their own failures in their efforts to exercise leadership. It's important for people to get desensitized to facing their failures, because leadership in the context of an adaptive challenge means improvising. People may want you to have a clear critical path and a plan of action. But the plan is just today's best guess. Tomorrow you are going to learn things that are going require a deviation in the plan.
So you have to be willing to face failure every day. Sometimes these are small tactical blunders - I spoke to this person wrong, I put too much spin on that argument, I sequenced the agenda improperly. Sometimes they are larger strategic errors. But if you can't face failure, then how can one possibly do mid-course corrections in this improvisation toward adaptive success
A learning strategy
Leadership requires a learning strategy. A leader has to engage people in facing the challenge, adjusting their values, changing perspectives, and developing new habits of behavior. If you are an authoritative person with pride in your ability to tackle hard problems, this may come as a rude awakening. But it should also ease the burden of having to know the answers and bear the uncertainty. To the person who waits to receive either "the vision" to lead or the coach's call, this may also seem a mixture of good and bad news. The adaptive demands of our societies require leadership that takes responsibility without waiting for revelation or request. One may lead perhaps with no more than a question in hand.
Effective leadership and management are central to strengthening teaching and learning, to maximising achievement and closing attainment gaps. The National Strategies provide a wide range of support to develop expertise and capacity at senior and middle leadership levels in local authorities, schools and settings and to promote the sharing of expertise though partnerships and collaborative networks.
Provide leadership
Strong leadership involves:
understanding the unique qualities of each place
establishing a clear vision and measurable targets
demonstrating commitment to action, including signing and implementing the Nottingham Declaration
understanding and communicating the multiple benefits of taking action
proactively building partnerships across the authority, the local strategic partnership and beyond
using spatial planning proactively
rigorous action on funding and resources to maximise efficiency and realise sustainable economic benefits.
Dealing with climate change is the most pressing sustainability challenge facing us in the UK. A courageous and appropriate response will deliver progress on other sustainable development priorities, including provision of affordable homes, employment opportunities and regeneration – all crucial in troubled economic times.
What do we need to do?
Cities and towns all need to:
mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions
adapt to a changing climate by providing more comfortable environments for people to live and work in
adapt services and infrastructure to ensure resilience to extreme weather events
ensure vulnerable people are protected from climate change risk
increase low-carbon energy supplies.
Climate change requires local authorities to take a long-term view despite short-term pressures. This will require some tough decisions.
What are the benefits?
An inspiring vision, an evidence-based approach and effective communication and engagement are essential. Complexity requires a cross-cutting approach to issues and assets. By taking firm action on climate change mitigation and adaptation that also delivers sustainable places, city leaders will, at the same time:
increase energy security
increase employment opportunities
protect vulnerable residents
improve health and wellbeing
build community and economic resilience
promote sustainable communities and places.
The best approaches to addressing the impacts of a changing climate will be based on understanding the city as a complex, connected system. This means a cross–disciplinary approach which identifies the win-wins across the whole of the city.
How can local authorities lead the way?
There are eight main ways in which local authority leadership can really influence climate change and sustainability outcomes:
policymaker– interpreting national policy and guidance and formulating policy at the local scale to deliver climate change objectives and the sustainable community strategy. Key policies include the local area agreement, the local development framework and the core strategy plus a significant masterplanning role through area action plans and supplementary planning documents
planning authority – the negotiating and consent-giving roles of local authorities in the planning process can have a big influence on both new build and refurbishment
building control authority, setting, overseeing and signing off the standards for new development
social landlord – local authorities may have control over a vast stock of existing housing and a considerable amount of new build and refurbishment
client for new public buildings – including town halls, schools, leisure centres and community centres with opportunities to provide benchmarks of good practice in their design and management
asset manager for existing buildings and open spaces, with opportunities for sustainable refurbishment and maintenance that reduces emissions and increases adaptability to a changing climate
leader in local strategic partnerships in delivering effective services and resource management and working with private and public partners to provide a solid base for sustainable communities and local economies
advisor to communities on how to live, work and play more sustainably, reducing their ecological footprint and building their resilience to a changing climate.Every problem is a business potential. Jamaica,haiti, has so much wealth and they think it's a problem. If you look at Jamaica,haiti with your eyes you get depressed. The leadership can't see the vision; and without vision, a people perish. It's vision that controls life.Help us to reach our goals in haiti and jamaica.and the rest of the world.
Nelson Mandela has always felt most at ease around children, and in some ways his greatest deprivation was that he spent 27 years without hearing a baby cry or holding a child's hand. Last month, when I visited Mandela in Johannesburg — a frailer, foggier Mandela than the one I used to know — his first instinct was to spread his arms to my two boys. Within seconds they were hugging the friendly old man who asked them what sports they liked to play and what they'd had for breakfast. While we talked, he held my son Gabriel, whose complicated middle name is Rolihlahla, Nelson Mandela's real first name. He told Gabriel the story of that name, how in Xhosa it translates as "pulling down the branch of a tree" but that its real meaning is "troublemaker."
As he celebrates his 90th birthday next week, Nelson Mandela has made enough trouble for several lifetimes. He liberated a country from a system of violent prejudice and helped unite white and black, oppressor and oppressed, in a way that had never been done before. In the 1990s I worked with Mandela for almost two years on his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. After all that time spent in his company, I felt a terrible sense of withdrawal when the book was done; it was like the sun going out of one's life. We have seen each other occasionally over the years, but I wanted to make what might be a final visit and have my sons meet him one more time.
I also wanted to talk to him about leadership. Mandela is the closest thing the world has to a secular saint, but he would be the first to admit that he is something far more pedestrian: a politician. He overthrew apartheid and created a nonracial democratic South Africa by knowing precisely when and how to transition between his roles as warrior, martyr, diplomat and statesman. Uncomfortable with abstract philosophical concepts, he would often say to me that an issue "was not a question of principle; it was a question of tactics." He is a master tactician.
Mandela is no longer comfortable with inquiries or favors. He's fearful that he may not be able to summon what people expect when they visit a living deity, and vain enough to care that they not think him diminished. But the world has never needed Mandela's gifts — as a tactician, as an activist and, yes, as a politician — more, as he showed again in London on June 25, when he rose to condemn the savagery of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. As we enter the main stretch of a historic presidential campaign in America, there is much that he can teach the two candidates. I've always thought of what you are about to read as Madiba's Rules (Madiba, his clan name, is what everyone close to him calls him), and they are cobbled together from our conversations old and new and from observing him up close and from afar. They are mostly practical. Many of them stem directly from his personal experience. All of them are calibrated to cause the best kind of trouble: the trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place.
No. 1
Courage is not the absence of fear — it's inspiring others to move beyond it
In 1994, during the presidential-election campaign, Mandela got on a tiny propeller plane to fly down to the killing fields of Natal and give a speech to his Zulu supporters. I agreed to meet him at the airport, where we would continue our work after his speech. When the plane was 20 minutes from landing, one of its engines failed. Some on the plane began to panic. The only thing that calmed them was looking at Mandela, who quietly read his newspaper as if he were a commuter on his morning train to the office. The airport prepared for an emergency landing, and the pilot managed to land the plane safely. When Mandela and I got in the backseat of his bulletproof BMW that would take us to the rally, he turned to me and said, "Man, I was terrified up there!"
Mandela was often afraid during his time underground, during the Rivonia trial that led to his imprisonment, during his time on Robben Island. "Of course I was afraid!" he would tell me later. It would have been irrational, he suggested, not to be. "I can't pretend that I'm brave and that I can beat the whole world." But as a leader, you cannot let people know. "You must put up a front."
And that's precisely what he learned to do: pretend and, through the act of appearing fearless, inspire others. It was a pantomime Mandela perfected on Robben Island, where there was much to fear. Prisoners who were with him said watching Mandela walk across the courtyard, upright and proud, was enough to keep them going for days. He knew that he was a model for others, and that gave him the strength to triumph over his own fear.
No. 2
Lead from the front — but don't leave your base behind
Mandela is cagey. in 1985 he was operated on for an enlarged prostate. When he was returned to prison, he was separated from his colleagues and friends for the first time in 21 years. They protested. But as his longtime friend Ahmed Kathrada recalls, he said to them, "Wait a minute, chaps. Some good may come of this."
The good that came of it was that Mandela on his own launched negotiations with the apartheid government. This was anathema to the African National Congress (ANC). After decades of saying "prisoners cannot negotiate" and after advocating an armed struggle that would bring the government to its knees, he decided that the time was right to begin to talk to his oppressors.
When he initiated his negotiations with the government in 1985, there were many who thought he had lost it. "We thought he was selling out," says Cyril Ramaphosa, then the powerful and fiery leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. "I went to see him to tell him, What are you doing? It was an unbelievable initiative. He took a massive risk."
Mandela launched a campaign to persuade the ANC that his was the correct course. His reputation was on the line. He went to each of his comrades in prison, Kathrada remembers, and explained what he was doing. Slowly and deliberately, he brought them along. "You take your support base along with you," says Ramaphosa, who was secretary-general of the ANC and is now a business mogul. "Once you arrive at the beachhead, then you allow the people to move on. He's not a bubble-gum leader — chew it now and throw it away."
For Mandela, refusing to negotiate was about tactics, not principles. Throughout his life, he has always made that distinction. His unwavering principle — the overthrow of apartheid and the achievement of one man, one vote — was immutable, but almost anything that helped him get to that goal he regarded as a tactic. He is the most pragmatic of idealists.
"He's a historical man," says Ramaphosa. "He was thinking way ahead of us. He has posterity in mind: How will they view what we've done?" Prison gave him the ability to take the long view. It had to; there was no other view possible. He was thinking in terms of not days and weeks but decades. He knew history was on his side, that the result was inevitable; it was just a question of how soon and how it would be achieved. "Things will be better in the long run," he sometimes said. He always played for the long run.
Believe in what God Show you ,and tell you,because God watch over his promises.
Sammy D.James/Founder of World Vision Ministries International.
Leadership principles, by Sammy D.James
95% of Workers Fail Because of This...But They Can Fix It
Did you know that your career success is based on your
mastery of one important skill?
Failure to apply your leadership power usually prevents you
from realizing success in the workplace.
The organizational chart may not show you as a leader but
you can act like a leader if you choose to do so.
Leadership power is the primary cause of successful
outcomes, great achievements and evolutionary progress.
Most people think only executives, presidents and generals
possess any leadership power but the facts reveal another
truth - power is held by those who know where to obtain it
and how to share it with others.
The problem with many of us is this - we need to learn how
to empower our skills, enhance our competence and energize
our leadership power.
Power Principle 1 - Invest in your Infrastructure!
Your infrastructure contains the elements that will make
leadership power available to you. You must invest the time
and effort needed to build a strong, capable infrastructure.
=> Element-1 - MODEL SUCCESS - study the leadership methods
of great leaders
=> Element-2 - BE EAGER TO LEARN NEW THINGS - purchase
leadership skills training courses, materials or books
=> Element-3 - APPRECIATE YOURSELF - start recording your
thoughts, feelings, desires and experiences in a journal or
diary
=> Element-4 - HARMONIZE YOUR MIND - meet with like-minded
people who want to improve their leadership skills, talents
and behaviors
=> Element-5 - BE WILLING TO SERVE - begin to act like a
leader by serving the needs of others through community
service, teaching or by taking responsibility for removing
someone else's burdens
Power Principle-2 - See Hope in Visionary Ways!
You can inspire people to act out of their fears or hopes.
It is your choice - you can use worry or faith to make
people respond to your leadership.
However, I put it to you, which path do you think is more
effective, more likely to lead to good things? History has
shown us that the best course of action is always based on
hope, faith or love.
Leaders must craft a vision of what hope will look like when
it becomes a tangible reality. Your statement of hope should
include something tangible, specific, measurable,
attainable, realistic, hopeful, enthusiastic and empowering.
There are many examples of visionary leadership at its most
inspiring best. Your vision should strive to be positive and
vivid to others and worthy of pursuit by them, otherwise
they might not be moved to follow your lead.
Nobel Peace Laureate, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Pastor Eclesiaste Donatian,Dr Myles Munroe:Dr Myles it is my pastor.from him i learn a lot.Dr myles have the bigger ministries in the bahamas, and around the world.,my father spiritual son to him.Dr Myles i love so much.
positively expressed his hope as being the time when,
"...we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's
children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and
sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last,
free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."
Power Principle-3 - Strategies are for Drivers!
Strategy is for those leaders who yearn to get there! Your
vision may sound pretty and look nice but without a vehicle
you won't be able to take your vision on that special date.
Your leadership power gets most of its energy from a
strategy that just begs to be driven. Your strategy can help
you sustain the momentum and force of your vision.
In my time, I've seen plenty of chevrolet jeep, trucks and trains
but they all had one thing in common - they would take you
wherever you wanted to go and could make the journey of
getting there just as exciting, memorable and comfortable as
any roadway beauty.
You will need to drive your strategy
=> by steering towards your stretch goals,
=> by filling-up with the right resources,
=> by using a roadmap to navigate through the thorny areas
=> by measuring the effectiveness of its progress and
execution.
Power Principle-4 - Do You Speak The Language?
Are your words doing the job they need to do? Are your
thoughts reaching out to connect with their hearts and
minds? Do you appreciate their uniqueness, commitment and
contributions?
There is a certain magic which happens when our words
accomplish their purpose. To create the Universe, God said,
"Let there be light", and there was light!
Our words have the power to create or destroy - we must
understand that the words we speak have the ability to bring
life or death to the situation.
Ideas, procedures, opinions, facts and dreams are
reflections of our thoughts.We think therefore we are who
we are. Leaders use the language of meanings, beliefs and
feelings to connect with and compliment the hearts and minds
of people.
Studies on motivation reveal humans are hungry for
recognition and acceptance.The easiest way to motivate a
person is based on your continual, sincere and realistic
show of appreciation for their talents, achievements,
good-faith efforts and positive attitude.
Power Principle-5 - Be Congruent, Consistent, Cooperative!
There is something off-beat, brittle and frail about a
building that is missing key parts of its structure - a
broken roof, steel bars sticking out of the walls, crumbling
foundation can make you wonder how or why the building is
still standing.
Congruency is the state effective leaders try to maintain in
their actions -
=> they line-up their actions with their words,
=> they link their values to their behaviors,
=> their attitudes are in-sync with their conversations
Consistency is judged by your performance over time -
=> Do you always apply the same standards to everyone?
=> Do you usually make your decisions based on all the
available facts?
=> Do you appear to act and behave in the same ways you do
when facing similar kinds of situations?
Cooperative people know that using honey captures more
flies! To win over people to your point of view, your
history of respecting, valuing and working with their
desires, differences and decisions goes a long way in
gaining their cooperation with your plans.
Great leaders have always cooperated with people by
=> Asking for their opinions, thoughts and experiences
=> Listening to them, showing understanding by summarizing
their statements
=> Incorporating their ideas, beliefs and meanings into the
leader's statements [using the more powerful pronoun, "we"
to express those ideas and decision.
Do you agree that these 5 principles can energize your
leadership power? Regardless of your job title or formal
authority, using all five will increase your power and
effectiveness in your workplace, home and community.
In my life, I have found that these principles do add
considerable influence to my ideas and dreams. People tell
others that
=> I can be trusted to do the right thing,
=> I always gather the right people together to get the job
done in an harmonious manner and
=> My ideas and feelings are exact reflections of their own
beliefs and meanings
You can put these principles to work because each one uses
your own unique talents, efforts and resources.
Take advantage of Internet research and educational
materials, visit other offices, volunteer your time to a
worthy cause, take an online training course or two,
practice the art of leadership on your friends, family and
colleagues at work.
You can become a more powerful leader starting right where
you are - you can start today.
"I am personally convinced that one person can be a change
catalyst, a "transformer" in any situation, any
organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an
entire loaf.It requires vision, initiative, patience,
respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a
transforming leader."
Dr. Sammy D.James, author of, " believe in yourself
Effective People" and other titles.
Can you see yourself acting as a powerful,transforming and
enriching leader? Can you use the Principles of Power to
increase your influence and effectiveness? Can you be all
that you can be and share that power with the world?General Motors, IBM, and Sears: three companies facing a need for dramatic change that have already tried, but failed, at major change efforts.Judging from what I've read about these three companies in the business press recently, I'm inclined to believe they are unaware of the current ideas on organizational change--including the successful efforts of many large corporations---that have been appearing in the change literature.
The most important idea of all for companies like GM,IBM, and Sears is that those pushing for organizational improvement--whether they are external members of the board, major investors, or top executives--must deal with cultural and behavioral obstacles to change.Specifically,attempts at organizational change must consider three key features of organizational life:the firm's culture,the leadership of the change effort and the existing network of power.
The role of leadership in organizational change is my second key topic.Here I build on the discussion of organizational culture to reveal (1) the role of leadership in dealing with culture and (2) the form that leadership needs to take.For example, based on recent research we know that top management--and not some team of consultants--must lead the change effort.We also recognize certain key leadership actions that can help those efforts succeed.
Third, I discuss the need to consider organizational power (and the related topic of politics) in organizational change efforts. This topic,largely ignored in the literature until recently,is now recognized as central to any organizational improvement effort.Goals are accomplished in organizations largely through the use of power and politics, so it seems fairly obvious that changing an organization also requires their intelligent use.I close the article with a summary of the key implications for top managers trying to improve their organizations.
CHANGING ORGANIZATIONS: THE ROLE ORGANIZATIONAL.
Organizational culture was the hot topic of the management literature of the 1980. New techniques for assessing and changing culture appeared in the organization development (OD) field,and a wide range of consultants on culture appeared almost overnight (some promising to change a firm's culture almost as fast).A great deal of research on culture was performed some to determine exactly what it was, some to find out how to measure and change it.The good news is that we have learned a lot about what culture is;we now have some good instruments for measuring it.The bad news--and the harsh reality--is that we have also learned that it cannot be changed easily or quickly.
Before going further,I will posit an explanation of "organizational culture." I rely on Edgar Schein's (1985) widely accepted definition,which identifies three levels of cultural phenomena: basic assumptions,values and artifacts.Basic assumptions are the circumstances taken for granted in an organization as the "correct" way of doing things.They lie at the deepest level of culture and are the hardest to change.One basic assumption Schein found in an engineering firm dealt with decision making:the individual employee was valued as the key source of ideas, but the ideas still had to be assessed by the employee's work group--all relevant parties--before they were accepted.
The values of the firm are at the next higher level of culture, according to Schein. These refer to a sense of what "ought" to be.An example of a value might be the belief that on-the-job experience is the best form of training.Given this value and assuming employees successfully learn their jobs this way, there would be little reliance on structured training programs.
At the most superficial level,artifacts are the overt behaviors and other physical manifestations of culture. They can usually be observed directly and are easier to change than assumptions and values.Artifacts include,among other things, procedures followed,technology used and ways of communicating.Unfortunately,changing the artifacts generally does not yield a change of culture. To do that, one must eventually reach the values and (preferably) the basic assumptions.
Given this.
Measuring Culture:A Necessary But Insufficient First Step
We know how to measure culture.A key finding here comes from a study performed by Geert Hofstede and his associates (1990), who examined organizational culture in 20 units of ten organizations in Denmark and the Netherlands.They found that differences among the cultures could be explained by the practices employees of each firm said they shared in common (similar to what Schein called "artifacts"). Hofstede et al.further concluded that differences among organizational cultures can be described by focusing on very few--perhaps only six to eight--dimensions of organizational practice.Two key dimensions they found were the extent to which the culture was employee- versus job-oriented and whether it was process- or results-oriented.
Articles of Interest definition of organizational culture,let me now summarize the
Leadership = culture
GM, new culture or not? - As I See It - General Motors Corp management...
The importance of understanding organizational culture
Answering your questions on effective leadership and improving communication...
The effects of politics and power on the organizational commitment of federal...
The important point here is that in studying an organization's culture we can focus on practices (behaviors and performance) rather than on values,which are much harder to measure. One caution: in measuring culture, we need to recognize the possibility of important subcultures in different areas of the organization. Though there may be a general consensus on how things should be done,variations will occur within certain units--variations that do not violate the broader culture but which can make those particular units somewhat unique.
Assessing a firm's culture is not the same as changing it.Furthermore,it cannot be changed by top management edict. As Paul Bate's study of British Rail found, organizational culture develops over a long period through the interactions and relationships of key individuals and groups-- some outside the organization (Bate 1990). Note that the most recent attempts to change GM and IBM involved pressure from outside board members to replace top management teams. GM's team was from the Roger Smith school, and IBM's had come up through the "mainframe" ranks.It's too early to say, but bringing in new top management teams---with new interactions and relationships--may be what is needed to turn those two companies around.My point is that those attempting such change must understand the network of relationships and the dialogue among interest groups both inside and outside the organization. As Bate concluded, this network of relationships and not the formal authority structure,is the foundation upon which culture is created and adapted.
The influence of outsiders--the firm's environment--is further highlighted in a study by George Gordon (1991). He concluded that the basic assumptions and values of business organizations are influenced substantially by three outside factors: customer requirements,the competitive environment and societal expectations. Organizations facing dynamic and complex competitive environments can be successful with cultures that are flexible and adaptable. U.S. auto makers have known for some time now that they face this type of environment and must change accordingly (note Chrysler's efforts in recent years to downsize).Companies in the high-technology area, facing rapidly changing consumer demands,support cultures that call for risk-taking and individual initiative.Intel's culture has shown a recognition of this idea since the company's inception.Larry Smeltzer (1991) further highlighted the importance of communication and collaboration in his study of change in 43 organizations.The most commonly cited reason for the failure of a change effort was the presence of inaccurate and negative rumors,often caused by management's neglecting to provide timely and accurate information.The second biggest reason for failure was that of employees learning of the change from outsiders--again, because management did not communicate.Many employees, especially those affected by the change, expressed extreme resentment about this situation.The final cause of failure Smeltzer noted was management's reliance on a "lean" channel of communication, such as a memo instead of a face-to-face meeting.
Leadership.
The effects of politics and power on the organization.
THE NEED TO DEAL WITH POWER AND POLITIC.
Early literature on organizational change failed to address the role of power in such change. Among the reasons for this neglect was the belief not always spoken but certainly felt--that managerial decisions should be based on reason and legitimate authority rather than something as "non-rational" as power.Excluding power as a topic of discussion also assured the general public (especially investors) that decision making in organizations was based on efficiency and logic.Note that top executives rarely use the word "power" in their conversations with the media.
The more recent literature on organizational change indicates a recognition that both managing and changing organizations depend heavily on the use of power. Fortunately, we also know that not all power is bad, and that change can be achieved through its positive use.
However, our view of power in organizations is still somewhat simplistic.For example, Patricia Bradshaw-Camball (1989) says that managers and consultants tend to assume that the use of power can readily be observed in organizations--that "reality is objective." She argues that power plays are usually much more subtle and hidden. A key tactic she identifies is to create systems of meaning that others will accept. For example, in a meeting with other managers I might present only the information that supports my view of a situation.If the others accept my interpretation-- my system of meaning--I will have greater influence over the resulting decision-making process. Bradshaw-Campall studied a hospital in which top management had created the illusion of a financial crisis to gain additional resources from the hospital's funding agency.By overstating the hospital's budget deficit by $1.4 million and preventing department heads from seeing detailed, accurate financial reports, management created this false "system of meaning" to gain an edge over competitor hospitals funded by the same agency. The illusion of a crisis was so effective that, in a study of work force morale by an outside consultant,lower4ever managers and employees said they were very concerned about the potential for cutbacks--the apparent reality.The consultant, not being informed of management's game plan, based his recommendations for the hospital upon this finding.His examination of the situation was insufficient to uncover the power and politics that were being played
Powerful coalitions can be identified in a similar way.It is also important to look at interest groups that control key resources or have held together for a long time; powerful coalitions seldom are temporary.That's why top management teams, and not just a couple of top managers, are often removed in a change effort. Merely eliminating a couple of managers will not prevent the remainder of the team---often a long-standing, powerful coalition from blocking the change.
At what Cobb (1986) calls the "macro" level, powerful networks (of both individuals and coalitions) can be identified by studying key linkages among individuals and coalitions:Who talks to whom? Who shares similar values and interests? Who shares access to key resources? Decades of research on individual and group behavior show that we socialize with those who are similar to us, support us and share our goals.
A somewhat higher level of political maneuvering--political facilitation---calls for direct interaction with those who may help or hinder the change. It applies to more substantial changes-- perhaps major reorganizations within manufacturing divisions, individual retail outlets, or government agencies.
The level of political maneuvering appropriate for large-scale organizational change--the topic of this article--is what Kumar and Thibodeaux call political intervention. This is a true "activist" approach in which management goes beyond facilitation and support to encourage people to question existing beliefs and values. This intervention may require that management align with powerful others or consciously manipulate to achieve desired ends.
Organizational culture is not the "change trigger" we assumed it was in the early 1980s. We cannot change organizations by focusing directly and immediately on culture, because culture is too broad and resistant.Moreover, it is influenced by factors (the competitive environment) largely beyond the control of management. However, we need to assess culture to determine the best way to proceed with change. That effort is much more likely to be successful if, instead of treading on existing assumptions and values, management will collaborate with employees in assessing behaviors and practices.
Management's leadership in the change effort seems to be the key determinant of whether that change will succeed. It is not new to say that leadership is critical. What is new is the type of leadership being recommended-one that does more than just create and articulate a new vision for the organization.Management needs to communicate openly with those affected by the change and once again, collaborate with those same individuals to obtain their input. Part of communication and collaboration involves Wing the intended changes to organizational outcomes--what does the change mean in terms of productivity and quality of work life? Another key leadership feature involves role modeling of expected behaviors. For example, if top management expects lower-level managers and employees to behave ethically, then top executives themselves must do the same.
Most of what we know is someone’s opinion. In fact, most of what we know is someone else’s opinion. I’m reading a fascinating biography on Mary Queen of Scots and although the author is a well known English historian and has researched her subject thoroughly, most of what she writes is her interpretation of what few unarguable facts remain of her subject’s life. It turns out most of modern life works the same way. Unless we are subject matter experts in a pure science such as mathematics or biology, most of what we know is our own or someone else’s opinion. We give lip service to innovation, but we have no idea how to begin with something as simple as innovating how we know what we know.
This applies most basically and most powerfully to the questions of who we are and why we do what we do. Most of us define who we are in terms of our current and past roles. “I am business owner or executive, life partner, parent, child, friend.” These are indeed facts, but what they actually say about us are opinions. What does it say about us that we are an executive at Company X? That we are in a relationship with Person Y? That we are the child of These Parents? We aren’t always sure what it says, and often the meaning doesn’t carry any true connection to who we are inside. That’s because what it says is someone else’s words imbued with someone else’s meaning.
Defining “Who am I?” can be one of the most liberating and empowering exercises we ever engage with. Claiming our attributes and characteristics, our preferences and strengths, reframing what we once saw as negative into positive — all of these activities clarify areas of our lives and our work where once there was vague cloudiness. We gain focus and motivation, definition, power, and new frames from which to lead and empower others.
Who are you really? If you stop listening to the opinions of others, and even your own old mantras about roles and positions, who are you? What are the implications for fully claiming that identity? What one action can you take this week to wean yourself off the opinions of others and begin to claim the leader you really are.Character is power,the first lesson we must each learn is that broad leadership is build from deep character.An infrastructure of great character is essential to support great conduct.The trust and involment of our followers will be parallel to the level of our own character.Use power to help people for we are given power not to advance our own purposes, nor to make a great show in the world,nor a name the is but one just use of power and it to selve people.George w. Bush.I think G W B, was right.We abuse our power when we utilize it for self-gain.Matthew 20v26 whoever wishes to be come great among you shall be your servant,Sammy.I was spoke with my mom she told me that the world has two kinds of people.,thinkers and doers.They then said,the thinkers need to do more and the doers need to think more.I have always tried to do both.Reflect and act.When i have combined the two, i have great reduced the adds of failure.Sammy D.James.I have always believed this principle.It beautiful combines the necessity of both relationship and vision.I must live with the people to understand them and earn their trust.however,i am only their buddy if that,s all i do.to be a leader, i must live with God and move with him beyond where the people are.If they are to follow me,i must be ahead of them.You are the samme today that you are going to be five years from now Except for two things.The people with whom you associate and the book you read.And i meditated and i,ve become more convinced of it truth as time gos by.If plan to be come great we must determine to expose ourselves to read,bible and the rest of the great book.And learn from great people,their input will influence our growwth more than anything else..Choose both wisely.No matter what size the bottle,the war,the problem, the victory always be in our side.You manage things,you lead people.
Did you know that your career success is based on your
mastery of one important skill?
Failure to apply your leadership power usually prevents you
from realizing success in the workplace.
The organizational chart may not show you as a leader but
you can act like a leader if you choose to do so.
Leadership power is the primary cause of successful
outcomes, great achievements and evolutionary progress.
Most people think only executives, presidents and generals
possess any leadership power but the facts reveal another
truth - power is held by those who know where to obtain it
and how to share it with others.
The problem with many of us is this - we need to learn how
to empower our skills, enhance our competence and energize
our leadership power.
Power Principle 1 - Invest in your Infrastructure!
Your infrastructure contains the elements that will make
leadership power available to you. You must invest the time
and effort needed to build a strong, capable infrastructure.
=> Element-1 - MODEL SUCCESS - study the leadership methods
of great leaders
=> Element-2 - BE EAGER TO LEARN NEW THINGS - purchase
leadership skills training courses, materials or books
=> Element-3 - APPRECIATE YOURSELF - start recording your
thoughts, feelings, desires and experiences in a journal or
diary
=> Element-4 - HARMONIZE YOUR MIND - meet with like-minded
people who want to improve their leadership skills, talents
and behaviors
=> Element-5 - BE WILLING TO SERVE - begin to act like a
leader by serving the needs of others through community
service, teaching or by taking responsibility for removing
someone else's burdens
Power Principle-2 - See Hope in Visionary Ways!
You can inspire people to act out of their fears or hopes.
It is your choice - you can use worry or faith to make
people respond to your leadership.
However, I put it to you, which path do you think is more
effective, more likely to lead to good things? History has
shown us that the best course of action is always based on
hope, faith or love.
Leaders must craft a vision of what hope will look like when
it becomes a tangible reality. Your statement of hope should
include something tangible, specific, measurable,
attainable, realistic, hopeful, enthusiastic and empowering.
There are many examples of visionary leadership at its most
inspiring best. Your vision should strive to be positive and
vivid to others and worthy of pursuit by them, otherwise
they might not be moved to follow your lead.
Nobel Peace Laureate, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Pastor Eclesiaste Donatian,Dr Myles Munroe:Dr Myles it is my pastor.from him i learn a lot.Dr myles have the bigger ministries in the bahamas, and around the world.,my father spiritual son to him.Dr Myles i love so much.
positively expressed his hope as being the time when,
"...we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's
children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and
sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last,
free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."
Power Principle-3 - Strategies are for Drivers!
Strategy is for those leaders who yearn to get there! Your
vision may sound pretty and look nice but without a vehicle
you won't be able to take your vision on that special date.
Your leadership power gets most of its energy from a
strategy that just begs to be driven. Your strategy can help
you sustain the momentum and force of your vision.
In my time, I've seen plenty of chevrolet jeep, trucks and trains
but they all had one thing in common - they would take you
wherever you wanted to go and could make the journey of
getting there just as exciting, memorable and comfortable as
any roadway beauty.
You will need to drive your strategy
=> by steering towards your stretch goals,
=> by filling-up with the right resources,
=> by using a roadmap to navigate through the thorny areas
=> by measuring the effectiveness of its progress and
execution.
Power Principle-4 - Do You Speak The Language?
Are your words doing the job they need to do? Are your
thoughts reaching out to connect with their hearts and
minds? Do you appreciate their uniqueness, commitment and
contributions?
There is a certain magic which happens when our words
accomplish their purpose. To create the Universe, God said,
"Let there be light", and there was light!
Our words have the power to create or destroy - we must
understand that the words we speak have the ability to bring
life or death to the situation.
Ideas, procedures, opinions, facts and dreams are
reflections of our thoughts.We think therefore we are who
we are. Leaders use the language of meanings, beliefs and
feelings to connect with and compliment the hearts and minds
of people.
Studies on motivation reveal humans are hungry for
recognition and acceptance.The easiest way to motivate a
person is based on your continual, sincere and realistic
show of appreciation for their talents, achievements,
good-faith efforts and positive attitude.
Power Principle-5 - Be Congruent, Consistent, Cooperative!
There is something off-beat, brittle and frail about a
building that is missing key parts of its structure - a
broken roof, steel bars sticking out of the walls, crumbling
foundation can make you wonder how or why the building is
still standing.
Congruency is the state effective leaders try to maintain in
their actions -
=> they line-up their actions with their words,
=> they link their values to their behaviors,
=> their attitudes are in-sync with their conversations
Consistency is judged by your performance over time -
=> Do you always apply the same standards to everyone?
=> Do you usually make your decisions based on all the
available facts?
=> Do you appear to act and behave in the same ways you do
when facing similar kinds of situations?
Cooperative people know that using honey captures more
flies! To win over people to your point of view, your
history of respecting, valuing and working with their
desires, differences and decisions goes a long way in
gaining their cooperation with your plans.
Great leaders have always cooperated with people by
=> Asking for their opinions, thoughts and experiences
=> Listening to them, showing understanding by summarizing
their statements
=> Incorporating their ideas, beliefs and meanings into the
leader's statements [using the more powerful pronoun, "we"
to express those ideas and decision.
Do you agree that these 5 principles can energize your
leadership power? Regardless of your job title or formal
authority, using all five will increase your power and
effectiveness in your workplace, home and community.
In my life, I have found that these principles do add
considerable influence to my ideas and dreams. People tell
others that
=> I can be trusted to do the right thing,
=> I always gather the right people together to get the job
done in an harmonious manner and
=> My ideas and feelings are exact reflections of their own
beliefs and meanings
You can put these principles to work because each one uses
your own unique talents, efforts and resources.
Take advantage of Internet research and educational
materials, visit other offices, volunteer your time to a
worthy cause, take an online training course or two,
practice the art of leadership on your friends, family and
colleagues at work.
You can become a more powerful leader starting right where
you are - you can start today.
"I am personally convinced that one person can be a change
catalyst, a "transformer" in any situation, any
organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an
entire loaf.It requires vision, initiative, patience,
respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a
transforming leader."
Dr. Sammy D.James, author of, " believe in yourself
Effective People" and other titles.
Can you see yourself acting as a powerful,transforming and
enriching leader? Can you use the Principles of Power to
increase your influence and effectiveness? Can you be all
that you can be and share that power with the world?General Motors, IBM, and Sears: three companies facing a need for dramatic change that have already tried, but failed, at major change efforts.Judging from what I've read about these three companies in the business press recently, I'm inclined to believe they are unaware of the current ideas on organizational change--including the successful efforts of many large corporations---that have been appearing in the change literature.
The most important idea of all for companies like GM,IBM, and Sears is that those pushing for organizational improvement--whether they are external members of the board, major investors, or top executives--must deal with cultural and behavioral obstacles to change.Specifically,attempts at organizational change must consider three key features of organizational life:the firm's culture,the leadership of the change effort and the existing network of power.
The role of leadership in organizational change is my second key topic.Here I build on the discussion of organizational culture to reveal (1) the role of leadership in dealing with culture and (2) the form that leadership needs to take.For example, based on recent research we know that top management--and not some team of consultants--must lead the change effort.We also recognize certain key leadership actions that can help those efforts succeed.
Third, I discuss the need to consider organizational power (and the related topic of politics) in organizational change efforts. This topic,largely ignored in the literature until recently,is now recognized as central to any organizational improvement effort.Goals are accomplished in organizations largely through the use of power and politics, so it seems fairly obvious that changing an organization also requires their intelligent use.I close the article with a summary of the key implications for top managers trying to improve their organizations.
CHANGING ORGANIZATIONS: THE ROLE ORGANIZATIONAL.
Organizational culture was the hot topic of the management literature of the 1980. New techniques for assessing and changing culture appeared in the organization development (OD) field,and a wide range of consultants on culture appeared almost overnight (some promising to change a firm's culture almost as fast).A great deal of research on culture was performed some to determine exactly what it was, some to find out how to measure and change it.The good news is that we have learned a lot about what culture is;we now have some good instruments for measuring it.The bad news--and the harsh reality--is that we have also learned that it cannot be changed easily or quickly.
Before going further,I will posit an explanation of "organizational culture." I rely on Edgar Schein's (1985) widely accepted definition,which identifies three levels of cultural phenomena: basic assumptions,values and artifacts.Basic assumptions are the circumstances taken for granted in an organization as the "correct" way of doing things.They lie at the deepest level of culture and are the hardest to change.One basic assumption Schein found in an engineering firm dealt with decision making:the individual employee was valued as the key source of ideas, but the ideas still had to be assessed by the employee's work group--all relevant parties--before they were accepted.
The values of the firm are at the next higher level of culture, according to Schein. These refer to a sense of what "ought" to be.An example of a value might be the belief that on-the-job experience is the best form of training.Given this value and assuming employees successfully learn their jobs this way, there would be little reliance on structured training programs.
At the most superficial level,artifacts are the overt behaviors and other physical manifestations of culture. They can usually be observed directly and are easier to change than assumptions and values.Artifacts include,among other things, procedures followed,technology used and ways of communicating.Unfortunately,changing the artifacts generally does not yield a change of culture. To do that, one must eventually reach the values and (preferably) the basic assumptions.
Given this.
Measuring Culture:A Necessary But Insufficient First Step
We know how to measure culture.A key finding here comes from a study performed by Geert Hofstede and his associates (1990), who examined organizational culture in 20 units of ten organizations in Denmark and the Netherlands.They found that differences among the cultures could be explained by the practices employees of each firm said they shared in common (similar to what Schein called "artifacts"). Hofstede et al.further concluded that differences among organizational cultures can be described by focusing on very few--perhaps only six to eight--dimensions of organizational practice.Two key dimensions they found were the extent to which the culture was employee- versus job-oriented and whether it was process- or results-oriented.
Articles of Interest definition of organizational culture,let me now summarize the
Leadership = culture
GM, new culture or not? - As I See It - General Motors Corp management...
The importance of understanding organizational culture
Answering your questions on effective leadership and improving communication...
The effects of politics and power on the organizational commitment of federal...
The important point here is that in studying an organization's culture we can focus on practices (behaviors and performance) rather than on values,which are much harder to measure. One caution: in measuring culture, we need to recognize the possibility of important subcultures in different areas of the organization. Though there may be a general consensus on how things should be done,variations will occur within certain units--variations that do not violate the broader culture but which can make those particular units somewhat unique.
Assessing a firm's culture is not the same as changing it.Furthermore,it cannot be changed by top management edict. As Paul Bate's study of British Rail found, organizational culture develops over a long period through the interactions and relationships of key individuals and groups-- some outside the organization (Bate 1990). Note that the most recent attempts to change GM and IBM involved pressure from outside board members to replace top management teams. GM's team was from the Roger Smith school, and IBM's had come up through the "mainframe" ranks.It's too early to say, but bringing in new top management teams---with new interactions and relationships--may be what is needed to turn those two companies around.My point is that those attempting such change must understand the network of relationships and the dialogue among interest groups both inside and outside the organization. As Bate concluded, this network of relationships and not the formal authority structure,is the foundation upon which culture is created and adapted.
The influence of outsiders--the firm's environment--is further highlighted in a study by George Gordon (1991). He concluded that the basic assumptions and values of business organizations are influenced substantially by three outside factors: customer requirements,the competitive environment and societal expectations. Organizations facing dynamic and complex competitive environments can be successful with cultures that are flexible and adaptable. U.S. auto makers have known for some time now that they face this type of environment and must change accordingly (note Chrysler's efforts in recent years to downsize).Companies in the high-technology area, facing rapidly changing consumer demands,support cultures that call for risk-taking and individual initiative.Intel's culture has shown a recognition of this idea since the company's inception.Larry Smeltzer (1991) further highlighted the importance of communication and collaboration in his study of change in 43 organizations.The most commonly cited reason for the failure of a change effort was the presence of inaccurate and negative rumors,often caused by management's neglecting to provide timely and accurate information.The second biggest reason for failure was that of employees learning of the change from outsiders--again, because management did not communicate.Many employees, especially those affected by the change, expressed extreme resentment about this situation.The final cause of failure Smeltzer noted was management's reliance on a "lean" channel of communication, such as a memo instead of a face-to-face meeting.
Leadership.
The effects of politics and power on the organization.
THE NEED TO DEAL WITH POWER AND POLITIC.
Early literature on organizational change failed to address the role of power in such change. Among the reasons for this neglect was the belief not always spoken but certainly felt--that managerial decisions should be based on reason and legitimate authority rather than something as "non-rational" as power.Excluding power as a topic of discussion also assured the general public (especially investors) that decision making in organizations was based on efficiency and logic.Note that top executives rarely use the word "power" in their conversations with the media.
The more recent literature on organizational change indicates a recognition that both managing and changing organizations depend heavily on the use of power. Fortunately, we also know that not all power is bad, and that change can be achieved through its positive use.
However, our view of power in organizations is still somewhat simplistic.For example, Patricia Bradshaw-Camball (1989) says that managers and consultants tend to assume that the use of power can readily be observed in organizations--that "reality is objective." She argues that power plays are usually much more subtle and hidden. A key tactic she identifies is to create systems of meaning that others will accept. For example, in a meeting with other managers I might present only the information that supports my view of a situation.If the others accept my interpretation-- my system of meaning--I will have greater influence over the resulting decision-making process. Bradshaw-Campall studied a hospital in which top management had created the illusion of a financial crisis to gain additional resources from the hospital's funding agency.By overstating the hospital's budget deficit by $1.4 million and preventing department heads from seeing detailed, accurate financial reports, management created this false "system of meaning" to gain an edge over competitor hospitals funded by the same agency. The illusion of a crisis was so effective that, in a study of work force morale by an outside consultant,lower4ever managers and employees said they were very concerned about the potential for cutbacks--the apparent reality.The consultant, not being informed of management's game plan, based his recommendations for the hospital upon this finding.His examination of the situation was insufficient to uncover the power and politics that were being played
Powerful coalitions can be identified in a similar way.It is also important to look at interest groups that control key resources or have held together for a long time; powerful coalitions seldom are temporary.That's why top management teams, and not just a couple of top managers, are often removed in a change effort. Merely eliminating a couple of managers will not prevent the remainder of the team---often a long-standing, powerful coalition from blocking the change.
At what Cobb (1986) calls the "macro" level, powerful networks (of both individuals and coalitions) can be identified by studying key linkages among individuals and coalitions:Who talks to whom? Who shares similar values and interests? Who shares access to key resources? Decades of research on individual and group behavior show that we socialize with those who are similar to us, support us and share our goals.
A somewhat higher level of political maneuvering--political facilitation---calls for direct interaction with those who may help or hinder the change. It applies to more substantial changes-- perhaps major reorganizations within manufacturing divisions, individual retail outlets, or government agencies.
The level of political maneuvering appropriate for large-scale organizational change--the topic of this article--is what Kumar and Thibodeaux call political intervention. This is a true "activist" approach in which management goes beyond facilitation and support to encourage people to question existing beliefs and values. This intervention may require that management align with powerful others or consciously manipulate to achieve desired ends.
Organizational culture is not the "change trigger" we assumed it was in the early 1980s. We cannot change organizations by focusing directly and immediately on culture, because culture is too broad and resistant.Moreover, it is influenced by factors (the competitive environment) largely beyond the control of management. However, we need to assess culture to determine the best way to proceed with change. That effort is much more likely to be successful if, instead of treading on existing assumptions and values, management will collaborate with employees in assessing behaviors and practices.
Management's leadership in the change effort seems to be the key determinant of whether that change will succeed. It is not new to say that leadership is critical. What is new is the type of leadership being recommended-one that does more than just create and articulate a new vision for the organization.Management needs to communicate openly with those affected by the change and once again, collaborate with those same individuals to obtain their input. Part of communication and collaboration involves Wing the intended changes to organizational outcomes--what does the change mean in terms of productivity and quality of work life? Another key leadership feature involves role modeling of expected behaviors. For example, if top management expects lower-level managers and employees to behave ethically, then top executives themselves must do the same.
Most of what we know is someone’s opinion. In fact, most of what we know is someone else’s opinion. I’m reading a fascinating biography on Mary Queen of Scots and although the author is a well known English historian and has researched her subject thoroughly, most of what she writes is her interpretation of what few unarguable facts remain of her subject’s life. It turns out most of modern life works the same way. Unless we are subject matter experts in a pure science such as mathematics or biology, most of what we know is our own or someone else’s opinion. We give lip service to innovation, but we have no idea how to begin with something as simple as innovating how we know what we know.
This applies most basically and most powerfully to the questions of who we are and why we do what we do. Most of us define who we are in terms of our current and past roles. “I am business owner or executive, life partner, parent, child, friend.” These are indeed facts, but what they actually say about us are opinions. What does it say about us that we are an executive at Company X? That we are in a relationship with Person Y? That we are the child of These Parents? We aren’t always sure what it says, and often the meaning doesn’t carry any true connection to who we are inside. That’s because what it says is someone else’s words imbued with someone else’s meaning.
Defining “Who am I?” can be one of the most liberating and empowering exercises we ever engage with. Claiming our attributes and characteristics, our preferences and strengths, reframing what we once saw as negative into positive — all of these activities clarify areas of our lives and our work where once there was vague cloudiness. We gain focus and motivation, definition, power, and new frames from which to lead and empower others.
Who are you really? If you stop listening to the opinions of others, and even your own old mantras about roles and positions, who are you? What are the implications for fully claiming that identity? What one action can you take this week to wean yourself off the opinions of others and begin to claim the leader you really are.Character is power,the first lesson we must each learn is that broad leadership is build from deep character.An infrastructure of great character is essential to support great conduct.The trust and involment of our followers will be parallel to the level of our own character.Use power to help people for we are given power not to advance our own purposes, nor to make a great show in the world,nor a name the is but one just use of power and it to selve people.George w. Bush.I think G W B, was right.We abuse our power when we utilize it for self-gain.Matthew 20v26 whoever wishes to be come great among you shall be your servant,Sammy.I was spoke with my mom she told me that the world has two kinds of people.,thinkers and doers.They then said,the thinkers need to do more and the doers need to think more.I have always tried to do both.Reflect and act.When i have combined the two, i have great reduced the adds of failure.Sammy D.James.I have always believed this principle.It beautiful combines the necessity of both relationship and vision.I must live with the people to understand them and earn their trust.however,i am only their buddy if that,s all i do.to be a leader, i must live with God and move with him beyond where the people are.If they are to follow me,i must be ahead of them.You are the samme today that you are going to be five years from now Except for two things.The people with whom you associate and the book you read.And i meditated and i,ve become more convinced of it truth as time gos by.If plan to be come great we must determine to expose ourselves to read,bible and the rest of the great book.And learn from great people,their input will influence our growwth more than anything else..Choose both wisely.No matter what size the bottle,the war,the problem, the victory always be in our side.You manage things,you lead people.
21 ago 2009
Realize your goals
Mission and Vision Statements: Envision your Business, Realize your Goals
By Sammy D.James
Vision and goals may seem like the "soft-stuff" of business, but as seasoned business owners know, these intangible elements play a very important role in the success—or failure—of a business.
While most 19-year-olds were out planning for future careers, sammy was busy making his a reality. Less than two years after i created a new board with the w b c.World business challenge the entrepreneur and his two young business partners had sold their venture to a U.S. firm for well over US$1 million.
One of the key things that Lai recommends for other entrepreneurs looking to build their own business is the need for clear vision and mission statements.
"Having unified vision and mission statements for your organization allows you to have a benchmark and touchstone for when you have to make decisions for the future," explains sammy. "This will help when there are no clear answers, or for critical decisions that will fundamentally impact you products and services."
Sammy D.James, -author of great book call believe in yourself,financial interprices,what is the youth. also emphasizes the importance of the mission and vision statements. In my book, Sammy defines the two statements that make up the heart of your business:
Vision:
"Vision is a big picture statement. It must be powerful, summarized in one memorable or motivating sentence or phrase. It should be general in scope, not restricting."
Mission:
"Mission is the answer to 'What am I going to do about my vision?' This is more general than specific. The mission must inspire you and your customers. It points the direction you are heading. It is not the map just a compass heading."
Defining your Vision and Mission
Knowing exactly what your business is all about is the one of the best ways to exhibit confidence and knowledge to prospective clients. Crafting your statements is a vital task but can also be overwhelming, especially if you're not a wordsmith.
"These phrases take time to develop," said Sammy. "Don't expect to sit down over lunch and develop the right statement."
Sammy's favourite mission and vision statements can be drawn from the popular TV series.
Star Trek's Vision Statement:
Space—the final frontier
"In just a few words we experience imagination and inspiration," explains Sammy.
's Mission Statement:
To seek out new life, to boldly go where no one has gone before.
"Notice how short, simple and powerful that is," said .
offers the following tips that can help you develop your mission and vision statements:
To find your vision, ask yourself "Why?"
Make your mission statement one that makes your customers want to do business with you.
Ask your clients what they like about you—look for common words, feelings or imagery.
How are you different from your competition?
What would be your proudest compliment?
Scribble words and phrases in your day planner or in your computer as you think of them and review them later.
Have coffee or lunch with someone you admire and ask their opinion.
Visit a local business school and offer your situation as a case study. Maybe hold a contest to develop your slogan, mission and/or vision.
By the way, don't make the mistake of thinking your mission is to make money—that is a condition of operating your business, but it is not the mission.
When Lai developed a mission statement for his business, he set out to develop a statement that would convey values, motivate owners and employees, and encompass long-lasting ideals. The final result, which he now uses for all of his companies, was:
"To empower, entertain and educate all people to advance humanity, through innovation and the creative use of information technology. To be a leader in delivering innovative solutions, and to be an icon of audacity in the digital era."
Sammy offers the following tips to other entrepreneurs who are working on their own mission statements:
Convey your company values;
Inspire and motivate your organization toward objectives that are fundamentally key to the culture that you wish to establish;
Use long-lasting ideals, not fashionable statements based on current business or market trends; and
Keep your statements clear and easy to understand for anyone coming on to your organization.
The Result
Once developed, your vision and mission statements will provide a firm understanding of who you are and what you're all about to yourself, your staff and those you do business with.
"Writing these statements will require some serious thinking and wordsmithing on your part," said Sammy. "But the work will pay off when your customers buy into your approach—and buy your product."
Mission and vision statements. They are a fundamental element of your business communications, and are one of the first steps a business will take toward developing a cohesive image and communications approach.
How to Realize Your Vision of Success
Whether you aspire to be a great CEO, become a world-class artist, achieve your dream job or something else, you must know how to leverage your talents to take you where you want to go. No matter what your starting point, you can become better. In fact, you can become extraordinary. This workshop will give you the needed answers, ingredients and insights to reach your chosen pinnacle.
We succeed when we can "connect" with people and do remarkable things. This achievement requires certain critical skill sets and a workable plan of action. Abraham Lincoln once said, "the best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time." With a clear destination in mind, a map of the territory the lies ahead, a compass to guide your decision making, and a structure to hold onto when the going gets tough, you can begin your journey toward personal or professional success with greater confidence and purpose than ever before.
Being "just good enough" is a failure to take responsibility for realizing your inordinate potential. Why spend the rest of your life doing what you really don’t enjoy or what doesn’t nourish you as a person? Since life is not a dress rehearsal for even greater things, what would you choose to be remembered for? At the end of your days, what will be your legacy?
You already know that nothing of great significance will ever happen if you stay in your comfort zone and do ordinary work. What you likely don’t know is what to do about it ... in practical, realistic, actionable terms.
This life-altering learning experience is the creation of Dr. Jim Murray who has a distinguished track record of leading organizations to accomplish great things. An acclaimed educator, mentor and architect of executive development programs, he has provided counsel to hundreds of organizations during four decades of exemplary practice and knows exactly what they are seeking in today’s leaders.
Topics include:
Taking stock: A realistic self-assessment inventory
Understanding the structure of the path to greatness
How successful people think and act differently
Identifying the barriers: blind spots and ego traps
Strategies that win people over to your viewpoint
Interaction styles: balancing strengths and weaknesses
Doing real work that gets noticed and makes a difference
Overcoming the dip and taking calculated risks
The art of self-promotion and playing office politics ethically
Self-motivation, self-investment and finding good advice
Recipes for success and adjusting your moral compass
Who will benefit by attending:
Anyone who is dissatisfied with his or her current job, career, happiness or station in life.
Create Change in Your Life - Realize Your Vision
Let’s talk about vision. That’s a big, big piece of being able to create to create what you choose to create in your life. Be able to create magic, literally. I define magic as the ability to create willful change in a fabric of your universe, both spiritually and materially. Vision is a big part of that and there is a big difference in vision and sight. Let me make a distinction here. Sight is seeing with the eyes. Vision is seeing through the eyes. I guarantee you this, when the vision on the inside becomes more compelling and powerful than what you observe on the outside, and then the universe is at your command. It really is.
Most people live their life as sight. A dog can do that. Animals can live by their sensory factors. You are more than that. What we must do is rise above our sensory factors and create that vision internally that modern science now tells us is then projected outward in the world. That is just not medical/physical foo foo anymore. That is reality. We literally project our world outside of us from the vision we have internally.
The ability to create willful change is what vision is all about. My friend James Ray calls that magic. Magic isn’t rabbits being pulled out of hats. It is ability to create willful change in the fabric of your universe, both spiritually and materially. Vision is a big part of that magic. Unless you have a strong imagination, and just look at the word imagination, image is a big part of that word.
If you don’t have the ability to image internally and to envision internally what you choose to create, then you are not going to be able to create that willful change. If you do, the universe is at your command. You are going to have to be able to turn away from sight or the sensory factors, which is seeing with the eyes vs. seeing through the eyes.
I experience it as something that a visionary feeling you have inside you. You can see it, you can feel it. You kind of immerse yourself in the concept of what you want to be.
If you look at the word motion, 99% of that work is motion. If you look at the work motivation, 2/3 of the word motivation is motion. Motion and emotion create vibrations within our body which are the feelings and vibrational universe that is the message you are sending out to the universe and going to attract the law of attraction. Being the law of attracting, those feelings of visual vibrations are going to attract into your life what you are in alignment with. You are never, ever, ever going to attract diamonds into your life if you are resonating with rocks.
Concepts from Bring Your Vision to Life by Dr.Sammy D.James
How can you make the most from the rest of your life? It starts by understanding those recurring imaginings or wishes of how things could be that, if fulfilled, would make a significant difference in your life and the lives of others. Each of us has God given dreams and desires, as well as unique interests and abilities. When these connect into a life calling it can be one of the most rewarding experiences for a Christian.
1. Your Job Description
How can you make the most from the rest of your life? Before fully addressing this question let’s look at some foundational concepts. Many people responding to this question would do so in terms of a job. They think, “I would be most happy if I were a doctor, or architect, or teacher, or whatever.” The real answer is a bit more complex.
One place to start is by looking at what I call ‘your job description’ Did you know that all people have one? Here it is: When you join a company you are typically given a job description that outlines the objectives of the position and the tasks and skills required. All people have a God given job description and it consists of two parts.
First is a general job description that is relevant for all people. All people are called to accept Jesus Christ as savior, to live lives in relationship with God, to be active members of God’s family, and to be responsible members in the world. We are to tend the world around us (The original job description given to Adam), to redeem it and transform it, to make it a better place. We are to live under God’s lordship and to inaugurate his coming kingdom. The Bible forms the basis of how we should live. Unfortunately many people have not heard or responded to God’s good news, yet that doesn’t mean that they are exempt from their general job description.
Second, there is a distinctive part to the job description. It is one of a kind for each person. Part of your distinctive job description is made up of the unique capabilities and interests that God has given you, and another part consists of the tasks you take on in life. That first part has to do with your unique gifting and experience. For instance, some people have inquisitive scientific minds, some are creative, some are extroverts, and others are introverts. Some are excellent with words. Others are reflective. Some are good with their hands. This list of personal qualities goes on and on, and the combinations are infinite. The fact is, you have been given uniqueness and this becomes one part of your distinctive job description. The second part is made up of the work you do in life including paid work and all the other responsibilities you take on.
As an aside here, it is important to understand that no job (paid or unpaid) should be seen as better than another, as long as the job is of service. In other words, does the job redeem, transform and add something positive to the world, or does it degrade. The Reformers like John Calvin and Martin Luther made this clear. Luther said that the job of the cleaning lady is just as noble in God’s eyes as that of the judge or the priest. Calvin reflected the same ideas. Ulrich Zwingli, a Christian Reformer from Switzerland said, “The worker is most like God.” There is no hierarchy with God. Always keep this in mind knowing that your special life calling is important to God and he wants you to stand firm in this. In today’s world of almost unlimited choice you have the possibility to engage in many different kinds of activities, but it is best to chose those that best fit your unique temperament and capabilities.
This means that it helps to determine what you are good at, what you enjoy doing, and who you are as a person. If you need some clarity in understanding yourself, why not take a personality test like the Myers-Briggs or something similar. Then understand and accept that you are unique, that God has formed you with special qualities and capabilities that can specifically apply to the tasks you chose.
So, to deal with the question of how to make the most from the rest of your life, a starting point would be to find life activities where your full job description can be expressed. When your general calling as a Christian, your unique gifting, and your life activities integrate, it can be a place of great fulfillment. But, there is more to it.
2. Search For Your Deepest Longings and Find Your Vision
Getting the most from the rest of your life involves doing what you were created to do, so that your deepest vocational longings are being met. This then leads to the question, “What are your deepest vocational longings?” In other words, what are those God given heart’s desires that if fulfilled would make a big difference in your life and in the world around you?
Your deepest vocational longing (or calling) is something you probably haven’t thought about very much, at least in a way that provides a satisfactory answer. Here are some reasons why. First, is the busyness of life. Most of the time we are consumed with the immediate concerns of life: making money to pay the bills, running children from place to place, meeting the incessant demands of bosses and professors, etc. We spend our time going from event to event and those events are the things that are filling our minds. With all this busyness it’s challenging to find a few spare moments to just stop and think about the simple question, “What is it that I really want to do?”
When is the last time you looked deep into your soul and asked yourself, “What is it that I really want to do with the rest of my life?” If “the rest of your life,” sounds a bit too futuristic then what about the next phase of your life?
Often when people think about what they want to do with the rest of their life they will come up with several possible answers. Your list might look like, a) I want to spend the rest of my life lying on a beach on a Caribbean island, b) I want to leave my job and start a new company, c) I want to finish my university degree, and d) I want to help some needy people down the street. As you go through the list you suddenly realize that many of the items are divergent from each other, or they can’t all be accomplished at the same time. And most likely as you begin to look at them you will find that there is one that has been sitting there for a long time. As new ideas come in and out of your head, there is usually one you keep coming back to. When you really think about it it’s the one you are passionate about, the one that raises your excitement level.
When you identify that most important thing you would like to do for the rest of your life, or for the next phase of your life, it carries with it a strong mental image of the future. A picture is formed in the mind and this makes you excited so see it happen. Let’s call this picture your vision. One of the main Hebrew words in the Old Testament used for vision is ‘Hazon’. It means, “An ecstatic beholding by the seer.” This represents more than just an idea. It is euphoric, something that pulls you forward. It is a vivid image of how the world could be.
One woman had a desire to be an artist since she was young. But her family told her she could not make a living with her paint brush and that she should teach instead. She suppressed her dream and did as they suggested. She taught grade school for years without passion, except for the times she was able teach her students art. Finally, she acknowledged that she had been deceiving her heart. This awareness helped her reaffirm her original desire, and it set her on a new path that led to the fulfillment of that initial, internal call.
To get the most out of the rest of your life you need to understand what you are called to do. One of the greatest life experiences is to know this and then to engage with God in pursuing it. That journey is where you will gain the most from life.
3. Bring It Before The Lord
As you go through the process of identifying this deepest calling (your vision), it is important to remember that you are not doing this on your own. It is God who enables visions to be formed in our minds, he brings clarity to our thoughts, and he is with us throughout our journey. Ultimately he is Lord and we are not.
In bringing your vision before the Lord you will want to reference it to the scriptures, to gain insights and as a way of testing your idea. I suggest that you also test your idea through the following filter, bringing each of these before God as you seek clarity.
First, reflect on how your vision provides a service or adds something to the world. Does it strengthen God’s church or add something positive to the world? This is a question the Puritans asked when considering the topic of work. All vocations were seen as noble if they provided a service. Fundamentally, how does your vision redeem or transform the world?
If your passion is to start a new company it is easy to see how people would benefit from the product or service made by the company. And the employees of the company would have a place to use their capabilities and gain a living to support their families. And the culture of the company would provide a positive influence in dealing with suppliers and customers. If your vision is to do basic research on molecular particles it makes a positive contribution to the knowledge of the world. But, if one’s vision is purely to gain riches or power that are only self-serving and at the expense of others, then the vision is lacking.
Second, ask whether it is really worth doing? Pursuing your desire will be time consuming and is likely to involve some costs. Will the effort and outcome be worth it?
Third, think about your unique gifting. If your vision is to fight an injustice in the world and it means rallying and leading thousands of people, and if you are naturally an introvert and uneasy with people, then you might question if your vision is something you truly want to start. At least you might consider if you will need people to complete the skills that you don’t have, or how you will learn the needed skills. This is not to say that God can’t use the introvert to lead people, but you need to think about the demands of your vision and what they mean.
Fourth, there are the economic implications. Most visions have an economic component. If your deepest desire is to go back to university, there is a cost. If you have a heart to help the poor in my community, there will be financial considerations. Some thought needs to be given to what funds are needed and where they will come from
4. Write It Out
To pursue your vision, write it out. This might be a one sentence ‘vision statement’, a few descriptive paragraphs, or a complete plan. By getting it on paper it helps fix your mind on what’s important and what needs to be accomplished. Whatever you do, do it in a way that captures the passion of what you feel for your vision remembering that this is something important. It is something that will direct your life, something that if accomplished will make a significant difference in your life and in the world around you. In the book Bring Your Vision to Life there is a chapter on the components of how to write this statement, but the essence is to write it in a way that motivates you, and then put it in a place where you see it often. The book also goes step by step through the key items you should consider in pursuing your vision.
5. Act Upon It
Ideas in your head or a plan written on paper will not enable you to get the most out of the rest of your life. It is when you take action that the fulfillment will occur. In fact, the fulfillment will come when you are in the process of achieving your goal. Just ask any entrepreneur. The fun is doing the project and there is additional fun when you see it achieved.
People who are getting the most out of their lives are typically those who know what they are about and are enjoying their efforts. In fact, the energy they expend to tasks doesn’t even seem like work. They tend to be extremely focused, almost obsessed in achieving their goal. They don’t get sidetracked into other things. They would not take on a bunch of superfluous tasks that will lead them away from their goal, like trying out a hundred and one interesting things to do before going to heaven. They know the goal they want to achieve in this lifetime, to get the most out of this lifetime.
Thanks to all of you,God bless you.Remember let put our hands together.
By Sammy D.James
Vision and goals may seem like the "soft-stuff" of business, but as seasoned business owners know, these intangible elements play a very important role in the success—or failure—of a business.
While most 19-year-olds were out planning for future careers, sammy was busy making his a reality. Less than two years after i created a new board with the w b c.World business challenge the entrepreneur and his two young business partners had sold their venture to a U.S. firm for well over US$1 million.
One of the key things that Lai recommends for other entrepreneurs looking to build their own business is the need for clear vision and mission statements.
"Having unified vision and mission statements for your organization allows you to have a benchmark and touchstone for when you have to make decisions for the future," explains sammy. "This will help when there are no clear answers, or for critical decisions that will fundamentally impact you products and services."
Sammy D.James, -author of great book call believe in yourself,financial interprices,what is the youth. also emphasizes the importance of the mission and vision statements. In my book, Sammy defines the two statements that make up the heart of your business:
Vision:
"Vision is a big picture statement. It must be powerful, summarized in one memorable or motivating sentence or phrase. It should be general in scope, not restricting."
Mission:
"Mission is the answer to 'What am I going to do about my vision?' This is more general than specific. The mission must inspire you and your customers. It points the direction you are heading. It is not the map just a compass heading."
Defining your Vision and Mission
Knowing exactly what your business is all about is the one of the best ways to exhibit confidence and knowledge to prospective clients. Crafting your statements is a vital task but can also be overwhelming, especially if you're not a wordsmith.
"These phrases take time to develop," said Sammy. "Don't expect to sit down over lunch and develop the right statement."
Sammy's favourite mission and vision statements can be drawn from the popular TV series.
Star Trek's Vision Statement:
Space—the final frontier
"In just a few words we experience imagination and inspiration," explains Sammy.
's Mission Statement:
To seek out new life, to boldly go where no one has gone before.
"Notice how short, simple and powerful that is," said .
offers the following tips that can help you develop your mission and vision statements:
To find your vision, ask yourself "Why?"
Make your mission statement one that makes your customers want to do business with you.
Ask your clients what they like about you—look for common words, feelings or imagery.
How are you different from your competition?
What would be your proudest compliment?
Scribble words and phrases in your day planner or in your computer as you think of them and review them later.
Have coffee or lunch with someone you admire and ask their opinion.
Visit a local business school and offer your situation as a case study. Maybe hold a contest to develop your slogan, mission and/or vision.
By the way, don't make the mistake of thinking your mission is to make money—that is a condition of operating your business, but it is not the mission.
When Lai developed a mission statement for his business, he set out to develop a statement that would convey values, motivate owners and employees, and encompass long-lasting ideals. The final result, which he now uses for all of his companies, was:
"To empower, entertain and educate all people to advance humanity, through innovation and the creative use of information technology. To be a leader in delivering innovative solutions, and to be an icon of audacity in the digital era."
Sammy offers the following tips to other entrepreneurs who are working on their own mission statements:
Convey your company values;
Inspire and motivate your organization toward objectives that are fundamentally key to the culture that you wish to establish;
Use long-lasting ideals, not fashionable statements based on current business or market trends; and
Keep your statements clear and easy to understand for anyone coming on to your organization.
The Result
Once developed, your vision and mission statements will provide a firm understanding of who you are and what you're all about to yourself, your staff and those you do business with.
"Writing these statements will require some serious thinking and wordsmithing on your part," said Sammy. "But the work will pay off when your customers buy into your approach—and buy your product."
Mission and vision statements. They are a fundamental element of your business communications, and are one of the first steps a business will take toward developing a cohesive image and communications approach.
How to Realize Your Vision of Success
Whether you aspire to be a great CEO, become a world-class artist, achieve your dream job or something else, you must know how to leverage your talents to take you where you want to go. No matter what your starting point, you can become better. In fact, you can become extraordinary. This workshop will give you the needed answers, ingredients and insights to reach your chosen pinnacle.
We succeed when we can "connect" with people and do remarkable things. This achievement requires certain critical skill sets and a workable plan of action. Abraham Lincoln once said, "the best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time." With a clear destination in mind, a map of the territory the lies ahead, a compass to guide your decision making, and a structure to hold onto when the going gets tough, you can begin your journey toward personal or professional success with greater confidence and purpose than ever before.
Being "just good enough" is a failure to take responsibility for realizing your inordinate potential. Why spend the rest of your life doing what you really don’t enjoy or what doesn’t nourish you as a person? Since life is not a dress rehearsal for even greater things, what would you choose to be remembered for? At the end of your days, what will be your legacy?
You already know that nothing of great significance will ever happen if you stay in your comfort zone and do ordinary work. What you likely don’t know is what to do about it ... in practical, realistic, actionable terms.
This life-altering learning experience is the creation of Dr. Jim Murray who has a distinguished track record of leading organizations to accomplish great things. An acclaimed educator, mentor and architect of executive development programs, he has provided counsel to hundreds of organizations during four decades of exemplary practice and knows exactly what they are seeking in today’s leaders.
Topics include:
Taking stock: A realistic self-assessment inventory
Understanding the structure of the path to greatness
How successful people think and act differently
Identifying the barriers: blind spots and ego traps
Strategies that win people over to your viewpoint
Interaction styles: balancing strengths and weaknesses
Doing real work that gets noticed and makes a difference
Overcoming the dip and taking calculated risks
The art of self-promotion and playing office politics ethically
Self-motivation, self-investment and finding good advice
Recipes for success and adjusting your moral compass
Who will benefit by attending:
Anyone who is dissatisfied with his or her current job, career, happiness or station in life.
Create Change in Your Life - Realize Your Vision
Let’s talk about vision. That’s a big, big piece of being able to create to create what you choose to create in your life. Be able to create magic, literally. I define magic as the ability to create willful change in a fabric of your universe, both spiritually and materially. Vision is a big part of that and there is a big difference in vision and sight. Let me make a distinction here. Sight is seeing with the eyes. Vision is seeing through the eyes. I guarantee you this, when the vision on the inside becomes more compelling and powerful than what you observe on the outside, and then the universe is at your command. It really is.
Most people live their life as sight. A dog can do that. Animals can live by their sensory factors. You are more than that. What we must do is rise above our sensory factors and create that vision internally that modern science now tells us is then projected outward in the world. That is just not medical/physical foo foo anymore. That is reality. We literally project our world outside of us from the vision we have internally.
The ability to create willful change is what vision is all about. My friend James Ray calls that magic. Magic isn’t rabbits being pulled out of hats. It is ability to create willful change in the fabric of your universe, both spiritually and materially. Vision is a big part of that magic. Unless you have a strong imagination, and just look at the word imagination, image is a big part of that word.
If you don’t have the ability to image internally and to envision internally what you choose to create, then you are not going to be able to create that willful change. If you do, the universe is at your command. You are going to have to be able to turn away from sight or the sensory factors, which is seeing with the eyes vs. seeing through the eyes.
I experience it as something that a visionary feeling you have inside you. You can see it, you can feel it. You kind of immerse yourself in the concept of what you want to be.
If you look at the word motion, 99% of that work is motion. If you look at the work motivation, 2/3 of the word motivation is motion. Motion and emotion create vibrations within our body which are the feelings and vibrational universe that is the message you are sending out to the universe and going to attract the law of attraction. Being the law of attracting, those feelings of visual vibrations are going to attract into your life what you are in alignment with. You are never, ever, ever going to attract diamonds into your life if you are resonating with rocks.
Concepts from Bring Your Vision to Life by Dr.Sammy D.James
How can you make the most from the rest of your life? It starts by understanding those recurring imaginings or wishes of how things could be that, if fulfilled, would make a significant difference in your life and the lives of others. Each of us has God given dreams and desires, as well as unique interests and abilities. When these connect into a life calling it can be one of the most rewarding experiences for a Christian.
1. Your Job Description
How can you make the most from the rest of your life? Before fully addressing this question let’s look at some foundational concepts. Many people responding to this question would do so in terms of a job. They think, “I would be most happy if I were a doctor, or architect, or teacher, or whatever.” The real answer is a bit more complex.
One place to start is by looking at what I call ‘your job description’ Did you know that all people have one? Here it is: When you join a company you are typically given a job description that outlines the objectives of the position and the tasks and skills required. All people have a God given job description and it consists of two parts.
First is a general job description that is relevant for all people. All people are called to accept Jesus Christ as savior, to live lives in relationship with God, to be active members of God’s family, and to be responsible members in the world. We are to tend the world around us (The original job description given to Adam), to redeem it and transform it, to make it a better place. We are to live under God’s lordship and to inaugurate his coming kingdom. The Bible forms the basis of how we should live. Unfortunately many people have not heard or responded to God’s good news, yet that doesn’t mean that they are exempt from their general job description.
Second, there is a distinctive part to the job description. It is one of a kind for each person. Part of your distinctive job description is made up of the unique capabilities and interests that God has given you, and another part consists of the tasks you take on in life. That first part has to do with your unique gifting and experience. For instance, some people have inquisitive scientific minds, some are creative, some are extroverts, and others are introverts. Some are excellent with words. Others are reflective. Some are good with their hands. This list of personal qualities goes on and on, and the combinations are infinite. The fact is, you have been given uniqueness and this becomes one part of your distinctive job description. The second part is made up of the work you do in life including paid work and all the other responsibilities you take on.
As an aside here, it is important to understand that no job (paid or unpaid) should be seen as better than another, as long as the job is of service. In other words, does the job redeem, transform and add something positive to the world, or does it degrade. The Reformers like John Calvin and Martin Luther made this clear. Luther said that the job of the cleaning lady is just as noble in God’s eyes as that of the judge or the priest. Calvin reflected the same ideas. Ulrich Zwingli, a Christian Reformer from Switzerland said, “The worker is most like God.” There is no hierarchy with God. Always keep this in mind knowing that your special life calling is important to God and he wants you to stand firm in this. In today’s world of almost unlimited choice you have the possibility to engage in many different kinds of activities, but it is best to chose those that best fit your unique temperament and capabilities.
This means that it helps to determine what you are good at, what you enjoy doing, and who you are as a person. If you need some clarity in understanding yourself, why not take a personality test like the Myers-Briggs or something similar. Then understand and accept that you are unique, that God has formed you with special qualities and capabilities that can specifically apply to the tasks you chose.
So, to deal with the question of how to make the most from the rest of your life, a starting point would be to find life activities where your full job description can be expressed. When your general calling as a Christian, your unique gifting, and your life activities integrate, it can be a place of great fulfillment. But, there is more to it.
2. Search For Your Deepest Longings and Find Your Vision
Getting the most from the rest of your life involves doing what you were created to do, so that your deepest vocational longings are being met. This then leads to the question, “What are your deepest vocational longings?” In other words, what are those God given heart’s desires that if fulfilled would make a big difference in your life and in the world around you?
Your deepest vocational longing (or calling) is something you probably haven’t thought about very much, at least in a way that provides a satisfactory answer. Here are some reasons why. First, is the busyness of life. Most of the time we are consumed with the immediate concerns of life: making money to pay the bills, running children from place to place, meeting the incessant demands of bosses and professors, etc. We spend our time going from event to event and those events are the things that are filling our minds. With all this busyness it’s challenging to find a few spare moments to just stop and think about the simple question, “What is it that I really want to do?”
When is the last time you looked deep into your soul and asked yourself, “What is it that I really want to do with the rest of my life?” If “the rest of your life,” sounds a bit too futuristic then what about the next phase of your life?
Often when people think about what they want to do with the rest of their life they will come up with several possible answers. Your list might look like, a) I want to spend the rest of my life lying on a beach on a Caribbean island, b) I want to leave my job and start a new company, c) I want to finish my university degree, and d) I want to help some needy people down the street. As you go through the list you suddenly realize that many of the items are divergent from each other, or they can’t all be accomplished at the same time. And most likely as you begin to look at them you will find that there is one that has been sitting there for a long time. As new ideas come in and out of your head, there is usually one you keep coming back to. When you really think about it it’s the one you are passionate about, the one that raises your excitement level.
When you identify that most important thing you would like to do for the rest of your life, or for the next phase of your life, it carries with it a strong mental image of the future. A picture is formed in the mind and this makes you excited so see it happen. Let’s call this picture your vision. One of the main Hebrew words in the Old Testament used for vision is ‘Hazon’. It means, “An ecstatic beholding by the seer.” This represents more than just an idea. It is euphoric, something that pulls you forward. It is a vivid image of how the world could be.
One woman had a desire to be an artist since she was young. But her family told her she could not make a living with her paint brush and that she should teach instead. She suppressed her dream and did as they suggested. She taught grade school for years without passion, except for the times she was able teach her students art. Finally, she acknowledged that she had been deceiving her heart. This awareness helped her reaffirm her original desire, and it set her on a new path that led to the fulfillment of that initial, internal call.
To get the most out of the rest of your life you need to understand what you are called to do. One of the greatest life experiences is to know this and then to engage with God in pursuing it. That journey is where you will gain the most from life.
3. Bring It Before The Lord
As you go through the process of identifying this deepest calling (your vision), it is important to remember that you are not doing this on your own. It is God who enables visions to be formed in our minds, he brings clarity to our thoughts, and he is with us throughout our journey. Ultimately he is Lord and we are not.
In bringing your vision before the Lord you will want to reference it to the scriptures, to gain insights and as a way of testing your idea. I suggest that you also test your idea through the following filter, bringing each of these before God as you seek clarity.
First, reflect on how your vision provides a service or adds something to the world. Does it strengthen God’s church or add something positive to the world? This is a question the Puritans asked when considering the topic of work. All vocations were seen as noble if they provided a service. Fundamentally, how does your vision redeem or transform the world?
If your passion is to start a new company it is easy to see how people would benefit from the product or service made by the company. And the employees of the company would have a place to use their capabilities and gain a living to support their families. And the culture of the company would provide a positive influence in dealing with suppliers and customers. If your vision is to do basic research on molecular particles it makes a positive contribution to the knowledge of the world. But, if one’s vision is purely to gain riches or power that are only self-serving and at the expense of others, then the vision is lacking.
Second, ask whether it is really worth doing? Pursuing your desire will be time consuming and is likely to involve some costs. Will the effort and outcome be worth it?
Third, think about your unique gifting. If your vision is to fight an injustice in the world and it means rallying and leading thousands of people, and if you are naturally an introvert and uneasy with people, then you might question if your vision is something you truly want to start. At least you might consider if you will need people to complete the skills that you don’t have, or how you will learn the needed skills. This is not to say that God can’t use the introvert to lead people, but you need to think about the demands of your vision and what they mean.
Fourth, there are the economic implications. Most visions have an economic component. If your deepest desire is to go back to university, there is a cost. If you have a heart to help the poor in my community, there will be financial considerations. Some thought needs to be given to what funds are needed and where they will come from
4. Write It Out
To pursue your vision, write it out. This might be a one sentence ‘vision statement’, a few descriptive paragraphs, or a complete plan. By getting it on paper it helps fix your mind on what’s important and what needs to be accomplished. Whatever you do, do it in a way that captures the passion of what you feel for your vision remembering that this is something important. It is something that will direct your life, something that if accomplished will make a significant difference in your life and in the world around you. In the book Bring Your Vision to Life there is a chapter on the components of how to write this statement, but the essence is to write it in a way that motivates you, and then put it in a place where you see it often. The book also goes step by step through the key items you should consider in pursuing your vision.
5. Act Upon It
Ideas in your head or a plan written on paper will not enable you to get the most out of the rest of your life. It is when you take action that the fulfillment will occur. In fact, the fulfillment will come when you are in the process of achieving your goal. Just ask any entrepreneur. The fun is doing the project and there is additional fun when you see it achieved.
People who are getting the most out of their lives are typically those who know what they are about and are enjoying their efforts. In fact, the energy they expend to tasks doesn’t even seem like work. They tend to be extremely focused, almost obsessed in achieving their goal. They don’t get sidetracked into other things. They would not take on a bunch of superfluous tasks that will lead them away from their goal, like trying out a hundred and one interesting things to do before going to heaven. They know the goal they want to achieve in this lifetime, to get the most out of this lifetime.
Thanks to all of you,God bless you.Remember let put our hands together.
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)
