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Leadership

An excerpt form Seth's book Tribes:

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.

The scarcity makes leadership valuable. If everyone tries to lead all the time, not much happens. It’s discomfort that creates the leverage that makes leadership worthwhile.

In other words, if everyone could do it, they would, and it wouldn’t be worth much.

It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers.
It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail.
It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.
It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.

When you identify the discomfort, you’ve found the place where a leader is needed.

If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.

Here is another excerpt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

She[Dagny] took positions of responsibility because there was no one else to take them. There were a few rare men of talent around her, but they were becoming rarer every year. Her superiors, who held the authority, seemed afraid to exercise it, they spent their time avoiding decisions, so she told people what to do and they did it.

At every step of her rise, she did the work long before she was granted the title. It was like advancing through empty rooms. Nobody opposed her, yet nobody approved of her progress.

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation | Video on TED.com

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation | Video on TED.com

Surprising? Maybe not. The "science" known to general public is handpicked by the privileged few for their benefit.

Is it gonna change? Probably.

Watch this with the book "Free".

read to confirm?

Sentences to ponder via Seth:

Some people read business books looking for confirmation. I read them in search of disquiet. Confirmation is cheap, easy and ineffective. Restlessness and the scientific method, on the other hand, create a culture of testing and inquiry that can't help but push you forward.

Niall Ferguson - A Bit of Blather with Bookworms then it’s off for a Wild Swim

Sentences to ponder:

The fatal flaw of Versailles, we concurred, was the attempt by Woodrow Wilson to draw the map of Europe on the principle of self-determination, whereby states and peoples would be one and the same.
This overlooked the fact that eastern Europe was a heterogeneous patchwork of ethnic, linguistic and religious groups. It also created a contradiction, since applying self-determination consistently would have made Germany bigger than it had been before the first world war.
You only have to spend a little time in the Welsh Marches to see the dangers of idealising the homogeneous nation-state. People move and mingle; you can’t pin blood and soil together.

Niall Ferguson - A Bit of Blather with Bookworms then it’s off for a Wild Swim