5SQ109 - Iliff Leadership

Poet Robert Hass in conversation about the role of leadership and media in contemporary culture. The most relevant-to-leadership-conversation starts about half way down.

Shawn, interesting! Thanks.

Lynn Tilton, 51, looks like a super model but she's CEO of Patriarch Partners and a self-made billionaire.  She owns more businesses than any other woman in America.  Over the last 10 years, Patriarch Partners have committed to debt and equity investments and provided operational and strategic expertise to more than 150 companies, and have saved 250,000 American jobs that would have otherwise been lost through liquidations.  She believes that our country's most valuable asset is human capital - and that job creation is the essential element to a true and sustainable economic recovery and prosperity.  

A link to an article where Cronin describes leaders as "inventors, risk-takers and entrepreneurs. Leaders are individuals who can help create options and opportunities, who can help clarify problems and choices, who can build moral and coalitions, who can inspire others and provide a vision of the possibilities." These leaders possess a "contagious self-confidence, optimism and idealism that allow them to attract and mobilize others to undertake tasks these people never dreamed they could undertake."

Cronin uses a Thoreau quote to describe perception of self. "What a man thinks about himself," wrote Thoreau, "that is what determines, or rather indicates his fate."

Black Poetry in the Diaspora: How Poets Become Leaders In a 2006 interview Madhubuti said , "If an artist, or any person, actually understands the condition of the Black world, it will be a dereliction of duty to not write about that world and expose the injustices that exist in it-injustices imposed upon the weak by white, Black and other cultures."

Coach K answers the question: Beyond the obvious of being connected to Jesus Christ, what's "Christian" about "Christian leadership"? This clip does not include the interviewer's question; however, in the original, the interviewer makes this distinction before asking the question.

Coach K on Christian leadership

Coach K gives some advice about leadership

Quotes from one of sports' greatest leaders

Article describing leadership in sports

In this series Eli Stone works for a law firm who has built their success on representing the clients that provide the largest payouts, the most media coverage and potential for future legal engagements that perpetuate the first two criteria. As Eli Stone takes on less prestigious, less financially beneficial and more morally grounded cases, the partners react. The firm is eventually split in two as one partner chooses the high yet substantially more difficult road and two leave with more than half of the staff to maintain a law firm with the previous standards and expectations. This show demonstrates how leaders and followers react when there are dramatic changes to vision, moral standards, financial motives and leaderships reactions to these things.

This video is GREAT stuff for any would-be leader. The basic lesson is that folks are driven by autonomy, mastery, and purpose, not profit so incentive pay only seems to work for repetitive physical, rather than cognitively challenging, tasks. What a great way to teach -- this 10 minute video is better than hours of lecture.

I think the ongoing situation in Libya provides an interesting illustration of leadership and what happens when there is no clear leadership or at least a process for leadership. Qaddafi seems to have provided a form of leadership for decades - somewhat along the lines of Northouse's narcissistic leader type. Understandably, Northouse does not provide an analysis of the use of violence in acquiring and retaining a position of leadership/power. Yet it seems to me that one reason Qaddafi has been able to retain power when others have fallen is his ability to lead, even if brute force is used to enforce his position. What is the difference between Mubarak and Qaddafi? Why did Mubarak lose the support of his inner circle where Qaddafi has not? Further, a lack of clear leadership seems to be hobbling NATO and the rebels. Those who oppose Qaddafi seem to agree only on the fact of their oppositional sentiment; they seem unable to agree on what should be done to effectively express that opposition.

This is an unlikely choice, but I picked it because it represents Judas' opinion about how well Jesus is doing as a leader. (And I happened to hear it yesterday.) And having just read the Drucker, I can't help but think about the haunting complexity of what it means that organizational success is about the leader prioritizing the task, not the leader. What does that mean in this context? I have an easy, possibly snarky UU answer to that question, which is almost certainly wrong.

Judas is shown in Superstar as also making the classic mistake for mistaking the leader for the cause--you know, it's about the church, not about the pastor.

I read about this conference in Christian Century (April 5, 2011) a leadership conference about failing, recovering, learning from mistakes, and community reassurance.  It's being held in a failed church that is now a bar!

This young man is a visionary leader. A boy with a dream and the open-mindedness to see what could be. As we travel through all of the amzaing, rhyming ways that this fellow will change this space we are challenged as a reader with what we can see and do beyond our own walls. Although the intended audience is most likely children, adults alike can gain perspective, be challenged, and appreciate the places that we can go when we let our mind wonder.

There are a few books that Dr Seuss wrote for adults and this sounds like one of them. The other that comes to mind is the Butter Battle Book before the fall of Communism. Thanks for posting it. I will check it out.