"Your success as a leader... depends on being free of self-betrayal. Only then do you invite others to be free of self-betrayal themselves." - Leadership and Self-Deception

Have you ever caught yourself seeing a person as an object during a conversation? What strategy did you use to shift your ‪#‎mindset‬ back to seeing that individual as a person? What effect did it have on the conversation? ‪#‎seepeople‬

The story of Tubular Steel & Arbinger. I believe this was the inspiration for Leadership & Self Deception.

Where in the pyramid are you stuck?

The best reason to brand someone with a pejorative label is to push them away, to forestall useful conversation, to turn them into the other. Much more useful: Identify the behavior that's counter-productive. When we talk about the behavior, we have a chance to make change happen. What would happen if the behavior stopped? When we call someone misogynist or racist or sexist or a capitalist, a socialist or an abstract expressionist, what are we hoping for? Every one of us is on the 'ist' spectrum, so the label becomes meaningless. Meaningless labels are noise, noise that lasts. If that person stopped acting like a _____ist, what would change? Because if there's nothing we want to change, the labeling is useless. And if there's a change that needs to be made, let's talk about what it is.

Great story about how Arbinger helped transform a culture.

How the simple decision to engage with the men on the street and see them as people rather than criminals allowed a few officers to change the whole dynamic of the neighborhood and dramatically reduce crime.

A new edition of the Anatomy of Peace has been released.

Our fate is shaped from within ourselves outward, never from without inward. (Jacques Lusseyran)

However mean your life is, meet and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names... It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. (Henry David Thoreau)

We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade and the harm we do, we do to ourselves. (Mitch Albom)

[Try reading this quote by replacing the words 'hating/hatred' with words like resentment, withholding love, bitterness, refusing to forgive, and judging. Any others?]

To forgive is to assume a larger identity than the person who was first hurt. (David Whyte)

The thoughts that creep into our brain about other people tell us less about those people than they do about our selves... Most judgments of others are an attempt to empower ourselves and give a sense of being better than the person we judge. (Charles F. Glassman)

In the world of human affairs, the will to dominate, even for apparently good reasons, nullifies itself. 'Every force', says the Tao te Ching, 'calls forth a counter-force.' But love is a power unmitigated. It allows others their freedom. (C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free)

Something to consider when I see myself as either superior or inferior to others: "To see others as gauges to be measured against is to see them as objects." (The Choice at Work)

Become a responsive person. Be influenced by the reality of other people. The rest will be wonderful. You do not do it conditionally -- not to try to change others -- you do it because you love, unconditionally. (C. Terry Warner)

If you would convince a person that they do wrong, do right. But do not care to convince them. People will believe what they see. Let them see. (adapted, Henry David Thoreau)

Make no judgments where you have no compassion.
(Anne McCaffrey)

But mankind is so addicted to systems and to abstract conclusions that we are prepared deliberately to distort the truth, to close our eyes and ears, but justify our logic at all cost. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

It's very, very difficult, time consuming, and demanding to let people have their say, especially when you disagree with them. But I think in life, it's actually more important to listen hard to those who disagree with you. (adapted, George Mitchell)