Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible (Covenant & Conversation Book 8)

If you want to bond human beings so that they act for the common good, get them to build something together. Get them to undertake a task that they can only achieve together, that none can do alone.

Leaders must sometimes silence their private emotions if they are not to demoralise those they lead.

Great leaders, be they CEOs or simply parents, have the ability to connect a large vision with highly specific details. Without the vision, the details are merely tiresome.

This means that a leader must lead from the front. He cannot be like the apocryphal British politician who we quoted earlier: “Of course I follow the party. After all, I am their leader.”

political leader is more exposed to temptation and error than a priest or judge.

Dream dreams, understand and articulate the dreams of others, and find ways of turning a dream into a reality – these three gifts are leadership, the Joseph way.

lowest of the low. Those who are loyal to other people find that other people are loyal to them. Those who are disloyal are eventually distrusted and lose whatever authority they might once have had. Leadership without loyalty is not leadership. Skills alone cannot substitute for the moral qualities that make people follow those who demonstrate the

There must be praise for those who do well, as well as constructive criticism when people do badly. Criticism must be of the act, not the person; the person must feel respected whatever his or her failures.

Leaders, if they are wise, think about the impact of their decisions many years from now.