Power and Influence
At least five major constraints can hold you back from summoning courage for the work of leadership: • Loyalties to people who may not believe you are doing the right thing • Fear of incompetence • Uncertainty about taking the right path • Fear of loss • Not having the stomach for the hard parts of the journey
Ronald A. Heifetz • The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World
Because if you are the leader, the rest of the people on your team or in your organization expect to see you project openness and honesty—including the confidence to say what you believe in, and to admit when you are uncertain. It is much easier to pull this off if you are in steady contact with someone who can help you uncover what you are thinkin
... See moreArt Kleiner • The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies for Building a Learning Organization
societies, those who have moved up the hierarchy into senior positions of authority are naturally socialized and trained to be good at taking action and decisively solving problems. There is no incentive to wade knee-deep into the murky waters of diagnosis, especially if some of the deeper diagnostic possibilities will be unsettling to people who l
... See moreRonald A. Heifetz • The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World
They also learn that behaviors they assume to be benign may have more effect within the group than they had supposed. This process has the force of disrupting the third order of consciousness. It does so by challenging their unexamined trust in Authority and thus questioning the power and control of the leader as conventionally understood.