You acquire more influence with young people when you give up using your power to control them...and the more you use your power to try to control people the less influence you'll have on their lives.
Interpretation
Influence is gained through trust and connection rather than through control and authority.
This quote emphasizes that true leadership involves nurturing relationships rather than exerting control. When leaders relinquish their desire to dominate others, they foster a more genuine influence that inspires young people to follow their guidance willingly, ultimately leading to more impactful connections and greater respect.
In practice
In a workshop on youth leadership, this quote can illustrate the importance of trust over authority.
It is one of those simple but beautiful paradoxes of life: When a person feels that he is truly accepted by another, as he is, then he is freed to move from there and to begin to think about how he wants to change, how we wants to grow, how he can become different, how he might become more of what he is capable of being.
What job is worth the enormous psychic cost of following a leader who values loyalty in the narrowest sense.
The most important relationship a head coach has on his team isn't with the other coaches, the owner or the general manager. It's with the quarterback. He's the one who runs the show on the field; He's the ultimate extension of his coach. If there isn't a high level of mutual trust between them, both coach and quarterback will be doomed.
Leadership is a series of behaviors rather than a role for heroes.
Managers will tell people what to do, whereas leaders will inspire them to do it, and there are a few things that go into the ability to inspire.
It is important that the Church of London, which has now lost its ruler, should receive for its new bishop a man whose personal merit, attainments in learning, and prudence in managing public business shall not be unworthy of the dignity of that see.
It is a critical job of any entrepreneur to maximize creativity, and to build the kind of atmosphere around you that encourages people to have ideas. That means open structures, so that accepted thinking can be challenged.
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