You need people who have their own views, whose views you respect, whom you can have a productive disagreement with, and work out ideas which you might not have come up with, or who improve on ideas you had.
Interpretation
Valuing diverse perspectives fosters constructive dialogue and innovation.
This quote emphasizes the importance of surrounding oneself with individuals who possess their own opinions and insights, as they contribute to meaningful discussions. Engaging with people who can challenge your ideas respectfully not only leads to better outcomes but can also help refine and improve your original thoughts, ultimately enhancing creativity and decision-making in leadership contexts.
In practice
In a team meeting when discussing a new project, I can remind everyone: 'You need people who have their own views, whose views you respect, whom you can have a productive disagreement with.'
If we did not have a sense of who we were, how we got here, why we want to achieve something - which, on the face of it, on the logic of it, is probably not worth trying - and prove that logic wrong, then you wouldn't succeed; then you would just evaporate.
Just as our forefathers saved and invested to build what we, the current generation, are enjoying today, so, too, we must plant trees so that our sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters, can enjoy the shade.
When people say they don't want a nanny state, they are, in fact, in a conflicted state of mind. On the one hand, they want to do whatever they want and not be stopped. On the other hand, if something goes wrong, they want to be rescued.
You need to have good people: honourable, capable, committed in politics, standing in public office. It's not a guarantee, but it's the ideal we have to aim for.
No government prospers by saying, 'I don't need to do anything. Just by being there, we have made the country thrive.'
At Facebook, we try to be a strengths-based organization, which means we try to make jobs fit around people rather than make people fit around jobs. We focus on what people's natural strengths are and spend our management time trying to find ways for them to use those strengths every day.
Most executives I know are so action-oriented, or action-addicted, that time for reflection is the first casualty of their success.
The Army, as usual, are without pay; and a great part of the soldiery without shirts; and though the patience of them is equally threadbare, the States seem perfectly indifferent to their cries.
My name is Mankiller, and in the old Cherokee Nation, when we lived here in the Southeast, we lived in semi-autonomous villages, and there was someone who watched over the village, who had the title of mankiller. And I'm not sure what you could equate that to, but it was sort of like a soldier or someone who was responsible for the security of the village, and so anyway this one fellow liked the title mankiller so well that he kept it as his name, and that's who we trace our ancestry back to.
A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be.
The authority you establish must emerge naturally from your character, from the particular strengths you possess.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.