“The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths in ways that make a system’s weaknesses irrelevant.” – Peter Drucker, quoted by David Cooperrider in the foreword to The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive…
Alfred Korzybski on belief and skepticism
“There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.” – Alfred Korzybski Polish-American philosopher and scientist, creator of the theory of ‘General Semantics’, big influence on NLP,…
Isaac Newton on seeing further
“If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants” ~ Isaac Newton, natural philosopher What are we to take from Newton’s observation nowadays? What advice does it hold for us? I take it to mean…
Martin Luther King on hope and disappointment
Yesterday was MLK Day in the USA. Not surprisingly, there were many inspiring quotes flying around Facebook. This was one of my favourites: “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” More quotes by Dr Martin Luther King…
Mulla Nasreddin on Reaching Enlightenment
Image of Nasreddin from WikipediaA tale of the incomparable Mulla Nasreddin on reaching enlightenment: Nasreddin was walking in the bazaar with a large group of followers. Whatever Nasreddin did, his followers immediately copied. Every few steps Nasreddin would stop and shake his…
The Dalai Lama on Kindness
“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.” ~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama Thanks to Sarah for the…
Amma Theodora on being a teacher
Some wise words on leadership from Amma Theodora – an early Christian monastic who went into the Egyptian desert during the third and fourth centuries to live a life of prayer and contemplation. For ‘teacher’, also read leader, therapist, and…
Gregory of Nyssa on self-awareness and self-deception
Recently I co-facilitated a training workshop in appreciative coaching skills for rural deans, bishops and lay members of the Diocese of Chester. It was the first time I had worked with Anglican clergy and a more welcoming and stimulating audience…
Terry Pratchett on travel
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place where you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where…
Buddhist saying refutes “cosmic ordering”
"Act as if the future of the Universe depends on what you do, while laughing at yourself for thinking that your actions could make any difference" — a Buddhist Saying (sometimes attributed to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) Thanks to @AboodiShabi for alerting…