an activity trap

It's incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall. It is possible to be very busy - very busy - without being very effective.

Stephen R. Covey 

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Simon and Schuster. p.98

a gate of change

No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or by emotional appeal.

Marilyn Ferguson 

As quoted in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey. Simon and Schuster. p.60

management/leadership and ladders

In the words of both Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

Stephen R. Covey 

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Simon and Schuster. p.101

out there

Anytime we think the problem is "out there," that thought is the problem. We empower what's out there to control us. The change paradigm is "outside-in" - what's out there has to change before we can change.

Stephen R. Covey 

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Simon and Schuster. p.89

by the close study of books

…With war threatening, [Nathanael Greene] turned his mind to “the military art.” Having ample means to buy whatever books he needed, he acquired a number of costly military treatises few could afford. It was a day and age that saw no reason why one could not learn whatever was required – learn virtually anything – by the close study of books, and he was a prime example of such faith. Resolved to become a “fighting Quaker,” he made himself as knowledgeable on tactics, military science, and leadership as any man in the colony.

David G. McCullough

1776. Simon & Schuster, 2005. p.23

talented people are restless at their core

Q: You’re in an odd position, because the better your employees perform, the more likely you are to lose them. How do you handle that tension?

A: Talented people are restless at their core. It’s the nature of the beast. The more talented move on sooner or later, and quite often the least talented are the most loyal. When I advise people about leaving the show, I always use the same metaphor: I tell them to build a bridge to the next thing and, when it’s solid, walk across. Don’t leave a national platform, where everybody in the industry can see you reinvent yourself each week, too early. I know there’s a lot of pressure and the hours are awful. It’s the hardest job in show business. But the real world of show business is much rougher than ours. I think Kristen handled it well. After Bridesmaids, which really established her, it was time to move on. But until her last day, nothing was a priority but the show.

Lorne Michaels

Interview with Lorne Michaels. Harvard Business Review. September 2013

people respond better when they feel they’ve been heard

Q: Comedy is so subjective. What happens when the team disagrees on what’s good?

A: Our dress rehearsals are up to 35 minutes longer than we have room for in the live show. Sometimes things don’t play, and then the writer is much more open to change and suggestions. You can have the fight beforehand, but who’s right? If we go through the dress and the audience is neutral, then we can start cutting in a relatively ruthless way, because all you’re trying to do is put on the best show out of what you have. At that point everyone falls into line. There’s no longer any real debate. We just execute. We come together and do the show. Creative people respond better when they feel they’ve been heard and had a chance to see how the thing they believed in actually performed. You know, we work in a business where people who don’t know each other kiss when they meet. It’s hard to navigate that, because nobody says, “You’re awful in that part.” There’s a level of truth that comes from the audience. They love it or they don’t.

Lorne Michaels

Interview with Lorne Michaels. Harvard Business Review. September 2013

a strict hierarchy

Most companies are built with a strict hierarchy in place. This allows for managers to thrive and companies to excel at what they know and do best. But for organizations that need to change and quickly pursue new strategies, leaders must thrive, and they can only do so in a more dynamic environment, where traditional reporting structures take a back seat to good ideas, and where all individuals, regardless of rank, have the opportunity to help move the company where it wants—and needs—to go.

John P. Kotter

"Is Hierarchy an Obstacle to Innovation?" Forbes. 10/1/2012

how we invest our time

[H]ow we invest our time ultimately determines our level of effectiveness and impact....

Does your calendar reflect your stated priorities? Certainly, it reflects your real priorities. However, a gap between the two erodes your moral authority to lead. Regardless of how well we do what we do, we get no credit for doing the wrong things well.

Are you investing your time with the right people? If we are not careful, we can drift, or be pulled, to spend time with the wrong people. Who are your future leaders? How much of your time do they get verses your problem people? Who can help you carry the load?

How much time do you invest on self-leadership? Many leaders, myself included, can falsely assume our role is to serve at our own expense. This strategy is shortsighted. We must put on our own oxygen mask first if we hope to serve over the long haul. This includes rest, recreation, personal growth and more. What we do in private has a huge impact on our public effectiveness.

How much time do you devote to the future? Many leaders are ineffective because they have succumbed to the management of today rather than the creation of tomorrow. The future demands time on your calendar. Don’t let today push out tomorrow. If you do, you’ve given away more than your time – you’ve given away your leadership.

Does your use of time increase others’ confidence in you as a leader? Do you use your time like a leader should? Are you seen mostly in reactionary mode or proactive role? Are you purposeful? Are you strategic with your time? Do people associate your decisions regarding your time with what a leader should do?

Are you investing your time on your biggest problems? One of my favorite moments in any consulting engagement involves two questions: 1) What is your biggest problem? 2) How much time did you invest on that issue last week? Leaders invest their time strategically.

A leader’s time is his or her greatest asset. Only when we steward it well, can we reach our full potential.

Mark Miller

"The Key to a Greater Impact." Great Leaders Serve. 8/3/2015

leaders cannot delegate presence

There are many situations when there is no substitute for a leader’s physical presence. Some might call this symbolic – don’t let that diminish in your mind the impact you have when you are present. Events, milestones, strategic meetings, or even personal markers in the lives of your people are all candidates for your presence. Former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani says, “Weddings are optional; funerals are mandatory.” Giuliani understands the impact of leadership presence. 

Mark Miller

"6 Things Leaders Cannot Delegate." Great Leaders Serve. 3/11/2015

hire people more talented than you

It's an oft-quoted refrain from hiring textbooks, and one equally often ignored in practice. How often do egos get in the way in traditional business and startups, let alone in narcissistic Hollywood? How tempting it can be -- for all of us -- to go for the self-image boost of engineering teams so that we are always the sharpest tool in the shed rather than collecting the absolute best talent possible? 

Stewart successfully and consistently hired correspondents more talented than he is. From Steve Carrell who has gone on to become an international movie star to Stephen Colbert who's notoriety has arguably eclipsed Stewart's in moving on to the CBS Late Show, to John Oliver who now hosts his own show on HBO, The Daily Show boasts an incredible alumni network. And it doesn't stop with these big names -- he's surrounded himself with comics with sharper wit -- Lewis Black -- and better acting chops -- Samantha Bee -- as well.

This talent was made abundantly clear when every former correspondent returned to his final show, filling the stage with unbelievable star power. Stewart has identified talent and The Daily Show has served as a 'rocket ship' for dozens of careers.

Alex Budak

"3 Leadership Lessons Learned From Jon Stewart." Huffington Post. 8/10/2015

never been closer than this

Americans who are tired of politics as usual should demand a clear answer to a simple question from every candidate: What will you do to unite all of us?

Our country deserves a candidate courageous enough to select a member of the other party as a running mate. Our country deserves a president humble enough to see leadership not as an entitlement but as a privilege.

The speculation about my candidacy reminds me of a lesson from a great Jewish leader. A decade ago, I visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem with Nosson Tzvi Finkel, a widely respected rabbi in Israel. As we approached one of the holiest sites in Judaism, the rabbi halted about 10 yards away as a crowd of admirers gathered nearby. I beckoned him further.

“I’ve never been closer than this,” the rabbi told me. Astounded, I asked why.

“You go,” he said. “I’m not worthy.”

Howard Schultz, CEO Starbucks

America Deserves a Servant Leader. The New York Times. 8/6/2015

don't be afraid

When Jobs was designing the iPhone, he decided that he wanted its face to be a tough, scratchproof glass, rather than plastic. He met with Wendell Weeks, the CEO of Corning, who told him that Corning had developed a chemical exchange process in the 1960s that led to what it dubbed “Gorilla glass.” Jobs replied that he wanted a major shipment of Gorilla glass in six months. Weeks said that Corning was not making the glass and didn’t have that capacity. “Don’t be afraid,” Jobs replied. This stunned Weeks, who was unfamiliar with Jobs’s Reality Distortion Field. He tried to explain that a false sense of confidence would not overcome engineering challenges, but Jobs had repeatedly shown that he didn’t accept that premise. He stared unblinking at Weeks. “Yes, you can do it,” he said. “Get your mind around it. You can do it.” Weeks recalls that he shook his head in astonishment and then called the managers of Corning’s facility in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, which had been making LCD displays, and told them to convert immediately to making Gorilla glass full-time. “We did it in under six months,” he says. “We put our best scientists and engineers on it, and we just made it work.” As a result, every piece of glass on an iPhone or an iPad is made in America by Corning.

Walter Isaacson
The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs - Harvard Business Review the Magazine. April 2012.

could you find a way?

One day Jobs marched into the cubicle of Larry Kenyon, the engineer who was working on the Macintosh operating system, and complained that it was taking too long to boot up. Kenyon started to explain why reducing the boot-up time wasn’t possible, but Jobs cut him off. “If it would save a person’s life, could you find a way to shave 10 seconds off the boot time?” he asked. Kenyon allowed that he probably could. Jobs went to a whiteboard and showed that if five million people were using the Mac and it took 10 seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to 300 million or so hours a year—the equivalent of at least 100 lifetimes a year. After a few weeks Kenyon had the machine booting up 28 seconds faster.

Walter Isaacson
The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs - Harvard Business Review the Magazine. April 2012.

some might call it character

IQ offers little to explain the different destinies of people with roughly equal promises, schooling, and opportunity. When ninety-five Harvard students from the classes of the 1940s – a time when people with a wider spread of IQ were at Ivy League schools than is presently the case – were followed into middle age, the men with the highest test scores in college were not particularly successful compared to their lower-scoring peers in terms of salary, productivity, or status in their field. Nor did they have the greatest life satisfaction, nor the most happiness with friendships, family, and romantic relationships.

A similar follow-up in middle age was done with 450 boys, most sons of immigrants, two thirds from families on welfare, who grew up in Sommerville, Massachusetts, at the time a “blighted slim” a few blocks from Harvard. A third had IQs below 90. But again IQ had little relationship to how well they had done at work or in the rest of their lives; for instance, 7 percent of men with IQs under 80 were unemployed for ten or more years, but so were 7 percent of men with IQs over 100. To be sure, there was a general link (as there always is) between IQ and socioeconomic level at age forty-seven. But childhood abilities such as being able to handle frustrations, control emotions, and get on with other people made the greater difference. 

Consider also data from an ongoing study of eighty-one valedictorians and salutatorians from the 1981 class in Illinois high schools. All, of course, had the highest grade point averages in their schools. But while they continued to achieve well in college, getting excellent grades, by their late twenties they had climbed to only average levels of success. Ten years after graduating from high school, only one in four were at the highest level of young people of comparable age in their chosen profession, and many were doing much less well.

Karen Arnold, professor of education at Boston University, one of the researchers tracking the valedictorians, explains, “I think we’ve discovered the ‘dutiful’ – people who know how to achieve in the system. But valedictorians struggle as surely as we all do. To know that a person is a valedictorian is to know only that he or she is exceedingly good at achievement as measured by grades. It tells you nothing about how they react to the vicissitudes of life.”

And that is the problem: academic intelligence offers virtually no preparation for the turmoil – or opportunity – life’s vicissitudes ring. Yet even though a high IQ is no guarantee of prosperity, prestige, or happiness in life, our schools and our culture fixate on academic abilities, ignoring emotional intelligence, a set of traits – some might call it character – that also matters immensely for our personal destiny. Emotional life is a domain that, as surely as math or reading, can be handled with greater or lesser skill, and requires its unique set of competencies. And how adept a person is at those is crucial to understanding why one person thrives in life while another, of equal intellect, dead-ends: emotional aptitude is a meta-ability, determining how well we can use whatever other skills we have, including raw intellect.

Daniel Goleman

Emotional Intelligence. Random House LLC, 2006. 358 pages, p.35,36

anyone can become angry

Anyone can become angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not easy.

Aristotle

The Nicomachean Ethics, as quoted in Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. Random House LLC, 2006. 358 pages. p.xix

who's winning

In 1964 an American father and his twelve-year-old son were enjoying a beautiful Saturday in Hyde Park, London, playing catch with a Frisbee. Few in England had seen a Frisbee at that time and a small group of strollers gathered to watch this strange sport. Finally, one homburg-clad Englishman came over to the father: “Sorry to bother you. Been watching you a quarter of an hour. Who’s winning?”

In most instances to ask a negotiator “Who’s winning?” is as inappropriate as to ask who’s winning a marriage. If you ask that question about your marriage, you have already lost the more important negotiation – the one about what kind of game to play, about the way you deal with each other and your shared and differing interests.

Roger Fisher, William L. Ury & Bruce Patton

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (The Harvard Negotiation Project). Penguin. 2011. P.150

the art of the critique

Harry Levinson, a psychoanalyst turned corporate consultant, gives the following advice on the art of the critique, which is intricately entwined with the art of praise:

• Be specific. Pick a significant incident, an event that illustrates a key problem that needs changing or a pattern of deficiency, such as the inability to do certain parts of a job well. It demoralizes people just to hear that they are doing “something” wrong without knowing what the specifics are so they can change. Focus on the specifics, saying what the person did well, what was done poorly, and how it could be changed. Don’t beat around the bush or be oblique or evasive; it will muddy the real message. This, of course, is akin to the advice to couples about the “XYZ” statement of a grievance: say exactly what the problem is, what’s wrong with it or how it makes you feel, and what could be changed.  “Specificity,” Levinson points out, “is just as important for praise as for criticism. I won’t say that vague praise has no effect at all, but it doesn’t have much, and you can’t learn from it.”
• Offer a solution. The critique, like all useful feedback, should point to a way to fix the problem. Otherwise it leaves the recipient frustrated, demoralized, or demotivated. The critique may open the door to possibilities and alternatives that the person did not realize were there, or simply sensitize her to deficiencies that need attention – but should include suggestions about how to take care of these problems.
• Be present. Critiques, like praise, are most effective face to face and in private. People who are uncomfortable giving a criticism – or offering praise – are likely to ease the burden on themselves by doing it at a distance, such as in a memo. But this makes the communication too impersonal, and robs the person receiving it of an opportunity for a response or clarification.
• Be sensitive. This is a call for empathy, for being attuned to the impact of what you say and how you say it on the person at the receiving end. Managers who have little empathy, Levinson points out, are most prone to giving feedback in a hurtful fashion, such as the withering put-down. The net effect of such criticism is destructive: instead of opening the way for a corrective, it creates an emotional backlash of resentment, bitterness, defensiveness, and distance.

Daniel Goleman

Emotional Intelligence. Random House LLC, 2006. 358 pages, p.153, 154

emotional brilliance

If the test of social skill is the ability to calm distressing emotions in others, then handling someone at the peak of rage is perhaps the ultimate measure of mastery. The data on self-regulation of anger and emotional contagion suggest that one effective strategy might be to distract the angry person, empathize with his feelings and perspective, and then draw him into an alternative focus, one that attunes him with a more positive range of feeling – a kind of emotional judo.

Such refined skill in the fine art of emotional influence is perhaps best exemplified by the late Terry Dobson, who in the 1950s was one of the first Americans ever to study the martial art Aikido in Japan:

One afternoon he was riding home on a suburban Tokyo train when a huge, bellicose, very drunk and begrimed laborer got on. The man, staggering, began terrorizing the passengers, screaming curses, he took a swing at a woman holding a baby, sending her sprawling in the laps of an elderly couple, who then jumped up and joined a stampede to the other end of the car.

The drunk, taking a few other swings (and, in his rage, missing), grabbed the metal pole in the middle of the car with a roar and tried to tear it out of its socket. At that point Terry, who was in peak physical condition from daily eight hour Aikido workouts, felt called upon to intervene, lest someone get seriously hurt.

But he recalled the words of his teacher: “Aikido is the art of reconciliation. Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his connection with the universe. If you try to dominate people you are already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it.” Indeed, Terry had agreed upon beginning lessons with his teacher never to pick a fight, and to use his martial-arts skills only in defense.

Now, at last, he saw his chance to test his Aikido abilities in real life, in what was clearly a legitimate opportunity.

So, as all the other passengers sat frozen in their seats, Terry stood up, slowly and with deliberation. Seeing him, the drunk roared, “Aha! A foreigner! You need a lesson in Japanese manners!” and began gathering himself to take on Terry. But just as the drunk was on the verge of making his move, someone gave an ear-splitting, oddly joyous shout: “Hey!” The shout had the cheery tone of someone who has suddenly come upon a fond friend.

The drunk, surprised, spun around to see a tiny Japanese man, probably in his seventies, sitting there in a kimono. The old man beamed with delight at the drunk, and beckoned him over with a light wave of his hand and a lilting “C’mere.” The drunk strode over with a belligerent, “Why the hell should I talk to you?”

Meanwhile, Terry was ready to fell the drunk in a moment if he made the least violent move. “What’cha been drinking?” the old man asked, his eyes beaming at the drunken laborer. “I been drinking sake, and it’s none of your business,” the drunk bellowed. “Oh, that’s wonderful, absolutely wonderful,” the old man replied in a warm tone. “You see, I love sake, too.

Every night, me and my wife (she’s seventy-six, you know), we warm up a little bottle of sake and take it out into the garden, and we sit on an old wooden bench . . .” He continued on about the persimmon tree in his backyard, the fortunes of his garden, enjoying sake in the evening.

The drunk’s face began to soften as he listened to the old man; his fists unclenched. “Yeah … I love persimmons, too .. . ,” he said, his voice trailing off. “Yes,” the old man replied in a sprightly voice, “and I’m sure you have a wonderful wife.” “No,” said the laborer. “My wife died….” Sobbing, he launched into a sad tale of losing his wife, his home, his job, of being ashamed of himself.

Just then the train came to Terry’s stop, and as he was getting off he turned to hear the old man invite the drunk to join him and tell him all about it, and to see the drunk sprawl along the seat, his head in the old man’s lap.

This is emotional brilliance.

Daniel Goleman

Emotional Intelligence. Random House LLC, 2006. 358 pages, p.124-126

the samurai and the monk

A belligerent samurai, an old Japanese tale goes, once challenged a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and hell. But the monk replied with scorn, “You’re nothing but a lout – I can’t waste my time with the likes of you!”

His very honor attacked, the samurai flew into a rage and pulling his sword from its scabbard, yelled, “I could kill you for your impertinence.” “That,” the monk calmly replied, “is hell.”

Startled at seeing the truth in what the master pointed out about the fury that had him in its grip, the samurai calmed down, sheathed his sword, and bowed, thanking the monk for the insight.

“And that,” said the monk, “is heaven.”

The sudden awakening of the samurai to his own agitated state illustrates the crucial difference between being caught up in a feeling and becoming aware that you are being swept away by it. Socrates’s injunction “Know thyself” speaks to this keystone of emotional intelligence: awareness of one’s own feelings as they occur.

Daniel Goleman

Emotional Intelligence. Random House LLC, 2006. 358 pages, p.46

polls or public opinion of the moment

For a while the mood overall seemed one of a death watch over his own presidency. Dwight Eisenhower had defeated Adlai Stevenson by a landslide. New poll results showed that only thirty two percent of the people approved of the way Truman was handling his job, and forty three percent thought it had been a mistake for the United States to go to war in Korea. But polls meant no more to him now than ever before. “I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt,” he wrote privately in an undated memo to himself. “What would Jesus Christ have preached if he’d taken a poll in Israel? It isn’t polls or public opinion of the moment that counts, it’s right and wrong.”

David McCullough
Truman Simon and Schuster. 2003. p.1086, 1087.

suffer by comparison

To no one was Marshall’s presence more reassuring, or inspiriting, than to Truman. “The more I see and talk to him the more certain I am he’s the great one of the age,” Truman wrote not long after Marshall’s swearing in. Marshall is a tower of strength and common sense,” he noted privately another time. It was admiration such as Truman felt for no other public figure, no one he had ever known, not Roosevelt, not Churchill, not anyone. Nor was he at all hesitant or concerned over having such a strong-minded man as his Secretary of State – Marshall, Harriman, Patterson, Forrestal, Lilienthal, Eisenhower, they were all strong-minded. Conceivably, Truman could have worried that someone of such immense reputation as Marshall in so prominent a role would diminish his own standing with the country, that he might suffer by comparison, and Marshall be perceived as more the sort of man who ought to be President. But Truman was neither jealous nor intimidated. He was not so constructed. “I am surely lucky to have his friendship and support,” he wrote, and that was that.

David McCullough
Truman - Simon and Schuster. 2003. p.637,638

cannot lead strangers

...you cannot lead strangers, you can only coerce or bribe them.

Orson Scott Card

Ender in Exile. Tor Publishing. 2008. p.100

as things forgot

Men must be taught as if you taught them not,

And things unknown propos'd as things forgot.

Alexander Pope 

Autobiography and Other Writings by Benjamin Franklin, edited by Russel B. Nye. 1949. p.15

how to build trust

So how can you do this? It requires a few qualities.

• You’re willing to get experience doing the work of your team. This doesn’t mean giving rousing speeches, putting out strongly worded press releases, or releasing polished promotional videos. This means you actually spend time with the people doing the work.
• You honor those people by listening and responding in earnest.

When I was at Medtronic, I gowned up and saw between 700 and 1,000 procedures. I’d put on the scrubs, met with the doctor, and watched an open-heart surgery, a brain surgery, or a pacemaker implant. And that’s how I learned the business.

When I was on the board of Target Corporation, the former CEO, Bob Ulrich, explained how he walked about 14 store floors a week. He didn’t tell them he was coming. He just put on a sweatshirt, walk around, and watch the store run.

And take Dan Vasella at Novartis. He’d be down in the labs all the time with the researchers asking, “What are you working on? What are the barriers?”

Instead of being the invisible entity who spends his or her time at black tie CEO events in DC, this is a leader who delves into the real day-to-day functions of the business. And that’s the type of leader who builds trust.

To maintain that trust, you need care about your team, want to be out there with them, and love the business. You really do have to love it! I can’t stress that enough. If you don’t love it, don’t do it.

Daniel Goleman

How Leaders Build Trust. Linkedin Pulse. 8/9/2015

he had squandered the golden moment

One person not often seen on the streets, at the Superdome, or on a rescue boat of any kind was Mayor Ray Nagin. Occasionally he’d pop up inside the Superdome, clinging to the exit doors, then disappear. Since the storm had approached the Crescent City, Mayor Nagin had been cloistered in the Hyatt, lording over the Superdome. From the get-go he was terrified for his own personal safety. And for good reason. At the storms peak, many of the windows of the Hyatt blew out. The high-rise was a jagged, ripped concrete-and-steel monstrosity, swaying in the feverish winds. Frightened, Nagin refused to make City Hall a command center. Terry Ebbert, the New Orleans director of Homeland Security, ostensibly ran the city. I went over to the Superdome numerous times, Ebbert recalled. I didn’t carry a weapon. I walked all around without a real problem.

Unlike Ebbert, Nagin was apparently repelled by the idea of speaking at the Superdome, to offer the evacuees both information and a morale boost. He refused to give a pep talk, blaming the city’s communications breakdown for his decision. His primary post-storm initiative was to get a generator hooked up to the elevator so he wouldn’t have to walk all those stairs. A timid Nagin had squandered a historic opportunity for a bullhorn moment. With a touch of guts he could have walked over to the Superdome with Teddy Roosevelt exuberance and tried to calm the jittery crowd. When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968, riots broke out in thirty-one American cities, but Robert F. Kennedy, shirtsleeves rolled up, fearlessly marched into the midst of an angry African-American mob in Indianapolis, easing their confusion and hurt with words of uplifting encouragement. RFK had seized the golden moment that Maureen Dowd wrote about. At the Superdome in New Orleans, scared citizens needed Nagin. But he feared that if he mounted a soapbox at the Superdome, he’d get shot, lynched, or bloodied up. He made the costly mistake of viewing the displaced persons as malcontents. He had squandered the golden moment, putting his own personal safety ahead of those poor and elderly in trouble.

Douglas Brinkley

The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. HarperCollins 2007. p.66, 67

requires such depth of oppression

The policy of apartheid created a deep and lasting wound in my country and my people. All of us will spend many years, if not generations, recovering from that profound hurt. But the decades of oppression and brutality had another, unintended effect, and that was that it produced the Oliver Tambos, the Walter Sisulus, the Chief Luthulis, and the Usuf Dadoos, the Bram Fischers, the Robert Sobukwes of our time – men of such extraordinary courage, wisdom, and generosity that their like may never be known again. Perhaps it requires such depth of oppression to create such heights of character. My country is rich in the minerals and gems that lie beneath its soil, but I have always known that its greatest wealth is its people, finer and truer than the purest diamonds.

Nelson Mandela

Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Back Bay Books. 1995. p. 662

actions that are unpopular

As a leader, one must sometimes take actions that are unpopular or whose results will not be known for years to come. There are victories whose glory lies only in the fact that they are known to those who win them. This is particularly true of prison, where one must find consolation in being true to one’s ideals, even if no one else knows about it.

Nelson Mandela

Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Back Bay Books. 1995. p. 390

the garden as a metaphor

In some ways, I saw the garden as a metaphor for certain aspects of my life. A leader must also tend his garden; he, too, plants seeds and then watches, cultivates, and harvests the result. Like the gardener, a leader must take responsibility for what he cultivates, he must mind his work, try to repel enemies, preserve what can be preserved, and eliminate what cannot succeed. 

I wrote Winnie two letters about a particularly beautiful tomato plant, how I coaxed it from a tender seedling to a robust plant that produced deep red fruit. But, then, either through some mistake or lack of care, the plant began to wither and decline, and nothing I did would bring it back to health. When it finally died, I removed the roots from the soil, washed them, and buried them in a corner of the garden. 

I narrated this small story at great length. I do not know what she read into that letter, but when I wrote it I had a mixture of feelings: I did not want our relationship to go the way of that plant, and yet I felt that I had been unable to nourish many of the most important relationships in my life. Sometimes there is nothing one can do to save something that must die.

Nelson Mandela

Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Back Bay Books. 1995. p.490

few among us would have qualified

We were soon transferred to the Johannesburg Prison, popularly known as the Fort, a bleak, castle-like structure located on a hill in the heart of the city. Upon admission we were taken to an outdoor triangle and ordered to strip completely and line up against the wall. We were forced to stand there for more than an hour, shivering in the breeze and feeling awkward – priests, professors, doctors, lawyers, businessmen, men of middle or old age, who were normally treated with deference and respect. Despite my anger, I could not suppress a laugh as I scrutinized the men around me. For the first time, the truth of the aphorism “clothes make the man” came home to me. If fine bodies and impressive physiques were essential to being a leader I saw that few among us would have qualified.

Nelson Mandela

Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Back Bay Books. 1995.  p. 200, 201