What do we mean by LEADERSHIP THAT WORKS, Faith vs. Reason? What are the most important issues in your life? We live in a complex society and cultural conditions affect the nature of an individual or community. It's also the study of society and of individual relationships in society, to include sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, political science, history and the environment in which we live. Are you a person of God? Does God exist now or in our past? If you believe in God, is God dead or alive? I will discuss many issues in this book that are important to strategy leadership and just plain getting things done. This is a collection of notes, experiences, learning and readings over a period of many years. The focus is on what constitutes common sense by way of leadership and a look into faith vs. reason. This book is on leadership that works and some hard questions on Faith vs. Reason.
Leadership That Works
Faith vs. ReasonBy Roy K. LintzAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2009 Roy K. Lintz
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4490-0786-7Contents
1 What Is Important................................12 Do You Have A Dream..............................73 Leadership Styles................................114 Great Leaders....................................635 Counseling.......................................776 Goals............................................917 Health...........................................978 Character........................................1039 The Bible........................................11910 Philosophical Point Of View.....................12711 Religious Extreme Terrorism.....................16112 Rethink Your Thinking...........................18113 Ideas...........................................207Source Notes.......................................223
Chapter One
What Is Important
What do we mean by LEADERSHIP THAT WORKS, AND Faith vs. Reason? What are the most important issues in your life? I see strategy leadership as what is important to you as a person within our society. We live in a complex society and cultural conditions affect the nature of an individual or community. It's also the study of society and of individual relationships in and to society, to include sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, political science, history, and the environment in which we live. Are you a person of God? Does God exist now or in our past? If you believe in God, is God dead or alive? Therefore, I have decided to write about one person's view of strategy leadership. I will discuss many issues in this book that are important to strategy leadership and just plain getting things done. It's important that we find ways to improve upon activities as we travel though life.
BLUF. What is BLUF? BLUF is Bottom Line Up Front. At the end of the day, were you successful? Did you obtain your goals and objectives? Did you hit your 25 meter target? True leadership is not about your position, it's all about the action that you took or did not take. Did you get done today the goals and objectives that were the most important to you? If you did, great job, keep up the good work. If you fell short, you must ask yourself why? What can you do to get better for tomorrow? Have a plan, make a plan, and put that plan in action. Find a way, get the important things in your life done; just get it done. Make them a priority as you go about your daily life. BLUF, you will become happier with yourself and your overall life itself will improve.
Strategy implementation may be the most important factor shaping management today. How do we measure strategy? Is our organization decentralized and closer to the customer - customer driven? Become a more customer focused organization, one that understands its customers better and deliver what they want. The ability to execute strategy can be more important than the strategy itself. Intangible assets have become the major sources of competitive advantage. Experience has repeatedly shown that the single most important condition for success is ownership. We will discuss what true ownership is all about and how to obtain it.
A strategy map is the cornerstone, shared service synergies, strategic learning and strategic awareness. Individual strategies must be linked and integrated. The competitive landscape is constantly changing, so strategies must constantly evolve to reflect shifts in opportunities and threats. Strategy must be a continual process. It requires that all employees understand the strategy and conduct their day to day business in a way that contributes to the success of that strategy. The first job is to make the need for change obvious to all; importance of teamwork in executing strategy. In many cases you can link personal objectives to the strategy. Learning and growth are priorities to create a climate that supports organizational change, innovation and growth.
To be a great leader, you must have a dream. Take your personal dream plan very seriously. If you spend the time well and expend the effort, it will change your life forever. Being very honest with yourself, do you have the brains, the aptitude and the talent to make your dream come true? Focus on the dream. Make a habit of keeping a copy of your action plan with you at all times. Life is too short to be saddled with doing something you don't like. People must realize that they are in their most productive years and that it's all going to end someday. Are you old or young? Old or young, you have today and at the end of the day, it's gone, never to return again. Therefore, what is your focus today? Are you working toward the most important issues in your life?
Attitude is a little thing that helps you get the most out of life and be successful regardless of what the odds might be. The only thing winners are up against is their own attitude. Attitude is very important for a leader, because attitude is everything. By having a personal mission statement helps us to have the right attitude. Our outlook must be that the glass is always half-full and never half-empty. We must focus on a strong finish. However, be realistic about strengths and weaknesses. Remember that little changes and a positive attitude can make a huge difference in regards to health and wellness.
Our society may over use the term leadership. There are three basic styles of leadership; directing, participating and delegating. Choosing the correct style of leadership requires you to understand the four factors of leadership. Anyone can do almost anything with unlimited resources. The true leader finds a way to do great things with limited resources. Leadership is action, not position. No matter what kind of leader you have been in the past, you can decide to be a new and different leader, a better leader tomorrow. A great leader will provide purpose, direction and motivation. The four major factors of leadership are always present and affect the actions we should take and when we should take them. They are the led, the leader, the situation and communications.
Counseling is a fundamental responsibility of every leader. Leaders at all levels have a responsibility to assist and develop subordinates. Counseling requires that a leader's actions demonstrate knowledge, understanding, judgment and ability. Of a leader's traits or characteristics in promoting effective counseling, a caring attitude is the most important. There are as many approaches to counseling as there are counselors. The approaches used in military counseling are the directive approach at one extreme, the nondirective approach at the other and the combined approach in the middle.
A great leader must be able to set goals and have good time management skills. Goals give a sense of direction and purpose, force us to plan ahead and give us a clear understanding of what is expected. Self-disciplined people know how to set a goal, define the steps to accomplish the goal, and take each step, even though each one might be more painful than the one before. Such planning refreshes your outlook and reinforces your determination to move forward. You are happier in life if you know what your goals are. Find out what you really want out of life. Make a game plan for your dream. Map out a plan to make it happen and then go out into the world and get it done.
Stay healthy. Only then do you have the equipment, the brainpower and physical power necessary to recognize, analyze and manage problems. Get plenty of rest, exercise regularly, eat well and watch your diet, and keep a clean conscience. Learn how to handle the stress in your life. Work to make your life more interesting, take up a new challenge or give your life some excitement in sports, hobbies or other leisure activities.
As a leader, you are responsible for understanding and directly transmitting values to your people. Ethical responsibilities such as beliefs, values, norms and character are keys to an ethical decision making process. Whether you like it or not, you are on display at all times. Your actions say much more than your words. Subordinates will watch you carefully and imitate your behavior. You must accept the obligation to be a worthy role model and you cannot ignore the effect your behavior has on others. You must be willing to do what you require of your people and share the dangers and hardships. No matter what, work hard to always do the right thing.
We have explored the environment, spread across the face of the globe, developed concepts and ideas. We have built settlements, machines, languages and societies. We have emptied our waste in, on and around this big blue planet of ours that we call home. We have added strange new man-made chemicals to this planet. No one knows exactly how great the ultimate consequences of these changes may be. Actions undertaken in the sudden glare of a crisis will not provide a long-term solution to problems that have been slowly building for many decades. Just as a crash diet cannot correct an overweight problem of many years standing. What is needed is a change in daily habits. A commitment to the health of our planet in the face of increasing population pressure and rising expectations of all humanity must be our focus point. Will our society provide the leadership that is needed to keep our planet alive, so the human race will live to see another day?
Do you live a good or evil life? Do you believe in God? Must you have God in your life to live a good life? What really happens when our life comes to an end? Do you believe in the Holy Bible? Have you read both the old and new Testaments? If not, should you if you believe in God? Or is God all based upon faith or a frame of mind? If you believe in God, then you must believe in the other - the Devil, Satan, the major spirit of evil and ruler of Hell. But what if there is no God or Devil, only this lifetime. How would you live your life?
Chapter Two
Do You Have A Dream
Take your dream plan very seriously. If you spend the time well and expend the effort, it will change your life forever. Start by committing your dream to paper today. If you don't know the destination, there's no way you'll ever be able to chart a course to get there. If your dream is vague, take some time to think it through. Your goal should be well defined before you proceed beyond this point.
There was a time when all of my friends were graduating from high school. I left the high school lifestyle by entering the United States Military and made it a career. My generation is slowly but relentlessly moving through the decades after our life's dream. It occurs to me that a time will soon come when my high school friends will be dying. Why should we work ourselves into an early grave, missing those precious moments with loves ones who crave our affection and attention? Once you get out from under the constant pressures of making a living, you will wonder why you drove yourself so hard for all those years. Therefore, what do you really want from life? You don't want to ask yourself how did I get to where I am which is so far from where I am supposed to be? The destiny of your future is in your hands, that's why one person can make a difference.
Spend a lot of time on your research. Who am I? What am I living for? Your objective must be very clear. Don't just dream about what you would like to be, become intimate with it. Get to really know it and you'll be well prepared when you start making your game plan. You'll have all the information you need to determine what you'll have to get done and how long it may take. Hopefully, your research efforts will help you to get on with making your dream come true.
Being very careful and honest with yourself, do you have the brains, the aptitude and the talent to make your dream come true? You either do or you don't. The point here is simple. Make sure that you really have the right stuff to make your dream come true. Assuming you have the brains, aptitude and talent, you can obtain everything else. Education, training and practice are keys. It's now only a matter of determining what you need and how long it will take to get it. This will comprise the formulation of your game plan.
It may take many years, a sacrifice of time from pleasurable activities for a while, a surrender of present finances and lifestyle. Your dream will not come easily. You must be prepared to go after it with all you've got. Don't look for or depend upon luck. Remember that luck requires you to be well prepared when opportunity knocks.
Try to clear your mind of all your daily problems, such as earning a living, paying the mortgage or figuring out what you're going to eat next. Try to get a clear picture in your mind. Not the day-to-day stuff, but who you really are and how you got to where you are today. Reflect on all that is good and bad in your life. It's important that you get a firm grip on reality and how you got to this point in life. Age and experience tend to change a person's outlook on life. Are you just going through a mid-life crisis? Don't make a major change in your life just for the sake of change. Your dream should be something you really want, not just an escape from the present.
Your strategy is the logic through which you hope to achieve your dream. Try not to compare yourself to other people and their progress in life. You are unique. Try to build a healthy attitude, confident of what you want to do with your life. As you start building your personal game plan, try to start on a self-improvement program of proper diet, rest and exercise. Concentrate on eliminating or reducing bad habit at this time. Dedication, concentration and meditation will help you make a plan that will work for you and lead to a happier and fuller life.
Focus on the dream. Be persistent, diligent and committed. Remember that this program is designed for a lifetime. Make a new plan for next year starting from the beginning. Even if your dream goal, supporting goals and other goals are the same, it's beneficial to rewrite your plan each year to help you keep a sharp focus on your progress.
Make a habit of keeping a copy of your action plan with you at all times. Review your goals daily, review your performance and see if your behavior matches your goals. Those who have made their dreams come true will tell you that it took time, effort and most importantly, a strong determination to stay with it. Don't give up. Those people who are unwilling to invest time and effort into achieving their dreams probably won't succeed.
A major newspaper reported that the average life span of a man after full retirement is two years. Over 95% of people die broke after working 40 years. Don't work hard for a living, work smart for a lifestyle. Merely making large amounts of money is not the answer if you are looking for any real security. Ask a high paid professional of this world that is about to drop dead from exhaustion. No matter how much you make, you have to keep working all the time or the money stops coming in.
It's suicide to go through life being passively shoved around by an employer who decides your earnings, exact hours you will work, vacation time or whether you'll even have a job. A person must take control of their own life. You can too. Choice is a gift, but you must exercise this gift. You can have all that you want. You need only make up your mind and take action. Life is not a spectator sport. All the knowledge in the world won't help you if you don't take action. Dreams only come true if the desire is great enough. Why not see what you can really do, how far you can go? Why not become the most you can and really live life instead of just watching it pass by.
Life is too short to be saddled with doing something you don't like. A lot of people never decide what they want to do. They may want something easier, and nothing is easy, but if they know what they want to do, they should do a little advance planning. I can't think of anything worse than being miserable at what you're doing, but I also say, stay at something long enough to find out enough about it to know whether you really like it or not. You've got to have patience. I don't think I'll ever quit working. I just enjoy working with people and it's all just too much fun, but you must work at the things that you enjoy.
You need support, encouragement, but more than anything else, you need the determination to do it, to leave security behind and take a chance. You'll never know, unless you try. Just go for it. If you've got a dream, make a plan to make it happen.
COL Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) never retired. At age 75 (in 1965) he was just getting started with KFC. This is a great example that we are in our most productive years, now, today, right now. Don't think that you are too old to start something new. Take on your dream. What do you really want to do in life? Don't wait, get started today.
People must realize that they are in their most productive years and that it's all going to end someday. It's much better to spend those years doing the things you really want to do, but it's not for everyone. Some people flourish in an environment where everything is provided for them and they are told what to do. This type of person will probably not make it, because when you first start, you have to do everything yourself. You have to be self-driven and self-motivated. If you want to be successful, you have to discipline yourself. If you love what you're doing, it's not really considered work. Take a chance. What's the worst possible thing that could happen if you fail? You just go back to square one and start over. If you're willing to work hard and believe in yourself, you'll be successful.
Excerpted from Leadership That Worksby Roy K. Lintz Copyright © 2009 by Roy K. Lintz. Excerpted by permission.
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