Good generals select intelligent officers, thoughtful advisors, and brave subordinates. They oversee their troops like a fierce tiger with wings.
Interpretation
Effective leaders choose capable team members and guide them with care and vigilance.
This quote emphasizes the importance of leadership in military and organizational contexts, highlighting how successful generals (or leaders) surround themselves with intelligent and brave individuals. It suggests that strong leaders not only select capable officers and advisors but also actively nurture and oversee their teams with a fierce devotion, likening their oversight to a powerful animal, which indicates strength and awareness while also being supportive.
In practice
In a motivational speech about management practices.
Opportunistic relationships can hardly be kept constant. The acquaintance of honorable people, even at a distance, does not add flowers in times of warmth and does not change its leaves in times of cold: it continues unfading through the four seasons, becomes increasingly stable as it passes through ease and danger.
To overcome the intelligent by folly is contrary to the natural order of things; to overcome the foolish by intelligence is in accord with the natural order. To overcome the intelligent by intelligence, however, is a matter of opportunity.
First organize the inner, then organize the outer ... First organize the great, then organize the small. First organize yourself, and then organize others.
Strength is but one aspect of power.
Battles are not won by strength alone!
Nothing is harder to see into thanpeoples nature. The sage looks at subtle phenomena and listens tosmall voices. This harmonizes the outside with the inside and the inside with the outside.
The basic DNA we've got to implant in leaders now is adaptability: not to get wedded to the solution to a particular problem, because not only the problem but the solution changes day to day. Creating people who are hardwired for that is going to be our challenge for the future.
The men who have guided the destiny of the United States have found the strength for their tasks by going to their knees. This private unity of public men and their God is an enduring source of reassurance for the people of America.
That's a strong sign of a good coach, to let an assistant participate. It shows his confidence in the coach's ability not to have to dominate everything.
We've backed off in good faith to try and give you a chance to straighten this problem out. But I am going to beg with you for a minute. I'm going to plead with you, do not cross us. Because if you do, the survivors will write about what we do here for 10,000 years.
When I was a young man, I was poor. In a war with other nations, I was in eighty-seven fights. There I received my name and was made Chief of my nation. But now I am old and am for peace.
I think, at the end of the day, you do better when you tend toward being transparent, even though there's some risk.
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