I'm sad to report that in the past few years, ever since uncertainty became our insistent 21st century companion, leadership has taken a great leap backwards to the familiar territory of command and control.
Margaret J. WheatleyRead
Let's just keep asking ourselves this question: 'Is what I'm about to do strengthening the web of connections, or is it weakening it?'
Interpretation
This quote encourages reflection on how our actions impact our relationships and connections with others.
Margaret J. Wheatley's quote prompts us to consider the effects of our choices on our relationships and social ties. By asking whether our actions strengthen or weaken our connections, we cultivate a mindful approach to interpersonal dynamics, ultimately fostering a more supportive and connected community.
In practice
During a team meeting, this quote can remind members to focus on collaboration over competition.
I'm sad to report that in the past few years, ever since uncertainty became our insistent 21st century companion, leadership has taken a great leap backwards to the familiar territory of command and control.
In our daily life, we encounter people who are angry, deceitful, intent only on satisfying their own needs. There is so much anger, distrust, greed, and pettiness that we are losing our capacity to work well together.
Even though worker capacity and motivation are destroyed when leaders choose power over productivity, it appears that bosses would rather be in control than have the organization work well.
Our willingness to acknowledge that we only see half the picture creates the conditions that make us more attractive to others. The more sincerely we acknowledge our need for their different insights and perspectives, the more they will be magnetized to join us.
They have eliminated rigidity, both physical and psychological, in order to support more fluid processes whereby temporary teams are created to deal with specific and ever-changing needs. They have simplified roles into minimal categories; they have knocked down walls and created workplaces where people, ideas, and information circulate freely.
It's not differences that divide us. It's our judgments about each other that do.
Most African women are taught to endure abusive marriages. They say endurance means a good wife but most women endure abusive relationship because they are not empowered economically; they depend on their husbands.
The moment someone asks you to do something you don't have the time or inclination to do is fraught with vulnerability.
I maintain, despite the moment's evidence against the claim, that we are born and grow up with a fondness for each other, and we have genes for that. We can be talked out of it, for the genetic message is like a distant music, and some of us are hard-of-hearing. Societies are noisy affairs, drowning out the sound of ourselves and our connection.
There’s no black male my age, who’s a professional, who hasn’t come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn’t hand them their car keys.
Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ.
It takes hundred of years sitting together in the same boat. It takes thousand of years sharing the same bed with. It calls : the predestined affinity.
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