If you're interested in the job and in the kind of work that's done, you have to have an interest in who's going to fill your shoes.
Interpretation
True leadership involves caring about the future and who will carry on the work after you.
In this quote, John Paul Stevens emphasizes the importance of succession in leadership. A responsible leader shouldn't only focus on their current role but also consider who will take over and carry forward the mission. This approach fosters a culture of mentorship and ensures that the values and quality of work continue beyond one's tenure.
In practice
In a team meeting about succession planning, you could mention this quote to emphasize the importance of mentoring future leaders.
It might be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.
But I wound like people to think I was an honest judge and a good judge. And I always tried the reach the best result in every case.
It is not our job to apply laws that have not yet been written.
I think this country would be much better off if we did not have capital punishment.... We cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated.
While money is used to finance speech, money is not speech.
But I really think it's a very unfortunate part of our judicial system and I would feel much, much better if more states would really consider whether they think the benefits outweigh the very serious potential injustice, because in these cases the emotions are very, very high on both sides and to have stakes as high as you do in these cases, there is a special potential for error. We cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated.
In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it.
Praise them for what they do well, both privately and publicly.
For women to achieve equal representation in leadership roles, it's important that they have the backing of men as well as women.
I am the commander in chief of the United States armed forces, and Iraq is gonna have to ultimately provide for its own security.
Trying to build a team over the course of the winter to put on the field is really just half the job. Because if your best players go down, it's not so much him going down as who you replace him with, which ultimately might have the biggest impact on how you end up finishing. So you want to have both a belt and suspenders for support.
A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.
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