This summary note, based on recent conversations with coaching clients, is useful for any business owner who has grown beyond finding and fixing and is ready for the next stage of development.
Strategic Leadership
Developing people is your primary work product.
Empowering others by holding a space that calls forth excellent performance
Being open to & on the lookout for ways the strategic leader is limiting other people’s development, e.g. rescuing and intervening.
Because it is possible to create [one’s self,] one has anxiety. One would have no anxiety if there were no possibility whatever.
Now creating, actualizing one’s possibilities, always involves negative as well as positive aspects. It always involves destroying the status quo, destroying old patterns within oneself, progressively destroying what one has clung to from childhood on, and creating new and original forms and ways of living. If one does not do this, one is refusing to grow, refusing to avail himself of his possibilities; one is shirking his responsibility to himself. Hence refusal to actualize one’s possibilities brings guilt toward one’s self.
During the 1980s, I was an avid admirer of Ayn Rand‘s philosophy of Objectivism. The greatest expression of this devotion was the following short story. The germ of the idea came from this news event. I was very proud of my story at the time. I offered it to only three magazines. I was shocked by their responses.
My rejection letters from The New Yorker and Esquire are below. The Atlantic Monthly did not bother to respond.
Reading the story now, it seems much more righteous and judgmental than I admit to being today. I still love the rhythm of certain sentences, the cinematic clarity of the settings and some of the word play, for example, the double meaning of the title and the triple meaning of DRILLER. Comments are welcome, of course, but please remember that I am no longer the author. He has grown away.
He pressed his fingers to the throb in his temple. Not to ease the pain, but to focus on the rhythmic pressure and blot out his sister’s insistence. Her unpersuasive words sought to compensate with repetition and emotion what they lacked in evidence and reason.
“Please Randall, if ever family mattered it is really important now.” Yes, Rachel, he thought as she talked. I know family matters, that is exactly why I am sitting at your kitchen table on a weekday morning. Being part of this family is why his day had detonated from the usual historical exposition to this hysterical exposition. If he were not born a Fleischer, Randall would still be at his desk, working on his next book.
Randall had just finished his daily preparing-to-get-ready-to-start-to-write rituals and was about to fill the computer screen with historical in-sight when the telephone rang. The first surprise was that the caller was his literary agent. Franklin called for only two reasons, either to report that Randall’s latest book had been sold to a publisher or to report that the publisher was impatient to receive the final draft of Randall’s latest book. Since Errors of Democracy had been purchased only three months ago, he could not imagine a reason for this interruption.
“Rand, what is your father’s first name?”
“Otto. And my mother’s maiden name was Calabrisi.” Randall was playful. “Is this some kind of identity check, Franklin? Are you going to pass along a secret message to me?”
“I’m afraid its no secret, friend. Something terrible has happened. The news is filled with reports that your father was… Rand, do you know what your father did during the war?”
Podcast #13: Teleseminar on the power and practicality of integrity: doing what you said you would do, by when you promised, and the it was expected to be done or, as soon as you know you will not, communicating and taking responsibility for the breach.
Just click here and either listen through your computer or subscribe through iTunes to have this and all new episodes placed on your device as they become available. You may also set up an automatic “feed” to non-Apple devices by using this link: click here for other devices.
I use Twitter to share brief messages, not more than two per day. You can have them delivered to your cell phone by text message (SMS) or view them when you visit your free Twitter web page. Create a Twitter account and “follow” TonyMayo.
Here are my recent tweets (messages):
Inside, I’ve got to feel I’m the best, but if I tell you I’m the best, then I’m a fool.
Medal of Honor winner, “most powerful force in the world is not hatred for the enemy but love for the man next to you.” Click here to see story on this blog.
It’s like a deal you can make with the universe: I’ll give up greed for freedom. Then you can start putting your time to good use.
I use Twitter to share brief messages, not more than two per day. You can have them delivered to your cell phone by text message (SMS) or view them when you visit your free Twitter web page. Create a Twitter account and “follow” TonyMayo.
Here are my recent tweets (messages):
A mood of resignation is an evasion of responsibility. –Tony Mayo
Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you. –Jean-Paul Sartre (attributed)
I use Twitter to share brief messages, not more than two per day. You can have them delivered to your cell phone by text message (SMS) or view them when you visit your free Twitter web page. Create a Twitter account and “follow” TonyMayo.
Here are my recent tweets (messages):
A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
I use Twitter to share brief messages, not more than two per day. You can have them delivered to your cell phone by text message (SMS) or view them when you visit your free Twitter web page. Create a Twitter account and “follow” TonyMayo.
Here are my recent tweets (messages):
No one can make you responsible, nor can you impose responsibility on another. It is a grace you give yourself–an empowering context that leaves you with a say in the matter of life. —Werner Erhard
Most scalable management method? Focus on improving your people not the product.
The fastest way to improve your communications is to cut them in half.
I defy the tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past.–Clara Barton
Stress is a symptom of not wanting to be in the moment we’re in. —Eckhart Tolle
Anyone who fights for the future lives in it today. —Ayn Rand
Demonstrate the behavior desired. People would rather be led than pushed. –Tony Mayo
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