This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Exercising leadership is an expression of your aliveness... But when you cover yourself up, you risk losing something as well. In the struggle to save yourself, you can give up too many of those qualities that are the essence of being alive, like innocence, curiosity, and compassion.
Authority | Expectation | Means | Order | People | Position | Expectation | Leadership |
First, [the leaders] identified the adaptive challenge – the gap between aspirations and reality – and focused attention on the specific issues created by that gap. Recognizing that they were working with a problem that existing technical expertise could not solve satisfactorily, they shifted from giving authoritative solutions to a plan for managing people’s adaptive problem-solving.
Need | Plan | Leadership |
It should be obvious from reflecting on our daily lives that authority relationships are enormously productive. The human capacity for generating complex systems of authority is essential to our extraordinary adaptability and creativity as social creatures.
Challenge | Problems | Will | Leadership | Learn |
Imagine the differences in behavior when people operate with the idea that ‘leadership means influencing the community to follow the leader’s vision’ versus ‘leadership means influencing the community to face its problems.
Influence | Practice | Leadership | Value |
Thus, authoritative action will tend to reduce stress, while inaction will increase it. This may be true regardless of the content of the action.
Change | Learning | People | Reality | Study | Usefulness | Work | Leadership | Learn |
Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"
The masses are in reality their own leaders, dialectically creating their own development process.
Future | Pride | Revolution | Strength | Tomorrow | Will | Leadership |
A leader who pushes the authority figure in an attempt to solve important problems should expect the authority figure to strike back, not necessarily from personal motivations but form the community’s pressure on him to maintain equilibrium.
Attention | Distress | Focus | Giving | Light | People | Responsibility | Will | Work | Leadership |
If we leave the value implications of our teaching and practice unaddressed, we encourage people, perhaps unwittingly, to aspire to great influence or high office, regardless of what they do there. We would be on safer ground were we to discard the loaded term leadership altogether and simply describe the dynamics of prominence, power, influence, and historical causation.
With whose imperfections will you bear, and what insult are you capable of enduring, if a thoughtless word from your own Superior is unbearable?
Fidelity | Will | Work | Leadership |
All animals except man know that the ultimate point of life is to enjoy it.
Success | Leadership |
As a mental discipline the reading of newspapers is hurtful. - What can be worse for the mind than to think of forty things in ten minutes.
We have got to begin a vast reclamation project to revitalize religion for those to whom it means little or nothing. This can be done not by trying to persuade those outside the church to believe what we believe but by pointing out to them the presence of the unrecognized religion that already exists in their lives.
Capacity | History | Men | Need | People | Soul | Truth | Wisdom | Wise | Leadership |
Ours is a government of liberty by, through, and under the law.
Democracy | Distinction | Experiment | Reward | Sense | Leadership |
Thomas Cronin, fully Thomas Edward Cronin
The essence of the leader as artist is consciousness-raising and unlocking the energies and talents of fellow associates. Leaders at their best are not involved in doing great deeds so much as getting their followers to believe they can do great deeds and excel. Leaders define and defend and promote values. Or they help redefine values, and understand when, in Lincoln’s phrase, the dogmas of the past are inadequate for the stormy present. They understand when new circumstances call for new vision. Leaders are skilled listeners and learners, carefully consulting their own and their colleagues’ values, beliefs, and passions. As important as anything else, a leader has to nurture trust and self-confidence. Associates and followers expect leaders to have bold visions and to pursue them with enthusiasm. People being led yearn for a mission or vision that is clearly stated.
Goals | People | Purpose | Purpose | Work | Leadership | Understand |
Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
Leadership is the capacity to transform vision into reality.
Will | Leadership |
Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation. Someone once wrote that the sound of surprise is jazz, and if there's any one thing that we must try to get used to in this world, it's surprise and the unexpected. Truly, we are living in world where the only thing that's constant is change.
Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
Taking charge of your own learning is a part of taking charge of your life, which is the sine qua non in becoming an integrated person.
Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
We have more information now than we can use, and less knowledge and understanding than we need. Indeed, we seem to collect information because we have the ability to do so, but we are so busy collecting it that we haven't devised a means of using it. The true measure of any society is not what it knows but what it does with what it knows.
Capacity | Purpose | Purpose | Vision | Leadership |