I was watching the beginning of the movie Patton. If you haven’t seen it, it begins with George C. Scott as General Patton giving an incredible speech. YouTube has only the audio, but here it is. Many see giving a speech like that as the pinnacle of leadership — “I have a dream,” the Gettysburg Address, Churchill’s great speeches, and so on. If they are the pinnacle of leadership, I[…] Keep reading →
I found a couple more videos on John Wooden, whom I wrote about yesterday. First, some thoughts on him by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of the top players of all time. He is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, with 38,387 points. During his career with the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers from 1969 to 1989, Abdul-Jabbar won six NBA championships and a record six regular season MVP Awards. In[…] Keep reading →
While searching for videos on Lou Gehrig for yesterday’s post, I happened on a short video on John Wooden, one of the great coaches of any sport. According to Wikipedia John Robert Wooden (October 14, 1910 – June 4, 2010) was an American basketball player and coach. Nicknamed the “Wizard of Westwood”, he won ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period—seven in a row—as head coach at UCLA, an unprecedented[…] Keep reading →
The changes you can make that will affect your life most are in your personal leadership skills — how you perceive yourself, others, and your environment; how you manage conflict; how you influence yourself and others; and the other components of leadership. These changes will affect how you experience life more than external things like winning the lottery, where you live, etc, no matter how big they seem. In fact,[…] Keep reading →
If, applying Vince Lombardi’s quote yesterday to leadership, you believe leadership is an all-the-time thing, and you want to be a great leader, or even just an effective one, are you a great leader now? Are you living a great life now? If you think you will be a great leader ever and you believe it’s an all-the-time thing, don’t you then think you are a great leader now, as[…] Keep reading →
The Martin Luther King, Jr you know won the Nobel Prize, was murdered in 1968, has a national holiday in his name, and has hundreds of streets and schools named after him. The man who helped organize and lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott, went to jail for his beliefs, and gave the “I Have a Dream” speech had not done any of those things. The man who helped organize and[…] Keep reading →
Does it ever occur to you that part of what made Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. so great were the adversity that they had to face and overcome? That if you lived in a world with such injustice, you’d have cause to overcome it too and you might reach that level of greatness? I wonder how many people think, “I’d be a better leader if only I lived at[…] Keep reading →