We never reflect how pleasant it is to ask for nothing.
Leaders who fail to appreciate this fundamental precept of accountability must also fail to muster the profound commitment true leadership demands.
It's instructive to consider the more spectacular and well-known falls from grace of leaders in the public eye. . . In the main, the issues behind these falls could be grouped under a lack of competence, a lack of support or loyalty from those they sought to lead, and a lack of failure of integrity. Of all these the last is the most egregious, the most fatal. We so much want our leaders to be unfailingly decent that an obvious or perceived flaw in integrity can be the toxin which kills them off.
Communication is the conduit of leadership from the Prime Minister down to the leading hand of a small group of council workers fixing the roads. Leadership uncommunicated is leadership unrequited!
We want our leaders to be fair dinkum, as much among us as above us.
Let's start therefore with a universal truth: leaders are fundamentally accountable.
Our vision is to look through the eyes of our kids. We are a lucky, peaceful nation. We are an unselfish people. That's one of our proudest national attributes.
It would seem that in history it's never a tooth for a tooth, but a thousand, a hundred thousand for one.
I know it sounds old-fashioned to say we're too materialistic in the West, but happiness does not derive exclusively from things, and yet we seem to be structuring our whole society around things. I think that's partially why Westerners are joining ISIS and going to Syria. We have lost our way in the West in holding up a vision for humanity that is not exclusively shaped by materialism.
The high IQ has become the American equivalent of the Legion of Honor, positive proof of a child's intellectual aristocracy. . . . It has become more important to be a smart kid than a good kid or even a healthy kid.
Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned.