Every businessperson knows a story about a highly intelligent, highly skilled executive who was promoted into a leadership position only to fail at the job. And they also know a story about someone with solid-but not extraordinary-intellectual abilities and technical skills who was promoted into a similar position and then soared. Such anecdotes support the widespread belief that identifying individuals with the "right stuff” to be leaders is more art than science. After all, the personal styles of superb leaders vary: Some leaders are subdued and analytical; others shout their manifestos from the mountaintops. And just as important, different situations call for different types of leadership. Most mergers need a sensitive negotiator at the helm, whereas many turnarounds require a more forceful authority.
Daniel GolemanRelated topics
art authority belief call different executive fail helm identifying job leadership need negotiator personal position right science sensitive shout similar story stuff support technical vary whereas others someone businessperson leadersRelated quotes
The fundamental difference between composing for a nobleman or a personal patron in general and working for the anonymous concert public is that the commissioned work is usually intended for a single performance, whereas the concert piece is written for as many repeats as possible. That explains not only the greater degree of care with which such a work is often composed but also the more exacting way in which the composer presents it. Now that it is possible to create works which would not be consigned to oblivion so quickly as commissioned works, he 76 sets out to create ‘immortal' works. Haydn already composes much more cautiously and slowly than his predecessors. But even he writes over a hundred symphonies; Mozart writes only half as many and Beethoven only nine.
Arnold Hauser
It is hard to suggest a remedy for this situation, which is one no military man enjoys. One alternative would be to refuse to permit military officers to appear before Congress and leave the defense of military matters to the civilian secretaries. This is the solution followed in Great Britain and many European countries. I doubt that it will ever be accepted in the United States, where the COngress wants to hear the facts from military men who presumably are without political motivation. A second alternative would be to take the position that the advice of the Chiefs of Staff to their civilian superiors is privileged and not to be revealed under Congressional interrogation. Thus far the Executive authority has not seen fit to raise the storm such a stand would create.
Maxwell D. Taylor
The national leadership could have avoided this calamitous course by going to the sources of Muslim separatism and by identifying the spearheads of this separatism as residues of Islamic imperialism rather than as leaders of a bonafide minority. That needed a historical perspective which the national leadership either did not possess, or did not entertain when it was presented to it by the more perspective analysts of the situation. The need for a historical perspective is as great today as it was at that time because the same Muslim separatism is still rampant in the guise of new slogans, and the same residues of Islamic imperialism are rising again to stake their claims for unjust privileges and unequal power. Their ultimate aim is to restore the power of Islam in the India that has survived Partition.
Sita Ram Goel
The performance of business leaders during the next decade will play a major role in determining not only business but political and social trends for a long time to come. Here are some of the principal reasons:
- Business leaders control the economic well-being of and stockholder.
- The course of business shapes public opinion.
- Business leaders shape public opinion.
So, in addition to his or her prime responsibility of managing his or her enterprise at a profit, the business leader of today is faced with new and larger responsibilities. And, at the same time, the job of managing his or her enterprise at a profit is increasing in complexity. Consequently, the imposition of additional responsibilities makes the nation's task of developing an adequate number of properly equipped executive leaders a staggering one indeed.
Marvin Bower
What I do not see is the argument...that we ought somehow to go on a quite different issue, a purely economic issue, to this new extreme which seems, greatly to my regret, to have inspired part of my party. There are no longer the principles of Lord Shaftesbury, Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Churchill. We are reverting to a form of neo-Cobdenism based upon the worst elements of the Manchester school, supported by aphorisms that would have done honour to that popular writer, Dr. Samuel Smiles. The paternalist elements and traditions of the Tory Party that come from its very roots are now unpopular. We are making a great error. It is because the people as a whole trusted those whom they regarded as their natural leaders to help them, support them and protect them that we have had the great authority in the past in our country.
Harold Macmillan
