Leadership Inspirations – One Must Be Willing to Fail in Order to Succeed

/in /by

Some of life’s greatest lessons come through failure… and greatness is often born in the rising from the ashes.

Everyone experiences personal and professional disappointments and setbacks. Those taking the time to critically and objectively examine and learn from their mistakes, applying those learnings to future endeavors, will inevitably be more successful. This truth is embodied by those from all walks of life who in their respective fields have achieved great success.

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

Albert Einstein

Awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, named Time’s Man of the Century in 1999, and best known for his conception of the theories of special and general relativity

“You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

Wayne Gretzky

National Hockey League Hall of Famer and winner of:

  • four Stanley Cup Championships
  • nine Hart Trophies as the most valuable player
  • ten Art Ross Trophies for most points in a season
  • five Lady Byng Trophies for sportsmanship and performance
  • five Lester B. Pearson Awards and
  • and two Conn Smythe Trophies as playoff MVP

Michael Jordan

National Basketball Association Hall of Famer, winner of:

  • 6 NBA Championships
  • Rookie of the Year
  • 5 NBA MVP Awards
  • 6 NBA Finals MVP Awards
  • 10 All-NBA First Team
  • 9 NBA All-Defensive First Team
  • Defensive Player of the Year
  • 14 NBA All-Star Awards
  • 3 NBA All-Star MVP Awards
  • 50th Anniversary All-Time Team
  • 10 scoring titles — an NBA record and seven consecutive matching Wilt Chamberlain
  • Retired with the NBA’s highest scoring average of 30.1ppg

    • and

  • whose NBA website biography reads: “By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time.“

StrategyDriven would like to extend a special thank you to Kelly Sonora, who introduced us to Online College’s (www.OnlineCollege.org) article 100 Incredibly Inspiring Videos for Leaders from which we found the above Michael Jordan video by Nike.

Leadership Inspirations – Making Mistakes

/in /by

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950)
Irish playwright and the only person to have been awarded both the Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938)

Leadership Inspirations – Inspiring Leadership

/in /by

“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson
American essayist, philosopher, and poet

True leadership is inspirational; motivating individuals to become far more than what they currently are. Leadership is not about coordinating activities, setting deadlines, and reporting status; those activities are the work of managers.

Leadership is visionary, creating a picture of a better alternative tomorrow and then inspiring others to passionately seek that vision with a level of commitment that is often unexplainable. There are instances of this type of leadership all around us, the leadership provided by the brave men and women who in our moment of greatest need do the unimaginable to keep us safe from fire, flood, and those who would do us harm. There are also leaders like Matt Harding, who inspired thousands of people from around the world to join together in the fellowship of the dance to make the video “Where the hell is Matt?”.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

“Management creates order where there would otherwise be chaos. Leadership inspires the achievement of greatness.”

StrategyDriven Contributors

Leadership Inspirations – Leading by Example

/in /by

“Example is not the main thing in influencing others; it’s the only thing.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875 – 1965)
Alsatian theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician

“I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.”

Thomas Jefferson
3rd President of the United States of America (1801 – 1809)

Leadership Inspirations – A Call for Innovation

/in /by

“To get what we’ve never had, we must do what we’ve never done.”

Anonymous

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Albert Einstein
Theoretical physicist, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics (1921)

Innovation, the act of introducing a new product, service, and/or method, brings with it the opportunity for great success and equally great failure. And while some failures result from unsuccessful attempts to introduce the new and different, no great achievement has ever been born without an act of innovation. Subsequently, a failure to offer something new or to do something differently will at best result in the continuation of today’s outcomes and will more likely result in diminishing returns as highly aggressive competitors offer more and more for less and less.

So what can you do today to become more efficient, more effective, more strategy driven?