People who accomplish great things have a combined passion for a single mission with an unswerving dedication to achieve that mission, whatever the obstacles and however long it might take.
For Peter Drucker, leadership is about communicating with people, uniting them behind a shared mission and values, and mobilizing energies toward accomplishing the mission or purpose of an organization. An effective leader leads followers with dignity, and inspires them toward achievement. That means that leadership is a means to an end--the mission it serves is the end.
Goals convert vision/mission into energy. When you lay out exactly what you want to do in detail, you immediately start feeling the room move and the earth shake.
“Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification,” by Martin Seligman, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania who helped establish the Positive Psychology movement, and Christopher Peterson, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, is a scholarly, 800-page reference book. The book was intended, according to the authors, as a “manual of the sanities,” an attempt to inaugurate what they described as a “science of good character.”
Seligman and Peterson consulted works from Aristotle to Confucius, from the Upanishads to the Torah, from the Boy Scout Handbook to profiles of Pokémon characters, and they settled on 24 character strengths common to all cultures and eras. The list included some we think of as traditional noble traits, like bravery, citizenship, fairness, wisdom and integrity; others that veer into the emotional realm, like love, humor, zest and appreciation of beauty; and still others that are more concerned with day-to-day human interactions: social intelligence (the ability to recognize interpersonal dynamics and adapt quickly to different social situations), kindness, self-regulation, gratitude.
In most societies, Seligman and Peterson wrote, these strengths were considered to have a moral valence, and in many cases they overlapped with religious laws and strictures. But their true importance did not come from their relationship to any system of ethics or moral laws but from their practical benefit: cultivating these strengths represented a reliable path to “the good life,” a life that was not just happy but also meaningful and fulfilling.
What does it take to transfer character and vision/mission into an action plan?
For educators, it is using this "Character Strengths and Virtues" handbook to generate lesson plans.
For career women, it is using the Workbook Edition of "When Doing It All Won't Do" self-coaching guide to create and implement your personal career plan to get to where you want to be.
Source: The New York Times Magazine, September 18, 2011
Christopher Peterson: Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification
To reclaim your time and life: "When Doing It All Won't Do: A self-coaching guide for career women" by Barbara McEwen & John G. Agno.
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Awesome and timely topic given the cluutre of todays society as it relates to women. Historically, we do understand that women, just as blacks, were seen as inferior to men therefore, suffering some of the same oppressive symptoms as many blacks in our community. Now just imagine, Black women, as W.E.B. Dubois believed, has to deal with the double consciousness of being both black and being a woman. So, with this, you can only imagine, the amount of oppression that women has historically had to deal with in our country.With this, we have to respect and empower our women through positive reinforcement. Given that women, who are bibically birth from man, and are the mortal creators of life, they indeed deserve to be treated with more respect and honor. Women should be loved, adored, and treasurered because they are indispensible.
Posted by: Leonardo | 07/18/2012 at 12:15 AM