Courage

The Right To LeadDo you think you have earned the right to lead?

Do you display the qualities that others feel compelled to follow?

The characteristics that define true leaders are tackled in The Right to Lead by John Maxwell. And there's no better person to provide insight on the subject.

An internationally recognized leadership expert, speaker and author, John has sold more than 18 million books. His organizations have trained more than two million leaders worldwide.

The Right To Lead , you'll read about people who have earned the right to lead others. They display the key qualities that made them worthy of followers: action, vision, sacrifice, risk, determination, service and integrity.

Today, I'd like to share the introduction from The Right To Lead :

Courage. Leadership through character and courage

An excerpt fromThe Right To Leadby John Maxwell What Gives a Man or Woman the The Right To Lead?

It certainly isn't gained by election or appointment. Having position, title, rank or degrees doesn't qualify anyone to lead other people. And the ability doesn't come automatically from age or experience, either.

No, it would be accurate to say that no one can be given the right to lead. The The Right To Lead can only be earned. And that takes time.

The Kind of Leader Others Want to Follow

The key to becoming an effective leader is not to focus on making other people follow, but on making yourself the kind of person they want to follow. You must become someone others can trust to take them where they want to go.

As you prepare yourself to become a better leader, use the following guidelines to help you grow:

1. Let go of your ego.

The truly great leaders are not in leadership for personal gain. They lead in order to serve other people. Perhaps that is why Lawrence D. Bell remarked, "Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things, and I'll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things."

2. Become a good follower first.

Rare is the effective leader who didn't learn to become a good follower first. That is why a leadership institution such as the United States Military Academy teaches its officers to become effective followers first—and why West Point has produced more leaders than the Harvard Business School.

3. Build positive relationships.

Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. That means it is by nature relational. Today's generation of leaders seem particularly aware of this because title and position mean so little to them. They know intuitively that people go along with people they get along with.

4. Work with excellence.

No one respects and follows mediocrity. Leaders who earn the right to lead give their all to what they do. They bring into play not only their skills and talents, but also great passion and hard work. They perform on the highest level of which they are capable.

5. Rely on discipline, not emotion.

Leadership is often easy during the good times. It's when everything seems to be against you—when you're out of energy, and you don't want to lead—that you earn your place as a leader. During every season of life, leaders face crucial moments when they must choose between gearing up or giving up. To make it through those times, rely on the rock of discipline, not the shifting sand of emotion.

6. Make added value your goal.

When you look at the leaders whose names are revered long after they have finished leading, you find that they were men and women who helped people to live better lives and reach their potential. That is the highest calling of leadership—and its highest value.

7. Give your power away.

One of the ironies of leadership is that you become a better leader by sharing whatever power you have, not by saving it all for yourself. You're meant to be a river, not a reservoir. If you use your power to empower others, your leadership will extend far beyond your grasp.

In The Right To Lead , you will hear from and read about people who have done these same things and earned the right to lead others. Because of the courage they found and the character they displayed, other people recognized their admirable qualities and felt compelled to follow them.

The followers who looked to these leaders learned from them, and so can we. As you explore their worlds and words, remember that it takes time to become worthy of followers. Leadership isn't learned or earned in a moment.

The Right To Lead

Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other. ~Samuel Johnson (Thanks, Frank Lynch)

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. ~Ambrose Redmoon

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every day you either see a scar or courage. Where you dwell will define your struggle. ~Dodinsky, www.dodinsky.com

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. ~Winston Churchill

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow. ~Mary Anne Radmacher

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. ~Mark Twain

People are made of flesh and blood and a miracle fibre called courage. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage. ~Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters to Lucilius

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave. ~Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, 1894

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow. ~Dan Rather

Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared. ~Edward Vernon Rickenbacker

A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage. ~Marvin Kitman

Coward: A man in whom the instinct of self-preservation acts normally. ~Sultana Zoraya

Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid. ~Franklin P. Jones

Courage can't see around corners, but goes around them anyway. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

If God wanted us to be brave, why did He give us legs? ~Marvin Kitman

Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs. ~Ambrose Bierce

Sometimes the biggest act of courage is a small one. ~Lauren Raffo

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination. ~Ernest Hemingway, Men at War, 1942

Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away. ~Thomas Fuller

Fear and courage are brothers. ~Proverb

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. ~C.S. Lewis

The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. ~John F. Kennedy

One man with courage makes a majority. ~Andrew Jackson

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar. ~Raymond Lindquist

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul. ~Michel de Montaigne

When we are afraid we ought not to occupy ourselves with endeavoring to prove that there is no danger, but in strengthening ourselves to go on in spite of the danger. ~Mark Rutherford

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason. ~Alfred North Whitehead

Courage, in the final analysis, is nothing but an affirmative answer to the shocks of existence. ~Kurt Goldstein

To live with fear and not be afraid is the final test of maturity. ~Edward Weeks

A man of courage never wants weapons. ~Author Unknown

Do not look upon this world with fear and loathing. Bravely face whatever the gods offer. ~Morihei Ueshiba

Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if you have to dig a little. ~Tori Amos

It is easy to be brave from a safe distance. ~Aesop

A brave arm makes a short sword long. ~Author Unknown

No one has yet computed how many imaginary triumphs are silently celebrated by people each year to keep up their courage. ~Henry S. Haskins

There is no such thing as bravery; only degrees of fear. ~John Wainwright

Look at hopelessness in the face and say: "We are simply not meant to be together." Hold courage's hand and walk away. ~Dodinsky, www.dodinsky.com

I'm not funny. What I am is brave. ~Lucille Ball

Courage is a peculiar kind of fear. ~Charles Kennedy

For without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men have lived. ~John F. Kennedy

Courage is fear that has said its prayers. ~Dorothy Bernard

Courage is fear holding on a minute longer. ~George Smith Patton

Courage is... the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared. ~David Ben-Gurion

Courage is knowing what not to fear. ~Plato

Optimism is the foundation of courage. ~Nicholas Murray Butler

Courage is as often the outcome of despair as of hope; in the one case we have nothing to lose, in the other everything to gain. ~Diane de Poitiers

To him that waits all things reveal themselves, provided that he has the courage not to deny, in the darkness, what he has seen in the light. ~Coventry Patmore

Courage is being scared to death... and saddling up anyway. ~John Wayne

Necessity does the work of courage. ~Nicholas Murray Butler

Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what we would be capable of with the world looking on. ~François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1678

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die. ~G.K. Chesterton

Courage is the fear of being thought a coward. ~Horace Smith

Courage is to feel the daily daggers of relentless steel and keep on living. ~Douglas Malloch

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone. ~Albert Camus

Courage is nine-tenths context. What is courageous in one setting can be foolhardy in another and even cowardly in a third. ~Joseph Epstein

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears. ~Arthur Koestler

Courage is a kind of salvation. ~Plato

Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure if they have it till the test comes. And those having it in one test never know for sure if they will have it when the next test comes. ~Carl Sandburg

Courage ought to have eyes as well as arms. ~H.G. Bohn

You can't test courage cautiously. ~Anne Dillard

The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot. ~Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

I believe that courage is the sum of strength and wisdom. You take away wisdom from the equation - courage may turn to rage. ~Dodinsky, www.dodinsky.com

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward. ~Jean Paul Richter

Have the courage to live. Anyone can die. ~Robert Cody

Courage Does Not Always Roar "Courage does not always roar. Sometimes,courage is that quiet voice that says...I willtry again tomorrow."~Mary Anne Radmacher This is one of my all-time favorite quotes because there have been times in my life when I've been consumed with doubts, fears and disappointments. There was my bout with cancer and also various business and family challenges that seemed overwhelming at the time.

During those times, this beautiful quote provided inspiration to move forward and say...

"I may not have the answers today, but...I will try again tomorrow."

One thing is certain in life...we will all face adversity. It's not a matter of if, but, when. That's why I love this book. The stories, the quotes and the original poetry will provide that "shot of inspiration" when you need it most.

Today, I'd like to share one of the stories from Courage Does Not Always Roar...Ordinary Women with Extraordinary Courage that touches my life in a very personal way.

I met Amy Jones in March of 2009 by phone, when she was just diagnosed with cancer. At the age of 40, she was a seasoned professional speaker with Zig Ziglar. And she had just released her book for Simple Truths, Twice as Much in Half the Time. Little did everyone know how prophetic her book title would be. It was the most exciting time of her life and the scariest too.

Amy told me that she felt so blessed at this time in her life. She had a career she loved, was amazed to have published a book and had a wonderful loving boyfriend in her life. She felt like everything was going her way. Then, after accidently being knocked down on stage at a speaking engagement, Amy experienced a terrible pain in her stomach. She was diagnosed with kidney cancer. The doctors were very aggressive with her cancer, immediately scheduling surgery and starting chemotherapy treatments. She suffered incredible pain while fighting her battle with cancer, and yet still focused on others, even during her last hours

Courage Does Not Always Roar w/Free Dvd

Return to home page

SBI!