9 Quotes by Raymond M. Kethledge

Leadership, like fertilizer, contains elements that can be volatile or nurturing, depending on how one handles them.

Serious thinking, inspired thinking, can seldom arise from texts sent while eating lunch or driving a car. Responding to these inputs generates as much thought, and as much inspiration, as swatting so many flies. They deaden both the mind and soul.

A healthy community can have differences, Chip says, but not division. “Differences are a product of ideas. Division is a product of behavior. A community means we live together with differences, but we can’t be divided.

A leader needs to have presence, to show up to the moment grounded in one’s self, as centered as one can be, ready to hear, to listen, to discern.

Time is an unrenewable resource. You can’t get it back. All these things we’ve done to exchange information, to access information at our fingertips, have actually taken away our time for restoring the soul. You’re giving away your soul’s ability to be moved. If we’d spend more time in solitude, we’d value ourselves more.

A leader has not only permission, but a responsibility, to seek out periods of solitude.

A lack of silence and solitude leads to anxiety, which leads to demonization based on differences, which leads to conflict, which leads to violence. We need to reverse the flow. We need to invite people to think about their feelings, to address them, and then come up with a creative response that builds relationships and trust.” What we need, one might say, is grace.

An unreflective leader is prone to volatility: he does not realize that his own anxieties are part of the fuel for his anger about some external event, and thus his response – berating employees, torching a meeting – is disproportionate to the event itself. A leader of this type finds himself apologizing frequently if he is decent, or embittering his followers if he is not.

The most inspiring leaders are ones who find a clarity of meaning that transcends the tasks at hand. And that meaning emerges through reflection.