The outrageous story of a group of financiers from a poor and damp island on the outer rim of Europe, who created a private company that became the biggest military and political power in all of India
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Simon Sinek with Arthur Brooks: Leading with Purpose
Our country is facing a crisis of moral leadership. From political polarization to falling private-sector dynamism, a lack of inspirational leadership is slowing our progress and making it more difficult to lift up the vulnerable. Bestselling authors Simon Sinek, TED Celebrity and Optimist, and Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, are among the country’s foremost leadership experts. Together, they will share the advice they offer leading policymakers and executives, and explain why uncovering our “why” is the key to greater effectiveness and personal happiness.
now my name is Joni I’m thinking aboutyour comment or your wife’s comment atleast we know he he’s not cheating therestatistics data shows us the 70% ofstudents are cheating now parents arecheating they’re writing their papersthey’re editing their papers so much forthat parents are saying we we finishedour applications we did this we did thatthis issue of integrity I think whichcuts through the why yeah how do youapply the golden to issuesso for example if you’re running anorganization or I run a school and I seeintegrity as a driving issue yeah thatimpacts everything that this school isdoing and the leaders are not yeahfacing this how do you apply this toissues yeah you want to take a crackwell I want to hear what you have to saybut I think it’s actually worth pointingout that every single one of us can bemore honest give me more every singleone of us shades the truth all the timeand there are lots of reasons to do itone of these to protect ourselves fromharm one of the reasons that we do it isto get ahead and what it’s just to sayto protect your reputation and sometimesis to protect other’s feelings those arelike kind of the three canonical reasonsfor shading the truth right there’s alot of research on lying actually andlying is common and is becoming morecommon and particularly among youngpeople that we find the interesting andthe alarming thing as they tend tojustify lying as if they were protectingothers when in point of fact they areprotecting themselves so well here’swhat I recommended to all of us we’retalking about cheating but thinkingabout any dishonesty thinking aboutsomething where you’re bending the ruleswhen you’ve done that why did you dothat and be honest with yourself evenbefore you’re honest with others nevershade the truth to protect yourself andnow here’s the gist goal go an hourwithout doing it and then go a whole daywithout doing it and you’re gonna pay acost by the way you’re gonna pay a costwhen somebody asks you a difficultquestion and you don’t want to give theanswer and you pretend that you’reprotecting somebody’s feelings butyou’re actually trying to protectyourself and your own reputation but thedividends are huge with respect to yourown integrity because the smart personwho is more integrated is happier ismore joyful has clearer vision SimonSimon what do you think of my answer soit’s more about integrityit goes to finite an infinite rightwhich is which is I’m playing by finiterules my kid has to get into this schoolmy kid has to get this job my kid has toget this my kid has to get that and I’lldo whatever it takes to get them thereand that’s their playing by a plankthey’re living life and manage worsethey’re managing their kids lives basedon the finite rules and the problem isthere is no winning exactly and and thatwe have this twisted concept in howwe’re managing our lives and helping ourkids in terms of wins and losses theshort term it’s the short term and andand we said it’s pervasive it’s beenbuilding and building since the 80s and90s is pervasive to the point now it’saffecting parenting exactly so so so sobye so if somebody learns leadership atwork right and I did we I’m actually nota business guy but but like during theGreat Depression the unemployment ratewas 25% during the last recession it was9 or 10 right good stable unemploymentis 4 4 so what I hear is even when 25percent I don’t have jobs 75 percent doso if you want to get two people getthem at work and it’s too hard to go toeverybody’s home and say let’s learnleadership but if I can get companies toteach leadership lots of people who workin companies are parents and you learnskills like conflict resolution youweren’t you learn things like effectivecommunication you learn things likeeffective confrontationthese are all skills that are parentingskills so the belief is that if we buildleaders in the most efficient waypossible which is at work they becomebetter parents that’s the belief we’renot teaching leadership at all there’s abook that just came out called the endof loyalty where companies are no longerloyal to people and people are no longerloyal to companies everything is aboutshort term short term short term andunfortunately that mentality nowpervades parenting so we have to do thehard work we’ve probably lost ageneration but we have to do the hardwork of going back to what– to be a parent which doesn’t meannecessarily helping your kid get the jobat any expense or get into the school atany cost we’ve run out of our formaltime but she’s gonna be outside isactually yeah because your babysitter ishas to leave we go a little but we can’ttell you what we’re gonna do we’re goingto retire to the festival but I want todo one thing before we do I want to sumup I want to sum up three big lessonsthat we’ve learned here from talking toSimon okay number one lesson number one
The Strange Failure of the Educated Elite
The chief accomplishment of the current educated elite is that it has produced a bipartisan revolt against itself.
.. A narrative is emerging. It is that the new meritocratic aristocracy has come to look like every other aristocracy. The members of the educated class use their intellectual, financial and social advantages to pass down privilege to their children, creating a hereditary elite that is ever more insulated from the rest of society. We need to build a meritocracy that is true to its values, truly open to all.
.. The real problem with the modern meritocracy can be found in the ideology of meritocracy itself. Meritocracy is a system built on the maximization of individual talent, and that system unwittingly encourages several ruinous beliefs:
.. Exaggerated faith in intelligence. Today’s educated establishment is still basically selected on the basis of I.Q. High I.Q. correlates with career success but is not the crucial quality required for civic leadership. Many of the great failures of the last 50 years, from Vietnam to Watergate to the financial crisis, were caused by extremely intelligent people who didn’t care about the civic consequences of their actions.
.. If you build a society upon this metaphor you will wind up with a society high in narcissism and low in social connection. Life is not really an individual journey. Life is more like settling a sequence of villages.
.. Misplaced notion of the self. Instead of seeing the self as the seat of the soul, the meritocracy sees the self as a vessel of human capital, a series of talents to be cultivated and accomplishments to be celebrated. If you base a society on a conception of self that is about achievement, not character, you will wind up with a society that is demoralized; that puts little emphasis on the sorts of moral systems that create harmony within people, harmony between people and harmony between people and their ultimate purpose.
.. Inability to think institutionally. Previous elites poured themselves into institutions and were pretty good at maintaining existing institutions, like the U.S. Congress, and building new ones, like the postwar global order. The current generation sees institutions as things they pass through on the way to individual success.
.. Some institutions, like Congress and the political parties, have decayed to the point of uselessness, while others, like corporations, lose their generational consciousness and become obsessed with the short term.
.. Diversity for its own sake, without a common telos, is infinitely centrifugal, and leads to social fragmentation.
.. The essential point is this: Those dimwitted, stuck up blue bloods in the old establishment had something we meritocrats lack — a civic consciousness, a sense that we live life embedded in community and nation, that we owe a debt to community and nation and that the essence of the admirable life is community before self.
Trump’s short-term achievements will cost conservatives
Amos went to Israel at a time of great prosperity to tell the nation God would destroy it for failing to care for its widows, its poor, its orphans and its refugees.
Everyone looked around at the success, riches, and plenty and mocked the prophet.
.. ch, and it has become far easier for conservatives to turn a blind eye to injustices than speak up.
.. More and more conservatives are modeling Trump’s bad behaviors. His vulgarity, his thin skin, his willingness to insult and demean, and his willingness to degrade his office are now reflected in conservative political leaders who increasingly see their goal as beating the other side instead of advancing ideas and sound public policy.
.. The party of small government is perfectly happy to grow government as long as Trump is spending the money. The party of limited government is perfectly happy to have a powerful chief executive as long as Trump is wielding the power. Trump and his supporters have also doubled-down on unwise precedents set by the Obama administration. President Barack Obama investigated leaks to reporters such as James Rosen; Trump now seems to revel in the idea of shutting down whole networks whose coverage he hates. Republicans who decried the left’s hostility to free speech in the Obama years now champion censorship of their opponents... It is safe to say many of the president’s supporters have concluded that arguments and debates no longer work, so they will take what they can get as quickly as they can before the tide rolls in and washes this administration away.
.. The short-term gains of this administration, like those of the last, are being achieved by executive order and appointment. So too then can the gains of this administration be wiped out as easily as those of the last.
.. There will always be partisans on the left who hate anything those on the right do. But they are not who conservatives have to worry about. Conservatives have to worry about those in the middle who are persuadable. They have to worry about minority voters increasingly skeptical of the secular drift of the Democratic Party. They have to worry about younger voters.
.. It has become harder to make the case for family and morality as prominent evangelicals applaud and justify the bad behaviors of a thrice-married adulterer who believes immigrants should be judged based on their nation of origin, not the content of their own character.
.. not only has Anthony M. Kennedy not retired from the Supreme Court, but also he has drifted left.
.. the precedent is now there for Democrats to just ignore a replacement who Trump nominates. The conservatives who rallied to Trump to save the high court may very well lose it because of him.
.. Though many conservatives, myself included, have cheered the successes of this administration, most of them are easily reversible and, along the way, it will be harder and harder to separate the successes from the low character and behavior of the man whose name is connected to them. Conservatives may no longer care, but for most Americans, character still matters. At some point, those on the right will pay the price.