Tribes: We need you to lead us

by Seth Godin

Religion gives our faith a little support when it needs it, and it makes it easy for your peers to encourage you to embrace your faith.

Religion at its best is a sort of mantra, a subtle but consistent reminder that belief is okay, and that faith is the way to get where you’re going.

Religion at its worst reinforces the status quo, often at the expense of our faith.

The reason it’s so difficult to have a considered conversation about religion is that people feel threatened. Not by the implied criticism of the rituals or irrationality of a particular religious practice, but because it feels like criticism of their faith.

When you fall in love with the system, you lose the ability to grow.

If faith is the foundation of a belief system, then religion is the façade and the landscaping. It’s easy to get caught up in the foibles of a corporate culture and the systems that have been built over time, but they have nothing at all to do with the faith that built the system in the first place.

The easiest thing is to react. The second easiest thing is to respond. But the hardest thing is to initiate.

Reacting, as Zig Ziglar has said, is what your body does when you take the wrong kind of medicine. Reacting is what politicians do all the time. Reacting is intuitive and instinctive and usually dangerous. Managers react. Responding is a much better alternative. You respond to external stimuli with thoughtful action. Organizations respond to competitive threats. Individuals respond to colleagues or to opportunities. Response is always better than reaction. But both pale in comparison to initiative. Initiating is really and truly difficult, and that’s what leaders do. They see something others are ignoring and they jump on it. They cause the events that others have to react to. They make change.