The Leadership Dojo Quotes

“We ask people to say, “I am a commitment to …” instead of “I’m committed to …” as a reminder that we are the commitment, we strive to embody its value and contribution, and we’re fully accountable for its outcome. The commitment lives inside us and moves out from our center.”
― Richard Strozzi-Heckler, The Leadership Dojo: Build Your Foundation as an Exemplary Leader

“Many people "think" they are entitled to dignity, and "believe in the right to dignity," but they are not engaged in the embodied practices that produce dignity. A spirited commitment to dignity is different than assuming we are entitled to be treated with dignity simply because we have reached a certain age, created a certain amount of wealth, attained a particular status, or have the legal right to vote. Dignity is not a given; we are not automatically entitled to it. We embody, or become dignity through a set of practices. Dignity, in other words, is not an ideal or mental construct but an embodiment of what we care about. In the Leadership Dojo, we call this embodying a "stand."p111”
― Richard Strozzi-Heckler, The Leadership Dojo: Build Your Foundation as an Exemplary Leader

“Socrates suggests that the more evolved a man is, the more he is able to put aside his fears and hankering after comfort and take a stand for his worth and the worth of those he loves. And if necessary, he will for an "alliance for battle with what seems just," even if he "suffers in hunger, cold, and everything of the sort." This quality of courage to take a stand, to fight for one's value, and to be unwilling to make moral compromises is what we call a "spirited commitment to dignity" in the Leadership Dojo. Exemplary leaders embody this commitment. p109”
― Richard Strozzi-Heckler, The Leadership Dojo: Build Your Foundation as an Exemplary Leader

“The following parable of the stonecutters is a useful metaphor in understanding the connection between language, story, and action. Imagine three stonecutters, each with a mallet in one hand and a cold chisel in the other, sitting on a stool in front of a huge block of granite. To the casual observer it looks as if they are all doing the same thing, cutting on a slab of stone. The are, in other words, all engaged in the same activity.
When we ask the first stonecutter what he's doing, he replies, "I'm carving a piece of stone."
We move to the second stonecutter and ask her what she's doing. "I'm building a wall," she says.
When we ask the same question of the third stonecutter, he answers, "I'm creating a cathedral." p99”
― Richard Strozzi-Heckler, The Leadership Dojo: Build Your Foundation as an Exemplary Leader

“At one point when he and a colleague were researching emotional expressions by forming their facial muscles into the shape of a specific emotion, Eckman stumbled upon a starling truth about mind and body. At the end of a day of emulating and practicing the muscular shape of sadness, he realized that he felt very, very sad. His colleague corroborated this, and they began to track their reactions as they spent hours shaping the muscles of their faces into a particular emotion. "We weren't expecting this at all. And it happened to both of us. We felt terrible. What we were generating was sadness, anguish."
He experienced the same things with other emotions; his heartbeat increased ten to twelve beats when he shaped his face into the expression of anger, and his hands significantly heated up.
What we discovered is that expression alone is sufficient to create marked changes in the autonomic nervous system. If you intentionally make a facial expression, you change your physiology. By making the correct expression, you begin to have the changes in your physiology that accompany the emotion. The face is not simply a means of display, but also a means of activating emotion. In other words, simply putting the face into a smile drives the brain to activity typical of happiness- just as a frown does with sadness." p94”
― Richard Strozzi-Heckler, The Leadership Dojo: Build Your Foundation as an Exemplary Leader