1) Leadership Mettle forged in Battle

Several organizations hire retired or short service commission officers from the Indian
defense organizations. Organizations from all domains - specialized research, construction,
financial services, manufacturing, human resources, consulting organizations-have hired ex-
defense men and women .

It’s not really surprising to see companies turn to military for leadership potential.
A long tradition of books and seminars advises leaders to think like military leaders ranging
from Sun Tzu to Norman Schwarzkopf. And military veterans do have a variety of valuable
skills learned through experience. Several recruiters have commented that the ex-defense
people have the experience at a very young age of managing large groups under crisis. They
learn to perform under pressure and scrutiny and have the discipline that is needed to excel
in any job or role. Military leaders are also used to having to make due in less than optimal
conditions, negotiate across cultures, be highly accountable, and operate under extreme
stress.

However, they do have to relearn some lessons fromthe service. Some may not be used to
leading someone like an eccentric computer programmer who worksstrange hours, dresses
like a slob, but brings more tothe company's bottom line than a conventional employee.
Indeed , in some companies like Google, there is nothing like the chain of command military
leaders ready to report for corporate duty in the near future, and many companies are
eager to have them.
Questions
1. Do you think leaders in military contexts exhibit the same qualities as
organizationalleaders? Why or why not?

2. In what ways not mentioned in the case would military leadership lessons not apply in the
private sector? What might military leaders have to relearn to work in business?

3. Are specific types of work or situations morelikely to benefit from the presence of
"battletested" leaders? List a few examples.

2) HOPE

At the International Psychiatric Congress in Madrid, Spain, which I attended, one of the main
Lectures was on the healing power of hope. Doctors, renowned psychiatrists from all over the world,
gathered to discuss and agree that the single most important healing force is hope: hope of
recovery, hope of loving and being loved, hope of making it, succeeding.
Carol Lovell is alive today because she had hope. Doctors attribute her survival after five bullet
wounds in the head to hope, as much as anything else. On September 4, 1981, Carol went to work
early at the restaurant where she was employed as a bookkeeper. The building was empty, and she
let herself in with her key. Soon Carol heard a knock at the door and recognized the man who stood
there as a new custodian. After she opened the door to him, he began slapping her around and
demanded that she open the safe: “You’re gonna be dead if you don’t open the safe.” So, Carol
opened the safe and gave him the money. Now, she though, he has what he’s come for. He’ll leave.

But, the man was not done with Carol. He pulled her into the employee restroom, raped
her, and shot her twice in the head. Somehow, Carol maintained consciousness. Sure that her
wounds would kill her, she prayed, “Lord, help me. I don’t know how to die. I’m afraid. Give me the
strength to die. how me how.” And then suddenly, she was able to pull herself to her feet. She
thought, I want to live; I don’t want to die. She ran to the front of the restaurant, and picked up the
wrong phone, only to realize that she could not call out. She panicked when she realized her
mistake, ran back to the office, and called a friend. She was asking her to call an ambulance when
the man returned. Seeing Carol, he shot her three more times. She fell to the floor, where she lay
until the police and ambulance arrived. She remained alert and amazingly calm as she described her
attacker and informed the emergency attendants that she was wearing contact lenses. She was so
calm, in fact, that the doctors felt freer to take time to determine the best way to remove the bullets
from her head. Her sister, Linda, arrived and began to fill her mind with hope and positive
instructions. She told Carol, “You’re going to be O.K. You’re going to make it. Don’t let your brain
swell. Don’t let your body bleed.”Amazingly, her brain never did swell, a common reaction to such a
brain injury.

For weeks as Carol lay in intensive care, her sisters continued to feed her with positive thoughts and
Scripture verses. After six months of surgery, recovery, and therapy, Carol was walking and talking as
she had before the accident. Her only residual difficulty after her attack has been an arm that tends
to be uncooperative. Carol’s survival is incredible. She attributes her healing to hope. As she had said
to me, “Only prayer and positive thinking kept me going!” Tough times never last,but tough people
do. If you want to succeed, if you want to conquer, then hope—hold on, praying expectantly!

Questions

1. “Tough times never last but tough people do”. Elaborate three testimonies of different leaders
that suits the quote.

2. Discuss the leadership Qualities and traits displayed by carol in this case.

3)Grew up around violence

The funny thing about gang culture is that it absorbs you without your knowledge. It is like a dark
cloud slowly squeezing out the light. You are living in total darkness, but you have no idea because
you don’t know what the light looks like. This is how I spent most of my adolescence. I grew up in a
place where the person with the biggest weapon won. Safety was never guaranteed and often my
friends and I found ourselves bullied and bruised. I found Jesus at an early age and He immediately
started to grow a restless longing in my heart to improve my surroundings. Something about the
environment I was in was not right—and I was prompted to do something about it.

 This was not the culture I was going to be stuck in .

At the age of seven, I decided that this was not a culture I was going to be stuck in. The
neighborhood might be going downhill, but it sure was not going to take me with it. I was tired of
the violence, the guns and the fights. It was time to take the neighborhood back. With that
irrevocable passion inside me, I built my own gang. But not an ordinary gang. We fought to protect
those who were innocently swept into gang life. We started staking out drug houses and mapping
drug delivery routes. While most little girls were playing with tea sets and dolls, I was camped in a
bush outside a drug den, taking pictures of cocaine hand-offs with my disposable Kodak camera.
Slowly but surely, we sniffed out the major ‘establishments’ in our town and turned the information
over to the police.

Our plan to take back our neighborhood was a success, or so I thought.

I learned that the absence of drugs does not diminish the need for gangs; the root of gang presence
goes much deeper than profitability. As children, my peers had such a desire to leave the life we
found ourselves surrounded by that we worked tirelessly to try and remove gangs from our streets.
As teenagers, however, I watched my friends, slowly but surely, dive into the sort of life they once
resented. We grew up in broken homes and in the absence of love and gangs provided a sense of
belonging. There was no example of family in the home. There was no one to lead us into better
choices. So those human desires for affection and acceptance were met though gang initiation.
Teenagers who were ignored by their parents suddenly encountered a group of people who found
them to be valuable. My friends found purpose and connection through gang life; the dark cloud
slowly enveloped them. And once you’re in, it is hard to get out.

This is where my passion for reaching those in prison was born.

So often we characterize inmates as bad people who make bad choices. But what if they weren’t
inherently bad; they were just never taught to be good? In the story I just told you, how different
would the ending have been if there were strong leaders in the home and the community? A crime
isn’t always just an illegal action. Sometimes there is a story of pain and injustice at the root of
someone’s decision.

What if they heard they were important?

one comment I heard from a prisoner from a particular gang when I met left me speechless. He said
“I didn’t know my life mattered.” What if 20 years earlier, that same person had heard the words,
“you’re important”? How different would their life be now? What would the world look like if
everyone felt like they were valuable, they belonged and they had a purpose? We can provide
teaching to the prisoners that show them how they can use their gifts and skill sets in a way that is
productive for themselves and society. It is a fact that 95% of inmates are released after serving their
time. When they leave prison, they usually go back into neighbourhoods similar to the one they
grew up in. They can then take this new-found sense of value and bring it to a demographic that
desperately needs hope.

4) LETTER TO ADOLF HITLER

That I address you as a friend is no formality. I own no foes. My business in life has been for
the past 33 years to enlist the friendship of the whole of humanity by befriending mankind,
irrespective of race, colour or creed. I hope you will have the time and desire to know how a
good portion of humanity who have been living under the influence of that doctrine of
universal friendship view your action. We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to
your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents.
But your own writings and pronouncements and those of your friends and admirers leave no
room for doubt that many of your acts are monstrous and unbecoming of human dignity,
especially in the estimation of men like me who believe in universal friendliness. Such are
your humiliation of Czechoslovakia, the rape of Poland and the swallowing of Denmark. I am
aware that your view of life regards such spoliations as virtuous acts. But we have been
taught from childhood to regard them as acts degrading humanity. Hence we cannot
possibly wish success to your arms. But ours is a unique position. We resist British
Imperialism no less than Nazism. If there is a difference, it is in degree. One-fifth of the
human race has been brought under the British heel by means that will not bear scrutiny.
Our resistance to it does not mean harm to the British people. We seek to convert them, not
to defeat them on the battle-field. Ours is an unarmed revolt against the British rule. But
whether we convert them or not, we are determined to make their rule impossible by non-
violent non-co-operation. It is a method in its nature indefensible. It is based on the
knowledge that no spoliator can compass his end without a certain degree of co-operation,
willing or compulsory, of the victim. Our rulers may have our land and bodies but not our
souls. They can have the former only by complete destruction of every Indian-man, woman
and child. That all may not rise to that degree of heroism and that a fair amount of
frightfulness can bend the back of revolt is true but the argument would be beside the
point. For, if a fair number of men and women be found in India who would be prepared
without any ill will against the spoliators to lay down their lives rather than bend the knee to
them, they would have shown the way to freedom from the tyranny of violence. I ask you to
believe me when I say that you will find an unexpected number of such men and women in
India. They have been having that training for the past 20 years. We have been trying for the
past half a century to throw off the British rule. The movement of independence has been
never so strong as now. The most powerful political organization, I mean the Indian National
Congress, is trying to achieve this end. We have attained a very fair measure of success
through nonviolent effort. We were groping for the right means to combat the most
organized violence in the world which the British power represents. You have challenged it.
It remains to be seen which is the better organized, the German or the British. We know
what the British heel means for us and the non-European races of the world. But we would
never wish to end the British rule with German aid. We have found in non-violence a force
which, if organized, can without doubt match itself against a combination of all the most
violent forces in the world. In nonviolent technique, as I have said, there is no such thing as
defeat. It is all ‘do or die’ without killing or hurting. It can be used practically without money
and obviously without the aid of science of destruction which you have brought to such
perfection. It is a marvel to me that you do not see that it is nobody’s monopoly. If not the
British, some other power will certainly improve upon your method and beat you with your
own weapon. You are leaving no legacy to your people of which they would feel proud. They
cannot take pride in a recital of cruel deed, however skilfully planned. I, therefore, appeal to
you in the name of humanity to stop the war. You will lose nothing by referring all the
matters of dispute between you and Great Britain to an international tribunal of your joint
choice. If you attain success in the war, it will not prove that you were in the right. It will
only prove that your power of destruction was greater. Whereas an award by an impartial
tribunal will show as far as it is humanly possible which party was in the right. You know that
not long ago I made an appeal to every Briton to accept my method of non-violent
resistance. I did it because the British know me as a friend though a rebel. I am a stranger to
you and your people. I have not the courage to make you the appeal I made to every Briton.
Not that it would not apply to you with the same force as to the British. But my present
proposal is much simple because much more practical and familiar. During this season when
the hearts of the peoples of Europe yearn for peace, we have suspended even our own
peaceful struggle. Is it too much to ask you to make an effort for peace during a time which
may mean nothing to you personally but which must mean much to the millions of
Europeans whose dumb cry for peace I hear, for my ears are attuned to hearing the dumb
millions? I had intended to address a joint appeal to you and Signor Mussolini, whom I had
the privilege of meeting when I was in Rome during my visit to England as a delegate to the
Round Table Conference. I hope that he will take this as addressed to him also with the
necessary changes.