Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: character

  • Favorite Authors: Robert Quinn

    Robert Quinn is one of my favorite leadership authors.

    He goes to the heart of the matter, that is, the heart of the leader as the starting point for thinking about how one approaches leadership.

    His books are character builders. Learning from the inside out. He is more concerned with what sort of person we are becoming than with the techniques we employ.

    You can find him online at:

    The LIFT Blog

    The Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship

    Must Read Books

    Quinn has written extensively, and everyone of them is worth reading.

    I have listed his major works with links to their Amazon.com pages.

    Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within

    Building the Bridge As You Walk On It: A Guide for Leading Change

    Change the World : How Ordinary People Can Achieve Extraordinary Results

    Letters to Garrett: Stories of Change, Power and Possibility

    I am excited to offer this new resource of identifying my favorite authors with links to their works. I can think of no better author with whom to begin than Robert Quinn.

    Favorite Authors are those unique writers whom I believe are worth reading everything they have written. Explore all my favorites here.

  • Quote to Consider: Counter-Intuitive Yet Wise

    quote-to-consider“Do not pray for easy lives, pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers, pray for powers equal to your tasks.”

    Phillips Brooks

  • Listen In -> Bridging the Work-Faith Divide #3: Character Formation and Lifelong Learning

    We have in the past discussed what we have called, “The Hard Facts of Working with People”.

    One of the “hard facts” is that people are learning, developing, maturing beings. You and I grow and change over time. It’s a fact.

    Bridging the Work-Faith DivideThis fact has important implications to the workplace, team-building, motivation, empowerment, and accountability.

    This fact bears directly on career development, setting goals, and professional development.

    In this week’s show, Claudia and I discuss how to show up at work both fully authentic to who you are, and grow into who you need to become to fulfill your job responsibilities.

    As persons of faith, we do not need to compartmentalize our faith at work into issues of superficial behavioral morality. Don’t steal pencils. Work hard. Don’t tell lies.

    At a deeper, more fundamental level God-designed people need to contribute and make a difference; learn and develop; and connect and belong.

    Incorporate these three opportunities into your workplace culture and watch your team come alive on the job!

    Listen in.

    Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.
    Interested in how we can resource your church or organization? Get more information here.

  • Quote to Consider: Do It Anyway

    quote-to-consider“Being unready and ill-equipped is what you have to expect in life. It is the universal predicament. It is your lot as a human being to lack what it takes. Circumstances are seldom right. You never have the capacities, the strength, the wisdom, the virtue you ought to have. You must always do with less than you need in a situation vastly different from what you would have chosen as appropriate for your special endowments.”

    Charlton Ogburn

  • Quote to Consider: An Infinite Return on Investment

    quote-to-consider“Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the cheapest of pleasures, costs nothing, and conveys much. It pleases him who gives and receives and thus, like mercy, is twice blessed.”

    Erastus Wiman

  • Quote to Consider: Caring in Principle Only

    quote-to-consider“The fact is that the possession of a highly social conscience about large-scale issues is no guarantee whatever of reasonable conduct in private relations.”

    Lewis Hastings

  • Quote to Consider: Your Will or Your Won’t?

    quote-to-consider“The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.”

    Henry Ward Beecher

  • Thought Leaders Unpacked -> The Soul of a Leader #8: Persevering to the End

    thought-leadersWhen consistently engaging in practices of human wholeness and integrity something “subtle” takes place. Transformation.

    This has been my favorite and most challenging chapter of this book. I am still wrestling with the notion that the “dark night of the soul” has an impact on one’s business life as well as one’s spirituality.

    Of course, you say. Of course, I say!

    A big mistake of modernity has been to compartmentalize spirituality away from other categories of work, life and relationships.

    Of course one’s journey of personal maturity includes and impacts all areas of life. Even work. Especially work.

    Benefiel courageously takes on perseverance in light of those tumultuous, disorienting seasons of life when the assumptions that have guided us to date collide with a deeper, richer, larger reality.

    A medieval scholar, St. John of the Cross, is most famous for observing and describing how the spiritual journey includes seasons of such enormous disorientation that all ways seem dark, lonely, and impassable.

    But we live busy lives of work, family, community involvement, political activism, etc. How do we accommodate an extended season of difficult (more…)

  • Dreaming of Perseverance

    Keep on keeping on.

    Both a frame of mind and the next decision.

    A blend of courage, hope and love for which there is no recipe.

    A life skill developed one obstacle at a time.

    – Karl Edwards

  • Quote to Consider: Waiting for the Applause

    quote-to-consider“Not in the clamor of the crowded street, Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.”

    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow