Kate’s 2 cents: Maxwell John C Leader Within You  and No Such Thing As Business Ethics

(Career) “Developing the leader within you 2.0”

By John C. Maxwell

   As I listened to John C. Maxwell read his own book, I started to jot down concepts I thought I’d be able to apply to the organizations in which I’m a member. Things such as:

–The world becomes a better place with better leaders.

–Better leadership will add to your effectiveness; subtract from your weaknesses; divide your workload; and multiply your impact.

–When opportunity comes, it’s too late to prepare.

There have been meetings of only a moment, which have left impressions for life for eternity.

–Leadership is communication, recognition, and influence.

–If you don’t believe the messenger, you won’t believe the message.

–priortize your time to be more productive.

–The 20%/80% rule of thumb: 20% of the people on the team get 80% of the work done and 20% of the people at a picnic will eat 80% of the food.

   Then, I realized that I was wasting my time  almost re-writing the book, when it would be more efficient to share with you the Library of Congress description of the two Maxwell’s books that I read.

   Author of Running with the Giants presents a guide to developing yourself into a transformational leader. Topics covered include defining leadership, identifying priorities, developing character, creating positive change, problem solving, serving people, establishing self-discipline, and recognizing areas for personal growth.

   I also read: “There’s no such thing as business ethics: there’s only one rule for making decisions”

By John C. Maxwell

   Leadership expert and author of Running with the Giants explains how the Golden Rule–“do unto others”–can be applied to business to build morale, increase productivity, and encourage teamwork. Uses real-life ethical dilemmas and in-depth discussion questions to demonstrate the benefits of following this universal guideline.

Kate’s 2¢:

“Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to  seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.”

   –John Keats

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

There’s no such thing as business ethics: there’s only one rule for making decisions DB57002

Maxwell, John C. Reading time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

Read by John C. Maxwell.

Business and Economics

Leadership expert and author of Running with the Giants (DB 55101) explains how the Golden Rule–“do unto others”–can be applied to business to build morale, increase productivity, and encourage teamwork. Uses real-life ethical dilemmas and in-depth discussion questions to demonstrate the benefits of following this universal guideline. Commercial audiobook. 2003.

Downloaded: October 8, 2022

Download There’s no such thing as business ethics: there’s only one rule for making decisions

Developing the leader within you 2.0 DB98692

Maxwell, John C. Reading time: 7 hours, 46 minutes.

Read by John C. Maxwell.

Careers and Job Training

Author of Running with the Giants (DB 55101) presents a guide to developing yourself into a transformational leader. Topics covered include defining leadership, identifying priorities, developing character, creating positive change, problem solving, serving people, establishing self-discipline, and recognizing areas for personal growth. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2018.

Downloaded: October 8, 2022

Download Developing the leader within you 2.0

Kate’s 2¢: “The Vanishing Half” by Britt Bennett

“The Vanishing Half” by Britt Bennett

Kate’s 2¢: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as,     describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ merely shares my thoughts about what I read.  I’m just saying…

   This story bothers me. You might think: So what! And I’d agree with you.

   The story opens with Desiree Vignes and her 7-year old daughter, Jude,  returning to Malard, LA in 1968  after Desiree and her twin sister, Stella, ran away 14-years ago.

   In 1848, Alfons DeQuer created a town where light-skinned Negros could live in peace. They bred light skin until his 3X twin granddaughters were so beautiful and fair-skinned, they could pass as white. Idea and place became one and marrying a black was frowned on and discouraged.

   As young children, the twins witnessed several white men drag their father out of his wood-working workshop, stomp on his fingers, and shoot him. They tracked him down in the hospital and finished him off, so he couldn’t take any more customers from their furniture business.

   After the twins ran away to New Orleans, Stella faded into the white culture. Desiree became an FBI finger-print expert, married a black attorney, and had a daughter. At first, it might have been rebellion or it might have been love, however, it turned to dread when he started to beat her. The ‘hunter’ her husband hired to find his run-away wife and child, happened to be an ardent admirer of Desiree, from when they were teenagers.  Early Jones didn’t want to turn her in and, instead, offered to hunt for Stella.

   In 1978, 17-year-old Jude, lithesome, tall, and very black rode the bus into Las Angeles, CA  to attend UCLA on a full-Track Scholarship. She meets Reese, a trans-gender, and works with a catering business for the white and wealthy. It is during one of her gigs that she gets the surprise of her life.

   Stella has emersed herself in the pampered life as the wife of a rich, white banker, living in a gated community. In fear of her secret being discovered, she protests the sale of the house across the street to a black family with one daughter. Things turn ugly and, after the family moves out, Stella starts taking courses for a degree in math.    

   Jude befriends Stella’s spoiled, actress daughter, in an effort to find out more information about her aunt. One night Jude confronts Stella and is rebuffed.

   Unknown to each other, Jude, who is now a med student,  accompanies Reese for his surgery and Kennedy’s soap opera acting career put them all in NYC. Jude and Kennedy re-unite in an uneasy truce, and Jude passes her a photo of their mothers with their Grandmother at their Grandfather’s funeral.

   Kennedy’s questions get to Stella and she goes to confront Desiree in Mallard. They resume their twinness, but Stella vanishes back to her white life. Even the death of their mother doesn’t re-unite the twins.

   I finally figured out why this story bothers me. So much of being a separatist or inclusionist, straight or gay, male or female, black or white, citified or countrified, is that they lie. They not only lie to each other, they lie to themselves.   

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

britbennett.com

Bennett (b. circa 1989) was raised in Southern California and received an undergraduate degree in English from Stanford University. She later attended the University of Michigan for her M.F.A. She also studied at Oxford University.[1]

   While she was completing her M.F.A. at Michigan, Bennett’s 2014 essay for Jezebel, “I Don’t Know What to Do With Good White People”[2] gained considerable attention, generating over one million views in three days.[3] While at Michigan, she also won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers.[4]

She has since published other nonfiction essays, including a history of black dolls called “Addy Walker, American Girl” for the Paris Review,[5] as well as a review of the 2015 Ta-Nehisi Coates book Between the World and Me for The New Yorker.[6] Vogue said Bennett’s nonfiction essays “recall Ta-Nehisi Coates [with] a similar ability to contextualize the present moment in a bigoted past.”[3]

   The Washington Post called The Vanishing Half a “fierce examination of contemporary passing and the price so many pay for a new identity.”[15] Within a month of publication it was reported that HBO had acquired the rights for “low seven-figures” to develop a limited series with Bennett as executive producer.[16]

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

The vanishing half DB99791

Bennett, Brit Reading time: 11 hours, 36 minutes.

Shayna Small

Family

Bestsellers

Desiree Vignes and her daughter return home to Louisiana in 1968, fourteen years after Desiree and her identical twin sister Stella ran away. The sisters ended up on different paths, and as Desiree struggles with the racial tensions of her hometown, Stella lives her life passing as white. Violence, strong language, and some descriptions of sex. Commercial audiobook. Bestseller. 2020.

Download The vanishing half DB99791