 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
 |
|
||||||
|
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
 |
 |
 |
worth repeating |
John Allison, chairman and CEO of BB&T Corp., discussed leadership and values in a public lecture for the Institute for Leadership Advancement Sept. 21. Some excerpts: “We have to some degree a crisis in values in our society. We’ve had a number of ethical deviations in politics and in business, and these deviations have really had a pretty negative impact on our society as a whole. It’s kind of the thing to talk about. Interesting enough, at BB&T, values have long been very important to our organization. We believe that the key to success and happiness is having the right set of values. . . . “Our first value is reality—what is, is. . . . People make three basic big mistakes in regards to reality that have an immediate impact on their personal life and the quality of life for all of us as a whole. One of those mistakes, to use a metaphor, is: Wishing something is so will not make it so. It’s really a matter of the ultimate psychological sin, and the ultimate psychological sin is the act of evasion. That’s when I learn some piece of information that at some level at least I know needs to be examined but I refuse to examine it—I don’t hear, classically because it threatens something I want to believe about myself or want to believe about the world. Unfortunately everybody evades. . . . When you evade you become detached from reality. . . . “The second error that people make in regard to reality is believing in popularity. Reality is independent of popularity. It’s interesting that in today’s society there’s even more emphasis on popularity… . In reality, popularity doesn’t matter. . . . “The third mistake… is the belief that there is some connection between reality and authority. Reality is independent of authority. . . . To some degree we do have to rely on authority but we are responsible for evaluating authority, responsible for making a judgment.” |
|
| —Beth
Roberts |
|