On Monday in Boston, we were assaulted by two bombings carried out by unknown assailants for unknown reasons. This stealth act of terrorism, perpetrated on unsuspecting, peaceful and innocent civilians needs to be called out for what it is: cowardice. On Wednesday in the United States Senate, we were assaulted by the tyranny of the [...]
Citizen Leaders are the men, women, young adults and teens who take stock of the kind of world they want to help shape for the people they care about and act to make it so. —Peter Alduino, Author, The Citizen Leader In a blog post 9 months ago, I applauded Patrick Burke, Brian Kitts and [...]
Most of us have suffered through the poor leadership of others, and I would argue that it’s because as a society, we don’t have a shared understanding of what leadership looks like. Most people “know it when they see it,” but they can’t really define it, which by extension means that they can’t develop it [...]
At Starbucks’ annual shareholders meeting in Seattle, Wash. last Wednesday, CEO Howard Schultz told off an investor who tried to argue that the company’s support for same-gender marriage is bad for business. The shareholder Tom Strobhar, founder of an anti-gay marriage group, claimed that as a result of the National Organization for Marriage’s boycott of [...]
To the Board of Directors: Boy Scouts of America Bigotry has consequences. Each day that the Boy Scouts of America continues to condone the marginaliztion of gay boys, it fails to send a strong message to very impressionable heterosexual boys that all youngsters deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. As a result, wonderful, promising young [...]
For every leadership development seminar I conduct, I ask each participant to gather some objective data on the topic of leadership ahead of time. Specifically, I ask each person to talk with a few of their friends, family, students, coworkers or acquaintances about leadership in the days before the seminar, and find out what they [...]
The broader implication of Citizen Leadership for a corporation is captured in this question: As we pursue our goals, are we operating in a way that serves the common good? I believe we earn the right to call ourselves citizen because we are willing to actively participate in, serve in and lead efforts that better [...]
The broader implications here are first and foremost that corporate character counts. In more familiar terms — corporate “culture.” Despite what might be printed, published or circulated about our culture, in practice all we need to do is look at how our people interact with one another, and how individuals conduct themselves towards our customers, [...]
A Citizen Leader is each one of us, the man, the woman, the young adult, even the teen who pauses to take stock of the kind of world that they — that we — want to help shape for the people we care about, and then act to make it so. A citizen leader is [...]
Over the past 25 years, leadership experts Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner have been collecting millions of data points seeking to identify the qualities that people look for most in a leader — that is, in someone they would willingly follow. The operative word here is willingly. For 15 of those years, I’ve led a [...]
