Citizen is a deeply honorable title. Yes, it is most commonly a designation bestowed by an accident of birth or location. But it can be so much more. In a truer form, citizenship is a merit that we earn by extending ourselves to others and contributing to the world around us. Citizens are involved and engaged. They are participants. They are doers.… Read more »
Author: Peter Alduino
Peter’s Perspective: Lovers are Better Leaders
A fundemental tenet of my book, The Citizen Leader, is that citizenship challenges us to participate in efforts to better our communities and improve life for all — that we earn the right to call ourselves active citizens when we contribute to the communites where we live, work, play and pray.
Let me follow and add that our willingness to act, and by extension our willingness to contribute to the world around us at all, is linked directly to our feeling and beliefs about our communities.… Read more »
Peter’s Perspective: Citizen Leadership is the Prerequisite to Engaging Leadership
Q. What exactly is a citizen leader?
A. A person who brings their character and courage to making a contribution on behalf of the community and the common good.
Look closely at the people around you who are in positions of leadership or who aspire to positions of leadership.
Character: What are their guiding principles? Are their values ones that inspire you to want to follow their lead?… Read more »
Active Citizens Have the Foundation to be Engaging Leaders
I am of the mind that the person who has experience as an active citizen will possess the unique capacity to engage others as a leader.
By the same token, I feel wary of those who wear the mantle of leader, but who, on closer inspection, show little appreciable depth as citizens. I look to see whether an individual has in their history any evidence of service and contribution to their communities, or whether instead theirs is a record of activity undertaken largely for the purposes of self-advancement or enrichment.… Read more »
The Engaging Leader
I am delighted to announce the release of my new series of leadership development tutorials:
The Engaging Leader: Be the Person They’d Want to Follow
The Engaging Leader prepares and prompts you to step into five essential roles of a leader, and be the person others would want to follow. These roles are:
- Visionary and Voice for Tomorrow
- Conscience of the Culture
- Champion of Innovation and Change
- Coach of Our Talent
- Trusted Partner and Collaborator
The Engaging Leader is a series of tutorials that helps you deepen your understanding and practice of these five essential roles.… Read more »
Community Values
Community values — or shared values — are the promises that we make to one another about how we will act and interact. Shared values hold a community together, whether it be a family, friends, a fellowship, neighbors, a virtual network, a town, a team, a troop, a company, a country or a culture. Shared values are our glue. When we collectively adhere to a set of shared principles about how we will act and interact with one another, we strengthen our bond as a community.… Read more »
Living with Integrity in Your Community
Earlier this week, I talked about community values as the promises you and the members of your community make to one another about how we will act and interact with one another as you go about your daily lives.
Now let us move on to consider whether you are indeed living with integrity in your community as you go about your daily life and activities.… Read more »
Living with Integrity in Your Community: The Slam Dunk
Living with integrity in your community, that is, acting from your core — adhering to your own set of principles — is most challenging when one or more of your community’s values offends, prompts or, worse, insists that you violate your own values.
How do you handle it when one (or more) of the shared values of your community seems to be at odds with your guiding principles?… Read more »
Living with Integrity in Your Community: The Dilemma
The Dilemma
My Uncle Anthony grew up in Brooklyn, New York, among a community of immigrant parents and first-generation American kids, an environment much influenced by a culture of family.
Many individuals with whom I have worked over the years profess to pattern their behaviors and choices after an adherence to family. When I’ve asked them to explain, they have shared stories that show vastly different definitions of what family looks like in action.… Read more »
Living with Integrity in Your Community: The Defining Choice
The Defining Choice
This is the third post that explores the options that we might consider when we find ourselves in a situation that pits our personal guiding principle against the shared values of one of our communities. This situation can (and probably will at some point in your life) bring you to a tipping point where you can and must consciously choose to define (or perhaps redefine) both yourself and your life.… Read more »