Be the Person You'd Want to Follow
The Defying Choice
In this fourth and final post of the series, let’s look at what happens if someone in a position of influence or power — someone higher in the chain of command — tells you to do something that runs contrary to your guiding principles (and cloaks that demand in the cloth of cultural values).
Here’s an example — an encounter that upset me at the time, and still upsets me now as I write about it.… Read more »
We are all witness to the torrent of fabrication, lying, maligning, intimidation and fear mongering that are being used (and all too often condoned or lauded) by people in all of our institutions – government, business, media, sports, religion – to pursue their ends. Hiding the truth, if not outright lying, seems to be emerging as a behavioral norm rather than abnormality.
The culture of our communities is, for better or for worse, the predominant pattern of our collective behaviors, speech, choices and actions. Our families, our schools, our neighborhoods, our towns, our teams, our troops, our places of worship, our places of work – all of these are the communities that make up our world. Each one of us, through our daily behaviors, speech, choices and actions contributes to the character of these communities.… Read more »
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 look for in someone whose lead they would willingly follow.… Read more »
If you are fortunate enough one of these days to drive along the central coast of California between Santa Cruz and Monterey, you will pass by field upon field of tall, thick-stalked, prickly leaved, some say prehistoric-looking spiny plants supporting a fist-sized vegetable that is poetically known as the vegetable of passion, the food of nobility, the thistle of love — the California artichoke.… Read more »
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 National Rifle Association when forty-five sycophant Senators voted against background checks for gun purchases and transfers for reasons that they can neither articulate nor defend without deceit or deflection.… Read more »
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 Glenn Witman as citizen leaders for their efforts to eradicate homophobia from amateur and professional hockey.… Read more »
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 the coffee company, “in the first full quarter after this boycott was announced, our sales and our earnings — shall we say politely — were a bit disappointing.”… Read more »
…Emma Axelrod, Sammi Siegel, and Elena Tsemberis — three high school students — started a campaign on Change.org earlier this summer asking the Commission on Presidential Debates to select a female moderator, after learning in their high school civics class at Montclair High School that a woman has not moderated a U.S. general election presidential debate since 1992. Today, August 13, the Commission announced that CNN’s Candy Crowley will moderate the second presidential debate on October 16.… Read more »
Patrick Burke , Brian Kitts , Glenn Witman think athletes should be judged by talent, heart and work ethic, and not sexual orientation. Together, they have founded the You Can Play Project which works to guarantee that athletes are given a fair opportunity to compete, and are judged by other athletes and fans alike by what they contribute to the sport or their team’s success and not by their sexual orientation.… Read more »