Be the Person You'd Want to Follow
Congratulations to these young grade school boys who banded together to show their support for a first grader who was subjected to bullying and teasing from other pupils. These youngsters rock! In the words of American anthropologist Margaret Meade:
Never doubt that the actions of a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
I am delighted to announce the release of my new series of leadership development tutorials:
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:
The Engaging Leader is a series of tutorials that helps you deepen your understanding and practice of these five essential roles. Your success as a leader — indeed, the success of the people you lead — requires you to take on the right role at the right time and express yourself and guide the members of your group in ways that build and fortify the bonds that inspire them to follow your lead. For each one of these essential roles, The Engaging Leader offers an interactive framework and practical tools that help you strengthen those bonds and emerge a more engaging leader at work and in your community.
You will apply the frameworks and tools to help you diagnose, plan, communicate, share decision-making and distribute ownership with your partners, staff and followers, and strengthen your capacity to engage their enthusiasm to participate, serve, act and persevere so that together you can make meaningful contributions at work, at home and in your communities.
The five tutorials in The Engaging Leader are designed both for your own individual use as you hone your personal and professional leadership skills and for use by an experienced facilitator or teacher as curriculum material in a professional development seminar or class. A facilitator or teacher can expect to guide a group of participants or students through the tutorials and derive meaningful, applicable benefits by investing seven hours in any one tutorial.
The Engaging Leader arrives on the two-year anniversary of the release of its companion piece The Citizen Leader: Be the Person You’d Want to Follow. This first book is a thought-provoking guide to help you develop and deepen your moral compass — that is, explore and respond to the questions: Who am I? and How do I want to be in the world? The Citizen Leader challenges you to be authentic and courageous so you can say with conviction: I am a person I’d want to follow, and then to extend yourself to make meaningful contributions at work or in your community.
Peter Alduino welcomes your inquiries and your invitation to have him lead a seminar or speak to you and your group on the themes of The Engaging Leader and The Citizen Leader.
Contact Peter Alduino by clicking here.
For more about The Engaging Leader
For more about The Citizen Leader
For more about Peter Alduino
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. These three men founded the You Can Play project — an outreach and advocacy program that challenges the culture of homophobia in locker rooms and among fans by focusing instead and only on an athlete’s skills, hard work, heart and competitive spirit.
As a direct result of their efforts since founding the project 12 months, yesterday, the National Hockey League and the NHL Players’ Association announced a groundbreaking partnership with the You Can Play project in what is likely the most comprehensive effort by a major North American sports league to support gay athletes. Hockey News reported, the agreement with You Can Play will see the implementation of an agenda of inclusion throughout the NHL that promotes better understanding of and respect for gay athletes. You Can Play will conduct seminars at the NHL’s rookie symposium and make its resources and personnel available to each individual team as desired. The NHL and NHLPA will work with You Can Play to integrate the project into their Behavioral Health Program to enable players to confidentially seek counseling or simply ask questions about sexual orientation issues.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in a statement, “Our motto is ‘Hockey Is For Everyone,’ and our partnership with You Can Play certifies that position in a clear and unequivocal way. While we believe that our actions in the past have shown our support for the LGBT community, we are delighted to reaffirm through this joint venture with the NHL Players’ Association that the official policy of the NHL is one of inclusion on the ice, in our locker-rooms and in the stands.”
In his statement, Patrick Burke reminds us that the You Can Play Project is not just for pro players. He said, “To me, it’s just as important that a young player playing lacrosse or a 60-year-old playing beer league someplace feel safe in their locker-room. We really want to work on the culture at its core because I believe in any sport, at any level, at any age, at any skill level, you should be able to play sports free of fear.”
Congratulations to Citizen Leaders Patrick Burke, Brian Kitts and Glenn Witman. Bravo to the National Hockey League and the NHL Players’ Association.
Sources:
NHL, NHLPA combine to form a partnership with You Can Play Project (Hockey News)
NHL, ‘You Can Play’ announce partnership to support gay athletes (LGBTQNation)
Major Sports Leagues Prepare for the ‘I’m Gay’ Disclosure (New York Times)
NHL Announces Support For Gay Rights, Pledges To Fight Homophobia With New Initiative (Huffington Post)
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 citizens because we are willing to actively participate in, serve in and lead efforts that better a community. I propose that a corporation has the same opportunity.
Now whether it acts on that opportunity is another story — and speaks volumes about the disposition of its leaders. And among the dispositions that thwart those efforts in our business communities: maximize wealth. I’m very familiar with it. It’s the mantra I learned in business school. It’s the message I’ve gotten from any number of leaders and consulting clients whose primary focus has been on building market value.
Yes we have fiduciary and legal responsibilities to our investors and shareholders. But in a citizen leader world, we also have responsibilities that extend well beyond our investors and shareholders to our other fellow citizens— not the least of whom are our employees, our clients and the people who live in our communities. In a citizen leader world, our pursuit of wealth (or power, or influence or reputation) does not give us license to degrade or damage the well-being of our constituents or our communities. Taking it one step deeper, in a citizen leader world, we are asked to act in ways that benefit our communities.
In 1886 [Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad] the Supreme Court allowed that a corporation is entitled to some of the same protections under our Constitution as is a natural person. That decision has been reexamined and reaffirmed any number of times since. Those decisions taken together have morphed into a short and succinct claim by our corporations to equal treatment under the law. Fair enough. It’s 2012. Now, 126 years later, if our corporations and institutions are intent on being included equally among We the People, then as a matter of course rather than as an exception, isn’t it also fair to at least ask that they act like citizens? Isn’t it also fair to expect that they act like citizens? And isn’t it also fair to expect that they, along with the rest of us, along with the rest of We the People, play an active role in promoting the common good (the general welfare)[1] .
In a citizen leader culture, we as a corporation recognize that we are all in this together. We look to ensure that our actions contribute rather than damage or degrade. We look for ways to give back rather than just maximize our take.
Heed the words of former Secretary of State and Chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell who reminds us:
My responsibility, our responsibility as lucky Americans, is to try to give back to this country as much as it has given us, as we continue our American journey together.
[1] The full preamble to the Constitution of the United States reads: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Citizen leadership has a direct bearing on the organizations and corporations that are the driving force of much of our society and culture. Among the broader implications of citizen leadership for these organizations, large and small, is this: corporate character counts. In more familiar terms — corporate “culture” counts.
Despite what might be printed, published or circulated about an organization’s 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, clients and communities. Those observations are all we need to discern our prevailing and dominant values. Nothing is 100%, of course not, but there are predominant patterns. Let us look to the patterns of our actions and decisions. Those patterns will speak volumes about who we are.
Is that the signature by which we want to be known in the world?
Because we are.
For example: if truth is a principle that you want to be known by, and you regularly act in ways that are truthful in word and deed, internally and externally, then that’s how you’ll be known. Actions reveal who you are.
But, your principles and values do not come free of charge. You have to be willing and committed to ante up, even when it cost you. That is called an investment — that’s an investment in your integrity and an investment in your credibility, in the bigger picture, an investment in your culture.
Another example; if truth is a principle that the people — say at XYZ Corp. — want to be known by, but they — the individuals who make up XYZ Corp. habitually misrepresent the facts — public pronouncements about truth and ethics notwithstanding — then that’s who they are and that’s how they’ll be known. They can rationalize or excuse their choice of actions for any number of reasons: competition, pressure for quarterly numbers or closer to home, compensation — individuals saying to themselves, I do what I get paid for — but here’s the thing, values — like truth — do not lend themselves to a cost-benefit analysis.
Now there are those who just don’t care. There are cultures that hold, “We have money, we have power, we have influence. It’s a free country and we’ll do as we please.” At least we know where they stand, what they stand for, and what we can expect.
But, there is a more sinister school of thought — one that adheres to the notion that “Principle is okay, up to a certain point, but principle doesn’t do any good if you lose.”[1]This is the culture that cloaks itself in principle — like truth — but if principle turns out to be inconvenient, then its members conveniently set it aside. In this culture, the overriding objective is “to win.” And whatever currency “to win” comes in — be it profit, power, influence, reputation or the like — the ends justify our means.
For the Citizen Leader — corporate or individual — the ends do not justify the means. Instead, in a citizen leader culture, the means are routinely examined through the filter of our principles. Some of the means will need to be discarded because they do not fit with how we want to be in the world. Other means will present us with viable options — or more precisely, values-based options. These options safeguard our character as we pursue our goals — whatever form our goals take — profit, power, influence or reputation.
To borrow from the great American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson:
As to means there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own means. The man who tries means, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
When all is said and done, it is the individuals in our organizations, our corporations and our institutions who will decide on their means, and on their choice of actions. It is the prevailing pattern of these individual choices that will define our corporate culture.
And so we are face-to-face again with these two questions: Who am I? and How do I want to be in the world? It’s just that our scope has grown from personal character to organizational culture.
Culture doesn’t happen because we will it to happen. It happens because we and many other people in our community turn our wills into behaviors and words and choices that honor and demonstrate the values that we choose to espouse. Building culture — a purposeful culture — is an act of dedication and ownership — personal and collective. Everyone can be involved. Everyone can accept ownership and take responsibility. Now, whether everyone accepts that ownership, whether everyone takes responsibility by holding themselves and one another accountable – that’s another issue. Accepting ownership for oneself is an act of citizenship; asking others to accept ownership and holding them accountable, regardless of our position or title, is an act of leadership. Not to do so, especially if we are entrusted with the responsibilities of a leader, is an act of abdication.
It was a series of acts of abdication among those who were most entrusted with the mantle of leadership at Penn State that allowed for the incidence of child molestation and the ensuing lack of any meaningful investigation that we learned about last summer. It has been a whole history of these acts of abdication among the leadership at the Boy Scouts of America and among the hierarchy of the American Catholic Church that have allowed for the scandalous abuse of children and the ensuing evasion from prosecution for both the perpetrators and their protectors.
On the other hand, it is an act of leadership that we see being played out at Harvard today with the candid disclosure and investigation of cheating among some 120 students. In the words of Jay Harris, dean of undergraduate education: “Without integrity, there can be no genuine achievement, either at Harvard or anywhere else. We have held, and will continue to hold, every Harvard College student to that same high standard.”
So in the broader sense, when we view citizen leadership on the scale of an organization, a corporation or an institution — be it in education, sports, religion, business, media or government — character still comes first. Who am I? and How do I want to be in the world? The principles that reveal our culture still count.
[1] Campaign advice given by former Vice President Dick Cheney to associates when he was White House chief of staff.
Source: Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, by John W. Dean.
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 acts to make it so.
A citizen leader is an active participant in her world – not a passive observer. She chooses to be engaged, not because she is told to but because she wants to. She chooses to be engaged not because it looks good on a CV or résumé, but because she cares deeply about the people and places that stand to benefit by her actions.
I believe that acts of citizen leadership are a training ground. They are the proving ground for each one of us who hopes to engage anyone else to willingly follow our lead. Our acts of citizen leadership are where we learn the basics, where we learn the essentials of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations. It’s where we learn that the prerequisite to effectively reaching out and engaging the human spirit of others is reaching inside to understand and engage our own.
This reach inside is a journey of self-discovery. This reach inside is a journey into self-awareness. And it is a candid and courageous exploration of character. For the citizen leader, character is what comes first! Character is the essential material of which a citizen leader is built.
So, let’s talk about character.
Character — it’s the embodiment and the expression of our guiding principles and values. It is who we are on the inside, and what we show on the outside. Our values — they’re the promises we make to ourselves about how we will behave, both in private and in the world at large. For some of us, we talk about them. We share them. We promise to live by them — we promise to walk our talk. We give other members of our community the expectation that we will conduct ourselves in ways that are consistent with our values. By keeping our promises, by living up to our stated values, (even when no one else is looking), that’s where we build our personal integrity and our public credibility. In essence, that’s where we build and strengthen our character.
The lifelong journey of the Citizen Leader calls on each one of us to have the curiosity and humility to carry on an ever-deepening exploration of our guiding principles and values — and by extension our integrity and our credibility — our character. My role in this journey, in this exploration, I pose questions. I ask you and everyone who has the courage to be a citizen leader to hold these two questions in the palm of their hand and reflect on them regularly: Who am I? and How do I want to be in the world?
I trust that your humble and curious consideration of these two questions will help you discern and define your moral compass.
Who and I? and How do I want to be in the world? I trust that your humble and curious consideration of these two questions will help you get clear and clearer over time on the set of principles that are your signature in the world.
And, I trust that at some point during the journey, you will arrive at the conclusion and heartfelt conviction: I am the person I’d want to follow.
This uncompromising and unapologetic adherence to guiding principles — to your personal and public moral compass — to your signature in the world — this is the stuff that allows you to engage the human spirit and the confidence of others. And that’s what allows them to conclude: you are a person I’d want to follow.
In his Commencement Address in 2005 at his alma mater USC, Neil Armstrong offered the following observation to the new graduates:
“Some things are beyond your control. You can lose your health to illness or accident; you can lose your wealth to all manner of unpredictable sources. What is not easily stolen from you without your cooperation are your principles and values. They are your most precious possessions and, if carefully selected and nurtured, will well serve you and your fellow man.”
For the citizen leader, character comes first!
But it doesn’t stand alone. There’s more.
The twin element of citizen leadership is contribution.
A Citizen Leader is an individual of character and contribution — contribution to his or her communities, contribution that benefits the common good.
We earn our stripes as a citizen when we extend ourselves to others and contribute to the world around us. Citizens are involved. They are doers. They are activists. And the objective of their efforts has everything to do with making a contribution to the common good.
In essence, we earn the right to call ourselves citizen leaders because we are willing to actively participate in, serve in or lead efforts that better a community. When we do that, when we actively and willingly participate in service of the common good, we give meaning to our lives and we transform the world around us.
As I’ve said before, I am of the mind that our acts of citizen leadership are the proving ground for each one of us who hopes to engage anyone else to willingly follow our lead. I am of the mind that the person who has experience as a citizen leader will possess the unique capacity as a leader to engage the human spirit and confidence of others — in essence, to be a truly engaging leader.
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 corporate seminar based on their work — The Leadership Challenge Workshop. I begin each session by asking my participants exactly the same question: what are the qualities you look for in a leader whom you would willingly follow. Time and time and time again, the results are the same. Among the top qualities that people look for most in a leader they would willingly follow are the following: honesty — meaning truthfulness in word and deed, and inspiration — they uplift the spirits of the people they lead.
Unfortunately, truthfulness and inspiration are not the qualities that a great many of the people I work with say they experience in their daily lives — in and outside of work. Let’s think about this. Let’s take a sober look at the world around us. Even a casual reading of the news and the blogs over these first 12 years of this 21st century offers a myriad of stories of women and men in every office of leadership in all of our institutions – government, business, media, sports, religion – who have supplanted the truth in order to pursue their ends and then taken to badmouthing their detractors — to impugning their integrity. Hardly the stuff of truthfulness and uplifting people’s spirits. As I look at the world around us today, it seems to me that we are more apt to experience a steady stream of fabrication and misrepresentation and then the maligning of those who want to set the record straight. Lying and maligning — are they emerging as new national norms rather than as exceptions? Are our inalienable rights being revised to read life, liberty, lie and malign all in the pursuit of power, profit and personal gain.
It matters. Truth matters. Civility matters. Are we really becoming a culture of cheats and bullies? It certainly seems we are becoming a culture that condones if not silently accepts and even applauds those who prosper regardless of the physical, emotional, spiritual or financial damage their actions and words leave in their wake.
The impetus for my work and my book The Citizen Leader: Be the Person You’d Want to Follow is to get the attention of the many people, especially our young people, who are at risk of being swept up if they haven’t already been swept up by this culture of cheating and bullying and to ask them to pause and examine the kind of world their words and actions are creating for themselves and for the people around them.
I believe that we’re all co-creators of the worlds in which we live and work. Our homes, our schools, our places of work, and our places of worship, our teams, our neighborhoods and our towns — all of these constitute the communities that make up our world. Through our words and actions every day, cheats and bullies included, we contribute to the character of these communities, and shape the world in which we live and work, for ourselves, our families, our friends, our colleagues, our coworkers and for our fellow citizens.
Now, even for those among us to whom cheating and bullying are repugnant, it still takes a strong and steady sense of self to deflect the forces that might tempt us to do otherwise. Howard Gardner, the eminent authority on education at Harvard, said recently that in the past 20 years that he has been studying professional and academic integrity, “the ethical muscles have atrophied” and that in part because of a culture that exalts success, however it is attained.
Even for those among us to whom cheating and bullying are repugnant, it still takes courage to speak up and push back from one’s core when faced with individuals in positions of power who would compel us to deviate from truthfulness or civility for the sake of short-term interests or gains.
I wrote The Citizen Leader in part for the young woman who fessed up to me during a seminar three years ago that she had been told to lie about product test results because her boss needed better results in order to continue to have their project funded. And she did. She intentionally misrepresented the truth out of fear that not to do so would be a career-limiting move.
Now, I know that I do not have the power to change the world (no matter how much I talk), but I do have the power to shape my world and be the person I can say proudly I’d want to follow. I have written The Citizen Leader to underscore this message. I believe that for each one of us not to take our power seriously, not to act as if each one of us is a co-creator of our reality and by extension of our collective reality, then we surrender our character — we abandon the one thing we can truly call our own.
By way of The Citizen Leader, I encourage you and my readers and the people who attend my seminars to be clear on who you are and what you stand for today, so that today and tomorrow, you speak and act in ways that that are entirely consistent with your core.
We are the final arbiters of our actions. That power — our power — cannot be overwhelmed by the dictates of others.
When we own and embrace that, then we stand to create great places where we and the other members of our communities will want to live, work, play and thrive today and well into the future.
This is my core belief. This is my wish for each one of us. This is the foundation of citizen leadership.
Character counts
We are all co-creators of the world we live in. Through our actions and words and choices, we help shape our immediate communities, be that home, school, work, club, church, etc. As such, it is incumbent upon each one of us to explore and respond to the questions: Who and I? and How do I want to be in the world? and in so doing, get very clear on a set of guiding principles that are your signature in the world — that allows you to say with conviction: I am a person I’d want to follow.
We are the final arbiter of our actions
Uncompromising and unapologetic adherence to our signature — to our guiding principles — is the stuff of personal integrity and public credibility — and in the longer term to our abilities to engage the confidence of others. More importantly, our adherence to principle is the stuff of a meaningful life.
Be a Citizen Leader
A citizen leader is a person who applies their character and the courage of their convictions to participate, serve, act and lead efforts that contribute to their communities and the common good.
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, citizen is a distinction 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. They are not spectators. In essence, we earn the right to call ourselves citizens because we are willing to actively participate in efforts that better a community and improve life for all. In so doing, it is we who, by the virtue and the value of our contribution, transform a particular community.
Citizen Leadership is the school for engaging leadership.
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. If the evidence supports the latter, I ask myself whether their conduct as a leader would be any different.
In my experience, self-serving behavior cloaked as leadership is a sham. It is the stuff of those who have traded integrity for expedience, for egocentric satisfaction, for selfishness. But it is not the stuff of engaging leadership, and it is certainly not the stuff of citizenship.
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. (This is the topic of Tangled Webs: How False Statements Are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff by Pulitzer Prize winning author, James B Stewart).
So many people are at risk of being or are already being swept up with the tide – choosing to act and speak in ways that mirror these public and private figures without pausing to examine the kind of world their words and actions are creating for themselves and for the people around them in their homes, at work, in school, on their teams, in their churches and temples, or among their neighbors.
It takes a strong and steady sense of self at one’s core, and the courage to act and speak from one’s core, to deflect the daily forces that would have us follow a leader who invites, tempts or at worst insists that we deviate from who we are and how we aspire to be in the world.
When all is said and done, we live (today and well into the future) in a world we create by our actions and words. Citizen leadership asks us to be clear on who we are and what we stand for today, and prompts us to speak and act in ways that create the great places where we would want to live, work and play, today and tomorrow.
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. If the evidence supports the latter, I ask myself whether their conduct as a leader would be any different.
In my experience, self-serving behavior cloaked as leadership is a sham. It is the stuff of those who have traded integrity for expedience, for egocentric satisfaction, for selfishness. But it is not the stuff of engaging leadership, and it is certainly not the stuff of citizenship.