Be the Person You'd Want to Follow
Citizen Leadership is:
Character and courage: Men, women, young adults and teens getting clear on who they are and how they want to be in the world, so they act and speak with authenticity and with the courage of their convictions day in and day out, in private and public – at home, in school, at work, in their club, in church and temple, on a team, in a troop, in the support group, in the neighborhood.… Read more »
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 values about how we will act and interact with one another, we strengthen our bond as a community.… Read more »
Community values are the promises you and the members of your community make to one another about how you will act and interact with one another as you go about your daily lives.
Let’s consider whether you are indeed living with integrity in your community as you go about your daily life and activities.
Integrity is, first and foremost, living from the core.… Read more »
Living with integrity in your community, that is, acting from your core — adhering to your own set of values — is most challenging when one or more of your community’s values offends, prompts or, worse, insists that you violate your own.
How do you handle it when one (or more) of the shared values of your community seems to be at odds with yours?… Read more »
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 »
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 values 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 »
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 personal values (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 »
Consider this bit of wisdom: The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing!
Now let’s put it to use: If the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, what’s the main thing?
If the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, what are the main principles that will guide your actions?… Read more »
All judgment aside, I’ve grown to accept that cheating is probably part of the human condition – good, bad or indifferent. Sometimes we are the ones who are doing the cheating. Sometimes we are the ones being cheated. Either way, cheating eventually (if not immediately) injures both the cheater and the cheated.
While the severity of injury caused by cheating depends on the circumstances — superficial, shallow, profound, grave — no repeated injury is harmless.… Read more »
Character is the embodiment and the expression of our values. It is who we are on the inside, and what we show on the outside. Our values are the promises we make to ourselves about how we will behave, both in private and in the world at large. When we live up to those promises — when we act consistently with what it is we say we stand for, and consistently deliver on our promises (even when no one else is looking) — we are living in personal integrity.… Read more »