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 »
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.… Read more »
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.… Read more »
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.… Read more »
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.… Read more »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »