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 »
Category: Peter’s Perspective
Let’s Leave, They’re Only a Buck Fifty at Safeway
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 Terror, Tyranny and Cowardice
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 »
Peter’s Perspective: Letter to Lady Gaga offering support for her Born This Way Foundation
Dear Lady Gaga,
I am writing to you in your capacity as champion of the Born This Way Foundation to make you aware of The Citizen Leader as a potential tool to use in your foundation’s mission to empower youth and inspire bravery. The Citizen Leader: Be the Person You’d Want to Follow is a guide to help young adults and teens be authentic and courageous and to make an uncompromising and unapologetic commitment to a set of personal core principles that speak to who they are, how they aspire to be, and the kind of world they want to live in.… Read more »
Peter’s Perspective: Letter to Mrs. Obama on the President’s Decision Not to Protect LGBT Federal Contractors
Dear Mrs. Obama,
Please have a stern talk with your husband about the importance of living by one’s values. He seems to be losing sight. Two days ago, he signaled that he will not issue an Executive Order that would protect men and women who work for Federal contractors from either being discriminated against in hiring or being fired because they are gay or lesbian.… Read more »
Peter’s Perspective: Legacy
My grandfather came over on the boat from Sicily at the age of 20, landed at Ellis Island in New York Harbor on April 30, 1900, settled among his Italian relatives in Brooklyn and set up shop as a barber. Four years later, he married a Sicilian farm girl, newly arrived in America from his home village of Juliana in the mountains above Palermo.… Read more »
Peter’s Perspective: The Main Thing is to Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing
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 »
Peter’s Perspective: Cheating Yourself, Cheating Others
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 »
Peter’s Perspective: What We Choose is Who We Are
I too am shocked and sickened by Rick Perry’s divisive tone and bigoted words in his Christmas campaign commercial for the Presidency. (As of this writing, YouTube “dislikes” are outnumbering “likes” by a count of 40:1).
Perry reveals a character that resorts to maligning and marginalizing minorities as a show of strength. He is really no different than the racists who denigrate African-Americans, the skinheads who slander Jews, and the bullies who mock Americans with disabilities.… Read more »
Peter’s Perspective: Obstacle to Citizen Leadership – “The Ends Justify the Means”
The Ends Justify the Means
While we do not lack for role models who share and demonstrate what it means to consistently live by guiding principles, there is also a fair share of public personalities whose demonstrate the opposite – whose primary guiding principle seems to be the ends justify the means (whatever it takes, or whatever I can get away with).… Read more »