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 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 »
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 »
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 »
Eagle Scout Zach Wahls challenged the Boy Scouts of America’s anti-gay policy in May 2012 when he delivered three boxes of petitions demanding change, signed by more than 275,000 people.
Inspired by the story of Jennifer Tyrrell, a den mother forced to resign from her seven-year-old son’s Cub Scout pack because of her sexual orientation, and the groundswell of support she has received since, Mr.… Read more »
… Read more »There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.
My thanks go out to Marcia Yerman for this article that emerged from our conversation about my book, The Citizen Leader, and the everyday application of its many ideas in families and in the community.
Posted on The Huffington Post on April 4, 2012, Ms. Yerman begins:
As the 2012 election fills the news cycle with a mixture of information and noise, many people will tune in and some will opt out.… Read more »
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 »