Belly up to the Leadership Bar
Our leadership in this country has been suffering a moral decay for many years that has finally passed the point where I can stay quiet.
Let’s start at the top of the food chain: our government leaders. We have a long history of marital infidelity, sex crimes and abuse of power: Just a tiny recent sampling includes President Bill Clinton, Senators John Edwards & John Ensign and Governors Eliot Spitzer & Mark Sanford. Then there is the Mayors Felony Club, which includes Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, and a host of others.
Disgusting, I know. Those of us in business shake our heads. Shame on them, we say. Then we look at our Wall Street leaders, movers and shakers and say, uh-oh. The legislators and politicians aren’t the only ones with shameful behavior. Look at Bernie Madoff, that crook. And there are more like him.
As we’re busy judging them, someone reminds us about Ken Lay and the “smartest guys in the room” at Enron. But it’s not just the leadership there, it’s everywhere in businesses of all kinds: a mini-list of crooked CEOs: Joe Nacchio at Qwest for lying to shareholders, Gregory Reyes of Brocade for illegal backdating, Richard Scrushy of HealthSouth for bribing the governor, and so on.
“Those rich bastard businessmen can’t be trusted. Money just makes them dishonest” you may say. You may be right. So, let’s just depend on professional athletes for our role models. There’s OJ SImpson, Darryl Strawberry, and Michael Vick, and…..woops, I guess not. What about Hollywood? We have Wynona Rider who can afford to pay for everything but would rather steal it, Hugh Grant who was just unlucky when he got caught soliciting a prostitute, and L’il Kim, for conspiracy and lying to the grand jury, just for starters. Well, maybe we can only trust our men of the cloth…..nahh, let’s not even go there. “Hmmmm, I can’t figure out who my kids are supposed to look up to and model! You see, they don’t listen to me. They just do what they want and tell me I’m a hypocrite. My own employees don’t listen to me. All I hear day after day is how they’re entitled to this and that, and the whole time they’re playing video games….I’m lucky if I get 2 hours a day out of the 8 hours I pay them for.” The truth? We’re responsible by our actions, non-actions, and for creating self-fulfilling prophecies by the way we speak about those under our leadership. Shame on us.
It’s time we had a ’Come to Jesus meeting’: WE, (that means you and I) are the leaders who can and will, if we act quickly, make the difference we need to see in our country. It’s time to stop leaving it up to Obama to fix our health care problems, stop leaving it up to the School Board to educate our children, and stop leaving it up to our local law enforcement to keep us safe from the bad guys. What will we leave as behavioral examples for our children’s grandchildren to follow? We’re teaching them “that’s not my problem”. Last time I looked, that wasn’t the slogan of personal accountability.
It starts right here. In the mirror. That’s you. That’s the leader. I don’t care if you are Steve Ballmer or the CEO of your small household and 3 kids. We are all leaders of some kind. We have 2 choices: we can belly up to the bar and accept the challenge, or we can just abdicate our role and continue to see more legal, financial, moral and spiritual failures in our beloved country, thanks to our selfish nature, our greed and gluttony, our addiction to power and perhaps worst of all, our complacency. We will be found guilty as accessories to the crimes because we stood by and did nothing to stop this kind of crap from happening. (Excuse me for saying “crap” ….make that twice now). But crap is crap. That makes four times.
So, what does it mean to belly up to the bar and take the leadership challenge? Well, basically, it means we must be the most disciplined person in the organization. Self-Discipline: regulation of oneself for the sake of improvement . Role Model: a person whose behavior in a particular role is imitated by others.
You see, we inately know that those we lead will imitate our behavior, not what we say. If we are not self-disciplined leaders, we forfeit our leadership, and our followers become weak and begin to follow others instead. They will follow leaders who are strong, magnetic, and appear to have what they want. That’s why and how gangs have become so popular. Sorry, I know I’m adding insult to injury. But I have never been so convinced of anything in my life: our nation has a big problem with its leadership. There are plenty of good people out there, but many are single parents simply trying to survive, and CEOs just trying to keep theircompanies running, and parents just trying to keep their kids out of trouble. Those of us with vision and ability must step forward, bravely look in the mirror at our strengths and our weaknesses and being honest about both, throw our hat in the ring and say “if not me, who? and if not now, when?”
If you have decided to commit to being a leader, one who will stand for what’s right, and help turn this country around, I’d love to hear from you. You will need to be willing to go to any lengths to stand for what’s right. You will risk unpopularity. (Our forefathers risked their lives, so that we could have freedom of speech and not have to risk ours.)
You will need some armour for your leadership journey, so I thought you might like the best armor made, right from Paul, as he sat in a prison cell in Rome: “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the world’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against spiritual forces of evil. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the arrows of evil. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Pray, and be alert.” (Julia’s paraphrase of Ephesians 6:11-18
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things”….Peter F. Drucker
Many of our leaders have not been doing the right things. But we can. And we must. —Coach Julia
Tags: CEO, Christian leadership, courage, Discipline, Ethical leadership, Executive leadership, Leaders, Leadership, mentor, mentoring, Patriotism, Personal Responsibility, responsibility, role modeling, role models, Self-Discipline, True Leaders
July 29th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Thank you Julia for another great post and call to action. I for one get irritated when I talk with executives or managers about sustainability. Usually, they give me a core dump about all of the initiatives that have or are planning (mostly planning). One line manager at a local Beaverton company told me that her company was “Green” long before it was fashionable. My ears perked up and I asked about what they were doing to be so “Green”. She said “recycle cardboard” - they were one of the “first”. When I broke it to her that Beaverton was now requiring businesses of her company’s size to recycle much more than just cardboard, she became offended! By stating that fact, I had struck a nerve. In fact she was not demonstrating the transparency required to show that her company was on a sustainable path. Her position was old and out dated yet she stuck to it. As I left, I introduced myself to several employees asking them about how they liked working for such a “green” company. The first question they asked was “are you working with our company?” When I said no, they said “you should be”. What kind of a leadership was this line manager demonstrating? What great opportunities was this company missing? Was this the type of leadership that permeated throughout the company? I know that this company has other “green” initiatives, but what good does it do if their executives, managers, employees, customers, vendors…don’t know about it. It begs the questions - why are they doing it? and are they really doing all they can do? It could very well be Green Washing.
I close my personal email with “I practice sustainable principles daily because this life on Earth isn’t just my life. ©Ken Hiatt” - so must we all adopt a similar line of thought to take a stand. I understand the risk of taking a stand and that the alternative is much riskier. I take my stand for what is right because it is what I must do. I must do it with integrity and transparency. My family, my friends, my business, my country and my planet demand it!
My best,
Ken Hiatt
August 3rd, 2009 at 9:28 am
Ken,
I understand completely. When we are “convicted” that we are not measuring up, it becomes uncomfortable. Those in leadership have to begin to be open to feeling uncomfortable and asking the question “What part do I have in this?” I was really proud of our pastor at Village (on Murray in Beaverton) recently, when he preached his first “green sermon” for lack of a better way to describe it, and how we, as Christians have been missing the boat, and I would love you to listen to it. I think he was spot on. The question now is who will step up and lead the charge? I thought of you right away, even though you do not attend our church, I think this is a great message, biblically basedf as to why we all have a responsibility in this direction. Check it out at http://www.vbconline.org/vbc/sermons . It is the July 25-26 sermon on earth keeping. There you will find the sermon itself in document form, questions, exercises, the MP3 file, or stream. Let me know what you think. I would love to talk with you about how to take it from here.
Love and hugs, Ken.
You are a great role model and a great leader. Keep up the good fight.
julia