And to think I registered myself as an Independent recently so I could feel comfortable about voting Republican this time around!
With this casting away of Trump in mind, of course, we join countless others hoping that the citizens of our country will, when election day comes, hold a clear enough vision in their minds of what genuine, exceptional leadership looks and feels like to defeat the prospect of this man as president, once and for all.
It is not my way to spend much time on negativity, no more than is necessary is my personal policy. So I won’t spend undue effort addressing the whys and wherefores of not liking Trump, and all he is representing in the persona he stages. Suffice it to say – enough is enough! So, like many others, I am praying that enough like-minded people will make their voices heard at the polls to demonstrate the quality and personal character for which we are yearning to lead this great country of ours. And that it will not be Trump!
What else can a sane person do?
The challenge is a bit like managing the intrusion of the stink bugs that seem to have awakened recently in my house!
With this in mind, I turned my attention to what I most admire in leadership values and styles. At New Horizons we call this the “Exceptional Leader” who, of course, is adept at helping to guide others to build and sustain “Exceptional Communities.” Be they the smallest constituencies of the nuclear family or as large as the world stage.
Jack, my radio show co-host, and I have, thus, begun to generate discussions on this theme of leadership the whole of March. As we delve into the topic it looks as if we might have enough to talk about here to last us for a good while.
If leadership is on your mind, as it is on ours as presidential election campaigning takes more and more space on center stage these days, as it is now doing, I encourage you to listen in to our radio shows on leadership on live broadcast or after the fact on podcast. And, even more energetically, join us on our Coffee House by Conference Call Forum immediately following our broadcasts.
I think Jack and I are offering an open door to personal and shared exploration of what “Leadership In A Sea of Controversy;” the sea we are currently swimming in these days, is at its higher end. What does top quality leadership look like and feel like? What does it produce when it is offered as “art” which is exactly what the U.S.A deserves. It is not Trump!
So join Jack and I on this week’s show titled Leadership Role Models – A Personal Story
Thursday, March 31
6:30 p.m.
Also on podcast
I will be telling a personal story on this program, illustrating the kind of leadership Jack and I have been referencing. Based on the thinking of my dear friend, now deceased, Rabbi Edwin Friedman, which Jack and I have been recently discussing, it will be a story of a very ordinary man, my father, In his various role as a parent, a businessman, president of our synagogue and a leader in many endeavors of the larger civic community within which I grew up, I saw leadership of a highly refined level in simple, everyday terms.
Reflecting on the radio show themes Jack and I have been presenting I realize that I experienced exceptional leadership characteristics in my father as I was growing up. Especially when he faced the most daunting challenges of his life with the kind of dignity I wish always to embody. I was blessed to have my father as a role model.
Today is his birthday. Had my father lived he would be one hundred and three years old. He has, unfortunately, been gone now for forty years. Some of the best gifts he left behind for me as a legacy are that which he gave me through my just being by his side as he encountered life, simply and so exceptionally.
When I think of it now I see that my father did leadership as an art without ever giving it a second thought beyond just being who and what he was as best he knew how.
