We learn by doing, by watching, by experimenting, and finally by some type of reflection or reinforcement. Then what happens when the senior leaders (military, corporate and political) set a bad example especially when our society, our culture define them as successful?
Now, believe me this is not a political blog. My blog deals with leadership and how to develop and nurture adaptability; but, I cannot hold my tongue as I continue to watch our political candidates for President of the United States “pander” to the voters-telling them what they want to hear vice what they need to hear. I also believing in using real-world examples in how to or not how to develop leaders.
I find this disturbing. While not a “chicken little the sky is falling,’ I am a realist, a obsessive reader of other disciplines (which may influence leadership) as well as constantly asking why?
Why does our nation face catastrophic issues, with energy, food, overpopulation that are now impacting our standard of living, security and thus our freedom under the Constitution. But it seems the nation, through the media, is more concerned with a lapel pin a candidate is wearing or what Paris Hilton or Britney Spears is up too. On top of that, while the economy is listed by many voters as the number one priority, it appears that no one gets to the causes and then the hard to hear fixes, the latest example is the “gas tax holiday.” Instead of telling people that we are somewhere on the verge of “oil peaking”(see Fabius Maximus’s great analysis of this), that demand is climbing dramatically due to growing economies and populations, the politicians focus on trying to keep the price low for the short term instead of how to fix the issue for the long term.
I saw a political cartoon on Monday that said it well. It was a picture of a political candidate, none in particular, but at the podium saying “We have some hard issues that our nation face, and it is going to take some tough decisions that will cause sacrifices, but it will make us stronger in the long term.” Below the caption and the candidate was a small profile of a person in the crowd saying “would we vote for someone this blunt and honest.” And someone else replied, “yes.”
I hope this is true, and not a rerun of what occurred in 1979 when President Jimmy Carter had the moral courage (a key component of strength of character) to tell the American people that we had to change our habits in regards to our addiction to foreign oil. It took a lot for a strategic leader to say this, and provide a course of action. But, there was a huge backlash through the corporate controlled media that people did not want to be told how to live their lives. Today’s politicians have paid heed too, and that is why I call them “cheerleaders.” Of course, this only went along with other issues Carter had to deal with like a sagging economy and the Iran hostage crisis.
The sad fact is that in no time in history has more information been available, along with the right type of people and the technology to solve our biggest issues. But it continually seems that ideology trumps intelligence, or greed trumps intelligence.
Before you have adaptability, you must have strength of character.
Below are questions that I will address as part of leader and adaptability development over the next few weeks.
Why is almost everyone lacking strength of character?
What happened to everyone, where did they go all of a sudden?
Is political correctness the new rule, is that the reason for this lack of strength of character?
If it is, well I say that is no excuse, rather it is a reason to press on, take some hits, tell it like it is and move the ball down the field for the common good, using reality as your guide. Can you look yourself in the mirror every day because you did something that went beyond yourself, something you did for others that was positive?
Why then did everyone turn off, stop caring and why are they setting for a life of mediocrity?
We can do better than this really; how so you ask?
The establishing guide, objective, goal, cornerstone and the foundation to any institution, organization or individual that develops leadership has to be developing leaders of character.
Here is my favorite definition of strength of character-”A leader that seeks out responsibility and has a fondness for responsiblity as well as the making and standing by their decisions in the face of the enemy, peers and superiors.”
This was a subject I revisit daily with myself (am I doing the right things?, setting the example?) and with my students (how to develop their strength of character and moral courage? what good examples can I give or show them to continue their development?).
One of the tools (among many in the adaptive leader methodology) that I use to help develop character is TDGs. In February 2006 Performance Improvement magazine, I published an article “From Swift to Swiss: Tactical Decision Games and their place in Military Education and Performance Improvement.” In TDGs students would have to demonstrate their character by justifying and defending their decisions in the face of their peers (other students) and superiors (teacher). This is just one, but an effective tool when facilitated correctly to build strength of character in our emerging young leaders.
I don’t know what the solution is to switch our senior leaders from “cheer leaders” back to making tough decisions and then communicating them to the rest of us. I know I would follow them if they did. Hopefully, my fellow citizens will wake up soon, and start demanding leaders of character.
Don your on the money with this topic of character. I teach veteran police officers each week and the topic of character, trust and truth come up constantly. Political correctness has run so far out of the normal realm of reasonableness, thats it is down to the the individual level. No one confronts issues anymore even in simple organizational problems that could be constructively resolved through simple communication about whatever the issue is. Instead the issue or problem between two individuals is carried out to extremes “behind the scenes” through whispers. Instead of situation resolved, it escalates to a more major problem.
I was in a class on terrorism a few years back and the instructors were Israeli. They had on the PowerPoint screen in BOLD words POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WILL GET YOU KILLED! I thought how true! Not only can the lack of character kill organizations, relationships, States and Nations. It can cost people their lives… Whats the cost of “anything goes?” Answer: Character goes with it!
What happened to integrity and truth? Tell me the truth, I may not initially like it, but I will be the better for it, in the long run!
re: “But it seems the nation, through the media, is more concerned with a lapel pin a candidate is wearing . . ”
A basic skill of successful politicians is to gently re-frame provocative questions into a form that will support a smooth segue into their one of their talking points. I don’t see why more pols, when confronted with the umpteenth lapel pin or guilt-by-association dig or don’t confront their interviewers in a similar way and suggest they start asking about things that matter to people. It sure would be refreshing.
WRT political correctness, although it is the left that is accused of this more vocally, I believe the right’s use of it tends to have more insidious consequences. The Bush-Cheney-Rove cabal carefully built a narrative that conflated the 9/11 attacks with Iraq and its alleged WMD and was used to suppress debate and dissent in the run-up to the Iraq fiasco. Look where that has gotten us.
Similarly, one of the seldom-remarked upon drivers of the Vietnam morass was the political correctness inspired by the witch-hunts of the late 40s and early 50s that made it career suicide for national security bureaucrats in the late 50s and early 60s to suggest that the Vietnam insurrection might be anything other than pure communist subversion. It definitely was communist-led subversion, the people leading it were ruthless bastards, and subsequent history has shown that the success of the revolution was a disaster for the Vietnamese people. But the faith-based vs. fact-based strategic thinking that sucked the US into that morass prevented us from taking into consideration the burden of Vietnam’s colonial history, how we would inevitably inherit that burden with our intervention, and how we might play the situation to exacerbate the emerging split between the USSR and China, of which it was a bad career move to speak its name, instead of mitigating it by the way we involved ourselves in the Vietnam war.
Chuck,
I am going to talk more about the impact of what you provided good insights to in future blog comments in how to build and sustain strength of character.
Thanks for you good comments. Reference your great example about strategic leaders and the State Department, is one of the reasons I do what I do. It seems like nurturing strength of character is an exception vice the rule in almost any organization, maybe it is human nature as well as the corruption that has infiltrated into our culture.
Don
Political correctness is no accident. I’m posting the link to a very informative film created by Bill Lind on the history of political correctness. If your truly someone who likes to ask “why,” this film has the answer. Its only 22 minutes so check it out.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8630135369495797236&q=origin+of+political+correctness&ei=J4wjSPraD4WqrwKmj6XCAg
It is not so much an issue of “strength of character” as “the force is not with them.”
The inability of politicians to address hard issues, which you well describe, is a symptom of a deeper problem with the American body politic as a whole.
Because of globalization, the band of the North American continent known as the United States is becoming more and more of a geographic expression and less and less of a coherent social unit.
This is particularly the case with the economy where events overseas have massive impacts domestically while traditional tools of fiscal and monetary policy become less and less effective.
The simple point is that the viewpoint from Washington, D.C. , is becoming a less and less well focused perspective from which to address the various problems that confront us. Trying to solve problems federally is increasingly the proverbial pounding a round peg into the round hole of our social reality. And no amount of “strength of character” can change that.
Duncan,
Good points, and I agree. In the 4th Generation Warfare world, state are becoming less and less relevant. But, I still think the leader of our nation needs to point out and at least guide the powers to be in the right direction.
I am also in agreement that we have to rely less on a massive Federal beauracracy to fix all of our problems, and decentralize to the local level. With Federal solutions come larger beauracracies, more regulations, more taxes for small results.
Thanks again, Don
A large part of my career was immigration law enforcement. One of the things that kept us at it was the thought that some day the American people and enough of their representatives would realize the consequences that unrestricted, agenda-driven mass immigration can have. This, of course, being an issue I was most familiar with; but there were and are plenty of other things badly in need of adult management.
Most of the times I have guessed wrong it was in the area of thinking that each of these cases carried a threshold beyond which a cold light of reality would dawn, and finally (!) substantive political decisions and actions would be taken.
I’m not so sure that I believe that anymore. There is sufficient irrationality, denial, and greed (dare we say it–evil?) out there to take us over the occasional cliff with our eyes wide open and foot to the floor.
Character hardly innoculates against all of this, but it certainly has made all the difference often enough in history to warrant first place in any efforts at education.
Plato in his “Republic” thought so. He was right then, and he is right now.
Let’s hope that we can find enough of it in our culture to work our way out of the maze.