True leadership—rooted in integrity, communication, and accountability—is rare today, but it’s exactly what our country needs now more than ever. Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)
What every successful civilization needs is leaders. “Leadership is defined as the ability of an individual or group to influence and guide others towards achieving shared goals. It involves aligning people in a collective direction and enabling them to work together effectively. Key characteristics of good leaders include vision, communication, integrity and the ability to inspire others.” So what does it take to be a leader? To me it includes the following traits:
- Act like you speak: The opposite of that is being a hypocrite and, among other things, my sister and I were raised by our parents to believe that “God hates hypocrites.” Thus I would never be inspired by a such a person. But not enough people focus on that.
- Communicate by explaining your understanding of what various problems are, how the various people are affected by them and discuss proposed approaches to resolving those problems before you take action
whenever possible. - Ask non-confrontational questions, and then listen and ponder when others respond: Leaders show that they care about all people and want to do the right things for the right reasons. So they are non-confrontational unless they have defined some problem areas in which people are acting selfishly and outside of the law.
- Pursue accountability at all levels of society, most importantly including yourself. Be selective about areas in which you choose to take a stand.
So why bring this subject up in this 2 Paragraphs series? Because I really don’t see many leaders in our country today at any level of government. Do you? Instead, the people “pulling the switches” seem intent upon further polarizing our society by pitting one group of people against another. So my answer to this situation is for all of us to try to act as leaders, teach our children and grandchildren to do the same, and seek out and applaud those in government when they do act as leaders as we have defined it. It’s probably the only way that this situation will ever change — for the better. In other words: “If it’s to be it’s up to me.”
P.S. Enclosed is an article about my two musicals that our 2 Paragraphs
Family Member Steve Downing wrote for “The Beachcomber,” which is published
every other week in Long Beach. Thank you Steve, and if some of you can
use it in your efforts please feel free!
(The rule of “i before e except after c” has been disproved by science.)