[October 22, 2014] With political elections coming up in the United States and many countries over the next month, I will find plenty to write about here. Sure enough, politicians running for office are providing plenty of fodder for us to see how senior leaders are performing. I’m resisting making the Leader Wall only about politicians, so included this week are a few others you might not have heard about. So, here it is … more senior leaders who speak their mind Note.
The following are the failures.
- H. Kim Bottomly, President of Wellesley College, said that “Gender identity is a complex matter, and the national discourse on this subject is evolving.” 1 Wellesley College is a private women’s liberal-arts college in Massachusetts. Bottomly commented because her college is in the middle of a controversy over what happens when “women become men.” She never answered the question or fully addressed the issue. She wrote her alumni stating that she looks “forward to the conversation.” If an issue is a moral one with no easy answer, a leader needs to provide guidance and reassurance on it, not empty words.
- Greg Orman, businessman running as an Independent for Senate in the State of Kansas, was walking in a parade, shaking hands, and asking people to vote for him. Orman walked up to a woman sitting on the sidelines of the parade who had called out his name. She wanted to know his position on abortion. He told her his position was on his website where he notes that it’s “time for the government to move past this issue.”2 The woman said that was too typical of Orman’s position on a variety of issues. “It seems like he’s taking a position while trying to not take a position,” she said. Leaders need to be clear about where they stand on issues and not try to avoid taking a stand that may be controversial.
- Special runner-up in the failure department is Monica Lewinsky, former White House intern with whom President Bill Clinton had an “inappropriate relationship.” She is not a leader but this was too good to pass up. She blamed the Drudge Report (a popular news website) for ruining her life. She blames her humiliation on everybody except for the married President with whom she had sexual relations. “Overnight, I went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one. I was Patient Zero.”3 President Clinton had no comment. This was a case of blaming her immoral and unethical behavior on someone else because she got caught.
And now for the list of successes.
- Chris Christie, Governor of the State of New Jersey and possible U.S. President contender, said the “experiment” of promoting a lawmaker to president has failed—and argued that Republicans must nominate a governor in 2016. He said, “We have had an experiment of a legislator who has never run anything getting on-the-job training in the White House. It has not been pretty.”4 One way of showing leadership is by being both clear and blunt. When Christie talks about President Obama, he managed to offend many but got across his point that to be successful as a politician by getting voter’s attention, it is important to sometimes offend them.
- Tim Fitch, former St.Louis County Police Chief, made a few comments about the killing of a black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Fitch says he thinks the “feds” recognize that it’s “probably very unlikely” that there’s going to be charges against Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. Fitch calls the information from the federal investigation coming out in phases to “coordinate leaks to the media, and to start getting some of the facts out there to kind of let people down slowly.”5 Leaders state the truth even when it may cause a problem and in this case it probably will.
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[Note] Recall that my intent is to write enough about the issue at hand to have the reader see that this person failed or succeeded in meeting basic leader traits. All information occurred within the last week. Below are references to the above senior leader quotes.
[1] http://www.wellesley.edu/news/journalists/presskits/statement
[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/kansas-senate-race-pat-roberts-v-greg-orman-2014-10
[3] http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/monica-lewinsky-drudge-ruined-my-life