Leadership
Encouraging Words and Leaders Who Encourage
Do you ever have a day when you know you need some encouraging words? Today is one of them for me. So may irons in the fire, anxious with waiting for them to come to fruition, feeling like sometimes hard work doesn’t pay. You know. We’ve all been there.
So I want to share two antidotes that are encouraging to me. First is Women’s eNews big fundraising dinner tonight honoring 21 Leaders for the 21st Century. This event produces enough positive energy to levitate our spirits to the sky and fuel our collective passion for bettering the lives of women everywhere. Be sure to read all these amazing, inspiring women’s stories.
One especially close to my heart are my friendMaria Luisa Sanchez Fuentes, head of the Mexican reproductive rights advocacy group GIRE that has led the successful effort to decriminalize abortion in Mexico City based on human rights legal principles
Read MoreHow Do You Grade Obama’s First 100 Days?
Tired of the routine 100 days analyses? Salon asked a wildly diverse compendium of opinionated pontificators, including me, to grade the president’s foreign policy, economic policy, and overall performance. Oh, in 200 words. Check ’em out.
How do you grade him? Please share your thoughts by clicking on comments below Here’s the report card I sent to Salon; they cut my last, and best (IMHO), paragraph:
Read MoreAfter Obama’s Presser: “Simply” Forward to the Next 100 Days
Really I’m not single-minded.
I watched every minute of President Obama’s 100 Days Press Conference (transcript here). I was enchanted by the reporter who asked Obama what had “enchanted, troubled, surprised, and humbled” him since taking office. Even though a quick wit said that sounded like a Facebook quiz, I thought it livened up the other, more predictable questions.
The answer I liked best was what surprised him, as reported in the Los Angeles Times:
“I am surprised, compared to where I started, by the number of critical issues coming to a head all at the same time.” When he first starting running for office, Iraq was dominant. The economy was an issue. “Obviously I did not anticipate the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.” So unlike new administrations that deal with three big issues, he says, his has about eight to address.
It was delivered with a sense of humor, making light of the many problems on his plate and eliciting gentle laughter. The laughter at these events always sounds gentle. No big guffaws. More of a gentlepersonly acknowledgment that something humorous has been said that makes the president more human.
Obama observed that every generation faces challenges and we will meet ours. This reminded me of the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir’s observation that every generation finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values. That thought was still in my mind when Obama was asked the inevitable torture question and he invoked Winston Churchill’s objections to using torture because it wasn’t in keeping with Britain’s values. Waterboarding is torture, he said, and he acknowledged that the U.S. had waterboarded. This is huge. No compromise there.
I was about to turn into a little puddle of warm butter over this amazing man–his intellect, grasp of the issues, candor, sense of ethics.
But then came this exchange with Ed Henry, and I snapped out of it. Really, I’m not single-minded but old habits die hard, and I couldn’t help but pay special attention:
Read MoreHow to Squander Your Leadership Position
As if a year with William Kristol on the op ed page of the New York Times wasn’t bad enough, now they’ve hired conservative pipsqueek Ross Douthat. At least Kristol had some life experience to draw upon.
If the liberal-leaning paper is seeking that elusive “balance” thinking it will attract more readers onto its old media ship that’s listing dangerously in these choppy new media seas, they should think again. First of all, liberal columnists to a fault already explore all sides of any issue they are writing about. They love being provocative and stirring up debate. Second, if the Times’ core readers are to the center-left, well, maybe they ought to concentrate on doing a really great job of appealing to them rather than alienating them.
Read MoreLeadership in Action in the Search for Human Origins
Monday I had the opportunity to attend the amazing Origins Symposium at Arizona State University. It was quite stunning to see that even in the midst of economic crisis, big, bold thinking goes on and big, bold visions are being turned into reality. Check out this video with an eye to these three examples of leadership in action:
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/4051690[/vimeo]
First is ASU professor Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist and theoretical physicist who conceptualized the symposium and provided the organizing energy behind it. Second is ASU president Michael Crow discussing his vision for the university of the future. Third but not at all least, you’ll see a speech by the renowned theoretical physicist and author of one of the most popular science books ever written, A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking. The speech had to be delivered via video from his hospital room because he was too ill to attend the symposium. The space science he discusses is intriguing of course. But in the context of leadership, Hawking’s courage, persistence, and indomitable commitment to use the faculties he has rather than being defined by his disabilities offer the most powerful lessons.
The full video archive can be viewed here.
Read MoreWriting History Forward–Who Will Lead?
Have been intending to blog about this fascinating intergenerational feminist convocation since I took the D train out to Brooklyn last Saturday after enjoying dim sum in Chinatown with my 30-something cousin Elizabeth. (She calls me “Auntie G” because of our age difference. Thus the day started out with an intergenerational theme; food if nothing else transcends the generations.)
Asking just what transcends and what divides the generations were a galaxy of feminist stars, moderated (if such a thing is possible with feisty feminists) by the ever-engaging Laura Flanders, “Women’s Visions for the Nation: What’s It Going to Take?”, the Saturday speakout showcased the intergenerational feminist think tank, Unfinished Business. The occasion marked and was sponsored by the 2nd anniversary of the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art.
NB: Sackler established the center at the Brooklyn Museum, and if you have not been out there to see the extraordinary wing where Judy Chicago’s famed feminist history review “The Dinner Party” is permanently installed–run, don’t walk. (Oh, and don’t forget to change to the 2/3 at Atlantic Ave.) You are in for a treat and I for one am immensely grateful for this treasure of a place, and for Elizabeth Sackler’s commitment to fostering the future of feminist thought, art, and action.
Read MorePow! Bam! Comic Books on Today’s Women Leaders Pack a Strong Message
Superheroines, Quemosabe! If art imitates life and pop culture depicts contemporary life most real and raw, then these new Female Force comic books deliver a powerful message that women in top political leadership have truly saturated our cultural consciousness. Embedded video from CNN Video There’s irony in that Female Force’s creators at Bluewater Productions are male,…
Read MoreObama and the Creation of Meaning
Check out this Wordle graphic of President Obama’s “not the state of the union” speech to Congress last night.
American, economy, health, every, people, plan, new, energy, education, Americans, America, recovery, also. These were the top words used. We didn’t hear as many specifics as we might have yearned for–or as the markets this morning indicate they were looking for–but the memes were as comforting as a warm bath after a 10 mile hike in the snow.
Obama’a speech was rhetorically excellent, his energetic delivery infectious, his vision sufficiently elevating to loosen up a worried and somewhat paralyzed nation and persuade us to consider new solutions.
“It’s not about helping banks but about helping people” was a great applause line, striking exactly the right note even though we know in our hearts that we are helping banks too. I perked up when he said, “The cost of health care keeps going up. Yet we keep delaying reform.” Has he taken on Clinton’s position that we need a universal health care plan? I dared to hope so, for incremental change won’t work and Obama has in the past tended toward the incremental fixes on this important issue.
Read MoreIncremental v Transformational Leadership Exemplified in the Stimulus Package
President Obama’s 787 billion dollar economic stimulus package is an important step forward. It shores up, pumps us, cheers up. It’s going to give relief to many low-and moderate-income families and help states avert drastic shortfalls in their budgets while saving major institutions. These are not small matters.
But courageous leadership isn’t just incremental. The New Deal was transformational. It changed government structure while building national infrastructure. Barack Obama was swept into office in large part because voters saw him as a visionary who could transform and take the nation to qualitatively greater heights. Read more thoughts on why good enough is on for now, but not transformational leadership.
Read MoreThe Shoulders We Stand On
Leadership is about action. A leader is someone who gets things done. But no one does it alone. This touching video reflects on some of the most courageous leaders in American history and how each stood on the shoulders of those who went before them.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-0NvkuPHZI[/youtube]
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