"Being a leader is a hard job – maybe the hardest job there is, but once you've chosen it you have a moral obligation to be your best self." Paul Weiand
If you are unfamiliar with Frederick Douglass, spend some time to get to know him. A slave who had been taught to read against the wishes of his former master, he escaped to the North. He recreated himself, becoming a self-taught, self-made leader within the abolitionist movement leading up to the Civil War. He was a leader, orator, author, and conscience of a young nation struggling with the truth about itself. Abraham Lincoln sought his counsel, and, yielding to no man, Frederick Douglas spoke truth to the man who would set his people free.
There is a biography of Fredrick Douglass, written by David Blight. I have it on audiobook and it is 37 hours long. Reading/listening to this book will change and expand your perception of who we are as a nation. In spite of everything he experienced – slavery and northern racism, Frederick Douglas loved the ideals of America, saw it as his country, and would not let our ancestors settle for lives of ignorance and hypocrisy. He rebuked with truth and passion and helped make our nation better, in spite of itself. His life reminds me of the admonition found in Proverbs and the video link that follows below demonstrates the power of his arguments that was difficult for audiences in the two decades before the Civil War to hear.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult; whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse. Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you. Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still; teach a righteous man and he will add to his learning. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
We – all of us, but especially the young – need around us individuals who possess a certain nobility, a largeness of soul, and qualities of human excellence worth imitating and striving for.
“The world often supports the notion of the strong natural leader as one who fits the following profile:
1. Visionary
2. Action-oriented, or, moved to be moving
3. Courageous
4. Energetic
5. Objective-oriented, rather than people-oriented
6. Paternalistic
7. Egocentric
8. Intolerant of incompetence in others
9. Indispensable
The consequences to an organization that fosters this view is that it has a whole lot of people just holding on for dear life while this guy is rampaging through his fantasy.’
Edwin H. Friedman discusses imaginative grid-lock in his 1996 program Reinventing Leadership.
“Similar to the imaginative gridlock of medieval Europe, contemporary American society is also stuck in its thinking. The same kind of bold and imaginative leadership that was provided by adventurous navigators such as Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, and Vasco da Gama, and that led to the full flowering of the Renaissance, is what is required today if American civilization is to emerge from its doldrums and overcome its seemingly intractable social problems. Central to this thesis is that when any relationship system is imaginatively grid-locked, it cannot get unstuck merely through more, or harder, thinking about the problem, but rather must adventure into unfamiliar realms. Only in this way can it encounter the kind of serendipitous experience that the mind can never prefigure or anticipate. It follows logically that a society that is focused on safety will most likely remain stuck in its imaginative gridlock.”
“Indeed, the conventional ways that we go about trying to understand human relationships today may be as misguided as was the Europeans’ medieval view of heaven and earth. From the perspective of most leadership programs’ understanding of human phenomena, the world is still flat.”
“More than a view of realty is at stake here, however. The very emphasis in our civilization on data, method, technique, and social science categories serves to undercut a leader’s confidence in the uniqueness of his or her own personal being. And all of this is occurring at a time when what our civilization needs most are leaders with a bold sense of adventure. For, with regard to both families and institutions, perhaps even the entire nation, our chronically anxious civilization (1) inhibits well-differentiated leaders from emerging and (2) wears down those who do.”
When a system – civilization, family, organization, team, etc. – is stuck, it cannot get unstuck by more thinking but only through adventure or encountering serendipity.
Society now seems more focused on safety than adventure.
Characteristics of “stuck” or highly anxious systems (families, organizations, societies)
high level of reactivity or automatic responses
herding instinct – togetherness more important than separateness or self-definition
blaming is paramount – blaming within and without
quick-fix mentality sets in – linear causes for problems are sought rather than recognizing the interaction of many components; looking for certainty rather than adventure
Effective leaders must deal with these characteristics.
Barriers to Effective Leadership
The fallacy of Expertise – emphasis on expertise and information rather than on understanding emotional process and having confidence in one’s own intuition
The Fallacy of Empathy – the most dependent members of a system set the agenda; feeling with people does not promote insight for unmotivated people; organisms that lack self-regulation cannot learn from their experience
The Fallacy of the Self – overlooking the importance of the self; chronic anxiety is only reducible when there are non-anxious leaders who are able to stay in touch with people while holding to their convictions; letting go of control is very important; it is more important to know where one “is” than where one is “going.”
Becoming a self-differentiated leader:
Qualities of Leadership
Vision – capacity to see things differently than others
Uncommon Persistence
Stamina – capacity to deal with mutiny
Self-regulation in the face of sabotage
“Self-differentiated leadership is about the capacity of a leader to maintain his or her self while still remaining connected, a balance that no one does well but all can learn to do better. Self-differentiation in a leader is about the capacity to see things differently, to persist boldly in the face of resistance, to be willing to be vulnerable, to learn to endure (if not come to love) solitude, and to muster up the self-regulation that is necessary when a leader’s initiative inevitably triggers sabotage.”
“In his book Leadership as an Art, Max De Pree, chairman of the board and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., tells a story:
‘Dr. Carl Frost, a good friend and adviser to our company, tells a story of his experience in Nigeria during the late sixties.
Electricity had just been brought into the village where he and his family were living. Each family got a single light in its hut. A real sign of progress. The trouble was that at night, though they had nothing to read and many of them did not know how to read, the families would sit in their huts in awe of this wonderful symbol of technology.
The light bulb watching began to replace the customary nighttime gatherings by the tribal fire, where the tribal storytellers, the elders, would pass along the history of the tribes. The tribe was losing its history in the light of a few electric bulbs.’
According to Max DePree this story illustrates what can happen to a group if it loses its ‘tribal storytellers.’ According to him, the penalty for failing to listen is that the group will lose its history and the key values that bind them together. Without the continuity of storytelling and the messages they contain from the leadership of the group, the people of any tribe or corporation will ‘forget who they are.’” — exert from Leading with Stories
Comments made by Abraham Lincoln to a friend and advisor during his race against Stephen Douglas for the Presidency.
“Here are twenty-three ministers of different denominations, and all of them are against me but three…” “I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see a storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me – and I think He has – I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but the truth is everything. I know I am right because I know liberty is right, for Christ teaches it and Christ is God. I have told them that ‘a house divided against itself cannot stand’ and Christ and reason say the same; and they will find it so. Douglas don’t care whether slavery is voted up or voted down, but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care; and with God’s help I shall not fail. I may not see the end, but it will come, and I will be vindicated; and these men will find that they have not read their Bibles aright.”
“Running is a road to self-awareness and self-reliance…you can push yourself to extremes and learn the harsh reality of your physical and mental limitations or coast quietly down a solitary path watching the earth spin beneath your feet. But when you are through, exhilarated and exhausted, at least for a moment everything seems right with the world.”
Excerpt From Theodore Roosevelt’s “CITIZENSHIP IN A REPUBLIC” “The Man In The Arena” Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, France April 23, 1910
“Today I shall speak to you on the subject of individual citizenship, the one subject of vital importance to you, my hearers, and to me and my countrymen, because you and we are great citizens of great democratic republics. A democratic republic such as ours – an effort to realize its full sense of government by, of, and for the people – represents the most gigantic of all possible social experiments, the one fraught with great responsibilities alike for good and evil. The success or republics like yours and like ours means the glory, and our failure of despair, of mankind; and for you and for us the question of the quality of the individual citizen is supreme.”
“Under other forms of government, under the rule of one man or very few men, the quality of the leaders is all-important. If, under such governments, the quality of the rulers is high enough, then the nations for generations lead a brilliant career, and add substantially to the sum of world achievement, no matter how low the quality of average citizen; because the average citizen is an almost negligible quantity in working out the final results of that type of national greatness. But with you and us the case is different.”
“With you here, and with us in my own home, in the long run, success or failure will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average women, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs of life, and next in those great occasional cries which call for heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high; and the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher.”
“Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities – all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.”
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.“
“Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who ‘but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier.'”
“Fellow countrymen: at this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends is as well known to the public as to myself and it is I trust reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
“On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it ~ all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place devoted altogether to saving the Union without war insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war ~ seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
“One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves not distributed generally over the union but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered ~ that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him. Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’
“With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
“I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: “For Whites Only.” We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”²
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
On May 6, 1864, the second day of battle at The Wilderness saw a stalemate breaking as Lee outmaneuvered Grant’s army and began to throw Grant’s generals into panic. With Grant’s recent promotion from the Western theatre of the war, he was confronting Lee for the first time. His new command however, had been suffering defeats at the hands of Lee for two years, and with appalling casualties. In the afternoon of this second day of battle, reports of Confederate breakthroughs and flanking maneuvers came pouring in one after the other. Finally, Grant had had enough.
A general officer came in from his command at this juncture, and said to the general-in-chief, speaking rapidly and laboring under considerable excitement: “General Grant, this is a crisis that cannot be looked upon too seriously. I know Lee’s methods well by past experience ; he will throw his whole army between us and the Rapidan, and cut us off completely from our communications.” The general rose to his feet, took his cigar out of his mouth, turned to the officer, and replied, with a degree of animation which he seldom manifested : “Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.” The officer retired rather crestfallen, and without saying a word in reply.
Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
Crossroads Leadership and Other Lessons Learned 
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