Terry Newell is currently director of his own firm, Leadership for a Responsible Society. His work focuses on values-based leadership, ethics, and decision making. A former Air Force officer, Terry also previously served as Director of the Horace Mann Learning Center, the training arm of the U.S. Department of Education, and as Dean of Faculty at the Federal Executive Institute. Terry is co-editor and author of The Trusted Leader: Building the Relationships That Make Government Work (CQ Press, 2011). He also wrote Statesmanship, Character and Leadership in America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and To Serve with Honor: Doing the Right Thing in Government (Loftlands Press 2015).
All in Character
The Compilation of Federal Ethics Laws has 109 pages. Why then did staff at the Department of Veterans Affairs falsify patient appointment wait times? Why did the IRS single out conservative groups for special scrutiny? Laws are not enough.
The real issue for Hillary Clinton, and for us, is about ethics and character, both much more essential in a Secretary of State - and president - than how she handled her emails.
The feeling of failure is just an emotion, not a statement about who we are. That feeling is a road sign that we are advancing rather than a roadblock whose emotional baggage is a detour on the road to a fulfilling life.
Until we see evidence that leaders have learned from their mistakes and improved,, we should be skeptical about the value of an apology. An apology without a subsequent change in behavior just deepens disappointment and increases distrust.
To say the words “I forgive you” and “I am sorry” is easy. To mean those words – to have undertaken the work required to turn bitterness to acceptance - is hard. But for our own good, and the good of others, we need to learn to forgive and move on.
Americans hold many of their public officials in low esteem. Could the reasons include that they detect a lack of honor in those who serve them?
Our legacy is not just our work accomplishments. It is also the way we make people feel. People will remember us less for how much work we crammed into our days than for how much caring we brought into their lives.
In our times, we seem so cynical about our leaders and our institutions. Moral exemplars, great Americans, can remind us of both who we have been and what we can still become.
America has always prided itself on the fact that we are, as John Adams first put it for us, “a government of laws, and not of men.” Indeed, law is a barrier to widespread abuse against human rights. But, if we are not careful, it can be a smokescreen as well.
What does James Madison, a product of the eighteenth century, have to teach us about the practice of politics in the twenty-first? Simply and profoundly this: he knew how to lose, and he knew how to win.
Long-time Detroit Tigers play-by-play announcer, Ernie Harwell, said that “baseball is a lot like life.” But perhaps life should be a lot more like baseball, for the moral lessons it can teach us.
