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 Statesmanship
Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were the Jeremiahs of the 19th century, calling the nation to live its founding values. We need Jeremiahs again.
The now-ritualized response to politicians discovered to have a racist past consists of condemnation, words of apology, and calls for resignation. Is this ritual helpful, and when is forgiveness appropriate?
We want strong leaders but mistake humility for weakness. Strength is not opposed to humility, it is magnified by it.
Americans yearn for moral leadership. Without it, we will fail to achieve the promises we made in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Questions about how candidates understand the Constitution are almost never asked. No one gets to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs without understanding the oath of office and the history of subordinating military to civilian authority, yet one can become Commander in Chief without even reading the Constitution.
It is easy to tear down international unions, especially when you take no responsibility for articulating how else to achieve the same ends they are designed to address. Going it alone has led to two world wars. We should learn from that experience.
A sense of humor today is essential for leaders, yet no one seems to think that politics and public life have a place for healing humor. By itself, it won't cure our ills, but it could be useful medicine.
Sound judgment is by no means the only capability essential in a president, but it is the one capability whose absence we accept at our peril.
Americans used to admire leaders with the humility to doubt themselves. Today, that is taken as a sign of weakness. We should rethink that.
We pay too much attention to ideological purity in selecting a president, without examining a candidate’s strategic leadership capability. We would not hire a handyman to do heart surgery. Nor should we elect someone without the qualifications to look after our lives in this dangerous world.
If private sector leaders don't do a better job of using the skills and accepting the ethical responsibilities of public officials, calls to rein them in will increase. GM’s Mary Barra may be the canary in the coal mine for private sector CEOs.
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.
Politics without good role models is like a home without good parents. The former leaves the next generation at a loss to see how to behave in public life just as the latter leaves them floundering on how to behave in family life.
Unlike corporate boards, which can often act in secret, the leaders of public institutions must meet demands for transparency and consultation. The Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia learned this hard lesson when it tried to fire the institution’s president. But she had a lesson to learn as well.
In his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln fashioned a story to help the nation see where it had been and where it needed to go. The best leaders tell stories that guide America forward.
It’s the bane of public servants that Americans want statesmen and stateswomen – people with the courage to do the right thing for the country despite the personal consequences – but almost routinely punish them for doing just that.
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.
