Leadership and lack thereof

Some thoughts I emailed to myself last week that I figured I'd post to my blog.

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 12:16 PM, wrote:

With the upcoming election I've been doing a lot of thinking about leadership. Many of the candidates go out of their way to sound down to earth like the gal/guy next store. Apparently, this is what we Americans want - someone just like us. Or is it?

Does misery love company? Do we despise those that are more successful than ourselves? Do we want to relate on every level to those that lead us? That lead the world?

I'm not so sure I want a leader just like me. In fact, I know I don't.

I eat too much, don't sweep the floor ever, get anxiety attacks over little things, ignore phone calls, spend too much money, neglect to do my hair on most days and often blow people off that I perceive as a waste of my time. I'm also addicted to cookies and milk.

I have no intentions of running for the job as president of the United States. I know how hard it is to navigate politics in the federal government. I speak from very personal and first hand experience. I have no desire to be a part of it. It turns smart people into drones or into highly ticked off people that the drones perceive as irrational. Either way, through my experiences I'm smart enough to know that I'm not qualified for the job as president and that the job is a lot different than the news media portrays. Kind of like the court system - it has nothing to do with morals or principles. It's pure politics, relationships and precedent. One must be a person that is capable of maneuvering these waters.

We need a leader. Leaders should be different than the following crowd. In my opinion, which I am allowed to state in my personal blog, I think leaders should be far more successful than the common person. They should be superior in all aspects that they have control over (height, race, gender and attractiveness don't count) as a result of their efforts to become a person.

I expect them to have more homes than me and more in their bank account. I expect them to have earned it in honest ways or successfully held on to family wealth and increase it (parable of the talents). I want them to have a better grasp of history than myself. They need to have a strategic outlook on the world and be open to advice from smart people that are expert in stock market analysis, banking, agriculture, terrorism, and customer relationship management. I want them to be able to operate on the world stage amongst different cultures and people that think completely differently than we do about human rights and decency. As a leader, I expect them to make decisions based upon advice from trusted and smart people, but know when to follow their gut...and when their gut isn't telling them the right information.

I want a leader that has experienced hardship and pain, but also knows extremely success. Some of this knowledge can be vicarious and other through personal experience. I want someone that can put first things first and is an exemplary standard of doing so. The same person that can keep first things first also seems to know when to make changes to the second, third and fourth priorities. After all, those are up to a little more interpretation than whatever is first.

There are so many mediocre people in the world - at work, in politics, on the news, on MTV and walking around town. Some don't want to be mediocre deep down, but become so through constant exposure to mediocrity. By mere fact we live on planet earth, we can't really get away from our exposure to the junk, but we can limit our access. It is easy to fall into the trap of complacency and mediocrity.

On the flip side, don't we all know someone that we truly look up to? Someone that always seems to be trustworthy, wise, empathetic, and consistent. A person that is an example of "excellence." These are those people that we proudly follow and want to represent us in difficult situations or when the tough choice has to be made. They remain calm and respectable despite the challenges, and they "rally the troops" when the troops are down (troops in the broad sense - child, team, congregation, class, organization, etc.). We somehow believe and trust them because they have mastered areas of their lives and brains that the rest of us haven't quite conquered.

These people do exist. We don't happen to have anyone that fits this particular leadership type running for president or vice-president right now. In that case, we still can pick the one that will surround themselves with the best team to accomplish this task. I'm not sure who that is right now and I may not decide until I go in to vote.

Either way, I can strive to be a standard of excellence in my personal life. I can be a leader in my own little bubble of world. After all, that is really the only place to make a true difference. For all we know, the vote is already rigged (call me a conspiracy theorist if you'd like, but I have seen the beltway politics at work for a while and it would be no surprise to hear this happened...the information will probably be unclassified twenty years from now).

And this, my friends, is as close as I will get to a political rant. Believe me, I am doing more ranting offline and I love the Tina Fey impersonations.