America’s Leadership Crisis and The Treatment
There is a leadership crisis in our culture. Politics. Business. Sports. Families. Wherever you turn the results of this crisis are evident.
Some of the symptoms are political stalemate, lack of trust, dysfunctional teams, cheating in athletics or broken homes. There are a lot of approaches to fixing these symptoms. But the problem is we are treating a PNEUMONIA patient with cough medicine!
The Disease
There are a lot of people who write books and speak about leadership and offer some quality treatment plans. But, treating the symptoms of the the leadership crisis and hoping the disease gets better is not working. The root cause of the disease that many well-meaning authors, consultants and academics are ignoring is:
CHARACTER
Let’s face it. We do a pretty good job at evaluating and measuring someone’s competence. For politicians we can look at elections won and bills passed. For business leaders we can look at stock prices, quota attainment, or cost controls. For coaches or athletic departments we can look at wins and losses. For families we can see the size of a house or the child’s grades.
But the disease of poor leadership continues. Look at some recent leadership failures in politics, business, sports and families:
- Any political scandal of the last decade
- Wells Fargo’s deceptive practices
- College athletic recruiting issues or USA Gymnastics abuses
- Parental neglect due to careerism or disrespectful children
The failures above are rarely the result of someone not knowing HOW to do the job or knowing WHAT they should be doing.
Don’t misunderstand me. Incompetence in any of these roles is damaging. But if that is the case, training departments, schools, and the self help sections of bookstores provide plenty of resources to educate us.
So why aren’t they more competent if there is a bevy of resources? Is pride keeping them from continually learning? Is it fear? Either way, it is a character issue
These leadership failures can almost always be traced back to a character issue not a lack of competence.
- We don’t need more savvy politicians.
- We don’t need more MBA’s in business.
- We don’t need more coaches who know the X’s and O’s.
- We don’t need more affluent parents.
We need more Leaders of Character
Until we begin to put the proper focus on character development in ourselves and the people we are responsible for developing, the leadership disease in America and the rest of the world will not get better.
Do you want a snapshot of your character? Take the Quick, Free and Private – My Mirror Character Assessment here:
The Treatment Plan
Many authors and consultants will mention the word character and tell you that you need to have it. But very few of these people actually tell you HOW YOU DEVELOP CHARACTER!
In a nutshell, you develop character by practicing character in the small things and the big things.
You have to do what you want to be!
Unless you begin doing the hard work that is required to build up your character, you will never develop those critical habits a Leader of Character must have. Character is the most critical area to develop and it is 100% in our power to do so!
This is not a quick fix. It is not a crash diet that will suddenly get your character in shape. Developing character takes work. It takes consistent effort. And you are never done!
It takes understanding that the little daily decisions we make impact our character. Each decision we make either put us closer to the person we are meant to be or further away from it.
Our book Becoming a Leader of Character – Six Habits that Make or Break a Leader at Work and at Home goes into detail about HOW to develop the Habits of Character that are causing so much of our leadership crisis.
Courage, Humility, Integrity, Selflessness, Duty, and Positivity.
Imagine if our political leaders, our business leaders, our coaches and athletic departments, and our fathers and mothers all developed these Habits of Character. Would there still be a leadership crisis?
The Bottom Line:
I consider myself a Character Evangelist. I am passionate about treating America’s leadership disease with more than just cough syrup. We must treat the root cause in order to beat this disease! We (that means you and me) must do a better job of developing our character and the character of the upcoming generations.
That has been my father’s cause for most of his 85 years on Earth. He has passed that passion on to me. I am looking for leaders to join me in leading a character revival in our culture.
Question:
Will you join me?
You can purchase Dave’s best seller Becoming a Leader of Character through Amazon here: bit.ly/LOCBook
Or get a personalized signed copy here: Signed Copy
Thank you for speaking to the elephant in the white house living room, and all boardrooms, PTA rooms and our living rooms. What happened to civility and CARING about character? Is it better to be rude, disruptive, bullying, deceitful and down right mean than to try to make the world a better place?
NONE of us are perfect, we will all struggle and the kinder you are and the more empathy you have in your reservoir, the more we need your COURAGE to disrupt an awful pattern of human emotional abuse that surrounds us at work, where we shop, our schools and our homes.
I appreciate your COURAGE in starting this conversation!