Posts Tagged “leadership”
Leadership is not community organizing. Leadership is when you step up to the plate, take a firm grip on the bat, and face the challenge of the curve ball on the outside corner. Thereby, setting the example for others to follow.
From the outset this president has failed miserably when it comes to leadership. You don’t sit in the White House and wait for things to happen. You don’t constantly carp about Congress’s lack of inaction and then head to the golf course. You don’t blame and criticize the former president for billion dollar deficits while all along creating trillion dollar deficits of your own.
If you ask people who was the worst president in modern history the answer always comes back Jimmy Carter. But Jimmy Carter was the one who took the bull by the horns and got Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and the Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to Camp David.
Carter provided the leadership that resulted in the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt which stands to this day. Not an easy task! For the most part the election of our president is a popularity contest. The average American on the street doesn’t know the first thing about what goes on in the world. Nor do they seem to care. We are a spoiled lot. We take our liberty for granted and we don’t understand how easy it is to lose the liberty that so many Americans have given their lives for.
We are too willing to trade liberty for government handouts these days. Liberty is more important than life itself. It was one of our founding fathers, Patrick Henry, who coined the phrase, “I know what course others may take, but as for me give me liberty or give me death.”
This cell phone generation we are now raising may just wake up one day and find out they live in a far different world than the hope and change they envisioned and voted for. A world where a
tyrannical government rules them based on a narrow set of religious beliefs and enforces those beliefs with a deadly iron fist. After all, if we don’t guard our liberty and the freedom to live our lives as we wish, we can all say hello to tyranny. Or maybe we should just follow our presidents’ lead and go play golf!
Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.
By Larry Oscar
There has been a lot of interest, comments, and attention paid to the subject of leadership recently. Oddly enough about nine years ago I had a series of articles and on the subject. I guess the articles must have been ahead of its time.
The military has been very interested in the subject for over 238 years. They have a great field manual on the subject. It dates back to the Revolutionary War. Funny, that when your life is on the line one tends to pay attention to the subject more than normal. Leadership is something that most of our CEO’s and politicians never took a course in. And believe me it shows.
Larry Oscar Every Saturday we have sporting events such as baseball, football, hockey, soccer, and golf. Most of us are so caught up in the action of the game that we fail to note one of the more important points of the sport, the end of the game hand shake. Did you ever notice at the end of the competition how the teams congratulate each other on their efforts? They shake hands, embrace, pat each other on the back, and depart as friends. The loser congratulates the winner and the winner congratulates the loser for their valiant effort. This is how it should be.
To be a gracious winner and loser is highly important. It is a mark of class. Good leaders know how to win and lose with classy dignity. We have seen very poor leadership by our politicians in the past few decades. You are not very smart when you tell your opponents, “We don’t mind you coming along for the ride, but you got to get in back,” and then ask them for their help in passing legislation in the very next sentence.
Wise leaders get out in front of the issue instead of letting it become a crisis and then trying to clean up the mess after the fact. Good leaders respect their opponents, and they use humor to ease tense situations. Poor leadership takes some time before it becomes obvious to their supporters what the problem is. Nobody wants to see who they voted for fail. It would be a reflection of their poor judgment in voting for that person.
On the other hand, we are a product of the choices we make in life. All of your choices have consequences. Recently one of our more famous politicians was stumping in the great state of Arkansas and encouraging voters to “vote with your heart.” Are you kidding me. Voting with our hearts is what got us into this mess in the first place.
I also seem to recall that his misbehaving with his heart and his cigar got him into a lot of trouble when he was in the White
House. One would have thought that he would have learned something, but politicians seldom do.
Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.