Category Archives: Positive Leadership

Lack of Insight and Empathy are Subtle Forms of Racism

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It is amazing how many white people think there is no reason why African-Americans, poor black people specifically, cannot pull themselves out of poverty and live their lives like we do. When a black person is shot by police these same people will say “if they don’t want to be stopped by police they shouldn’t break the law!” These Americans have no insight into the implicit pre-judgment in their minds that the black person must have been doing something wrong,” or even worse, that “they should not have been there in the first place.” How can America be great if there are public places to which access is denied because of race or religion?

These white Americans do not understand why anyone whose car broke down along a highway would be afraid of an approaching police officer. They cannot imagine that that they would be perceived as a threat when walking through someone else’s neighborhood. Most white men cannot imagine that women, whom they pass on a sidewalk or other public place, would feel endangered by their nearness just because of the color of their skin. White Americans do not understand what it is like to be profiled by the color of their skin.

White Americans are incensed when a millionaire black athlete kneels during the National Anthem as a form of protest over the death of yet another black man at the hands of police. These white people have no insight into the fact that the reality in which young black children are reared in the U.S. is not the same reality with which they are familiar. They do not understand that the chasm that separates poor blacks from mainstream American society seems as wide as the Grand Canyon to black Americans. Most whites Americans cannot comprehend that life in poor urban and rural communities is not a matter of choice. They do not see that the black athlete who kneels during the national anthem is using his platform to speak on behalf of young people who are unable to speak for themselves.

White men and women who ridicule the idea of “white privilege” are oblivious to their own lack of empathy. Rather than seek to understand or work to find solutions they opt, instead, to pass judgment on their fellow citizens. They are so busy exercising their “white privilege” in response to their perceptions of black America that they have no insight into how they, themselves, are perceived by that other America. Sadly, far too many do not believe that blacks are entitled to such privilege and they do not care what black America thinks. These Americans reject the assertion that their behavior is a subtle form of racism. They also reject the possibility that they could ever be wrong.

It is because of such intransigence that we remain divided as a nation, unable to assuage the pain of past and present injustice. When are white Americans going to acknowledge that the greatness of America is a matter of perception and that we do not all enjoy the same opportunities and freedoms?

Rather than strive to address the inequities of our society and the prejudices of the American people, conservative white men and women want to turn back the clock to a simpler time when they felt safe, secure, and in control. We cannot achieve the future we seek by bullying, calling people names, blaming others when we do not get our way, by clinging to the past, or by abandoning our democratic principles. What we all must understand is that there will never be a simpler time.

The reality that is early 21st Century America is a function and consequence of our government’s policies since the end of World War II; both republican and democrat, liberal and conservative. Since the world has changed exponentially, we must be willing and able to think exponentially, which is just another way of saying “think outside the box.” The one thing of which we can be certain is that the problems of the balance of the 21st Century will not be solved by the solutions of the past. The sooner we accept this truth the sooner we can begin working together to repair the widening breach that divides us.

The Danger of Donald Trump

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As far back as twenty years ago, I became concerned that our nation was losing its sense of purpose and that the American people had begun to take democracy for granted. Democracy is a delicate concept that requires an equilibrium between freedom and responsibility. For democracy to work, people must share the same or at least a similar vision for our nation and its people. They must be willing and able to find common ground—a solution with which all parties can live.

When views become so disparate and extreme that people are unable to forge amenable agreements, democracy is put to a severe test. This is what we have seen in recent years with a Congressional gridlock where the best Congress can do is pass temporary legislation to hold off a government shutdown for a few weeks or months. Passing substantive legislation has become problematic, so great is the discord in Congress. This is also what happens when the focus of the principal players is to attack their opposition rather be a positive advocate for their own platform. It is a lack of positive leadership.

It has taken me 2 weeks to sort through my thoughts and feelings while watching parts of the Republican convention. I must confess that I could not make myself watch more than snippets of the major speeches during the convention. The rhetoric was simply too. . . . I cannot seem to come up with a word that accurately describes the disgust, fear, and even anguish of watching the Republic Party’s candidate for the Presidency of the United States calling people names, insulting their character, pandering to the racism and hatred in the minds of so many Americans, and making absurd promises that only the most gullible adults could believe. As I have written before, Donald Trump is the antithesis of positive leadership.

What I have come to realize is that watching Donald Trump at the Republican Convention is the scariest thing I have seen in my lifetime. It is not simply the things he says or the way he bullies people but something far more subtle but at the same time more profound. Donald Trump and many of the people who support him seem willing to trample the rights of people of whom they do not approve or with whom they do not agree. There is a viciousness to it that says no one matters but me and mine. This is hardly a recipe for democracy.

Throughout my lifetime, there has been simple concept that I have heard in many contexts and stated in many different ways that says “everyone counts or no one counts.” Is there anyone on God’s Earth that you would be willing to grant the power to pick and choose to whom we should extend the protections of the Constitution of the United States as delineated in the Bill of Rights?

During the entire Obama administration, attacks against our nation’s President have been nothing short of virulent and the overwhelming majority of the accusations are absurd and found to be untrue by any of the independent fact-checking services. The same is true of Hillary Clinton. You do not see Donald Trump attacking her ideas and accomplishments rather you see him brand her as a liar, much as he did with Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio during the primary elections.

Our focus in determining to whom we wish to give our vote for President of the United States should be looking at their body of work and their overall integrity. In doing so we need to keep in mind that the longer one has been in public life or business the more mistakes they will have made and the more misstatements will have been uttered. It is simply a reflection of the fact that none of us are perfect, not even our candidates for the Presidency.

When we compare Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump you have two extremes in terms of career activity and objectives. Hillary Clinton has spent most of her life in some form of public service, whether working as a community activist or as a public official. Donald Trump has spent all of his life focused on his business interests. Both career choices are noble. If they are to be judged they can only be judged on the basis of the number and types of victims left in the wake of their respective careers.

Measuring overall integrity is problematic but what we can measure is the relative truthfulness of the two candidates. Truthfulness may not be the same thing as integrity but it is certainly a reflection of integrity.

Recently, Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize winning fact checking service that spares no one, found that 55 percent of Trump’s public statements were “false” which Politifact defines as “not accurate” and half of those received Politifact’s “Pants on Fire” rating which is defined as “A statement that is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.” (http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/)

This is compared to 13 percent of Hillary Clinton’s statements that were found to be “false” and only 2 percent of her statements were judged as “Pants on Fire.” (http://www.politifact.com/personalities/hillary-clinton/)

Looking at the two candidates from the perspective of truth, 72 percent of Hillary Clinton’s public statements have been judged to be “mostly true” compared to 29 percent of Donald Trump’s public statements.

If he acts true to form, one would expect Donald Trump to declare that Politifact is “unfairly biased against him.” It seems only fair to point out that other Republican candidates such as Jeb Bush and John Kasich were found by Politifact to be truthful roughly 70 percent of the time. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, by the way, were found to be 35 percent and 59 percent truthful, respectively. Bernie Sanders was truthful 72 percent of the time and had no “pants on fire” falsehoods.

In case you are wondering, President Barack Obama, according to Politifact, is mostly truthful 75 percent of the time, compared to Rush Limbaugh, who was found to be truthful only 17 percent of the time. I point that out only because so many of the outrageous accusations against President Obama and Hillary Clinton were originally voiced by radio and other talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh. That people are so willing to believe such people says a lot about Twenty-first Century America.

The rude surprise that awaits Donald Trump is that, should he be elected, his authoritarian approach will face the same gridlock as his predecessors. The only way he can implement any of the ideas reflected in his campaign promises would be if he were to circumvent or otherwise subvert the democratic process. This, my friends, is what makes Donald Trump so scary.

If the differences that divide the American people continues to expand, it is only a matter of time until someone like Donald Trump is elected to the Presidency who believes they have sufficient power to impose their will on the American people and the democratic process. This would mean the end of the American democracy as we know it.

When I began to grow concerned, twenty years ago, I began writing a novel about how things could go horribly wrong if we were to lose our faith in democracy and elect an authoritarian outsider to the Presidency on the basis of his pledge to restore domestic peace and prosperity (make America great again) at any cost. My novel, entitled Light and Transient Causes, was published in 2013. I encourage the reader to check it out. If we want to prevent something like this from happening we must understand just how bad things could be if we abandon our faith in democracy. You can check my novel out at https://melhawkinsandassociates.com/light-and-transient-causes-a-novel/

Positive Leadership Involves Building Positive Relationships

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Most often when men and women are struggling in their role as leader their problems are a function of their relationships with the people with whom they interact. Rarely does it matter whether the relationship issues are with the leader’s employees, fellow supervisors, the people to whom they report, or members of their supply chain, both internal and external. The dynamics are pretty much the same in all human relationships, with the exception of romances and friendships. What distinguishes love/partnerships and friendships is that these relationships exist in the context of choice.

All other relationships typically happen as a result of us coming into frequent contact with others through work, team play, neighborhoods, or other serendipitous event. When our daily lives bring us into close contact with another human being, the extent to which we get along and are able to interact on a positive basis goes a long way in determining our happiness and success. If we like the people with whom we must spend time, then life is so much easier, less stressful, more productive, and happier. Sometimes these relationships blossom into friendships or partnership but rarely are we able to make this happen.

For people who are having relationship issues, in the work place or other non-intimate situations, there are two simple rules at play. The first, is if you are unhappy with the way other people are treating you, start by taking a critical look at how you treat them. Inevitably, how others treat you is a reaction to your behavior toward them.

The second rule at play is one of the core principles of positive leadership. It is only when we accept responsibility for relationships/problems that we begin to acquire the power to change/solve them. In this case, we have no direct power over the way people are treating us or responding to us. We do, however, have control over how we choose to interact with them and respond to the negative nuances.

Never be afraid to ask people for their help in improving your relationship with them but asking for that assistance in the right way is imperative. If they interpret your request as “I don’t like the way you are treating me and we need to change it!” you can be sure they will view your request as self-serving.

Simply approach the person(s) with sincerity and acknowledge that the relationship seems strained. Ask what you can do to improve it. Once that subject is broached it becomes easier to arrive at a point where you each accept responsibility for the friction that exists between you. Very few people welcome friction in their relationships but that friction persists because few are willing to take the initiative to do something about it. Most people will respond to an olive branch, however, if they sense sincerity.

Accepting responsibility and reaching out to others is the essence of positive leadership and it can change your life and the lives of the people around you. My book, The Difference is You, Power Through Positive Leadership will show you how much power you have to make a difference.

Freedom of Religion Misconstrued

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It is difficult to imagine that our founding fathers envisioned that the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America would be used to justify discrimination against any person or persons or to provide an exemption from compliance with the laws of the land.

The Constitution was adopted to guarantee the rights of citizens to choose how they wish to live their lives and to protect them against abuses by their government. Such protections were a high priority of the framers of our Constitution given that so many of their families had fled to America to escape such abuses. The Bill of Rights refers to amendments to the constitution that were intended to define the rights that were considered to be most precious to a free people.

The First Amendment specified freedom of religion, free speech, freedom of the press, freedom to peacefully assemble, and “to petition the government for redress of grievances.” With specific reference to freedom of religion, the intent was that not only are citizens free to choose their religion but also that the government is prevented from interfering with those choices.

Annually, at Christmas and Easter, we hear complaints that the refusal to grant permission to have displays of Christian worship symbols within or on the grounds of public buildings is somehow an infringement of the religious freedom of Christians.

This is a clear misinterpretation of the First Amendment. Our government’s obligation is to protect our right to decide how we worship, not play favorites. Public buildings belong to Jews, Muslim, and practitioners of other religions every bit as much as they belong to Christians and these American have every right to object to those symbols being placed on property funded with their tax dollars.

That Christianity has long been the dominant religion in the U.S. makes it that much more important that Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and others be protected from persecution or domination by Christians. Christians have no right to preferential treatment, their claims that the U.S. is a Christian nation notwithstanding.

The truth, today, is that the other religions of the world have become and will continue to become more prevalent in American society. While the adjustment to this reality may not come easily to Christians, it is an adjustment that cannot be avoided if we are to remain a free society.

Recent proposals to restrict the freedoms of Muslims, in the aftermath of both domestic and international terrorism by radical Islamic terrorist groups, proves the vital importance of such Constitutional protections. Imagine infringing on the rights of Christians, for example, following terrorist acts committed by armed anti-government militia groups who profess to be radical Christians executing the wrath of God.

History has shown that human beings, Christians included, are capable of horrific acts of violence against other human beings. Each and every one of us deserves the same protections under the law from individuals or groups that lay claim to the Divine right to pass judgment on their fellow man.

The same would be true for the rights of gays and lesbians. To think that we could use our constitutional right to freedom of religion to justify discrimination against any population of Americans, including gays and lesbians and now transgenders, is scary. The American Congress, as duly empowered by the Constitution, has passed legislation prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and these laws have been found to be Constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Claiming that religious freedom grants one license to disregard the law of the land is a frightening prospect in a free society, no matter who does the proclaiming.

The United States of America may well be one nation, under God but it is for individual citizens to determine how they wish to profess their faith and beliefs, or not at all.

Donald Trump: The Antithesis of Positive Leadership

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As an American who has spent his entire career as a student, advocate, and practitioner of the principles of positive leadership, it is staggering to think that not only is a presidential candidate spreading a message of prejudice and hatred but also that he is garnering the support of a significant percentage of Republican voters. The man behaves like a bully and a name-caller of the same ilk as a rising political leader in Germany, eighty-five years ago. If you do not agree with someone, call them names, threaten to do harm to them, persecute an entire religious group, or deport millions of others.

Over the last couple of decades we have seen the emergence of bitter enmity on the part of Americans who are so full of hatred and prejudice that they will believe even the most outrageous accusations against President Obama, a man whom they despise. No doubt, someone recently spouted that “Obama probably paid protesters at a recent political rally for Trump” and now those accusations are sweeping across the internet, taken as gospel. Equally ridiculous are the accusations that “Obama arranged and paid for the assassination” of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

How can people be so full of hate that they are willing to believe such unsubstantiated nonsense about the President of the United States?

The sad thing about Donald Trump is that the man is correct about some of the things that need to happen to keep our nation healthy and “return it to greatness.” Support of Trump on these few issues becomes impossible, however, when the man preys on the ignorance and prejudices of millions of Americans and when his political strategy poses the biggest threat to democracy in my lifetime.

We do need to put the restoration of the U.S. infrastructure at the top of our nation’s priority list. We do need to take control of immigration. We do need to put people back to work. We do need to replace politicians who have become little more than puppets of some of our nation’s richest and most powerful political action committees. We do need leadership that is beholden to no one other than the American people.

We desperately need positive leaders who recognize that the issues with which we struggle, today, did not just happen rather that they are the consequence of 65-years-worth of ineffectual policies, whether liberal or conservative, republican or democrat.

What we need most of all is a positive leader with a vision for the future. A leader who recognizes that poverty is a consequence of an obsolete educational process that has set generations of American children up for failure and that makes it almost impossible for even our best teachers to do what they dreamt of doing when they chose their profession. It is an educational process that can only be further damaged by reforms focused on privatization and standardized testing.

We yearn for a positive leader who understands that the strongest economy during the latter third of the 21st Century will be the one that has ended its reliance on fossil fuels and has mastered the production of renewable sources of clean energy. It will also be an economy that is committed to responsible stewardship of the environment.

We hunger for a positive leader who believes that all Americans are entitled to comprehensive healthcare and prescription drugs as a right of citizenship and who understands that we can provide such healthcare without socialized medicine if only we open are hearts and minds to a new way of thinking.

And, finally, we need a positive leader who can help us renew our faith in democracy and in each other; a leader who can show the American people that our greatest strength as a nation is, has always been, and will always be our diversity. We seek a leader who can rebuild a nation in which the American dream is an achievable reality for all of its citizens; not just a privileged few.

My novel, Light and Transient Causes, is about one way things could go horribly wrong if a man like Donald Trump was elected President. https://melhawkinsandassociates.com/light-and-transient-causes-a-novel/ The reader is invited to take a look.

The Essence of Organizational Leadership in Business, Government, and Education

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The essence of organizational leadership is acceptance of responsibility for producing better outcomes for the organization, its customers, and its people. The most effective way to accomplish this is to recognize that the purpose of a leader is to help his or her people be successful in meeting or exceeding the expectations of customers. This is also true in education and applies to principals in private, parochial and public schools and to university presidents as well as business and governmental leaders.

The job of a leader is not to give orders, keep people in line, enforce rules or regulations, or disciple and terminate. These may sometimes be necessary but they are secondary to the leader’s purpose which is to help employees be successful whether professional, managerial, sales, white collar or blue.

The most common mistake leaders make is acting under the belief that they are the center of all wisdom; that all solutions flow through them. These men and women cherish their power as if it is a precious commodity over which they must stand guard.

Powerful positive leaders recognize that the most effective use of power is through empowerment of one’s people, and not just the people within the organization but also throughout the supply chain. These leaders view their people as assets rather than liabilities.

While it is true that the leader is often the most knowledgeable and experienced person in the organization, it is vital that they share rather than hoard their wisdom. Powerful positive leaders view each challenge as a teaching opportunity. These powerful men and women pull their people into the creative process of innovation, problem-solving, and decision-making. This results not only in better outcomes but also in the growth and development of the organization’s people.

Sharing leadership in this manner has a compounding effect in that the growth of an organization’s people increases the power of the entire organization, including that of the leader. It works like any other investment to increase the value of the asset; in this case, the organization’s people. This type of positive leadership also increases loyalty and commitment.

The leader retains ultimate responsibility for the success of the enterprise and may, periodically, find it necessary to intercede. Even this creates an invaluable learning opportunity, however, and it is imperative that the leader helps his or her people understand.

The best leaders understand that they need not always be right and that the best outcomes are always bigger than any one person. Neither is it necessary for the leader to be the smartest person in the organization. Positive leaders need to be an effective teacher. Some people are fearful that their status as leader may be threatened as others gain knowledge and wisdom but this is an irrational fear. Ironically, teachers almost always learn as much or more than their pupils.

The reader is invited to check out my book, The Difference Is You: Power Through Positive Leadership.

We Need Fresh Ideas for a New Era of American History

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Both conservative republican and liberal democratic tenets of 20th Century America have gradually taken on the characteristics of dogma in that the underlying assumptions of their respective conventional wisdoms are rarely challenged or evaluated for their efficacy.

This is particularly concerning as we move into a new century where the problems we face as a nation, society, and world community are of an unprecedented breadth and scope. The unfortunate reality is that many of the challenges we face as members of an increasingly diverse people in an ever-more-complex new century are the consequence of the choices and policies of both republican and democratic leadership in the 20th Century. Those policies, choices, and ideologies will no longer take us where we need to go.

Most troubling is the emergence of the “tea party movement” that is striving to take us back to a time in America history that is perceived as better; a time when values seemed clearer. The problem, of course, is that the only people for whom that idyllic past was better were non- poor, white Americans. It was a time when white Americans represented the overwhelming majority and when they lived in a world in which they occupied a special place in society. This past is not recalled with the same reverence by black Americans and other minorities or by poor, white Americans.

Interestingly, this cherished past was a time in which blue-collar America, thanks to strong unions, enjoyed a level of economic success at least approaching that of “white collar” middle class Americans. The present day irony is that tea party and other conservative politicians and policy makers are doing their best to emasculate present-day unions as if they somehow pose a threat to the middle class. Why we would ever think that a strong working class able to earn levels of income to provide for their families, contribute to a vibrant economy, and pay their fair share of taxes is a bad thing is difficult to fathom.

The actions and policies of conservative politicians and policy makers seem to be driven by an equal resentment of the interests of African-Americans; other minorities; new immigrants, illegal or not; Muslim-Americans; gay and lesbians; and any other population of human beings who are perceived as different.

The unalterable fact is that African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and other groups as defined by race, color, creed, faith, or sexual preferences represent one of the two fastest growing segments of our population and will soon replace white Americans as the majority. The needs of these growing segments of the American population, simply stated, cannot be ignored or otherwise abused without placing our entire society at risk.

What conservative Americans do not seem to comprehend is that the more the interests of these “other” Americans are left unattended, the more likely they will be to rise up and begin exercising their right to vote. Given that these groups, in the aggregate, will represent a statistical majority, such an eventuality will bring the conservative agenda to an abrupt but judicious end. We can only hope that the traditional liberal agenda will also be laid to rest.

We have not even addressed the issues involving the other fastest growing population of Americans made up of baby-boomers who are joining the ranks of the retired; a group whose political clout will also mushroom.

The best hope for preserving our liberty and providing a safe and affluent future for our children and grandchildren is through leadership that embraces our diversity and engages all Americans in the quest for new and innovative solutions to the challenges of the 21st Century. At present, we are not even seeking new and innovative solutions, much to our great disadvantage.

In my novel, Light and Transient Causes, I show what could happen if we relax our vigilance and abdicate our responsibilities as citizens of a participatory democracy.

View Part 2 of my Interview on “The Verbal Edge” re: my book, The Difference is You: Power Through Positive Leadership

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View the second segment of my 2-part interview with Elizabeth Nulf MacDonald on her show, “The Verbal Edge” to talk about my book The Difference is You: Power Through Positive Leadership.

View Part 1 of my interview “The Verbal Edge” to talk my book The Difference Is You: Power Through Positive Leaders

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View the following excerpt from part 1 of the two-part segment of my interview with Elizabeth Nulf MacDonald on her show The Verbal Edge, to talk about my book The Difference Is You: Power Through Positive Leadership.

The Verbal Edge, The Difference is You: Power Through Positive Leadership, Part 1

Even our System of Public Education is Within Our Power to Change

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One of the most important things people in organizations must learn is that there are always opportunities to bring about positive change. That ability always begins with a sense of awareness about the system of events, objectives, and activities that swirl about us, immersing us in the flurry of our individual lives and moments.

We can teach ourselves how to take a few steps back to a point from which we can view all that takes place around us as if we were standing apart. It takes effort to acquire this skill but it is still just that, a skill that men and women can learn to master and utilize like any other tool.

Once we are able to gain that perspective, it is a matter of evaluating all of the activities of the organization, system, or process within the context of our essential mission and purpose. What we learn, rather quickly, is that distractions, secondary agendas, and the ongoing friction of human beings working together is that it is easy to be diverted from one’s mission or purpose. Over time, the consequences of these ancillary activities begin to accumulate like weeds in an unkempt garden and they literally eat away at the productive output of the entity.

Periodic maintenance of your organization will bring things back in line, if not permitted to go unnoticed. When too much time has elapsed, it becomes necessary to reconstruct the organization, system, or process to make sure that it is not only focused on mission and purpose but also to assess whether the ramifications of the changes in the world around us have been factored in.  Very often changes in the reality of the world in which the entity operates have not been incorporated and the process has become antiquated; sometimes obsolete.

In business, the process of addressing these systemic dysfunctions on a comprehensive basis is often referred to as “turnaround management” or “transformational leadership.” It is all constructed on the premise of one of the basic laws of systems and one of the principles of positive leadership:

“The only point at which a product, service, process, organization, or system can no longer be improved is the precise point in time that it has become obsolete.”

This transformational process is, itself, a complex tool that can be applied to systems of all sizes, shapes, and purposes by positive leaders skilled in the application of “systems thinking.” It is a powerful tool that can transform even something as complicated as our systems of public education.

It does require, however, 1) a willingness to believe that such change is possible and within our power to create, and 2) a willingness on the part of people to come together as a unified and committed force behind a set of shared principles and common purpose.