Rise up a genuine leader Who is driven by moral character and integrity Who commits to truth and responsibility Who models personal discipline and accountability Who earns respect by giving it Who is humble in self-imperfections and gracious in others’ Who nurtures trust and collaboration
Rise up a genuine leader Who is we-oriented, not me-oriented Who articulates vision with clarity and infuses pride in purpose Who disables barriers to people development Who confronts social ills with positive solutions Who seeks understanding and resolutions in contentions Who fosters creativity and inspires hope
Rise up a genuine leader Who can undo chaos and create order Who is composed instead of clamorous Who promotes diversity of viewpoints in unity of purpose Who invests in people and worthy dreams Who is transparent, trustworthy, and teachable Who upholds faith in a better future and spurs actions toward it
Rise up a genuine leader Who values people and ideas over profit Who knows virtue sustains character, but its absence destroys it Who is considerate instead of caustic Who brings competence with candor Who discerns realities with compassion and directs resolutions with care Who influences people to mutually elevate lives, institutions, and ideals.
Rise up a genuine leader Who is attentive to needs of the people and builds their spirit Who overcomes personal ego, arrogance, and unethical behavior Who rejects conflict mongering Who is consistent and persistent in value-added contributions Who equips and empowers other leaders Who builds an enduring legacy of transformational results
In popular culture, the concept of faith is often derided as a superstition of ignorant people.
But I’d like to advance the notion that faith is required for living successfully every day. And we need not be bashful about it!
After all, what is a plan but the expression of faith in something that does not yet exist?
In order for things that are apparently impossible to transform into things that are solidly real, faith is the PRIME ingredient.
(On the other hand, under the guise of “being realistic,” and often embraced by the willfully ignorant, doubt is the full-stop barrier to realizing any preferred future at all.)
For success in any endeavor, be genuinely faith-full!
Books have brought me into worlds I wouldn’t otherwise know
This past year’s reading has brought me into worlds and cultures I wouldn’t otherwise know. I have visited Nazi Germany (three times), ancient Palestine, Soviet Russia, Revolutionary Russia, Cold War Europe, South Africa, Victorian Australia, Spanish colonization, Antarctica, even those spheres of oppression, depression, gene editing, scientific research, cosmology, and quantum physics.
These books have taught me more about myself and those around me. I have reveled in the wonders of my own body, and have gained insights into wellness, happiness, and better working and personal relationships.
These books have ignited my imagination through creative storytelling. I’ve entered several classic tales for the first time, and have revisited some inspiring old favorites.
These books have expanded my knowledge in a great many subjects: natural, geologic, and cultural history; economics, public policy, activism; exploitation, greed, commerce, philanthropy; psychology, volunteer organizing, and leadership in philosophical differences and changing cultures. And so much more!
My favorites and recommendations are noted with an asterisk. But here are my special mentions:
Most satisfying ending: Angel of Vengeance
Most surprising over what I thought I knew about it: Tarzan of the Apes
Most over my head: The Physics of Immortality
Most annoying: HHhH (author reports true things, then confesses he made them up)
Most wide-ranging scope: Saving the Redwoods
Most spiritually revealing: New Morning Mercies
Most enjoyable biography/memoir: Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story
* Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany, Hans J. Massaquoi
The Handbook for Health: 5 Essential Pillars for Optimized Wellness, Dr. Christopher Turnpaugh with Dr. Cynthia West
The 6 Types of Working Genius: a Better Way to Understand Your Frustrations and Your Team, Patrick Lencioni
* The Body: a Guide for Occupants, Bill Bryson
* Only One Year: How Joseph Stalin’s Daughter Broke Through the Iron Curtain, Svetlana Alliluyeva
The Millionaires, Brad Meltzner
Name All the Animals: a Memoir, Alison Smith
* The Blue Zones of Happiness: Lessons from the World’s Happiest People, Dan Buettner
* The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing and the Future of the Human Race, Walter Isaacson
* From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Vern
A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, Aldo Leopold
* Inkheart, Cornelia Funke
* Inkspell, Cornelia Funke
* Inkdeath, Cornelia Funke
* The Noticer, Andy Andrews
HHhH “Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich”, Laurent Binet
Bethlehem, Karen Kelly
Homecoming, Kate Morton
The Trail, Robert Whitlow
Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton
* The Last Days of Night, Graham Moore
* Still Life With Crows, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
* Shackleton’s Stowaway, Victoria McKernan
The Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis
White Fire, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Three Sisters, Heather Morris
* Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt
Murder in the Lincoln Bedroom, Elliot Roosevelt
* The Scorpion’s Tail, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
The Leader’s Greatest Return: Attracting, Developing and Multiplying Leaders, John C. Maxwell
Mayday, Nelson DeMille and Thomas Block
* The Oath, Frank Peretti
Community Recreation and Parks Handbook, Sue Landes
Financing Municipal Recreation and Parks, Sue Landes
Absolute Friends, John le Carré
* The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland, Jim DeFede
Humorous Stories and Sketches, Mark Twain
Murders on Alcatraz, George DeVincenzi
* Palisades Park, Alan Brennert
Skin: Revenge is Beautiful, Ted Dekker
* A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
* Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughes
Just Tell Them I Love Them: a Hospice Chaplain’s Invitation to Live Well, Helen Burke
* Take This Cup, Bodie and Brock Thoene
The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter, Michael D. Watkins
* Saving the Redwoods: The Movement to Rescue a Wonder of the Natural World, Joseph H. Engbeck, Jr.
* Eternal, Lisa Scottoline
* Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story by Jack Benny and his daughter Joan
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Barbara Roobinson
* Healing Stones, Nancy Rue and Stephen Arterburn
* Angel of Vengeance, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead, Frank J. Tippler
* New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional, Paul David Tripp
Helping train our emerging leaders is always rewarding – both now and in the future! Day 2 of the intensive Pennsylvania Recreation and Park Society’s Leadership Academy included sessions on successful communications and creating collaborative relationships with key stakeholders, a working lunch, but also a few moments for a Class of 2024 selfie!
The strength of my character determines the vitality of my leadership.
It’s frequently denied, but more commonly ignored. We swear we don’t want to know what public leaders do privately—it’s their own business. (Yet the media claims it’s merely scooping up the private dirt the insatiable public appetite demands!)
Perhaps. But we need look no further than the morning’s headlines to document the direct correlation between countless individuals’ private and public behaviors. While it may be covered up for a time by bluster, talent, charisma or other gifts, we can all recall more than a few public failures, or “mistakes” admitted to in which private actions became public scandals.
When a leader’s intentions and behaviors clash, look to character to discover why.
Lance Armstrong, Gary Hart, Anthony Weiner, Jim Baker, Richard Nixon, Brian Williams, Rob Ford, Bernie Madoff, Martha Stewart, Mel Gibson: they’re just a fraction of the more infamous fallouts. Such a list of Exhibit A’s demonstrate the problem is not confined to particular professions, industries, ages or genders.
Here are five characteristics that make character the pivotal point of everyone’s persona:
Character is a foundational morality product. Morality is universally and primarily a social issue, not a religious one. Conforming to the rules of virtuous conduct is good for everyone: virtues are universal and absolute standards that do not change with circumstances, time or point of view.
When virtues are practiced, they always support personal and collective well-being. When rejected by a person, team or community, their foundations corrode and crumble.
Virtue sustains character, but its absence destroys it.
Character is more than talk. In my career, I’ve personally hired more than 300 individuals. As a usual part of my interview process, I ask the candidate to briefly tell me how each character trait I mention applies to them, and I take notes. Regrettably, there’ve been too many times I’ve had to go back to those very quotes to remind employees that their actions have contradicted their testimony.
Nobody ever admits that integrity isn’t important, but our outward actions are the real indicator of internal character, no matter what we say.
We cannot separate character from actions.
Character is a choice. We can’t control the circumstances of our birth, nor little else of the world around us, but we can determine our character. We do it with each choice we make. How we respond and react to life builds it or destroys it a decision at a time. Challenges don’t create character, but they do reveal it as we choose capitulation, compromise or conquest.
What others see of us is mere veneer. No matter how attractive or polished it may be with expertise, charisma or talent, it’s still just thin skin that occasionally gets torn open. The quality of the character inside then spills out for all to see.
Ability may be a gift, but character is a choice.
Character builds up. True leadership is built only as relationships are. As character is proven and relationships grow, so does trust. In that secure haven, a team thrives, a family flourishes, a society succeeds.
Sensible people do not follow those they know are flawed and untrustworthy: relationships dissolve, trust disintegrates and community breaks down. Society is upheld only by popular adherence to a code of principles distinguishing right and wrong.
Moral character brings strength to relationships and society.
Character is limiting—or liberating. Sooner or later, but inevitably, character outs. This is a universal truth, as evident in the ancient proverb—“out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks”—as in the modern maxim: “garbage in, garbage out.”
The strength of a leader is tied to the strength of his or her character. Everything rises or falls on leadership; and leadership rises or falls on character.
Leaders cannot rise above the limitations of their character.
There’s really no doubt: your personal character directly impacts your public leadership.
The Council of State Executive Directors met this week in Park City, Utah. The annual gathering focuses on trends and best practices of association management, and mutual issues in the recreation and park profession.
But we are more than just colleagues. We are a gregarious, fun, engaging (and exhausting!) bunch who continually and passionately invests in each other. This is my greatest gang of professional associates and personal friends – my collective, got-your-back brain trust. I appreciate and love them all.
In honor of my mom on Mother’s Day, I’ve decided to report on something I wouldn’t normally share publicly. See, Mom was known for her absolutely bizarre dreams. And she has passed that legacy on to me. So as a loving tribute to her, I offer up today’s inexplicable edition from very early this morning. (Thanks for the endowment, Mom! I’m thinkin’ of ya!)
It appeared I had some tiny metal splinters in the middle side of my left forefinger. I tried to grab at them with my right thumb and forefinger, but couldn’t pull them. I then looked closer, and what had looked liked some black fuzz, was now a fully formed, but extremely tiny bird. It was only about a quarter-inch round in size, with bright pink and buff feathers. As I looked, disbelieving what I was seeing, it flew off my finger and lighted on a shelf or half-wall directly in front of a mailbox facing away from me about 7 feet away, and grew into a full-sized duck with similar plumage. I frantically asked Becky to take some pictures of it real quick! I wanted to see if we could identify it.
There were other people standing and talking near me. I still couldn’t trust what I think I saw, and pulled Carol and Ann close so I could whisper into their ears what I witnessed, and see if I was crazy. Then, as I looked again at my finger, which still felt like there was something stuck in it, the wound opened up and appeared as a deep, narrow throat. Looking down it I saw a pair of long black, curlicued antennae, with the tops extending to the top of the “throat.” I grabbed them with my right thumb and forefinger and pulled them up and out. They were attached to a long, narrow black insect, about an inch long, that crawled out as I pulled. I kept hold of it as it struggled to get away, and went over to a nearby sink. (We were neither indoors or outdoors, but both, what with the sink and the street mailbox in close proximity.) And I asked Carol to get something to help me drown it before I let go of it. It was getting bigger all the time, now at about 5 inches, with long legs and curly antennae, and still struggling.
She gave me an odd-shaped cup, like those for measuring laundry detergent, filled with a liquid. I carried it away, crossed the street to what seemed like a boardwalk over the street next to water, and I forced the now 18-inch-long insect’s head into the cup. It seemed to be extremely thirsty and actively drank with its whole head submerged. I then tilted the bug vertically and kept the cup on its head until it stopped moving. It was now about three feet long including antennae and legs, and dead.
I showed it to two men on the boardwalk and explained that it came out of my finger. I had thought it was a splinter! They seemed amazed, but looked at the spot on my left finger, and agreed that it looked like it had had a splinter. The monster bug was now starting to shrivel and shrink. I wanted to get back to show Carol before it shriveled up entirely. But I had to cross a couple street blocks to get back to her. But then there was construction on the parking lot and sidewalk. The sidewalk was all crumbly and taped off closed, and I was in a hurry, and had to backtrack a little to go around the construction site.
In the 2024 Iowa caucuses, Donald Trump urged supporters to go vote for him despite a life-threatening cold snap. “You can’t sit home,” he demanded. “Even if you vote and then pass away, it’s worth it.” (reported in The Week, Jan. 26, 2024)
Jerks have a way of making everything about them, without a care for others.
Trouble is, jerks have infested nearly every area of life. Not only do they harm people, they are often contagious, influencing imitators of their poor behaviors. See above.
But to those who are aware that behaviors have consequences, jerks can be great role models—for how NOT to act.
This short list comes from my personal experiences. My purpose in identifying some of the noxious results is to hopefully arrest the actions of potential jerks before they permanently damage other people.
Belittler. He was the VP at Orkin Exterminating, where I worked as a termite inspector salesman, who occasionally attended our daily 7:30 AM sales meetings to “motivate” our salesmanship. “If your customer doesn’t want to buy,” he declared in all seriousness, “you just bring on the tears.” Another time, he publicly belittled our top salesman in front of everyone, to show (I suppose) who was the real Top Dog. Of course, that motivated our guy to move on to other opportunities. After more than 40 years, what I remember most about Mr. VP is his stupidly uncaring arrogance.
• Be a builder of people instead of a demolisher.
Deceiver. When I worked at Kiawah Island Resort, I directed and sang with a small group of interns who performed every Saturday night at the Pig & Oyster Roast. My boss had hired them based on whether they said they could sing. (I was lucky: they could!) But he continually misled them on their working expectations. They, in turned complained to me. I eventually confronted him about his lying, and he broke down and bawled in front of me. I was just 22 years old myself, and didn’t know how to respond to that. What I remember most is his excessive self-boasting to (apparently) cover up his insecurities.
Micromanager. I became one of the first Recycling Coordinators in Pennsylvania when the state law requiring it went into effect, working for the City of Bethlehem. I reported to the head of the City Health Department. Two memorable quotes from his mouth: “Listen, I know more about this than you!” as he berated a citizen over the phone who had questioned him. And in a particularly revealing moment with me, he confided: “I should have been a cop because I like telling people what to do.” To this day, he has been my prime example of the interfering and ineffective micromanager.
• Hire good people, give good guidance, and let them make good for you.
Yeller. I once took up an offer of no rent from a farmer in exchange for feeding his pigs everyday (upwards of 200) and mucking out the stalls on Saturdays. It didn’t take long to discover his unpredictable temper that could explode at any moment. I got screamed at several times a week, mainly for infractions he seemed to make up on the spot. (He reminded me of the temperamental character of Quint in the movie Jaws.) He never apologized, and then carried on as if nothing at all happened. I remember him as a pitiable, angry man who preferred ignorance.
• Get the best of your temper before it brings out the worst in you.
Bully. I sold my business to a nonprofit group that was to pay me over a period of years, but unfortunately didn’t understand the work involved to make it successful. The Board promptly ran it into the ground in 18 months, and then sued me to get out of the agreement. Bullying can be verbal, physical, social, cyber or legal, as in my case; they stiffed me on 90 percent of our agreed sale price. I could have countersued, but the assets no longer existed. I donated the remains of the business in exchange for them dropping the suit. (See Matt. 5:40 for my legal guidance.)
• If you habitually force others to get your way, or to feel better about yourself, seek interventional help.
Such classic jerk behaviors come in many forms. But perhaps the most insidious are those that arise unchecked from within. How many of us have ever been unintentionally rude, sharp, or disrespectful? Disparaging, resentful, or unforgiving? Pushy, flippant, or ungracious? I know I have at times. The jerk resistance movement must start within me.
MasterPoint:Deny the jerk within to prevent its contagion abroad.
Four years ago today my organization canceled its largest-ever statewide conference, just four days before it was to begin, due to the emerging pandemic.
Today is the start of this year‘s conference. And we have returned to same venue for the first time since the “Greatest Conference That Ever Wasn’t.”
And when I opened my daily devotional this morning (New Morning Mercies, by Paul David Tripp), I see my note in the margin from the last time I used this book four years ago.
Tripp’s particularly timely reminder for this day: “You are always facing the unexpected. Almost daily you are required to deal with something you wouldn’t have chosen for your life…“
Today, and every time you face the unexpected, I wish you grace.
