Real, Essential Leadership Starts Within
I don’t begin to understand what it really means to be under cyberattack. Just this week, I learned that I have a Windows username and password, and I had to reach out to my IT wizard to discover where they lived. Yeah, cyber-hacking is not really in my wheelhouse.
But “Thomas P. Bossert, who was the homeland security adviser to President Trump and deputy homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush,” closed his Opinion piece in this morning’s New York Times with these chilling words, “We are sick, distracted, and now under cyberattack. Leadership is essential.”
Sick, I know. The coronavirus threat is only deepening as we approach likely lonesome holidays for many of us. Dr. Anthony Fauci said he’s spending Christmas with his wife. Period. Despite the fact that his birthday is Christmas Eve and the day after is Christmas, his kids and grandkids are staying away from him. We too plan a simple holiday. Just us two, and Smooch the Cat.
Distracted, I know. Oh yeah. Since the eclipse on Monday, I’ve had a terrible time with follow-through, something upon which ordinarily I pride myself. Really, long-term follow-through. In the short term, like yesterday when I was sitting in the car awaiting my sweetheart’s return from the packed grocery store, and the car died, I was fine. That, I could handle. The dealership was down the street; they came and jumped the car immediately. Done! But no long-term anything. I was skittery-scattery in my ability just to pay basic attention.
Cyberattack, I don’t know. I’ll leave that to those who do. But, Beloved, I do know leadership, and I couldn’t agree more that what is needed now, what is essential now, is Leadership—with a capital L. For most of us, that means we look outside ourselves. That’s not the kind of Leadership I’d like to invoke today. I’d like to invoke Leadership that comes from within each one of us.
Opinion writer Elizabeth Bruenig witnessed a federal execution in Terre Haute, Indiana recently. Her story about it is arresting. She owns that she knew, when she took on the assignment, that she had her own death penalty issues that needed sorting. She writes, “It’s nearly impossible to live with a conflict between feeling and belief. You end up feeling the way you believe you should, or believing the way you feel you ought to.”
My whole heart squeezed when I read those words. Oh, wow, do I know how that feels. Belief systems in conflict with reactive emotions. Did you know that the emotions, the reactions, win every time? It’s how we’re hardwired.
I am going to cite a long quote from her article because it holds an object lesson for Leadership for all of us Americans. It’s a hard read, be forewarned.
Ms. Bruenig writes, “The idea of execution promises catharsis. The reality of it delivers the opposite, a nauseating sense of shame and regret. Alfred Bourgeois was going to die behind bars one way or another, and the only meaning in hastening it, as far as I could tell, was inflicting the terror and the torment of knowing that the end was coming early. I felt defiled by witnessing that particular bit of pageantry, all of that brutality cloaked in sterile procedure.
“So much time and effort goes into making executions seem like exercises of justice, not just power; extreme measures are taken at each juncture to convince the public, and perhaps the executioners themselves, that the process is a fair, dispassionate, rational one.
“It isn’t. There was no sense in it, and I can’t make any out of it. Nothing was restored, nothing was gained. There isn’t any justice in it, nor satisfaction, nor reason: There was nothing, nothing there.”
So why did the Trump administration insist on it? In fact, why are there so many executions scheduled before his final exit from The White House? I think the answer is because he can. Because he’s doing everything he can think of to sow chaos in his wake. Thwarted at every turn by the rightness of the election, he needs to feel he’s doing something. But, Beloved, just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.
He’d call it Law and Order. Ms. Bruenig called it nothing. I’d call it cruelty. I think the death penalty is barbaric. Whether we can do it or not, I think we shouldn’t. That’s not what Real Leaders do. Real Leaders look past what we can to what we ought, to benefit the most of us and harm the least of us.
Big Pharma is enjoying its moment in the sun right now because of the vaccine, but in “Don’t Fall for Big Pharma’s Savior Act,” Stephen Buranyi names the moment for what it is. “[G]enerations worth of ill will appears to be melting away. [You will, of course, recall that this is the same motley crew who profited from the ongoing, devastating opioid epidemic.] Last year, Gallup polling had the pharmaceutical industry ranked the most disliked in America, below both big oil and big government. By this September—even before the vaccines arrived—the industry’s approval rating was already improving.”
Real Leaders don’t measure approval ratings on their industries. Real Leaders ask instead if their industries are doing more good than harm. He concludes, “Public support should mean a public vaccine, one that reaches people as quickly as possible—profitable or not. The pharmaceutical industry wouldn’t be able to rake in its profits and restore its reputation without funding that comes from our tax dollars. We shouldn’t let Big Pharma forget it.”
This is why Leaders must take the long view, Beloved. In fact, Real Leaders are paid to take the long view. When we don’t, we lose immeasurable good will, but also opportunity to do good for more of our compatriots.
Dr. Paul Farmer won the $1 million Berggruen Prize this week for “thinkers whose ideas have profoundly shaped human self-understanding and advancement.” Nicholas Berggruen, the chairman of the institute, said, “As both thinker and actor, Dr. Paul Farmer has connected the philosophical articulation of human rights to the practical pursuit of health.”
This is what Real Leaders do. They link philosophical, long-term things together with other, practical, perhaps slightly illogical, things, to make a better world for all of us. Human rights and health. The drug manufacturers should be linking the Worldwide Pandemic and Free Vaccinations for the Whole World. Not counting their approval ratings or their profits.
Real Leaders might take a clue from the article this morning on gift-giving. “Givers might favor the beautiful and dramatic because they think about gifts in the abstract: ‘What’s a good gift?’ Recipients, in contrast, imagine themselves using it, and so focus more on utility.” Real Leaders might be tempted by the beautiful and dramatic, but if they are true to Leadership itself, they stop and think, not about themselves, but about those who are affected by their leadership decisions.
This has been missing from federal governance for years. Perhaps it’s time to reestablish Leadership where it actually sources—in humanity? We all carry cellular memories, Beloved, of times when we each have taken the stand of a Leader in all kinds of different scenarios. Even if it’s just a classroom of kids to the lunchroom, all of us have the capacity to lead. But, we must ask, are we willing to take the risk Real Leadership entails?
The gift-giving article made five recommendations for holiday gifting. Each one of them works for Real Leadership as well. “First, ignore price. Second, give gifts that are actually usable. Third, (and this one is especially relevant during the pandemic) don’t worry if your gift isn’t usable immediately. Fourth, give people what they ask for. Fifth, give experiences, not things.”
The eternally quotable Anonymous appeared on my Mary Engelbreit Page-A-Day calendar this morning. It said, “Memory is the ability to gather roses in winter.” Leadership, too. Hardwired into us, we are given the opportunity to lead every day.
Will you join me in replacing the pseudo-leadership of me, me, me we have settled for lately with the Essential Leadership of we? We. No exceptions. This one action alone stands to right our society faster than any other. Step up, Beloved. Lead. Right where you are. Make the hard choices of a Real Leader. Choose we over me—and watch us—just watch us—make a world that works for everyone. See if we don’t!
Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual teacher, the founder of iAmpersand, and the author of The Mex Mysteries, the Boots & Boas Books, and spiritual nonfiction. Her essays address the intersection of spirituality and culture. Her website is susancorso.com.