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What characteristics distinguish a true leader from someone merely occupying a leading position? What makes a person a true leader?
This is a year for electing the president of the United States. So it's a fitting time to explore the qualities of true leadership.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and presidential biographer Dr. James MacGregor Burns, who received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard, wrote a highly influential book in 2010 titled Leadership, which is thorough, incisive and instructive on many levels. He precedes his prologue with a few notable quotes, including one from Franklin Roosevelt, U.S. president from 1933 to 1945:
"The Presidency is . . . preeminently a place of moral leadership. All our great Presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified . . . That is what the office is-a superb opportunity for reapplying, applying in new conditions, the simple rules of human conduct to which we always go back. Without leadership alert and sensitive to change, we are all bogged up or lose our way."
What a contrast to the mudslinging we typically see in election campaigns. Attempts are made to malign opposing candidates in a variety of ways. Denigrating stories regarding a candidate may be researched and exploited or even invented by the opposition's supporters. While the not-so-subtle attacks don't necessarily emanate from the candidates themselves, they might affirm their approval.
Some of the supporters engaged in such tactics constitute the political brain-trust strategizing a hopeful candidate's bid for the highest office in the world. Other supporters supply the essential finances to catapult their candidate to victory, making it possible for the candidate to hire persuasive specialists extraordinaire. Is this what true leadership is all about?
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Keywords: leadership Washington, George
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