Archive for the ‘Quintessential Leadership’ Category

I’ve watched more live news coverage in the last week than I have in the last five years. I cut cable several years ago, and I limit myself to daily perusal of the headlines from several credible news outlets, stopping only to read in-depth if it’s a topic I’m interested in or that I need to know.

anthony-fauci-andrew-cuomo-quintessential-leadershipI have had, by listening to the daily briefings on COVID-19 from the White House, the opportunity to see quintessential leadership. And unquintessential leadership.

I’ve also had the chance to see quintessential leadership at the state and local levels, and I’ve also seen unquintessential leadership.

Dr. Anthony Fauci and Governor Andrew Cuomo (New York) have shown a lot of quintessential leadership in the way they have addressed the rapidly-spreading COVID-19 in the United States (New York is now the epicenter, leading the nation in confirmed cases and in deaths). (more…)

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for FailureThe Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While Haidt makes his case in a very narrow sense that focuses on the current higher education environment, the reality is this is the current pervasive American (regardless of age) mindset. We’ve, collectively, just turned off our brains from any kind of critical thinking and just absorb the opiate of the masses around us until it becomes the tainted glass through which we see and respond to everything.

We’re dumbed down and weakened by not be aware enough and courageous enough to stand alone and think for ourselves using common sense, logic, and reason within a moral and ethical framework that is unchangeable. (more…)

This video I’m including here is called The Millennial Question, but, in fact, some of the deeper issues raised here may have infiltrated all of lives because of our ubiquitous access to technology. (more…)

John McCain quintessential leader

John McCain, United States Senator from Arizona, died on August 25, 2018, a little more than a year after being diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive, and always fatal, type of brain cancer.

Senator McCain’s life could have been much different then it turned out to be. He grew up in a very elite and privileged world, and one that afforded him the opportunity, if he chose, to live for himself. Senator McCain didn’t do that.

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daddy-young-man-1If my dad were still alive, he’d turn 90 next month. That sounds really old to me, but I am reminded that he and my mom came to parenthood later in life, after he’d almost finished his veterinary degree and after several years of heartbreaking miscarriages, the last of which almost killed my mom.

After Dad and Mom realized they wouldn’t be able to have biological children, they still wanted a family, so they decided to adopt children and love them as their own. (more…)

Are we unquintessential leaders in the way we parent our children?The first relationship that children will – or should – experience leadership (both as a role and as a role model) is with their parents.

In our society, many parents have abdicated this leadership role – in spite of having experienced it, albeit imperfectly at times, themselves as children – in favor of being friends with their children. 

This is unquintessential leadership at a core level (it is also parental neglect) and it, just as quintessential leadership aims to grow quintessential leaders as its legacy, produces a new generation of unquintessential leadership that is even worse than the one before it.
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