A cause is the raison d’etre of leadership–it answers the question, “Why do we need a leader, why this leader?”
Great leaders are associated with particular causes on which they focus fully. The resolution of that cause becomes an all-consuming goal for them and their followers. The more humanistic the cause, the broader its appeal. In a way, the cause itself ultimately defines the leader.
George Washington and the other founding fathers of America made their cause the liberation of America from the colonial grip of Britain.
Abraham Lincoln, after a frustrating first year in office, found a twofold-cause: the abolition of slavery through the Emancipation Proclamation, and the simultaneous cause of holding the Union together through the Civil War.
Mahatma Gandhi made it his cause to liberate India from the ravages of English colonialism through non-violent means.
Nelson Mandela’s cause was getting rid of apartheid.
Martin Luther King’s struggle was against racism and the Jim Crow South.
This brings us to the question: What is Barack Obama’s cause? The sooner he finds it and declares it, the better it is for him and for all of us.
But the most important question is one that each of us has to ask of ourselves: What is my cause?
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How Leadership Begins in the Family
Often, leadership development seems to begin and end in the corporate environment. How do we take the lessons learned during corporate training to environments beyond the company, and on the other hand how do we bring leadership lessons from the outside world into the company? Excellent leadership training will actually make the environments inside and outside the work-place seamless. The focus of good leadership development should be to make leadership an everyday habit.
In this context, the key thing to recognize is that our families are both sources of leadership lessons, and also sites in which to practice leadership. For a child, a parent is a role model and leadership qualities displayed by the parent become lessons for the child. Remember Harper Lee’s characterization of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mocking Bird?
As parents we are leaders to our children, and the family becomes a laboratory in which we try to teach leadership and learn from the feedback. Listen to this 5-minute extract from Sidney Poitier’s speech at Guilford College, NC in 2003. It is a superb illustration of how our leadership abilities develop within the family and why we need to show leadership qualities in the family. The scene begins with Poitier as a 15-year old kid having been arrested for stealing and roasting corn in a cornfield. Listen:
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Sidney Poitier on Leadership Lessons in the Family
The full speech can be found here