Leadership

Mathew McConaughey for president

No, not really, but after hearing him speak yesterday from the White House, I would take him over the current president—and many of the past half dozen on both sides. His speech was a lesson in leadership.

Photo by Jehyun Sung on Unsplash

He started with several indisputable truths:

• We need to set out a path to get something done

• He came to DC to speak to lawmakers, to speak with them, and to encourage them to speak to each other—on both sides of the aisle.

• Loss of life matters

• We need secure and safe schools

• We need gun laws that won’t allow bad guys to get guns

He called these tactical regulations to fight a problem. I’d say they were strategy. He went on to corral the “other side” to his argument.

Responsible gun owners are fed up with the second amendment being abused and hijacked by some deranged individuals.

That could have been one of the most important lines in the speech. In order to accomplish change, you need to get buy-in, especially from those resistant to the change.

For a little background. MM (I’ll abbreviate because my fingers can’t type his name) grew up in Uvalde. He went “home” after the shooting last week and spoke with anyone who would speak to him. Being MM, he probably had a few willing. He assembled what he learned (knowledge) and added his beliefs and experience as a father (wisdom) and assembled the most coherent and forward-thinking response to the shooting I have heard.

I’m working on another post about gun violence. This post is about leadership.

For the record, the headlines mostly speak of his stance on gun control, which was only a small portion of his speech. The rest was good stuff, I agree with most if not all of what he said in response to the immediate issue:

This was unusual because I did have an instinctual bias before listening, as I don’t care to hear from celebrities on issues. MM quickly showed his mettle. A little research revealed that he is a pretty good motivational speaker as well.

His multi-faceted approach (another post coming on this) to stop this kind of tragedy showed what we don’t see from our leaders—LEADERSHIP.

I’ve been in management both as an employee and as a business owner. One common trait of successful businesses is that they have leaders. Throughout both careers, I read everything I could on the subject. Most were worthwhile in some form or another, but I always came back to the oldest and simplest.

The Tao Te Ching is a 2,500-year-old Chinese test accredited to Lao Tzu. The passage is #17 and goes as follows:

The supreme rulers are hardly known by their subjects.       

The lesser are loved and praised.

        The even lesser are feared.

        The least are despised.

        Those who show no trust will not be trusted.

I think our current leadership falls into the last category. By seeking to aggrandize themselves, they fall down the scale. I had a hard time instituting this myself, but finally reached a point in my career when I stopped caring what people thought and just focused on my stuff, my process. MM stated likewise in his speech here. I’m also a big Tampa Bay Lightning fan. Coach Cooper never talks about winning or losing, he talks about process. The Lightning are again the Eastern Conference Finals and six wins away from their third consecutive Stanley Cup. Once I reached that level, I became the ruler who is hardly known—and it worked.

People notice action. They are drawn to modesty and the truth. They are instinctually aware when a “leader” is all rhetoric.

Being an elected official, regardless of level has several priorities before they deal with their campaign promises and agenda. First they have to gain power by getting elected. Then they need to keep power which involves fund raising and self promotion. With whatever time remains they can do their job. I get this and understand this. We could work with term limits to mitigate the second, but neither will ever go away.

With that said, that doesn’t stop an elected official from being a leader. Joe Biden was in the perfect position to heal this country and he has squandered it by listening to the Twitter left and a group of progressive professors who told him he had the chance to be legendary. The administration also focuses on tactics and disregard a larger strategy. I wrote about this in Drill Baby Drill.

He didn’t have to put much energy into gaining power. The nomination was placed in his lap after a splintered (and awful) primary field was almost taken by Bernie Sanders. The powers that be in the Democratic Party pushed Joe as the only viable candidate. He also didn’t need to put much into winning the election. Trump lost if more than Biden won it.

With a promise to seek middle ground and heal the country he then pandered to the progressive wing of his party and with each defeat became more antagonistic toward the rest of us.

I’ll close with a last passage, and only wish that it had come from the president and not an actor:

Will you ask yourselves: Can both sides rise above? Can both sides see behind the political problem at hand and admit that we have a life-preservation problem on our hands. We have a chance tight now to reach for and to grasp a higher ground—above our political affiliations, a chance to make a choice that does more than protect your party, a chance to make a choice that protects our country now and for the next generation.

We have to take a sober and honest look in the mirror and rebrand ourselves based on what we truly value. We’ve got to get some real courage and honor our immortal obligations instead of our party affiliations. Enough of the counter punching and invalidation of the other side. Find the middle ground—the place where most of us Americans live.

That’s leadership. Thank you Matthew.