A wise old mentor of mine was sharing his experience with politics recently. He offered some pretty good observations and lessons. Are politicians leaders?
A professor once taught me LEADERSHIP is the process of influencing others. SELF-LEADERSHIP is the process of influencing oneself. You must have SELF-LEADERSHIP before LEADERSHIP. No doubt politicians have SELF-LEADERSHIP. If they did not, they would not be elected, but LEADERSHIP is another question.
It is an insightful list and this person has given me more. I will share at a later time. We are wise to keep these lessons in mind when dealing with politicians.
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Politicians should be required to spend as much time, energy and effort in their elected positions as they did in their campaign to get elected.
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Politicians often refer to themselves as “elected leaders’, when in fact they are elected office holders. Whether or not they are leaders is as entirely different question.
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Courses offered in leadership are useless if the “leader” is only interested in figuring out what the pole numbers are on an issue so they can follow the current trend. Someone needs to design a course called “followship”. Politicians who think of themselves as leaders when all they are interested in doing is bending to the current popular opinion is akin to having the bell cow follow the herd. You can’t lead from the back of the pack.
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If the private sector would exercise more corporate responsibility, we could eliminate half of the regulatory agencies.
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When a political party wins control of both the legislative branch and the Presidency / governorship , they are doomed to fail because they know they can’t fulfill their campaign promises and they have no scapegoats to blame for their failures.


