LEADERSHIP: 3 POINTS

INTRODUCTION

The title of my talk is, “Leadership: 3 Points.”

I have given a talk on leadership at this COSA ceremony at the beginning of another St. Mary’s High School year - almost  year now for the last 14 years.

Thank you for this opportunity to think about this topic of leadership again.

At 77 years of age - I would guess that I still have a few words about this topic.

So I sat down and listed 10 possibilities. Then I picked 3.

I’ll save the other points for another year.

POINT NUMBER ONE: ASK QUESTIONS - FOR EXAMPLE?

A leader asks questions.

A leader listens for the questions people have.

A leader has to address his or her own questions about leadership and life.

A leader is often expected to give answers. I prefer to stress questions before answers.

And I think the # 1 question to ask is, “For example?”

Let me repeat that: “The #1 question for leaders to ask is, “For example?”

Asking that question gets each other  to think. It gets us to be more specific. The for example question forces clarity.

For example: “What are the specific issues we need to address when we talk about leadership?  Give me some examples.”

So leaders ask other people questions - more than giving answers.

I’m saying again for the 3^rd time, the number one question to ask is, “For example?”

I would think that example speaks louder than words - in fact, words to me are reflections and thoughts after the fact - after experiencing some example.

Looking forward, some of you will become coaches and captains of teams and for starters you will imitate the example of those you saw on the teams you were on.

Looking forward, some of you will be in organizations in this school - and future schools.

For example, some of you will experience COSA here at St. Mary’s. Those on COSA will influence you - in what you do and what you don’t do - how you saw people lead and not lead - how someone ran a meeting well or not so well. And hopefully, what you will learn are the examples you liked and didn’t like.

Looking forwards, most of you will become parents, leading kids into the future, and you will do parenting the way you saw your parents do parenting. There will be things your parents did that you won’t do - because you named them and you named how you want to be different.

If you don’t do that, “History will repeat itself.”

Someone said, “If you want to change someone, you have to change their grandmother.”

So what I’m saying here is this: “For example? is a great life question - to ask it a good 10,000 times before you die.”

When someone is complaining - when someone is accusing you of something, ask - say, “For example?”

Let me give one of my favorite examples. It’s called, “How To Use a Microphone.”

As COSA leaders - as any leader - learn how to speak loud and clear when you stand  up to speak up at a microphone.

At different times in life, you will go to the microphone.

When I get a chance,  I like to tell anyone who will listen, “Here’s how I learned to use a microphone.”

For example, someone says to you, “You were at the microphone and it’s obvious, you don’t know how to use a microphone.”

So you answer back, “Sorry! I didn’t know that. Thanks for telling me. Well, can you show me how to use a microphone?” 

When you do that, you’re asking, “For example, what’s the best way to use a microphone.”

It’s then I say, “Make a fist. Then make a ‘Thumbs up.’ with that fist. Then put the tip of your thumb on your lips - still making a fist. Then leaving your hand exactly as it is,  fold in your thumb.”

If you don’t know how to use a microphone, that’s Lesson  # 1. That’s how close you should be to the microphone - if you’re not sure. It’s the length of a thumb: around an inch and a half.

Now,  I want to say, “If one person here this morning heard what I just said about how close you should be to a microphone - and puts it into practice for the rest of your life, then I have been a leader. Then it was worthwhile for me to come to this microphone to speak today.”

I heard someone say and show that way to use a microphone in the 1970’s and I have been practicing that  ever since when I use a microphone.

For example, I was at a meeting on Riva Road on Opioids last Tuesday and I heard people yelling about 37 times to the people on stage, “Not loud enough!”

Those speaking were too far from the microphone.  They could not be heard. I was not in charge, so I didn’t say anything, but if I was in charge, I would show them the fist, thumb, to the mouth trick.

There are other tricks - but that’s one practical one:  The Fist and Thumb to the Lips example.

Leaders need to be heard. Speakers need to be heard.

Learn how to yell at speakers, “Louder!” The other day - after a lot of people could not be heard - a bunch of people did yell out and some people got closer to the microphone.

Leaders need to be heard for starters.

SECOND POINT: THE TASTE TEST

In your lifetime you will experience a lot of laziness, craziness,  people making comments that are not thought out too well. People don’t prepare. People don’t do their homework. 

To put it bluntly: In your lifetime you will experience a lot of crap.

So my second suggestion for being a leader is that you learn to use the taste test.

It goes like this.

A person is walking down the street. He or she stops. They see something on the sidewalk. They go over to it and say, “It looks like.”

They get down on their knees, bend over it and smell it. “It smells like.” 

Then they take their finger and touch it and say, “It feels like.” 

Then they taste it and they say,  “Oooh. This is crap!” 

Then they say, “Good thing I didn’t step in it.”

A leader knows crap when they see, smell, touch,  taste and almost step in it.

For the rest of your life, you will experience people feeding you a lot of crap - in dating, with regards drugs, in business meetings, and especially regarding money.

People want your money and they will feed you a lot of crap to get it.

Don’t fall for it - and you know what   IT  is. It rhymes with it.

Remember you heard it  here - this second point about leadership.

THIRD POINT: BE A GLOBALIST

There are two kinds of people, those who build walls and those who build bridges.

I hold that good leaders build good bridges. I hold bad leaders build walls.

I don’t know how much it will cost to build a new Bay Bridge.

Ask those stuck on Route 50 on most Friday evenings here in Annapolis - as they inch their way forward so that they can cross the Bay Bridge - into Eastern Maryland if they would want a new or bigger Bay Bridge. Or asks that some question on Sunday night to people coming back over the Bay Bridge from the Easter Shore of Maryland. Ask them if they prefer walls or bridges?

As priest - I know one of the key jobs for a priest is to build bridges.

As priest I know that a New Testament word for priest and pope is pontifex - meaning bridge.

I love Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. It has God reaching out his finger to touch Adam’s finger. It then shows Adam  pointing his finger to touch God’s finger. It’s two fingers trying to bridge the distance between two people.

Notice God’s hand is not a fist.

Notice Adam’s hand is not a fist.

If people asked me, “Is there anything in the world  you don’t like to see happening?” I would answer, “Yes.”

If they then asked, “For example,” I would say, it’s this call to be nationalists - isolationists - to build walls that separate people from people. It’s this urge to wall out people.

It would be this tendency to make fists - instead of open hands; to shake a fist at another instead of making an open hand to shake on a deal with each other.

I see it in groups. People want to isolate and insulate each other from each other - to push away and bully away people we don’t like.

A leader notices hands when with others.

It’s happening right now on the border between Myramar and Bangladesh. There is a group of people who are labeled the Myramar Rohingyas. They are Muslim. They are also labeled “the most friendless people in the world.” 300 to 400 thousand are trying to migrate and move - trying to find a place to live. Hindus and Buddhists, and other Moslems are giving this group of Muslims a tough time to find a place to exist.

If there is one thing in the world that is happening in the last 20 years it’s migration.

What’s your position on people coming into America? Wall them out or invite them in?

If there is one thing that’s happening in our world, it’s this brownification of peoples. Next time, you're in New York City or Toronto, take the subway. Look around at the color of the skin of the people traveling on spaceship earth with you. Study the people you are moving and migrating on this train called, "earth" with.  People are falling in love with those around them. People are having mixed marriages. People are having multi-cultural babies. We are becoming one world - whether we like it or not.

For the sake of transparency I grew up within eyesight of the Statue of Liberty. Its base or bottom line plaque invites the world’s tired and poor to come to America and join us.  Listen again to what that Statue says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these the homeless, tempest tost,  to all. I lift my flame beside the golden door.”

That is part of my Christian outlook on life.

It’s everyone’s earth.

All are welcome.

For the sake of transparency my parents came to America from another county - speaking both English and Gaelic. My parents had little education. My parents did what many people who come to America did. They earned money and sent it back home to pay for their brothers and sisters to come to America - as well as to feed those back home.

I’m 77. You’re 17 and younger. Lucky you: because you’re going to be seeing the world’s borders crumbling a lot more than ever in the next 50 years.

That means there will be pushback - and screams about immigration - legal and illegal.

People are going to want more and more walls - so that what they perceive as their land and their stuff - that it will be protected.

Christians forget the Resurrection story - when Jesus came through walls and said, “Peace!” [Cf. John 29:19-21.]

So leaders there is my third point for leadership. Have as 1 of your 3 key points: “All are welcome.”

I would hope that COSA leaders here in St. Mary’s would be highly in favor of no walls - no cliques - no isolating people who seem to be or seem to look different than the who I am.

CONCLUSION

Let me close with a quote about leadership - that touches on  my 3 points for this morning: “A little old lady was refused a hearing by Alexander the Great. She spoke up and reprimanded him saying, `If you have no time for the little person as well as the big, you have no time to be King.’”  

O - O - O

This was a talk I gave to our St. Mary's High School students at the beginning of this new school year - when the Council of Student Activities - were sworn in as the COSA  leaders.