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01 Leadership in the 2008 Presidential Race—Who has the right stuff? - David Russell
As we are all too aware, we are in the midst of a presidential election. Most everyone agrees that our country needs real leadership, which raises the question what should a presidential leader look like. How do we look for intelligent leadership in the next president? Will eitherSenator McCain or Senator Obama be a good leader based on what we see so far? There are a lot of tough issues for this country to face so the question is not trivial. David Russell is an acknowledged expert in helping entrepreneurs succeed. He has authored the book, Success With People, and has been under contract with Microsoft for the last 2 years to teach their partners how to hire, manage, develop and retain great people. More about Dave’s work can be found at his website, successwithpeople.com. We start with the question of how political leadership differs from business leadership. The principal difference seems to be that political leaders, especially presidential candidates, are in the spotlight all of the time. Every move and word must be calculated and planned. Because the scrutiny is so intense, there is little room for error. Thus, the safe path is usually blandness and ambiguity. Taking this into account, the two most important leadership attributes in a presidential candidate should be integrity and vision. Integrity tells us that a presidential candidate will be consistent to his stated set of values, giving us some certainty and predictability about his performance. Vision tells us what fundamentally, a presidential candidate sees as the direction of the country in the next four years.