Obama: Principles of Leadership
By David on Nov 5, 2008 in Featured, Leadership Principles
Jack Welch, former head of GE, writes in BusinessWeek that Barack Obama won the presidency on three leadership principles: a clear vision, clean execution, and friends in high places. I would add that Mr. Obama was also consistent in purpose and message, and was not distracted … at least publicly … by vicious attacks.
Those tenets of leadership are going to be tested in coming months as the country struggles to right itself from what can only be termed, a dark time of ineptness and corruption. As Bob Schieffer of CBS News observed this morning, “the country is in a mess.”
Perhaps the first benefit to the country of the Obama win is for the image of the United States around the world … the signal that is sent to friends and foes, alike, that America is a nation of strong and purposeful people who have elected a man whose father came from a village in Kenya and whose mother came from middle-class America … a man who achieved education and stature by working hard … and who, even with a middle name of Hussein, a fact over which he muses, has been elected President. As Mr. Obama said, America “is a place where all things are possible.” What a powerful message that sends to the world.
In the moment of greatness late on election night, as Mr. Obama addressed the nation and the world, all of the feebleness of incompetent attempts during the last eight years to manipulate the image of America seemed to be erased, and we begin with a new light of unity, universality and hope.
