Before leaving the newspaper business last summer, a young co-worker asked me if I had any advice about advancing his career. Now, this is a dangerous question to ask someone as verbose as myself–we could have easily wasted an hour by the water cooler.
Nonetheless, I could give a fairly concise response because of the wisdom passed along by my late father, William K. Jones. He was never one to talk much about the seminal events of his life when he led Marines through some of the most hellish and lethal fighting of World War II on heavily fortified islands such as Tarawa, Saipan, and Guadalcanal.
As Ken Burns’ recent documentary showed, these near-death experiences became seared on the hearts, minds, and souls of everyone touched by America’s defining moment of survival in the 20th Century.
Novelist William Faulkner would capture their spirit in his 1950 Nobel speech. As the shadow of the Cold War spread across Europe and the United States, Faulkner, the normally shy creator of a fictional county in his native Mississippi, felt compelled to deliver a speech to address the prevailing gloom in modern literature.
In refusing the fashionable nihilism of his time, Faulkner declared, “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.”
Without claiming to have the wisdom of that great writer, all I could do with my young friend was offer the wisdom of my father.
“My dad told me that he made it through the war by listening to his intuition. So follow your gut.”
For Bill Jones, this meant ducking at the right moment when he was under fire from Japanese forces - only to see the guy next to him get his head blown off.
Unlike my father’s generation-or the Vietnam generation of my older brother and cousins-I’ve never had to make such dramatic choices of whether to duck, run, bob or weave away from enemy fire. The closest I’ve come to war was last summer during a research trip to Iraq for the book I’m writing on the media coverage of Iraq. As mortars exploded somewhere beyond the runway of Baghdad International Airport, I thought of my father and what it must have been like to rush into the hot metal death of Japanese pillboxes, and make decisions for his Marines that could make all the difference between living and dying.
Launching RichmondLeaders.com
Though must of us aren’t under fire, our work brings us a constant barrage of information, opinions, regulations, and, whatever the size of our responsibilities, decisions, decisions, decisions.
Others depend on us to make the best choices—and set the best examples-that we can.
As The Bergman Group launches this Web site dedicated to leadership in its many forms, I have asked a number of gifted leaders to offer their thoughts in the hopes of helping others better understand decision-making and leadership in a world that seems to change at a dizzying speed.
As J. Thomas Wren, a professor at the University of Richmond’s Jepson School of Leadership Studies, wrote more than a decade ago in The Leaders Companion: Insights On Leadership Through the Ages, “Leadership has become one of the hot topics in the popular consciousness. Bookstores are filled with ‘how to’ books on leadership, and colleges and corporations have discovered that the study of leadership is both popular and potentially quite useful.”
How can we be better leaders? A simple question with no easy answer.
In our first round of blogs, our contributors tackle the question from a variety of angles:
- Richard Coughlan, associate dean for graduate and executive programs at the University of Richmond, explores pragmatic questions about whether one needs an MBA to advance one’s career.
- John Sherman, former president and chief executive officer of Scott & Stringfellow Inc., reflects upon four heroes in his life.
- Philip Davidson, a former bank executive who remains active with the Richmond Ballet, Leadership Metro Richmond and other groups, offers insights into the essential personal qualities of the 21st Century leader.
- Robert L. Thalhimer, senior vice president of advancement at The Community Foundation, writes about the need to make tolerance part and parcel of leadership.
- Robert Shinn, President, Public Affairs, of Capital Results, a Richmond-based business consulting and public affairs company, shows the importance of creative listening to get the best out of others.
I invite your responses, and perhaps, contributions to our growing list of writers. Our goal is to create an online forum for the civil discussion of ideas, approaches, and questions of mutual interest.
We also plan to post articles and materials about emerging issues from around the world, and share interesting blogs, speeches, and other materials.
Virginia’s capital is a great place to live, work, and enjoy a high quality of life. We hope Richmondleaders.com contributes to the area’s promising future by providing a new outlet for intelligent discussion.
My gut tells me this is a good thing.