Leadership and the Next Presidency

I'm finding that this blog is a good place to jot down ideas that pop into my head about GL.

Thanks for the Election ideas. Here's a resource that I came across today: http://howyoulead.org/

The Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership has come up with 15 questions to ask the 2 candidates about their leadership. It might be an interesting activity to ask our GL students what questions they would ask Obama and McCain to help them understand how they would lead.

From CPL President Andy Zelleke:

Few would question that leadership competence is an essential ingredient in a successful presidency. Candidates know this, routinely trumpeting their leadership prowess in commercials and bumper stickers. But campaigns rarely provide voters with the depth and quality of information about the candidates that they need to assess how much “there” there is beneath the self-serving slogans, and to judge—between two capable leaders—which candidate’s leadership would better fit the challenges of the day and those still unknown that will emerge.

Voters need a clear sense of the candidates’ inner core, and how they have dealt with and learned from their personal and professional challenges. Voters should also better understand the candidates’ visions of where they want to lead the nation, and how they will do the actual work of leading—inspiring, communicating, building high-performing teams, forming coalitions, making decisions, getting difficult things done against predictable resistance—if elected.

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I also came across these leader profiles today on the same website. There are a couple of them that I might consider using.