All Over the Landscape

2/19/2011

Recently, I had a parent ask me "for what audience did I 'really' intend to inform when I wrote my book, "So You Want to Be a Leader -- Advice and Counsel for Young Leaders?"  I assumed the parent had correctly concluded that it may not have been truly written for young leaders, so I went on the explain that I was three-fourths finished with the book when I decided to redirect it to young leaders - probably unsuccessfully.  Anecdotally, virtually all of my readers (at least those who comment, email, or write me) are established professionals.  It seems that most of the cadets at Marion Military Institute and Riverside Military Academy who have read it did so at the encouragement of the parents.  I wish I would have been quicker on my feet when the parent asked me the question, so that I would have answered something like, "it was written for practitioners of change - those who take forlorn organizations and make them vibrant again and those who create new organizations destined for success."  That would have been a more scholarly response.

In 1995, right after I returned from the Haiti operation (I was still on active duty), I was asked by the President of Bridgewater College to return to campus (my alma mater) and serve on a search committee to select a new football coach (I had been a quarterback there a few years past).  The first candidate we interviewed was Jay Paterno, son of the great football coach at Penn State University (another of my alma maters), Joe Paterno.  After the interview, I told Jay how much I respected his father because of the type of program he ran at PSU.  Jay responded, "Yeh, but you didn't have to live with him."  All I could think of was, "Is that what my kids say about me?"  I don't think for a minute that Jay was being disrespectful to his father, simply that his father was demanding.  Now that I am a little wiser, I think that is probably what mine would have said, and it wouldn't have been meant in a disrespectful way.