To lead you have to care

Posted Date: 10/07/2021

There’s a story about a man who came to pay his respects for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. While waiting in Washington’s Union Station for the train carrying FDR’s body, a reporter asked the mourner, “Why are you here? Did you know Franklin Roosevelt?” The man replied, “No, I did not know President Roosevelt, but he knew me.”

I think that’s a major aspect of leadership — caring for the people you are leading to the extent that they believe you’ve got their best interests at heart. That kind of leadership is hard to come by. Currently, there are leaders who are admired within certain polarized groups, but few have that broad, almost universal support.  And it has been difficult for leaders the past 18 months during the COVID-19 pandemic. This has been all new to them as it was to us. But a big part of leading through adversity is doing the most basic and probably the hardest thing to do — caring, a lot, and sometimes for people who didn’t care much for you, and they let you know it. The narrative of angry, sometimes out of control people disrupting school board meetings has already reached one of the pinnacles of our popular culture, a recent skit on Saturday Night Live.

It will be interesting to see in the future, what books will say about what leadership was like during the past few years. Because of all the changes and disruptions brought on by the pandemic, I bet a lot of leaders have probably shelved, or altered their leadership styles and just relied on their basic humanity to keep things moving. For all of us now — leaders, followers and everyone in between — we’re learning about what kind of people we are. Will we try and care for our fellow humans to the greatest extent possible? Everyone can be a leader in this area. The more, the better.