Presidential Leadership: Role Models for the Asking

Presidential leadership is a topic of great interest to me.  As indicated on my Facebook and LinkedIn postings, I try to visit the 13 official Presidential Libraries in addition to 30 more homes and museums of other past leaders of the United States (click on the cover below to access William Clotworthy's directory of "Homes & Libraries of the Presidents" on Amazon.com)

Independent of political affiliations or philosophies, Presidents are very visible role models to study the positive and negative aspects of leadership.  Think about the various dimensions of leadership - creating a vision, inspiring, strategizing, executing, sincerity,  authenticity, influencing, bringing out the best in people - to name a few.  In the words of Joel A. Barker, independent scholar and futurist, "A leader is a person you will follow to a place you wouldn't go by yourself."  (http://joelbarker.com/)  Think about all the "places" U.S. Presidents have taken citizens over the span of U.S. history and what influencing techniques they have used to get the population to follow them (not to mention voting them into office).

Each of the 43 individual Presidents has brought their unique brand of leadership to the table. (Technically there were  44 Presidents since Grover Cleveland was both the 22nd and 24th).  Every one of them had traits that others could learn from, while some displayed lesser qualities that one would not want to emulate.  Some excelled at leading while in office, a few were unmemorable, while others did not achieve their full leadership potential until after exiting the Presidential role.

The purpose of this posting is to introduce you to the idea of becoming a student of  Presidential leadership styles and identify the qualities, characteristics and behaviors that you want to model in living your lives.   Bookmark this blog and come back in the future to learn more about specific Presidential leadership styles that you can use as role models to help you achieve your leadership potential.

Please take a few minutes to answer this short poll indicating your interest in pursuing this approach to leadership development.

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