Being a Leader and Making Decisions (Character Education)

Being a Leader and Making Decisions

Being a Leader and Making Decisions Being Fair and Honest Dealing with Bullying Dealing with Frustration and Anger Handling Peer Pressure Handling Teamwork and Respect for Others Managing Conflict Resolution Managing Responsibilities Overcoming Prejudice

Being a Leader and Making Decisions TRACEY BAPTISTE INTRODUCTION BY CONSULTING EDITORS

Madonna M. Murphy, Ph.D. University of St. Francis and Sharon L. Banas former Values Education Coordinator, Sweet Home Central School District, New York

Character Education: Being a Leader and Making Decisions Copyright © 2009 by Infobase ­Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, ­contact: Chelsea ­House An imprint of Infobase ­Publishing 132 West 31st ­Street New York NY ­10001 Library of Congress ­Cataloging-­in-­Publication ­Data Baptiste, Tracey. Being a leader and making decisions / Tracey Baptiste. p. cm. — (Character education) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-60413-125-3 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-43812-876-4 (e-book) 1. Leadership—Juvenile literature. 2. Decision making—Juvenile literature. I. Title. BF637.L4B35 2009 158’.4—dc22 2009001157 Chelsea House books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-­8755. You can find Chelsea House on the World Wide Web at ­http://www.chelseahouse.com Text design by Annie O’Donnell Cover design by Takeshi ­Takahashi Printed in the United ­States Bang EJB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 ­1 This book is printed on ­acid-­free ­paper. All links and Web addresses were checked and verified to be correct at the time of publication. Because of the dynamic nature of the Web, some addresses and links may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.

Contents Introduction

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by Madonna M. Murphy, Ph.D., professor of education at University of St. Francis, Joliet, Illinois, and Sharon L. Banas, former values education coordinator and middle school social studies teacher, Sweet Home Central School District, Amherst and Tonawanda, New York

1 What Makes a Good Leader?

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2 Thrust into Leadership

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3 Inspirational Leadership

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4 Leading in the Community

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5 Leading at Work

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6 Leading the Way

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7 When Leadership Goes Bad

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8 How You Can Be a Good Leader

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Glossary

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Bibliography

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Further Resources

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Picture Credits

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Index

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About the Author and Consultants

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Introduction

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n February 14, 2008, as these books were being edited, a shooting occurred at Northern Illinois University (NIU) in DeKalb, Illinois. A former NIU graduate student, dressed in black and armed with a shotgun and two handguns, opened fire from the stage of a lecture hall. The shooter killed five students and injured 16 others before committing suicide. What could have led someone to do this? Could it have been prevented? When the shooting started, student Dan Parmenter and his girlfriend, Lauren Debrauwere, who was sitting next to him, dropped to the floor between the rows of seats. Dan covered Lauren with his body, held her hand, and began praying. The shield of Dan’s body saved Lauren’s life, but Dan was fatally wounded. In that hall, on February 14, 2008—Valentine’s Day—one person’s deed was horrific and filled with hate; another’s was heroic and loving. The purpose of this series of books is to help prevent the occurrence of this kind of violence by offering readers the character education and social and emotional skills they need to control their emotions and make good moral choices. This series includes books on topics such as coping with bullying, conflicts, peer pressure, prejudice, anger and frustration, and numerous responsibilities, as well as learning how to handle teamwork and respect for others, be fair and honest, and be a good leader and decision-maker. In his 1992 book, Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong,1 William Kilpatrick coined the term “moral illiteracy” and dedicated a whole chapter to it. Today, as he points out, people





being a leader and making decisions often do not recognize when they are in a situation that calls for a moral choice, and they are not able to define what is right and what is wrong in that situation. The California-based Josephson Institute of Ethics agrees with these concerns. The institute states that we have a “character deficit” in our society today and points out that increasing numbers of young people across the United States—from well-to-do as well as disadvantaged backgrounds—demonstrate reckless disregard for fundamental standards of ethical conduct. According to the 2006 Josephson Institute Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth, our children are at risk. This report sets forth the results of a biannual written survey completed in 2006 by more than 36,000 high school students across the country. The compilers of the report found that 82 percent of the students surveyed admitted that they had lied to a parent about something significant within the previous year. Sixty percent admitted to having cheated during a test at school, and 28 percent admitted to having stolen something from a store.2 (Various books in this series will tell of other findings in this report.) Clearly, helping young people to develop character is a need of national importance. The United States Congress agrees. In 1994, in the joint resolution that established National Character Counts Week, Congress declared that “the character of a nation is only as strong as the character of its individual citizens.” The resolution also stated that “people do not automatically develop good character and, therefore, conscientious efforts must be made by youth-influencing institutions . . . to help young people develop the essential traits and characteristics that comprise good character.”3 Many stories can be told of people who have defended our nation with character. One of the editors of this series knew one such young man named Jason Dunham. On April 24, 2004, Corporal Jason L. Dunham was serving with the United States Marines in Iraq. As Corporal Dunham’s squad was conducting a reconnaissance mission, the men heard sounds of rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. Corporal

Introduction Dunham led a team of men toward that fire to assist their battalion commander’s ambushed convoy. An insurgent leaped out at Corporal Dunham, and he saw the man release a grenade. Corporal Dunham alerted his team and immediately covered the grenade with his helmet and his body. He lost his own life, but he saved the lives of others on his team. In January 2007, the Dunham family traveled to Washington, D.C., where President George W. Bush presented them with Corporal Dunham’s posthumously awarded Congressional Medal of Honor. In the words of the Medal of Honor citation, “By his undaunted courage, intrepid fighting spirit, and unwavering devotion to duty, Corporal Dunham gallantly gave his life for his country.”4 Thomas Lickona, the author of several books including Educating for Character and Character Matters, explains that the premise of character education is that there are objectively good human qualities—virtues—that are enduring moral truths. Courage, fortitude, integrity, caring, citizenship, and trustworthiness are just a few examples. These moral truths transcend religious, cultural, and social differences and help us to distinguish right from wrong. They are rooted in our human nature. They tell us how we should act with other human beings to promote human dignity and build a well-functioning and civil society—a society in which everyone lives by the golden rule.5 To develop his or her character, a person must understand core virtues, care about them, and act upon them. This series of books aims to help young readers want to become people of character. The books will help young people understand such core ethical values as fairness, honesty, responsibility, respect, tolerance of others, fortitude, self-discipline, teamwork, and leadership. By offering examples of people today and notable figures in history who live and have lived these virtues, these books will inspire young readers to develop these traits in themselves. Finally, through these books, young readers will see that if they act on these moral truths, they will make good choices.



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being a leader and making decisions They will be able to deal with frustration and anger, manage conflict resolution, overcome prejudice, handle peer pressure, and deal with bullying. The result, one hopes, will be middle schools, high schools, and neighborhoods in which young people care about one another and work with their classmates and neighbors to develop team spirit. Character development is a lifelong task but an exciting challenge. The need for it has been with us since the beginning of civilization. As the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle explained in his Nicomachean Ethics: The virtues we get by first exercising them . . . so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. . . . Hence also it is no easy task to be good . . . to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not easy; wherefore goodness is both rare and laudable and noble. . . . It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference.6

This development of one’s character is truly The Ultimate Gift that we hope to give to our young people. In the movie version of Jim Stovall’s book of the same name, a privileged young man receives a most unexpected inheritance from his grandfather. Instead of the sizeable inheritance of cash that he expects, the young man receives 12 tasks—or “gifts”— designed to challenge him on a journey of self-discovery. The gifts confront him with character choices that force him to decide how one can be truly happy. Is it the possession of money that brings us happiness, or is it what we do with the money that we have? Every one of us has been given gifts. Will we keep our gifts to ourselves, or will we share them with others? Being a “person of character” can have multiple meanings. Psychologist Steven Pinker asks an interesting question in a

Introduction January 13, 2008, New York Times Magazine article titled “The Moral Instinct”: “Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates, or Norman Borlaug?” Pinker goes on to explain that although most people would say that, of course, Mother Teresa is the most admirable—a true person of character who ministered to the poor in Calcutta, was awarded the Noble Peace Prize, and was ranked in an American poll as the most admired person in the twentieth century—each of these three is a morally admirable person. Pinker points out that Bill Gates made billions through his company Microsoft, but he also has decided to give away billions of dollars to help alleviate human misery in the United States and around the world. His charitable foundation is built on the principles that “All lives—no matter where they are being lived—have equal value” and “To whom much is given, much is expected.” Pinker notes that very few people have heard of Norman Borlaug, an agronomist who has spent his life developing high-yielding varieties of crops for third world countries. He is known as the “Father of the Green Revolution” because he used agricultural science to reduce world hunger and, by doing so, saved more than a billion lives. Borlaug is one of only five people in history to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal. He has devoted his long professional life and his scientific expertise to making the world a better place. All of these people—although very different, from different places, and with different gifts—are people of character. They are, says Pinker, people with “a sixth sense, the moral sense.” It is the sense of trying to do good in whatever situation one finds oneself.7 The authors and editors of the series Character Education hope that these books will help young readers discover their gifts and develop them, guided by a moral compass. “Do good and avoid evil.” “Become all that you can be—a person of character.” The books in this series teach these things and

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being a leader and making decisions more. These books will correlate well with national social studies standards of learning. They will help teachers meet state standards for teaching social and emotional skills, as well as state guidelines for teaching ethics and character education.

Madonna M. Murphy, Ph.D. Author of Character Education in America’s Blue Ribbon Schools and professor of education, University of St. Francis, Joliet, Illinois

Sharon L. Banas, M.Ed. Author of Caring Messages for the School Year and former values education coordinator and middle school social studies teacher, Sweet Home Central School District, Amherst and Tonawanda, New York

Footnotes 1. William Kilpatrick. Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992. 2. Josephson Institute, 2006 Josephson Institute Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth: Part One – Integrity. Available online at: http://josephsoninstitute.org/pdf/ReportCard_ press-release_2006-1013.pdf. 3. House Joint Resolution 366. May 11, 1994, 103rd Congress. 2d Session. 4. U.S. Army Center of Military History. The Medal of Honor. Available online at: www.history.army.mil/moh.html. 5. Thomas Lickona, Educating for Character: Teaching Respect and Responsibility in the Schools. New York: Bantam, 1991. Thomas Lickona, Character Matters: How to Help Our Children Develop Good Judgment, Integrity, and Other Essential Virtues. New York: Simon and Schuster Touchstone Books, 2004. 6. Richard McKeon, editor, “Nicomachean Ethics.” Basic Works of Aristotle, Chicago: Random House, Clarendon Press, 1941. 7. Steven Pinker, “The Moral Instinct,” The New York Times, January 13, 2008. Available online at www.newyorktimes.com.

WhAt MAKes A Good leAder?

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A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. —John C. Maxwell (1947– ), author and leadership expert

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n a sunny day in May, two rabbits graze in a field as the sun goes down. The smaller one, called Fiver, tells his friend Hazel that he senses danger coming. He says that all the rabbits must leave their home. The two of them tell the Chief Rabbit, who is in charge of their home, but the chief ignores their warning. Hazel takes charge and rounds up a few rabbits. The small group escapes just before their old home is destroyed, as Fiver predicted. This is how Richard Adams’s novel Watership Down begins. Hazel, who followed Fiver’s advice and took charge, soon becomes the chief of the rabbits’ new home. She shows all the signs of a true leader: the ability to listen to others, to make a decision based on the information at hand, to rally others to join in even though there may be disagreement, and to work for the good of the community.

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being a leader and making decisions

What Good Leaders Do Listen and Learn

Leaders are good listeners. They also know when to follow, as Hazel did when Fiver sensed danger coming. Leaders communicate well. They are clear. They make decisions and they follow through. It is easy to follow their lead. They set goals and make plans that help them accomplish those goals. Good leaders inspire others. If they didn’t, people would not want to follow them. They are positive, set a good example, and take good care of themselves and the people in their group or community. Showing care for themselves and others is one way that leaders prove that they are worthy of the position they hold. Leaders take time to learn better ways to do their job, and they surround themselves with people who are able to help them do better. They try to help other people to be leaders, too. This is because they realize that they are not always the best person for the job. Another person might need to take the lead at times. Good leaders know this.

Persevere Good leaders also know when it is the right time to take a risk. Sometimes it is necessary to do something that no one has ever done before, or to try something that was once thought of as being wrong. That means leaders must persevere, or keep doing what they believe in, no matter what difficulties get in the way. What follows are stories of some famous people throughout history who learned the value of persevering.

Dr. Seuss’s Books Theodore Geisel wrote children’s books under the pen name Dr. Seuss. He had a career as an illustrator for magazines such as Life and Vanity Fair, and eventually he took a job illustrating a collection of children’s sayings. Although the

What makes a good leader?

Author Theodore Geisel, known as Dr. Seuss, greets the Cat in the Hat, one of many popular characters he created. Geisel, seen here in 1988, didn’t let 27 rejection letters stop him from finally getting his work published.

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being a leader and making decisions book did not sell well, Geisel received great reviews for his illustrations. Geisel had written and illustrated another children’s book, but he was having a lot of trouble getting it published. It was called And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street! The book was rejected 27 times before the publishing house Vanguard Press agreed to publish it. Later, Geisel was asked to work on a book for beginning readers. He was restricted to 225 words. The result was The Cat in the Hat. Although the book had taken Geisel more than a year to create, it became more popular than classic beginning reader books, such as Dick and Jane, which had much simpler and shorter story lines. The Cat in the Hat was more complicated—and it was a big hit. Geisel led the way for a new era in children’s book publishing.

Pasteur’s Chemical Processes Louis Pasteur was a French chemist born on December 27, 1822. As a young student he was not particularly brilliant. When he graduated from college with a science degree, a note was attached to his diploma. It read that Pasteur was “mediocre,” or average, in chemistry. However, Pasteur went on to distinguish himself by solving a chemistry problem that the top scientists of his time could not. He discovered the exact process that turns sugar into alcohol—fermentation. Older scientists were amazed at young Pasteur’s discovery. Pasteur went on to discover the process of pasteurization, in which food and drinks are exposed to high temperatures as they are being made. This kills the bacteria that would make them spoil, without changing the taste. Pasteurization was named for Pasteur. He became a leader in the scientific world, even though he started his career from mediocre beginnings.

Beethoven’s Musical Contributions Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer. His father was a music teacher, and by the age of 8, Beethoven was

What Makes a Good Leader? learning to play the piano, organ, and viola. An early music teacher of his said, however, that, “as a composer, he is hopeless.” Beethoven later became a composer, and proved his teacher wrong. Even though he began to lose his hearing at the age of 26, Beethoven continued playing and creating music. He developed tools that could help him feel the vibrations of the music. One was a sound horn that he held up to his ear. Another was a rod that brought the vibration of the sound of the piano to his jaw, so that he could feel the music. After his Ninth Symphony was first performed, someone had to turn Beethoven around to see the applause of the audience. Unable to hear anything, he began to cry. Today, Beethoven is one of the most well-known and admired composers in classical music.

Make Mistakes If things do not go as planned, a good leader will still take responsibility for his or her decisions and actions. A good leader will also take responsibility for the actions and decisions of his or her followers. Sometimes, too, mistakes will happen in a leader’s plan that turn out to be pleasant surprises. A good leader will recognize when his or her mistake was really a blessing in disguise.

Accidental Vaccine In addition to discovering fermentation and pasteurization, Pasteur also tried to find a way to cure cholera. This was a deadly disease in Pasteur’s time, and it still is today if it is not treated. In his studies, he first infected chickens by injecting them with the disease so that he could study it. One batch of the virus went bad and did not infect the chickens because it was too weak. When Pasteur tried to re-infect them, he found that he could not. The chickens had already been exposed to the weak form of the virus, so they could not be infected again. Pasteur had accidentally created a vaccine, which is

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being a leader and making decisions the weakened form of a disease. When given to patients, it prevents the disease from becoming fatal. Pasteur decided to further test his theory. He asked his assistant to infect some chickens while Pasteur himself was on vacation. His assistant did not inject them until Pasteur returned from vacation a month later. The chickens became ill, but then recovered. Pasteur had expected them to die. His assistant wanted to get rid of the virus, since it hadn’t worked, but Pasteur recognized that this mistake was actually what they had been looking for. He then used this method to make vaccines for anthrax and rabies. Mistakes are good when people learn from them, as Pasteur did to invent vaccines. When people are alert, they may recognize that their mistake can be used in a different way than they had planned. A good leader can see the potential for success, even in mistakes.

A Sweet Mistake Sometimes great decisions are made by mistake. Innkeeper Ruth Wakefield was making a batch of butter drop do cookies in 1930 when she discovered that she didn’t have any of the special bakers chocolate called for in her recipe. Instead, she broke sweetened chocolate into little pieces and put them in the dough. She expected that the chocolate would melt into the dough. Instead, the chocolate pieces softened into little chocolate chips. Wakefield had made the very first chocolate chip cookies. They were named Toll House cookies because that was the name of Wakefield’s inn, where she had created the cookie. Today, chocolate chip is the most popular kind of cookie in the United States.

Sticky Invention In 1970, Spencer Silver was working for the company 3M. He invented a kind of glue that was weaker than anything the company had ever produced. Instead of abandoning it as a

What Makes a Good Leader? mistake, he decided to try to use it. He created a large piece of paper with his glue on the front that people could use as a kind of bulletin board. It didn’t sell well. For four years, Silver kept talking about his weak glue at presentations and hoping that someone would find a use for it. Then another scientist at 3M, Arthur Fry, found the answer. Fry was singing in his church choir and needed something to keep his paper markers from falling out of his hymnbook. He tried the weak glue and it worked perfectly. It kept his slips of paper in place and they came off without ripping the page. He used it again as a bookmark to send a note to his supervisor. Soon many people at 3M were using Fry’s bookmarks to communicate. Six years later, 3M executives decided to start selling Post-it Notes. This sticky mistake has changed the way

Bowling for Oklahoma

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he bones in Michael Munds’s face don’t grow in the same way that they do for other people. Because of this, Michael has had to have many operations. Doctors refit his bones in the correct way so his face can look more like that of other kids. Michael doesn’t let his differences stop him. Instead of thinking only of himself, he likes to help other people. After the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995, which killed 168 people and injured more than 800 others, six-year-old Michael wanted to help. He was due for another operation, but he asked his mother to put it off so that he could help. He and his family put up posters asking people to bowl for the bombing victims. People would donate money for every bowling pin that was knocked down. Michael’s goal was to raise $20,000. In the end, he raised nearly $40,000—the most money raised by a single person for the people of Oklahoma City, according to the Web site the Giraffe Heroes Project, which presented him with an award for his contribution.

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being a leader and making decisions people communicate, organize, and study. Fortune magazine named it one of the top inventions of the twentieth century.

Young Leaders in History A person does not need to be an adult first in order to be a leader and make decisions. The following are some of history’s most famous young leaders.

Alexander the Great The year was 336 b.c., and Alexander’s father had died, leaving him in charge. Alexander was just 20 years old when he became the king of Macedonia, a region of Europe that took up parts of Greece, Bulgaria, and what was once Yugoslavia. Young Alexander was ambitious and wanted to create a world empire. He put together an army that conquered many lands between modern-day Greece and India. He was considered a great leader—one who was able to get his army to move quickly. He was a tactical expert, meaning that he could think of good ways to defeat his enemies. Alexander’s ability to rally people around him and move across great expanses of land quickly helped to bring Greek civilization to a wide range of people and places.

Joan of Arc Born in 1412 in Domremy, France, to a poor farming family, Joan of Arc spent most of her time praying at church rather than playing with her peers. At the age of 12, Joan said that she began to hear the voices of saints. At the time, the English were trying to invade France and claim the country for England. Joan claimed that the saints she heard told her to help the French king against the English army. By age 17, she said the voices grew insistent and she could not ignore them any longer. Joan made every effort to meet the French king. When she finally met him, she convinced him to give her an army, which she led against the English.

What makes a good leader?

Though just a teenager, Joan of Arc led many successful battles against the British during the Hundred Years’ War. In this painting by Jean-Jacques Scherrer, Joan is depicted entering Orléans, where she led a major victory for France.

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The Youngest King

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ing Jigme Singye Wangchuk became king of Bhutan—a small country, located in the Himalaya Mountains between India and China—at the age of 16, after his father’s death in 1972. At his 1974 coronation, he became the world’s youngest monarch. While many rulers are concerned mostly with their country’s economy, industry, and military, King Wangchuk created the term Gross National Happiness. In an interview with Time magazine in 2006, he said that the rich are not always happy, King Jigme Singye Wangchuk, but the happy feel that they are seen here wearing a crown in rich. To keep his people happy, 1974, was only a teen when he King Wangchuk insists that the inherited the throne of Bhutan. people of Bhutan maintain their Still, he showed great leadertraditions. The small country has ship skills and gave up his absovery few modern technologies. lute power over his people. In fact, it has no traffic lights. In 1998, King Wangchuk gave up absolute power over his people. Then, in 2005 he announced that he would step down from the throne. He sent a new copy of the constitution to every family in Bhutan and called for elections to be held in 2008. In 2006, he stepped down as king and put his son in charge until election time. That same year, Time magazine honored him as one of the “100 People Who Shape Our World.” The magazine asked, “If most politicians are inherently suspect because they seem so eager to grab power and so reluctant to surrender it, what does one make of a leader who voluntarily gives up his position, as if placing his people’s needs before his own?”

What Makes a Good Leader? Joan was successful in all of her battles. She was also able to make predictions about future events. Even though the king consistently doubted her, soldiers and ordinary people believed in her. The English put Joan to death at age 19. They could not legally execute her for beating them, so they charged her with dressing in men’s clothes, a crime back then.

Queen Elizabeth I Elizabeth I became queen of England in 1558, at the age of 25. In David Loades’s book, Elizabeth I: The Golden Reign of Gloriana, she is described as “the best educated woman of her generation.” The time of Elizabeth’s rule was called the Elizabethan period or the Golden Age. It had this name because of a huge growth in the arts, such as the plays of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. It was also a great time of national pride because of the military successes of naval commanders, such as Sir Walter Raleigh. During Elizabeth’s 45-year reign, her country lived mainly in peace, while her neighboring rulers of France, Spain, and Scotland were having difficulty governing their countries.

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thrust Into leAdershIP

one who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength [that] can overcome adversity. —Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), philosopher and doctor

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ot all people choose to be leaders. For some, life may have taken an unexpected turn for the worse. When that happens, people are left with a choice: Feel like a victim, or use the experience to help others. People who choose the leadership role ultimately help their communities rather than just try to survive their ordeal.

rYan White

dealing with disease When Ryan White was three days old, doctors found that he had hemophilia. Hemophilia is a rare disease whose sufferers have blood that does not clot and make a scab as quickly as other people’s blood. That means that, while most people would bleed for a few minutes if they got a cut, Ryan could bleed for more than a half hour. A hemophiliac could bleed to death waiting for a cut to clot. Ryan would spend most of his life being careful because of his disease. He stayed away from sports and watched out

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Thrust into Leadership for bumps and bruises that could bleed internally. He began taking Factor VIII, a medication made from blood that helped his blood to clot. His mother learned how to give him shots of Factor VIII at home. He spent a lot of time visiting doctors. Despite all this, however, Ryan had a life like any other kid. Soon, that would all change. At age 13, Ryan was admitted to the hospital just before Christmas with pneumonia. It turned out to be a very rare form of pneumonia usually found in AIDS patients. AIDS is a fatal disease that is passed from person to person through blood and sex fluids. It turned out that Ryan had caught AIDS from a contaminated bag of Factor VIII. The same medicine that had helped to keep him alive as a hemophiliac now made him face the possibility of death from an AIDS-related illness. Ryan stayed in the hospital past Christmas, and then rested at home for another several weeks. Soon he was ready to go back to school. Unfortunately, school was not ready for him.

Battling School In 1984, when Ryan was diagnosed, AIDS was still a new disease that few people understood. They knew that it was fatal, but because there was uncertainty about how it was spread, people were afraid that they could get it from casual contact. Even though Ryan’s doctors had assured him and his family that he was not contagious, the school principal and several students’ parents were afraid that Ryan’s disease could be spread to others in the school. Many parents spoke out about Ryan coming back to school. Some of Ryan’s favorite teachers said in television interviews that they did not want him to come back. Even the girlfriend that Ryan had before he had been diagnosed told him that she just wanted to be friends. Rather than being angry or feeling sorry for himself, Ryan decided to take action. His mother was uneasy about speaking publicly, but Ryan said, “We have to fight, Mom. If we don’t, we won’t be allowed to go anywhere or do anything.

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Teenager Ryan White, who contracted AIDS from contaminated blood during treatment for hemophilia, fought to educate others about his disease, with the hope of providing more acceptance of AIDS victims. Here, he speaks to reporters (next to his mother, Jeanne, left) after a judge threw out a temporary injunction restraining him from going to high school in 1986.

What they want to do isn’t right. We can’t let it happen to anybody else.” He later recalled these events in his book, My Own Story. Ryan went on the news to try to get the facts about his disease out in public. Then people would understand that he was not contagious, he thought. It didn’t work. Eventually, Ryan had to bring a court case against his school to try to go back. In the meantime, his school district set up a phone link with Ryan’s classrooms so that he could hear what was going on in classes. However, it was difficult for Ryan to hear everything that was happening. When his science teacher dissected a lizard, he could not see it, nor

Thrust into Leadership could he see any video presentations. Worst of all, Ryan was lonely. He missed his friends. One of his friends came over often to do homework and study, but it wasn’t the same. He wrote in his book, “I want to be with my friends, just like everybody else.” Ryan became famous for speaking out publicly about AIDS. His appearances on television, articles in magazines and newspapers, and public service announcements helped to get people talking about the disease. Ryan attended fundraisers to help raise money for research. His public actions may have made life easier for other people suffering with AIDS. Yet, life became increasingly difficult for Ryan and his family. The other side of fame was that everywhere Ryan went, people knew who he was. He didn’t like being known for being sick. People who didn’t understand the disease were sometimes cruel toward him. The first time the family went to church after his diagnosis, it was Easter Sunday. At the point in the church service when people shake each other’s hands and wish each other peace, no one wanted to shake Ryan’s hand. On another Sunday when they were at church, someone shot a gun through their window. Another day, he and his mother stopped at a diner for some water and a light meal. Instead of getting glasses of water, they were given cans of Coke so that the owner could easily throw them away. When they had finished eating, their plates and cutlery were also thrown away. The diner owner was clearly afraid that people would contract AIDS from touching what Ryan had used. Ryan told his mother that they should come back every week so that the diner would run out of dishes. Even Ryan’s grandparents and aunt and uncle were feeling the stress. His younger sister was shunned and called names, just as Ryan was. But Ryan and his mother refused to give up fighting for what they felt was right. Ryan had a right to go to school like everyone else. Their goal was to educate people to understand the virus so that he could go to school.

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being a leader and making decisions While the people in Ryan’s hometown of Kokomo, Indiana, made life for the family difficult, reporters and people from all around the world made him feel like a star. Ryan noted that the farther away people were, the more they liked him. One day, he told a journalist, “I just can’t believe the way complete strangers like you treat me so nicely. People in Kokomo, people I’ve known my whole life, treat me like dirt,” he remembered in his book. As the court battle to keep Ryan out of school went on, Ryan said it reminded him of racial segregation in the South. At one time, people were fighting to keep black children out of schools where white children studied. Ryan knew what discrimination felt like. When the court finally ruled that Ryan could return to school, a parent group pulled their children out of classes and started a home school for them. Ryan found that the students who remained still discriminated against him. Being back at school was just as lonely as being home alone.

The Right Attitude Through all of this, Ryan’s health was a roller-coaster ride. He and his family didn’t know what he’d feel like one day to the next. When he was so ill that he kept throwing up, the doctor wanted to put a feeding tube in him. Ryan refused. A boy named Chad whom Ryan knew was also a hemophiliac and had gotten AIDS from his Factor VIII. Chad was on a feeding tube and he liked it. But Ryan felt that Chad had the wrong attitude. “If you think about dying, you’re going to die. If you think about living, you’re going to live,” he said. When Chad died not even a year after he was diagnosed with AIDS, Ryan felt lucky that his positive attitude and fighting spirit kept him going. Even though Ryan was small for his age, he didn’t look sick. He met other kids, like Chad, who looked in pretty bad shape. He felt that this was also a sign that he should be out speaking about the disease. He felt there had to be a reason

Thrust into Leadership

Tank Man

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n June 5, 1989, one man in a white shirt stood in Tiananmen Square in China in the path of a row of military tanks. The tanks stopped. Then the first tank tried to drive around him. The man moved in front of the tank, and the line of tanks stood still again. The tank again tried to get around him, and the man moved in front of it again. Wherever the tank moved, the man moved in front of it. Eventually, the man climbed up to the top of the tank and went inside the open hatch. He and the driver spoke to each other. When the man climbed back down from the tank, the crowd of people who were watching the incident grabbed him and absorbed him into the crowd. The man was part of a large protest against the Chinese government. Many Chinese people wanted democracy and the ability to choose their own leaders. They wanted freedom of the press, a media that was not controlled by the government. Their protests had begun on April 15 as a memorial to another man, who fought for the same things they did and was punished for his beliefs, and continued through June 4, when the Chinese military began fighting against unarmed citizens. The report from the Chinese government about the attacks said that the “official figure is 241 dead, including soldiers, and 7,000 wounded,” according to the BBC program Frontline in a report called The Memory of Tiananmen 1989. A year later, Time magazine reported that on the day of the protests, the Chinese Red Cross told reporters that 2,600 people died and 10,000 were injured. The Red Cross later denied making this claim. Other groups reported anywhere from 800 to 2,000 dead. The day following the attack on the protestors, with tanks upon him, the man in the white shirt stood up to try to prevent the soldiers from killing anyone else. Photos and videos of the man were seen in media all around the world. His actions rallied people to the cause of the protesters and forced the world to look at the Chinese government differently. (continues)

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(continued)

Not much is known about this man, whom some call the Unknown Rebel. To this day, he has never been identified and has never come forward. Some say he was a leader of the protests. The British tabloid newspaper The Sunday Express said he was Wang Weilin, a 19-yearold student, but that was never officially confirmed. Rumors have said he was arrested, killed, or moved out of the country for protection. In 1998, Time magazine named the unknown man one of the “100 Most Influential People of the Twentieth Century.” One photo of him was similarly honored among Life magazine’s “100 Photos that Changed the World.” In that one moment, one person led the world in a different direction.

that he was doing so well, and that reason was educating people about AIDS. He continued to lead the cause for acceptance of AIDS victims. Ryan never enjoyed his fame, even though he got to meet entertainers Michael Jackson and Elton John, as well as athletes, such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He simply used his fame to educate people about his disease. He never stopped speaking about his disease and fighting for his rights, even when people made his life extremely difficult. At his funeral, his minister said Ryan wanted people to “make AIDS a disease—not a dirty word,” The New York Times reported on April 12, 1990. The minister went on to say that the White family had kept hoping for a miracle, but in the end, Ryan was the miracle. “He healed a wounded spirit in the world and made it whole,” the minister said. In the same New York Times article, a woman said, “We all learned something from his battle. What he went through, it brought so many people—whites, blacks, people of all religions and ages—he brought people together.”

Thrust into Leadership

John Bul Dau A Lost Boy

The people of Sudan, a country in northeastern Africa, have many tribes. Each has its own customs, traditions, and folktales. A tribe called the Dinka has a story about a mystical being that gave tribal members the power to be leaders. The Dinka seem to have leadership in their blood. John Bul Dau, a young Dinka boy, was the son of a tribal leader. His father listened to disputes in the village, like a judge listens to court cases in the United States. John felt from a young age that he would lead his people, but he thought it was a long way off. When John was 13 years old, leadership found him unexpectedly and violently in the middle of the night. It was August in Sudan. The rainy season meant there would be many mosquitoes and crops that were not ready to harvest. There were far worse hardships than this, though: People had been running away from war in their own villages and seeking safety in Dinka villages, such as the one in which John lived. Fighting was all around them, as Arabs from the northern parts of Sudan brought guns and bombs to kill black African Sudanese people in the south. John and his family knew that war would come to them soon enough, but there was nowhere for them to go. They decided to wait it out. The children slept naked because of the heat. They all stayed inside in a large hut with the sick and the elderly. The parents slept outside and dealt with the swarms of mosquitoes. John was not able to sleep. He was hot, hungry, and anxious about the sounds of bombs he heard exploding in villages around him. Suddenly, a bombshell whistled through the night and landed in John’s village. More bombs and then machine gunfire followed. In the pitch black of the night, John could barely make out the door to the hut. Once he got outside, he followed a man who he thought was his father as he ran into the night.

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Running for His Life It turned out that the man John followed was not his father, but rather his neighbor, Abraham. John and Abraham waited by crouching in the grass as the soldiers attacked the village. After two hours, the attackers stopped and began to move away. The two of them headed back toward the village. They heard soldiers, so they turned the other way. In the slippery mud, snail shells cut into John’s bare feet. They became bloody and sore, but he had to keep moving. If a soldier found the boys, they could be killed. This was the beginning of John’s walk through Sudan, a walk that stretched nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers), to the nearest refugee camp in neighboring Ethiopia. Refugee camps are places people go to when they are trying to escape war, poverty, and other serious and deadly situations where they live. Along the way, John and Abraham tried to walk as far as they could without dying of thirst, hunger, and the blazing heat that reached 120ºF (49ºC). Abraham tried to prepare John for life on his own by teaching him how to find food, drink mud when no water was available, and even drink urine when no mud could be found. In John’s book, God Grew Tired of Us, he said that Abraham told him to “keep moving until someone kills you.” They met other refugees along the way, and the group of refugees trekked together. Some of the refugees they met, young boys like John, did not survive the walk. Some nights when they settled down to rest, they realized that some of the boys who had started with them in the morning were not there. They might have been consumed by thirst, hunger, heat, blistering sores under their feet, or exhaustion, and did not make it to the next point. The following morning, the remaining boys set out again, and again by nightfall, even fewer of them were left. It took the boys nearly four months to make it to the refugee camp. When they got there, they found that several

Thrust into Leadership thousand Sudanese boys had arrived ahead of them. The boys who arrived at the camp had survived thirst, starvation, attacks by animals and insects, disease, and a terrible civil war. Most were naked, exhausted, and so sad from what was happening to them that they became mentally ill.

A Leader Among Boys Because there were so few adults in the camp, boys were assigned to take charge of groups of other refugee boys. John was chosen to be one of these leaders. He had about 1,000 boys in his care. He made sure that food was given out fairly. When the United Nations brought clothes, he made sure that the boys who were naked got the first pick. He showed the boys how to break branches from trees and make huts. He

Lin Hao

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ine-year-old Lin Hao was in his classroom in Sichuan, China, in May 2008 when a deadly earthquake hit. The 32 students in his class were covered in rubble. Hao, who was a hall monitor, freed himself from the rubble, and then went back in to pull two of his classmates out. In the process, he was further injured on the head and arms by falling debris. Afterward, Hao led the 10 survivors in song. He wanted them to keep their spirits up while they waited to be rescued. Hao was asked why he went back in to help. “I am a hall monitor, it was my job to look after my classmates,” he told the Associated Press. He understood that his role as a leader meant that he was responsible for others. On August 8, 2008, Hao led the Chinese Olympic team in the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics. He walked along with basketball star Yao Ming. Yao, at 7 feet 6 inches tall (2.28 meters), towered over tiny Hao, but even he seemed to be looking up to the nine-year-old hero.

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being a leader and making decisions taught them how to dig trenches near their huts in case there was a bomb attack. Because the boys did not know how to take care of themselves properly, they often became sick. John remembered the traditional home remedies of his village and gave them to the sick boys to help them. Sometimes they worked, but sometimes they did not. In the unfortunate cases when a boy died, John assigned people to burial duty. Sometimes he assigned himself. Without tools, the boys dug holes with sharp sticks and their own hands and buried their friends as best they could. John kept his spirits up by singing the hymns of his Christian faith. He encouraged others to do the same. He tried to keep the traditions of his village alive. After two years in the refugee camp in Ethiopia, a new government had taken over, and it wanted the Sudanese refugees out of the country. They had to leave immediately, with whatever they could carry. They could not even wait to harvest the food they had planted. To minimize the number of boys heading out at the same time, the few adults at the camp organized the boys into groups. John was in the third group. When they came to a river crossing, the adults fixed a rope bridge for the non-swimmers so they could pull themselves across. There were crocodiles in the water, so crossing was dangerous and slow. After five days of waiting, suddenly John heard bullets whizzing past him. The Ethiopian army had found them and seemed determined to kill them. About 20,000 Lost Boys (the name given to the thousands of boys displaced or orphaned by the war) were on the river that day, and 2,000 to 3,000 of them were killed. Considering the gunfire, crocodiles, and inability of some boys to swim, even this high number of deaths seemed like a miracle to some. John himself was nearly drowned by a man who could not swim and grabbed on to him. He managed to get away, but another boy grabbed him. With bullets whizzing past their heads, John found a way to tow the boy along as he swam, and they both made it safely to the other side. The

Thrust into leadership river was filled with blood and body parts, but they all kept going. One man had lost his hand to a crocodile, but was able to continue swimming. The refugees walked to Kenya—a country south of Sudan—and made their homes at another refugee camp. There was a fresh water well, supplies of food and medicine, and the opportunity to go to school. The refugees also started having nightly church service, which they called “synagogue.” Although the services were Christian, the person who organized it found the predicament of the Lost Boys similar to the Israelites, or Jews, who walked through the desert searching

John Bul Dau (left), with actor Don Cheadle, spoke on a panel at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. He demonstrated extraordinarily strong leadership skills throughout his life—from leading other Lost Boys in refugee camps as a young teen to starting Lost Boy and Lost Girl foundations after arriving in the United States.

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being a leader and making decisions for safe places to live, so he named their place of worship after the Jewish synagogue. John felt grateful for life at this camp. In his book, John explained, “I knew the Lord had kept me alive in the desert and in the forest, and I was sure he must have a plan for me to do something good with my life.” John supervised his synagogue and kept lists of preachers who were going to lead services so that he could remind them when it was their turn. He also auditioned new boys who wanted to preach.

Where Water Turns to Stone John had left his village when he was 13 years old. For five years, he had not heard anything about his brothers, sisters,

Liviu Librescu

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n April 16, 2007, Professor Liviu Librescu was teaching his class in the engineering section at Virginia Tech University. Librescu was a leader in the community of mechanical engineering, and was also a leader in a crisis that day when he gave his life to save others. It is not clear when he heard the gunshots coming from the gun of student Seung-Hui Cho, but as soon as he became aware that someone was shooting and killing people, Librescu jumped into action. The 76-year-old professor barricaded his classroom door with his body. While Seung-Hui shot Librescu to death, most of Librescu’s 15 students were able to jump out of the windows to safety. One student died and two others were injured from that classroom, but there may have been more deaths and injuries if Librescu had not taken the lead. Those who knew Professor Librescu were not surprised at his actions. “I expected my dad to do this. This is who he was,” said his son, Joe. Librescu was born in the Eastern European country of Romania. His family was Jewish. Librescu was a teenager during World War II,

Thrust into Leadership mother, or father. When he was 18 years old, he was just starting the first grade at the camp’s school. Nevertheless, John studied hard. There was only one library, and students had to line up for hours to get inside because they could not check out the books. John copied texts that he needed wordfor-word so that he could study in his hut. John moved quickly through each grade and did well on his exams. He finished high school and learned about the United States, so he applied to live there. After taking an exam, getting checked by a doctor for diseases, and passing an interview, John was accepted. He was one of only 3,800 Lost Boys to be allowed to move to the United States. There, he began to get cultural lessons so that life in his new

when the German Nazis were killing people of the Jewish faith in the Holocaust. Romania had an alliance with Germany, and Romanian Jews were also being persecuted, but Librescu managed to survive. Librescu earned his Ph.D. in fluid mechanics in Romania and later moved to Israel, where he became a professor at Tel Aviv University. In 1985 he came to Virginia and found a job at Virginia Tech. Both his sons graduated from that university. In his work as a professor, Librescu wrote scientific papers and books, gave lectures, and worked as an editor on seven scientific journals. His last paper was published in 2008, a year after his death on April 16, which is also Holocaust Remembrance Day. People from all over the world mourned Librescu’s death. In May 2007, the Holocaust Resource Center at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey was renamed in his honor. Jane Stark, who represents one of the resource center’s major donors, told the U.S. Fed News Service, “This man, who endured so much during the Holocaust, thought of his students’ safety before his own in a time of crisis.”

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being a leader and making decisions country would not be so hard. One day, someone brought in a block of ice to show John and the other students how cold it gets in parts of the United States. In his book, John wrote, “I was amazed. How could people live in a land where water turned to stone?” Once John settled into the United States in 2001, he decided to start an organization to help new arrivals. He formed the Sudanese Lost Boys Foundation of New York, which accepted and distributed donations so that the Lost Boys could pay for their education and basic supplies. In the first year, they raised $35,000. After two years as president of the organization, John stepped down to let others lead. He wanted to start another organization; this one would help the Lost Girls—the women and families of Sudan. He called it the Sudanese Association of Central New York. Then he went to work on finding a way to put a clinic in his home village in Sudan. As he was putting together these foundations, John earned money in mostly low-paying jobs. He sent letters and money back to his friends, those who did not make it to the United States. One of his friends told the story of John to another man he met. The man turned out to be John’s cousin. Soon, news about John reached his family. It turned out that John’s entire family had survived. They had believed that he was dead. His father donated a plot of land that would be a good spot for the clinic, and John made the journey back to Sudan to meet his family again. He had not seen them in 17 years.

InsPIrAtIonAl leAdershIP

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When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another. —Helen Keller (1880–1968), author and activist

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ot all leaders come to their roles by accident. Some make a purposeful decision to do what they believe is right. Their example makes them leaders and inspires others to rally around them. Whether they become known for their actions, or remain in the shadows of other people’s fame, their actions encourage others to do great things. This makes them great leaders.

Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi was born to a Hindu family in India on October 2, 1869. His father was a politician. His mother was very religious, and taught him to follow Jainism. Jain beliefs include nonviolence (called ahimsa), limiting personal possessions, and not wasting human life. These beliefs, along with a commitment to community service, would play a great role in Gandhi’s life as an adult. Gandhi’s family wanted him to be a lawyer. After getting his law degree, he found work in South Africa, which was a

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being a leader and making decisions British colony at the time, just as India was. In South Africa, he experienced racism expressed against Indians by the British. One day while riding the train, Gandhi was asked to move to the third-class car even though he had a first-class ticket. When he refused to move, he was thrown off the train. He continued his trip on a stagecoach. Gandhi had an inside seat, but when a European passenger came aboard, he was asked to move to the footboard to make room. Gandhi once again refused. The stagecoach driver beat him. After Gandhi’s job was completed, he decided to stay in South Africa to help the Indian people who lived there. The British were trying to pass a bill that would deny Indians the right to vote. Gandhi put the teachings of Jainism into practice. He encouraged his followers to try nonviolent protest, or passive resistance, against the British. Gandhi believed that this was the best way to cause change. On October 29, 1931, he wrote in the journal Young India, “The method of passive resistance is the clearest and safest, because, if the cause is not true, it is the resisters, and they alone, who suffer.” Gandhi and his followers protested for years, suffering whatever punishment was given to them. Eventually, people became angry at the South African government’s harsh treatment of the peaceful Indian protesters. The government was forced to negotiate. Gandhi’s first experiment in ahimsa worked.

The Great Soul In 1915, Gandhi returned to India. The British government there was using Indians to make money. India was in an economic depression. Farmers were forced to grow cash crops such as tobacco, cotton, and indigo. Cash crops brought money to the British landowners, but Indian farmers were paid little. Also, because they were not growing food, there was not much to eat. The lack of food brought on a famine. To make matters worse, the British still insisted on taxing poor Indian villagers.

Inspirational Leadership

Iqbal Masih

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n Iqbal Masih’s fifth birthday, he was taken away to a carpet factory to learn how to tie knots into carpets. For 12 hours almost every day for the next five years, Iqbal tied thousands of knots. He did not go to school. He did not eat much. There was not even time for him to play with his little sister. Iqbal’s hands grew as rough as an old man’s. Because he did not eat properly, his body remained small. Iqbal was a debt slave, which meant he had to work After becoming a debt slave at every day for a very small age 5, Iqbal Masih bravely spread amount of money, until he awareness about child labor, even paid off money his family though it put him in danger and owed. When Iqbal was four ended up costing him his life at age years old, his mother needed 12. Through his work, he helped an operation. She borrowed shed light on the brutality of child money from the owner of the labor and free many children. carpet factory. In exchange, Iqbal would have to work off the debt. They owed the equivalent of $12. Over the course of five years, Iqbal, who was paid only 60 cents a day, never managed to pay off what they owed. One day, his mother added more debt when she borrowed more money to pay for a wedding feast for Iqbal’s halfbrother. The debt rose to $250. Iqbal knew that he would never be able to repay it. (continues)

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(continued)

At age 10, Iqbal heard about the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF). This group helped debt slaves get their freedom. In Pakistan, where Iqbal lived, debt slavery is against the law. The people at BLLF helped to free Iqbal. The carpet factory owner threatened Iqbal and his family, but Iqbal did not care. He wanted to tell the whole world about child labor and free every child from living the way he had. With the help of BLLF, Iqbal traveled the world telling his story, but he always returned home for Christian holidays. On Easter Sunday 1995, when Iqbal came home, he was shot and killed. The carpet factory owner along with other businessmen who used debt slaves had set up the killing to stop Iqbal from talking about child slavery. Those bullets did not stop Iqbal’s dream of freeing children from child labor. A group of students in Massachusetts, who had met Iqbal and heard his story, decided to raise money for a school in Iqbal’s town. They bought a school building, hired a principal, and bought the freedom of debt slaves from 50 families. When the school opened, 200 children showed up—all because Iqbal had stood up for what he believed in.

Gandhi led farmers and villagers in peaceful protests. Eventually, the British suspended taxes and allowed farmers to grow whatever they liked. Gandhi’s fame grew. The people of India began to call him Mahatma, or “Great Soul.” Shortly afterward, British troops led by Reginald Dyer fired on a large group of unarmed people at a religious gathering. A law called the Rowlatt Act, which prohibited groups larger than four people from gathering, had recently passed. The group of nearly 2,000 people had come together for an annual festival. Dyer waited for the group to get together, and then entered the garden at the only available entrance. With everyone trapped, he and his troops fired on them for about 10 minutes. When the people ran to the middle of the

Inspirational Leadership garden, the troops fired into the middle. When the people ran to the sides of the space, the troops fired to the sides. When people dropped to the ground, the troops fired at the ground. Because everyone was packed together, one bullet would go through several people. Hundreds of people died, including a six-week-old baby, and more than 1,000 people were injured. After the massacre, 120 bodies were pulled out of a well in the garden. Those people had jumped in, trying to escape the bullets. Dyer and his superiors did not apologize after the massacre. At the Hunter Commission inquiry into the massacre, Dyer said, “I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed the crowd without firing but they would have come back again and laughed, and I would have made, what I consider, a fool of myself.” As a result of the massacre, Gandhi began his noncooperation movement. People quit jobs at British companies and organizations, stopped buying British goods, and stopped going to British schools. People sat in the streets and did not budge, even when they were attacked by troops. Gandhi encouraged followers to be self-sufficient. He began to spin and weave his own cloth to make clothes for himself. He felt that if other people did the same, they would not have to buy foreign clothing with the little money they had. He believed in leading by example. “My life is my message,” he said. Through nonviolent protest, Gandhi believed that eventually the British would grow tired of trying to fight against people who would not fight back. India would get its independence. He was right. India became independent of Britain in 1947. Although Gandhi did not come up with the idea of nonviolent protest on his own, he was the first person to do it on such a large scale with great results. His actions inspired other leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States and Nelson Mandela in South Africa in their struggles for civil rights.

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being a leader and making decisions

Annie Sullivan The Spitfire

Annie Sullivan was born to a poor, working-class Massachusetts family on April 14, 1886. At five years old, she caught trachoma, a contagious eye disease. The disease caused her to struggle with her eyesight for the rest of her life. Three years later, her mother died. Her youngest sister went to live with other family members, but nobody wanted partially-blind Annie, who had a temper, or her younger brother, Jimmie, who was unable to walk after developing tuberculosis. The two of them were sent to live in a poorhouse called Tewksbury. Tewksbury was filthy and overrun with rats, and some of the inhabitants were drunks or criminals. Within three months, Jimmie died. His bed was taken out of their room while Annie slept. She woke in the dark to find him gone. “Suddenly I missed Jimmie’s bed. The black, empty space where it had been filled me with wild fear.” Ten-year-old Annie was suddenly alone. When she was 14, an inspector came to check on the terrible conditions at Tewksbury. Annie ran toward him and said, “Mr. Sanborn, Mr. Sanborn, I want to go to school!” Annie was sent to Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston. The students at Perkins came from well-off families. Annie was out of place there. She had poor manners and was unable to read, write, or spell her name. Students and teachers teased Annie, and she responded with characteristic temper. The director of Perkins, Michael Anagnos, called her “Miss Spitfire.” Sullivan came close to getting kicked out several times, but she was smart and caught up to the other students quickly. When she graduated from Perkins, she was the valedictorian—the student with the highest class honors.

The Miracle Worker That summer, Sullivan was offered a job. The parents of Helen Keller—a deaf, blind, and mute girl—were looking for

inspirational leadership

Anne Sullivan (right) taught Helen Keller (left) to “hear” vibrations by feeling her lips as she spoke. Both women led the way for others through their hard work in overcoming obstacles.

a teacher for their daughter. They had heard of Laura Bridgman, another Perkins student, who was the first deaf, blind, and mute person to be educated. They wrote to Anagnos, and he recommended Sullivan. She spent the rest of the summer reading over the reports of how Laura Bridgman was taught. She used those methods in her first weeks with Helen. When Sullivan arrived at the Keller home, six-year-old Helen was eager to meet her, but immediately showed that she had a temper when she did not get her way. At their first dinner together, Sullivan was horrified to find that Helen was

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being a leader and making decisions allowed to walk around the table at will and take food from anyone’s plate. Sullivan insisted that they be left alone in the dining room and she refused to move as Helen tried to force her off her chair. Eventually Helen sat, folded her napkin, and ate properly from her own plate. For weeks they locked wills, Miss Spitfire against tantrum-throwing Helen. Once, Helen punched Sullivan in the face and knocked out two of her teeth. A different teacher may have left, but Sullivan remained. She and Helen moved in together into a little house on the Kellers’ estate. There, she and her student learned to respect each other. Once they formed a bond, the two were nearly inseparable for the rest of their lives. To teach Helen, Sullivan spelled out words into Helen’s hand. At first, Helen did not know that the words meant anything. All of that changed on April 5, 1887. After Helen asked how to spell water, Sullivan took her outside to the water pump and pumped water into her mug, while spelling out water in her hand. Finally, Helen understood that the word Sullivan spelled was related to the water rushing over her hands. Afterward, Helen asked for the names of several things nearby. Then she asked Sullivan’s name. Sullivan spelled out t-e-a-c-h-e-r. From then on, Helen called her that. The pair worked outside. Sullivan described everything into Helen’s hand, and Helen continually asked questions. Helen learned more than 300 words in a little more than a month and then began writing. Sullivan realized quickly that she was barely educated enough to teach her student. The two moved to the Perkins School and stayed there as guests. There, they both received more education. Helen became famous for her ability to learn despite her challenges. At the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, she and Sullivan met Maria Montessori, a pioneer of children’s education. Montessori said to a crowd that if they were looking for a

Inspirational Leadership

Dr. Catherine Hamlin

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n 1959, Australian Dr. Catherine Hamlin and her husband, Dr. Reginald Hamlin, traveled to Ethiopia. Catherine Hamlin was an obstetrician, a doctor who specializes in pregnancy and childbirth. The Hamlins wanted to open a midwifery school. The school would train women to be midwives, people who are not doctors but can help deliver babies. They intended to stay for two years. Dr. Catherine Hamlin and her husband have now been there for more than 35 years. The Hamlins found women who were suffering from childbirth injuries. Surgery during childbirth would have helped them, but often in Ethiopia there is little money and few surgeons trained for those operations. Often the babies were stillborn and the mothers severely injured. Dr. Hamlin worked to help these women. After 15 years, the Hamlins were finally able to open the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in 1974. There, women suffering from fistulas, a specific kind of childbirth injury, can be treated for free. Catherine Hamlin also developed new techniques for this type of surgery, and her hospital now trains surgeons from around the world. In 1995, Catherine Hamlin was given the Order of Australia, the highest honor that an Australian native can receive. In 1999, she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Since arriving in Ethiopia, Hamlin, her husband, and their surgeons have treated more than 34,000 women. They have opened two other hospitals, and two more are set to open in 2009. In 2008, the Hamlin Midwifery College opened in Addis Ababa. Because the hospitals are free for the patients, they rely on donations to pay for equipment, surgery, treatment, and even clothing and traveling money for patients to get back home. Dr. Hamlin inspires donors to give whatever they can to contribute to the $450 that is needed to treat each woman who needs surgery.

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being a leader and making decisions pioneer, Sullivan was the real pioneer. She admired Sullivan’s practices for teaching Helen based on the student’s interests. Montessori felt this was the best way to teach. In 1894, Sullivan was asked to speak at the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf. Sullivan was too shy to give her speech, so Alexander Graham Bell read it for her. In it, she wrote, “We shall never properly develop the higher natures of our little ones while we continue to fill their minds with the so-called rudiments. . . . Children will educate themselves under right conditions. They require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.” Sullivan stayed with Helen throughout her life. Her teaching methods and sacrifice became an inspiration to all teachers. She was truly a leader in educating children with disabilities.

Claudette Colvin Young Activist

Many people know Rosa Parks as the “mother” of the civil rights movement. She refused to give up her seat on a bus and was arrested for it. A boycott of the buses in Montgomery, Alabama, finally caused the Supreme Court to rule that segregation between blacks and whites on buses was against the law. What many people don’t know is that Rosa Parks was not the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat on a bus. Four other women did the same thing before her: Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin, and Mary Louise Smith. Their court case, Browder v. Gayle, was the one that went to the Supreme Court and finally changed the law. Of the women who went before Parks, Claudette Colvin is probably the most famous. By most accounts, Colvin was also the first to act against the bus segregation laws. Fifteen years old and smart, but prone to trouble, Claudette was an active member of the National Association for

inspirational leadership

Before Rosa Parks’s famous refusal to move to the back of a bus, teenager Claudette Colvin refused to give up her bus seat. Her brave action helped push the civil rights movement forward.

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being a leader and making decisions the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council. She was very ambitious. At age 10, she announced that she wanted to be president of the United States so that she could help her people. Claudette Colvin never became president, but she did begin one of the most important events in civil rights history. On March 2, 1955, the high school junior boarded a bus and sat toward the back. When some white passengers got on the bus, the driver asked her and some other students seated in that area to move. The other people stood up, but Claudette Colvin refused. Colvin later said in a December 2000 article in The Guardian, “I didn’t get up because I felt like I wasn’t breaking the law.” The young activist said that she was inspired by the actions of others in civil rights history: “The spirit of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth was in me. I didn’t get up,” she said at a speech in 2005 to the Booker T. Washington School in Montgomery, Alabama. Eventually, the police were called. As they dragged Colvin off the bus, kicking and screaming, she said that they were violating her constitutional rights.

Mother of the Boycott Following her arrest, people in the community wanted to use the incident to begin a boycott and start making a case against segregation. Yet, nobody in the community felt that they could get behind Colvin. As a teenager, she was uncontrollable by her own admission. She had been accused of using obscenities against and assaulting the officers who arrested her. Colvin was from a very poor family on the “wrong side” of town and she was dark-skinned—something that was looked down upon, even among other African Americans. To make matters worse, a few months after her arrest, the teenage Colvin became pregnant. The supporters who had initially rallied around her began to dwindle in numbers. She was still encouraged by some, though, including seamstress and family friend Rosa Parks.

Inspirational Leadership “She used to tell me what a brave young lady I was,” Colvin told reporter Jim Auchmutey in 2005. Colvin and three other women became the plaintiffs in the case against the bus company. Parks, who refused to get off the bus nine months after Colvin, is the one who is remembered. “I’m not disappointed,” Colvin said years later. “Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. But also let them know that the attorneys took four other women to the Supreme Court to challenge the law that led to the end of segregation.” Fred Gray, the lawyer behind the Montgomery bus boycott, said in a 2005 USA Today article, “Claudette was a very pivotal person. She really gave moral courage to Mrs. Parks and to me and other people who were involved in the movement.”

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leAdInG In the CoMMunIty

leadership is not just about you. It’s about them. —Jack Welch (1935– ), former CEO and chairman of General Electric

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ome people find leadership in helping others. In their communities, or in the world around them, they find a group of people who need help, and they fill that need. In the process, they may start new organizations that others can join to help, thereby leading others, and inspiring other leaders to do the same thing.

Mother teresa the Calling

On August 26, 1910, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born in Macedonia, which is now called Serbia. At 12 years old, she said she felt the call of God. She became a member of a youth group in her church and became interested in missionary work. At 18 years old she joined the Sisters of Loretto, an Irish community of nuns who worked in India. Three years later, she took her vows to become a nun and chose a new name. She chose the name Teresa for St. Therese, the patron saint of missionaries. Sister Teresa was assigned to teach geography and Cathecism (Catholic teachings) at St. Mary’s High School in the

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Leading in the Community city of Calcutta. Outside of the school and the convent, she saw people who were so poor, they were dying in the streets of illness and starvation. One day, she found a woman lying in front of a Calcutta hospital. She described the woman as “half eaten by maggots and rats.” Yet, the hospital would not accept her. Sister Teresa sat with the woman until she died. The thought of that woman, and countless other poor people who could not afford meals, health care, or education, remained in her mind. After 13 years, Sister Teresa became the principal of a Calcutta high school. Soon after, she caught the lung disease tuberculosis. She was sent to Darjeeling, another city in India, to heal. As Sister Teresa sat on the train heading through the countryside to Darjeeling, the sight of the sick and poor passing outside her window struck her deeply. Sitting on the train, Sister Teresa said she received another call from God. She called this “the call within the call.” She said that she felt she was instructed “to leave the convent and work with the poor, living among them. It was an order. I knew where I belonged, but I did not know how to get there.”

The Missionaries of Charity To leave the Sisters of Loretto and work with the poor, Sister Teresa needed permission. In 1948, the Vatican (the main office of the Catholic Church) granted permission for her to leave her convent of nuns and pursue her calling to help the neediest people in India. Although she had been ordered to rest because of her tuberculosis, Sister Teresa started a school in the slums of India. These were the poorest places with the poorest people. She and some of her former students from St. Mary’s High School found men, women, and children who had no homes, money, and food, and they were dying without proper care. No hospital would help them. Yet, Sister Teresa was eager to help. She learned medical skills so that she could treat the sick. She and her students

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being a leader and making decisions rented a room so that they would have a place to care for those in need. Two years later, the Vatican granted her a missionary of her own. It was called the Missionaries of Charity. Sister Teresa once said, “When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.” People were so grateful to Sister Teresa for her love and care that they began to affectionately call her “Mother” Teresa. In addition to working with the homeless, she established a home for the dying in 1952. The home accepted homeless people who had no one to care for them. Some had diseases that made them unacceptable in other hospitals and institutions. At the home, they were washed, fed, clothed, and allowed to die with dignity. In an August 2007 article, Time magazine reported that shortly after starting her own missionary, Mother Teresa stopped hearing the call of God. In a letter to a priest in 1979, she wrote, “Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness [are] so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.” Despite her loss of the voice that had called her to become a nun, Mother Teresa continued to work to better the lives of the people in the community she served. In the book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, letters that Mother Teresa wrote over a period of 66 years express doubt in her faith after no longer hearing God’s voice. The editor of the book, Brian Kolodiejchuk, was a member of her missionary. He saw that she found ways to live with her doubts without abandoning her faith or her leadership role in the community. In 1979, Mother Teresa was honored for her work with one of the highest prizes that can be given to a person. The Nobel Peace Prize was established by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel. In his will, as recorded by the Nobel Foundation, he asked that

leading in the community

Mother Theresa holds a child in West Beirut, Lebanon, in 1982. Her noble leadership led to the development of numerous homes, schools, and other programs to help people in need around the world.

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being a leader and making decisions the prize be awarded “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Mother Teresa was given the prize as a “poverty awareness campaigner.” When Mother Teresa arrived in Oslo, Sweden, for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, she was dressed in her usual blue-bordered sari. It was freezing cold, but she did not change into warmer clothing. After the awards are presented, there is usually a banquet. Instead, she asked that the $6,000 normally spent on the dinner be donated to the poor people that she was working with in Calcutta. That amount of money would allow her to feed hundreds of people for a year. In her acceptance speech, she said, “I choose the poverty of our poor people. But I am grateful to receive (the Nobel) in the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.” Mother Teresa was beginning to get worldwide fame for her work. She used it to try to help even more people. As she went around the world giving speeches, she educated more and more people about the poorest of the poor. In a speech to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives at the National Prayer Breakfast in February of 1994, she asked people “to find the poor here, right in your own home first.” Financial donations she received allowed her to open up new homes for people who suffered from drug addiction and abuse. She also opened more orphanages for children who had lost their parents, as well as schools for poor children around the world. In 1985, Mother Teresa started the first hospice for AIDS victims in New York. Despite her good deeds, Mother Teresa was sometimes criticized for accepting money. She and her order relied

Leading in the Community on donations and the prize money that she received from awards such as the Nobel Peace Prize. Sometimes she would accept money from people who had a bad reputation. In reply to these criticisms, she said, “No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own work.” Mother Teresa used whatever she received to help others. When Pope Paul VI, the head of the Catholic Church, gave her a car, she auctioned it off and used the money to start a leper colony in India.

Health Problems By 1990, Mother Teresa’s own health was in decline. She had suffered heart attacks in 1983 and 1989. In 1990, she tried to resign as head of her order. In a secret ballot, she was reelected almost unanimously. The only vote against her was her own. A year later she suffered a bout of pneumonia, which caused heart failure, and she was hospitalized. In May 1993, she broke three ribs in a fall. In August of that year, she was again hospitalized, this time for malaria, a sometimes fatal infectious disease that is carried by parasites such as mosquitoes. After her recovery, Mother Teresa had surgery to clear a blocked blood vessel. In 1996, she broke her collarbone in a fall. In August of that year she caught malaria again and was treated in September for her continuing heart problems. The following year, on March 13, 1997, she stepped down as the head of her order. She wanted to continue her work, but she was aware that her body was not strong enough. That year she told Prince Michael of Greece, “The other day I dreamed that I was at the gates of heaven, and St. Peter said, ‘Go back to Earth. There are no slums up here.’” Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997. By then, Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity had more than 4,000 sisters, a brotherhood of 300 members, and more than 100,000 volunteers. They worked in 610 missions in 123 countries, and their work helped people with HIV/AIDS, drug addicts,

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being a leader and making decisions orphans, and the homeless, among others. Although she was a Catholic nun, the government of India acknowledged her life of selfless leadership and expressed gratitude for her service to all the different Indian religions.

Kendall Ciesemier Finding Her Purpose

In 2003, Kendall Ciesemier, a fifth grade student in Chicago, said she felt she wanted to help people. In a 2008 interview for TribLocal, she said, “I’ve always had this huge feeling that I need to help people. I was waiting that year in fifth grade

Sticking Her Neck Out

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he Giraffe Heroes Project is the creation of Ann Medlock. She began practicing yoga and meditation after she and her husband divorced, and as she found peace through her activities, she felt that she was called to service. Medlock began a hotline for abused and abandoned women. When that job did not work out, she moved to New York City and began working on a magazine called The Giraffe Society. The magazine went bankrupt, but Medlock felt that the giraffe idea was too good to lose. Then the Giraffe Heroes Project was born. Medlock chose the symbol of the giraffe because she wanted to showcase people who stuck their necks out for others. The project’s logo bears a Latin phrase: nobis est, which means, “It’s up to us.” Since 1984, the project has featured more than 900 heroes in the United States and around the world. They range from 7 to 97 years old. They have risked spending time in jail, the ridicule of their peers, and rejection, but still continue to work on projects that are important to them Medlock and her staff work to get their stories printed in local and national magazines and newspapers, and on media broadcasts. On the

Leading in the Community for it to just hit me, for something to say, ‘This is what you’re supposed to do.’” In December 2003, an idea finally did hit her. She was watching a special on The Oprah Winfrey Show about African orphans. There were children the same age as Kendall who had no one to care for them because AIDS had killed all the adults in their family. There were 13-year-olds who had to be the mother and father to their younger siblings—kids were caring for other kids. It sparked the idea that she, as a kid herself, could do something for those children she had seen on television.

Giraffe Heroes Web site (www.giraffe.org), she notes that people have “been absorbing social and political toxins for so long that we’re losing sight of the fact that we’re being poisoned. We need some antidotes, quick, and the way to offer them is to use media. . . . If we begin loading these avenues to people’s hearts and minds that are healing and antidotal, we can recover our health as a society.” Medlock feels personally helped by each of the heroes whose work she wants to show to the world. She and her new husband work on the project together along with a small staff. They review nominations for giraffe heroes, and coordinate which media outlet will get to tell their story. When the payroll is low, or the work is getting hard, she feels inspired by the heroes who are working to better their communities. She feels that anybody can serve in the community and says it’s as simple as asking yourself, “What have you got?” “Everybody has something,” she explained in an interview. “You could be the best talker around, you might have an enormous ability with your hands, you may be able to fix anything. You need to look at every gift you have and ask, ‘How can I use that to serve?’”

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being a leader and making decisions While doing Internet research, Kendall found an organization called World Vision, an international Christian relief and development organization. She planned to adopt an AIDS orphan like the ones she had seen on Oprah. Kendall took her savings—a total of $360—and tucked it into an envelope. Then she asked her mother for a stamp. In a CBS interview in 2004, her mother said she asked Kendall, “What is all this money for?” Kendall told her, “It’s my thing. I’m adopting an AIDS orphan.” Kendall sent out the money and adopted an 8-year-old Mauritian girl named Benite. A few months later, Benite sent Kendall a note updating her about how she was doing. Kendall later said it was this letter that made her think, “Wow, if I could change this little girl’s life, all by myself, then maybe with a little help I could change more lives.” With that, Kendall had found her mission. However, by the end of fifth grade, Kendall was fighting a battle of her own. She had been born with a rare liver disease, though people couldn’t tell that by looking at her. The summer after fifth grade, she had to have a liver transplant. Her father donated a piece of his liver, but unfortunately she developed a lifethreatening complication and needed to be re-transplanted. Kendall spent most of her summer in the hospital. Although she lay in a hospital bed fighting for her life, Kendall still felt that she could pursue her cause. She asked family and friends to donate to her charity rather than send her flowers and gifts. She partnered with World Vision with the intention of embarking on an even larger project that would help more people. Although she wasn’t able to do much fundraising while she was in the hospital, she could ask others to contribute for her. Her father credits her spirit of giving for pulling her through that summer. “I think it’s why she’s here today,” he told CBS News. Kendall, with the help of World Vision, decided to help an entire Zambian village. The village of Musele has one of the greatest numbers of children orphaned by AIDS. Nearly 1,000 children there are without a mother or father. Although

leading in the community relatives care for some of these children, more than 75 percent of them live below the poverty line, and 50 percent are malnourished. That means that they have so little to eat that

Kendall Ciesemier made it her mission to help AIDS orphans in Africa, and then she helped create a Web site and materials so other kids could learn to do similar good work.

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being a leader and making decisions they get sick. About half of Musele’s school-age children are unable to attend school. Kendall’s first goal was set at $60,000, as that was how much World Vision was looking for to fund the project. Although Kendall’s mom asked her if she wanted to make a goal that was easier to reach, Kendall was determined to keep her goal of $60,000 and set out to achieve it. That summer, Kendall’s friends and family pitched in and did their own kinds of fundraising, through lemonade stand sales as well as the sale of t-shirts. At the hospital, Kendall also went to work. She and some friends started making dog necklaces to sell. They called them “Bow Wow Bling Bling,” and sales of the necklaces added about another $1,000 to the cause. By the end of the summer, everyone’s efforts had raised $20,000. Kendall thought, “Wow, this is huge; we can really do something with this,” she recalled in a phone interview. That was when she decided to start her own organization. She and her family applied for a 501(c)(3) to become a nonprofit charitable organization. She decided to call it Kids Caring 4 Kids, and she established a Web site (www.kidscaring4kids.org) for donors to learn about the cause, donate to the charities that Kendall has supported, and read news reports about how other individuals, schools, and organizations are lending a hand. When Kendall was in sixth grade with the transplant behind her, she once again started to do active fundraising for her cause. She spoke at schools, businesses, and civic organizations. She even began to coordinate with churches to get her message across. In the fall of 2006, Kendall’s eighth grade year, she reached her $60,000 goal.

Brushes with Fame A year later, Kendall entered high school. Within the first two weeks, there was a school assembly. Kendall didn’t think anything of it, and because she was feeling ill that morning, she decided to wear sweats. Her mother convinced her to

Leading in the Community

Building a Well

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n 1998, six-year-old Ryan Hreljac listened to his first-grade teacher talk about people in Africa who did not have clean water to drink. She told the class that many people have to walk several miles to a clean water source and then bring it back to their family. An estimated 300 million Africans have no access to clean water. This leads to life-threatening diseases. When Ryan got home from school that day, he begged his parents Canadian teenager Ryan Hreljac to give him $70 to pay for decided to help people in Africa a clean water source for a gain access to clean water and he village in Africa. At first, his formed the Ryan’s Well Foundation parents refused. After he to accomplish his goal. Here, he sits pestered them for a while, with former Canadian Environment they agreed to pay him Minister Rona Ambrose in 2006. to do extra chores around the house. After about four months, Ryan had raised the $70 he set out to make. He and his mother contacted an organization called WaterCan to make their donation. They were disappointed to find out that $70 would cover the cost of only a hand pump. To fund a whole well, they would have to raise $2,000. Ryan immediately decided to do more chores. Then, he did more than that. He stepped up his fundraising efforts in his community and in two years was able to raise $61,000. (continues)

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being a leader and making decisions

(continued)

In April 1999, “Ryan’s Well” was dedicated at Angolo Primary School in Uganda. In July 2000, Ryan and his parents went to visit the school. They took supplies and money for new desks. While there, they met Ryan’s pen pal, Akana Jimmy, a boy whose parents had died from a disease caused by the lack of clean water. Ryan’s parents later adopted Jimmy through a refugee program. Jimmy has now joined Ryan and his other two brothers in Canada. All four of the brothers work to continue Ryan’s vision of bringing clean water to those in need. Today the Ryan’s Well Foundation (www.ryanswell.ca) has built 394 wells in 15 countries around the world. It has helped more than 500,000 people.

dress up a little. It turned out that her mother knew that a surprise was coming Kendall’s way. In fact, the whole school was in for a surprise. At the assembly, the principal introduced former President Bill Clinton. Clinton began by praising the school for its active work with charities. Then he mentioned Kendall and her Web site, and asked Kendall to join him on stage. He praised her efforts and then took her with him to a taping of The Oprah Winfrey Show, on which he was appearing to promote his book, Giving, and talk about how ordinary people like Kendall could make a big difference in the world through charitable contributions. Kendall said that she had changed her original goal of $60,000 to $1 million because she had already raised more than $100,000 and felt that she could meet her new goal. During a commercial break for the show, one of Clinton’s friends made an anonymous donation of $500,000 to Kendall’s charity. Since then, Kendall has been recognized by Chicago Magazine as one of the top seven Chicagoans of 2007. Car

Leading in the Community manufacturer Volvo honored her as a hero in its Volvo for Life Awards. Also, in May 2007, Kendall was honored with the Prudential Spirit of Community Award. She received $5,000 for her charity, a $5,000 scholarship, a trophy, and two medals. Kendall is well on her way to her $1 million goal to help the poorest children in Africa, and she wants to help kids in the United States, too. She feels that kids want to help, but don’t know how. To facilitate that, she has helped create an “i care 2” kit, which is being sold on her Web site as something to help inspire other kids to do similar work. Kendall has found her purpose and is helping others to find theirs, too.

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leAdInG At WorK

the very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. you can’t blow an uncertain trumpet. —Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh (1917– ), former president of the University of Notre Dame

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he idea of “servant leadership” is that people who are being helped do something in turn to benefit the community. Robert K. Greenleaf came up with the term in his essay, “The Servant as Leader.” He explains that the person who is driven by a desire to serve first is different from someone who is driven by a desire to lead first. The person who serves first is interested in making sure that the needs of others are met so that they can learn and grow and become servant leaders themselves. Another part of leadership is seeing potential. In Leslie Dillon’s 2008 article for Leader’s Digest, she notes that one of the traits of a good leader is “the ability to spot talent.” Similarly, the Harvard Business Review’s 2007 article “How Successful Leaders Think” suggests that how leaders think is more important than what they do when it comes to being successful. In the case of Alfred Blalock and Abraham Lincoln, the ability to spot talent and think in unique ways, along with a

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Leading at Work desire to serve others, may have led both men to greatness in their fields. They also encouraged greatness in others.

Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas Lab Partners

In 1930, 19-year-old carpenter’s assistant Vivien Thomas walked into a lab at Vanderbilt University looking for a job. He had gone only to high school, but he wanted to go to college and earn a medical degree. This was during the Great Depression, a time in U.S. history when jobs and money were hard to obtain. Earning money for school was difficult, especially for a black man in the 1930s, such as Thomas. What Thomas needed was a job. He planned to save his money to go to college the following year. Alfred Blalock, then 30 years old, was a doctor at Vanderbilt. He ran an animal lab where he performed experimental surgery on animals that he later perfected to use on humans. He needed a lab assistant, and when Vivien Thomas walked in, he immediately saw potential. Thomas asked questions about what he was doing, and how and why he was doing it. He seemed eager to learn, and that was exactly what Blalock was looking for. According to Katie McCabe’s 1989 article, “Like Something the Lord Made,” within three days, “Thomas was performing almost as if he’d been born in the lab. . . . Within a month, the former carpenter was setting up experiments and performing delicate and complex operations.” Clearly, Blalock had chosen the right man for the job. Thomas was a talented surgeon, and side-by-side with Blalock’s talent for leadership and desire to help every patient he could, the two made groundbreaking discoveries in surgery over the next three decades. At first, Blalock was working on learning why some patients went into shock during surgery. He asked questions, and Thomas found ways to approach them step-by-step in the lab to find the answers. While there, Thomas also learned anatomy and physiology, something he would have learned

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being a leader and making decisions in medical school if he had ever made it there. Thomas never did go to college or medical school. And yet, even during a depression and in a segregated country, he was able to do things that no other man had done—black or white, educated or not. Inside of the lab, they were an excellent team. Yet, outside of the lab was entirely different. While they could be friends in the lab, it was difficult to remain friendly outside because of how society looked upon blacks at the time. When Blalock held parties at his house, Thomas could attend only as a bartender, working for extra money. And Thomas needed the money. Although Thomas was fulfilling the duties of a senior research fellow, Vanderbilt University paid him a janitor’s salary because the only other black people who worked for Vanderbilt were janitors. Thomas’s older brother, Harold, had sued the Nashville Board of Education for paying him a lower salary because he was black. Even though Harold had won the case, he lost his job. Thomas had learned from his older brother to avoid trouble. He now had more than just himself to take care of. A new wife and child made speaking out about unfair wages seem like a luxury he could not afford. As the depression continued, Thomas was happy to have a job when many others did not.

Sticking Together After Blalock and Thomas finished their shock therapy research, Blalock gave a lecture on the subject. Immediately, the medical community sat up and took notice. He and Thomas had approached the problem of shock from many angles and had gathered a great deal of information, but most importantly, they had laid out their methods very simply. Blalock became a star in the medical world overnight. Four years later, he was offered a position at the prestigious Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Blalock refused to go without

Leading at Work Thomas. The hospital withdrew its offer. Officials there would not hire a black man. Blalock and Thomas remained at Vanderbilt and began doing studies on hypertension, commonly known as high blood pressure. In his autobiography, Pioneering Research in Surgical Shock and Cardiovascular Surgery: Vivien Thomas and His Work with Alfred Blalock, Thomas described their research as “a flop.” However, it would help them greatly in years to come. In 1940, Blalock was considered one of the best young surgeons in the United States. His former university, Johns Hopkins, asked him to return as surgeon in chief. He made a deal to bring Thomas with him and negotiated their salaries. Johns Hopkins was a segregated hospital with separate bathrooms and entrances for blacks and whites. Over the years, Thomas trained 20 young technicians in his surgical technique. All were young black men, like him, with an interest in medicine, but no ability to send themselves to school. He was patient and soft-spoken, and those who learned under him became very skilled themselves. Years later, a student of Dr. Blalock’s and a student of Thomas’s were operating together. McCabe reported that when something went wrong in the surgery, Blalock’s student was able to deal with it. Thomas’s student complemented him and he said, “Well, I trained with Dr. Blalock.” Weeks later, in another operation, Blalock’s student was stumped. The technician who had trained with Thomas stepped in and solved the problem. Blalock’s student complimented him and he replied, “I trained with [Thomas].”

Blue Babies Blalock and Thomas’s greatest discovery came in 1943 when a doctor approached them about “blue baby syndrome.” At birth, “blue babies” were weak and had a pale blue color

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being a leader and making decisions because their blood wasn’t flowing properly to their lungs. At the time, the syndrome was fatal. Blalock and Thomas thought about one of their experiments from years before. Thomas had successfully split an artery into two and rerouted it in surgery. He had done it six times. Blalock had done it only once, under Thomas’s supervision. But now, there was a newborn baby, Eileen Saxon, who was going to die if they did not find a way to help her. No one had ever done heart surgery before. It was new territory, and no one knew what would happen. Thomas immediately began research, and after a short time, Blalock decided to perform the operation. Because Eileen was so small, there were no tools that were small enough to do surgery on her. So Thomas cut down materials and specially fit them to her size as well as he could. On the morning of the surgery, Blalock had a stepstool placed behind his right elbow so that Thomas could guide him through the surgery. With every step, he consulted Thomas to make sure he was doing things right. If he didn’t, Thomas instructed him in the correct way. As soon as the surgery was done, baby Eileen immediately began to turn pink. The blood was flowing through her lungs, and she was now the right color. Eileen would live. For the next year, the two men performed hundreds of surgeries on babies with the syndrome. Thomas received some recognition, though far less than Blalock. However, Thomas was recognized at his school because of his work, and because he worked in the animal lab, he was becoming recognized in the field of veterinary surgery. Blalock retired in 1964 and died shortly afterward. Thomas remained at Johns Hopkins, and in 1971 was honored with a portrait in the Alfred Blalock Clinical Sciences Building, opposite a portrait of his old colleague. Five years later, Johns Hopkins awarded him an honorary doctorate—the degree

Leading at Work

Anne Mulcahy

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hen Anne Mulcahy majored in English and journalism in college, she could not have imagined that her career would lead her to run a multimilliondollar corporation. She started at the Xerox Company in the sales department. She rose up the ranks for 24 years, and in 2001, she was named CEO, the highest position in the company. Mulcahy had little business experience and no financial training. She was definitely a risky pick and seemed somewhat unqualified for the important job she was given. To make things worse, Xerox was having Ready to learn and not afraid financial problems. It was losing to ask questions along the money from competition from way, Anne Mulcahy rose other paper copier makers, such through the ranks of Xerox as Hewlett-Packard and Canon. to become CEO and chairIn addition, the Securities and woman, despite having no Exchange Commission, a gov- financial training. ernment group, was looking into Xerox’s accounting practices. When the announcement was made that Mulcahy was taking the top spot in the company, many people who had bought stock in Xerox decided to sell it. As a result, the company’s stock price went down 15 percent. All signs pointed to the company’s death. (continues)

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(continued)

In an interview for Time magazine on April 30, 2006, Mulcahy admitted that she knew what her shortcomings were. More importantly, she was not afraid to ask for help. She asked a colleague to teach her what she needed to know about finance and said she needed to be taught fast. “There wasn’t a lot of time for false pride,” she said. A year later, the company was profitable again, and Mulcahy was offered the second highest position at the company in addition to the CEO position. She was now CEO and chairwoman. Xerox was still in debt, but the company was definitely coming around. By early 2008, Xerox’s stock prices had almost tripled. Xerox’s Board of Directors was able to spot the talent that Mulcahy had, and she in turn became a good leader for Xerox.

that had been out of his reach all of his life. He was also appointed to the medical school faculty and was officially a professor. Blalock and Thomas did their best work in a time when a white man and a black man were hardly seen to share a conversation, let alone a laboratory. However, as medical partners, Thomas would not have become the influence that he was if not for Blalock’s ability to see potential. And like Blalock, Thomas went on to mentor many others, becoming a leader himself.

Abraham Lincoln

An Unlikely President On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected as the sixteenth president of the United States. Lincoln learned of his election while waiting at the telegraph office in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois. He and a few friends had gathered there to get immediate access to the returns from the polls. Some newspaper reporters waited with them. Once it

Leading at Work was clear that Lincoln had won the election, he immediately turned to the reporters and said, “Well boys, your troubles are over now; mine have just begun,” according to Jim Hargrove in his book, Abraham Lincoln. After an initial celebration, Lincoln sat down and penned the names of the people he wanted in his cabinet. In the 1862 Diary of Gideon Welles, Welles wrote that Lincoln told him, “Before the sun went down, I had made up my Cabinet. It was almost the same as I finally selected.” In Lincoln’s first draft of people whom he wanted as his closest allies to run the country, his three political rivals were at the top of the list. Lincoln inherited a country that was on the edge of tearing itself apart. Slavery in the Southern states had become extremely important to the region’s main source of income: agriculture. To maintain slavery, Southern slave-owners hoped to expand it into other states. However, Northern states hoped that limiting slavery only to the states that already had it would eventually squeeze the practice out of existence. The argument over slavery had pushed the country toward civil war. Lincoln himself was against slavery, but he knew that to keep the country together, he needed to find a way for everyone to come together for the sake of the Union. In his acceptance speech when he won the Republican nomination for president, Lincoln quoted the Bible, Mark 3:25: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” He went on to say, “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.” What Lincoln didn’t say in that speech was that he expected the country to become all free. To accomplish this, Lincoln sought to bring together men of differing political views, people from the North, the South, and the East and West coasts, to get a full representation of the entire country. He wanted to make sure that everyone had a voice. Although he quickly chose whom he wanted to

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Abraham Lincoln knew that to keep the United States together, a diverse cabinet made up of people with different viewpoints was essential.

Leading at Work work with, getting these men to agree to work together was no small task. It took nearly the entire four months before his inauguration to coax everyone into position.

Handling the Secretary of State First, Lincoln approached the man he wanted as his secretary of state. William Henry Seward was Lincoln’s main rival in the race for the Republican nomination. However, when Seward lost to Lincoln, he immediately threw his support behind him and went around the country making political speeches on Lincoln’s behalf. Seward, a native of New Jersey, brought the support of his home state, plus New York, to Lincoln’s presidential campaign. With Seward in the top spot as secretary of state, Lincoln would also be able to count on the support of those states during his presidency. Lincoln did not come right out and name Seward. In fact, some newspapers reported falsely that Lincoln wanted someone else. Seward was upset and prepared to turn down Lincoln even if he was offered the job. Lincoln sent a mutual friend of theirs to talk to Seward. He also sent Seward two letters. The first was the official letter asking him to be the secretary of state. The second was a personal letter from Lincoln, expressing that Seward was his first and only consideration and that he did not encourage any news reports about other possible choices. Seward then felt that he was in a position to bargain. He tried to encourage the hiring of someone whose politics were just like his to be secretary of the Navy. He held off on accepting the secretary of state position until he could get Lincoln to choose this person. Lincoln, however, had already settled on Gideon Welles, who was from a state on the North-South border. Support from border states would prove crucial in helping keep the country together. Lincoln refused to budge on his choice. He felt sure that despite Seward’s behavior, he would eventually take the job of secretary of state with or (continues on page 78)

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Barack Obama’s Connections to Lincoln

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arack Obama, the forty-fourth president of the United States, has a lot in common with Abraham Lincoln, the country’s sixteenth president. They are both tall men who were Illinois state senators. Both were relatively unknown on the national political scene before they set their eyes on the presidency. And both led presidential campaigns against far more qualified candidates and won. Like Lincoln, Obama is a gifted speaker who can affect the emotions of the crowd, and also like the sixteenth president, Obama is known for his natural charm. While those similarities are coincidental, others are more deliberate. As a young senator, Obama would jog down the Washington mall toward the Lincoln Memorial on warm days and mouth the words carved into the marble monument. He looked up to Lincoln as a mentor and often thought about Lincoln’s life and work when considering in his own political career. “There is a wisdom there and a humility about his approach to government, even before he was president, that I just find very helpful,” Obama told CNN in January of 2009. When Obama was ready to announce his run for the presidency, he made that announcement on the steps of the Illinois State Capital where Lincoln had worked as a senator. In his acceptance speech after he won the election, Obama used words from Lincoln’s Inaugural speech to underscore his belief that the country needed to come together. “We are not enemies but friends,” Obama quoted. “Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.” When Obama set off for Washington, D.C., to begin his presidency, he took a train that followed the same route as Lincoln’s train ride into Washington before his swearing-in. At his Inauguration, Obama was sworn in on the same bible that Lincoln had used for his swearing-in. No other president had used it since. Even the theme of Obama’s Inauguration was taken from a line in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “A New Birth of Freedom.” And at Obama’s Inaugural meal, the fish soup that was served had been a favorite of Lincoln’s.

Leading at Work

President Barack Obama speaks to a crowd at Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona, on February 18, 2009.

Lincoln may also have affected the way Obama conducts his official life. After the Civil War ended, Lincoln was urged to prosecute soldiers in the Confederate Army who had opposed the end to slavery and fought northerners, but Lincoln wanted them to return home to their jobs and families. He felt it was the best way to maintain the country’s harmony. Likewise, early in his Presidency, Obama has risen above score-settling. Democratic Party leaders threatened to strip Senator Joe Lieberman as chairperson of the homeland security committee after he spoke at the Republican National Convention. Democrats felt that by doing so, Lieberman had turned his back on fellow Democrats. Yet Obama decided to let Lieberman keep his position. When Lincoln chose his cabinet members, he chose among the people he had run against to become president, creating a “team of (continues)

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rivals,” as one historian described it. Obama also asked his former political rivals to join him. Hilary Clinton, his chief opponent during his bid for the Democratic nomination, became his Secretary of State. Joe Biden, another opponent, became vice president, and at a time when the country was sharply divided between Republicans and Democrats, Obama spoke with Republican rivals to find ways to work together. The connections between these two presidents, whether intended or coincidental, still underscore an important fact. Lincoln was the president who ended slavery, and as an African-American, Obama may never have had the opportunity to become president without his efforts.

(continued from page 75) without his preferred choice. He was right. Seward accepted the position. Like a true leader, Lincoln had stuck to his beliefs and called Seward’s bluff.

Two Secretaries of the Treasury His second rival, Salmon Chase, had been the oldest candidate running for the Republican nomination that year. While Lincoln was tall and messy, Chase was small and very careful about how he wore his clothes. Chase was the governor of Ohio, and a very religious man. He disagreed with slavery because he felt it was not morally right. Before Lincoln could offer Chase the position of secretary of the Treasury Department, he met another man, Simon Cameron. Cameron was pro-slavery and had been accused of taking bribes. He was also involved in some bad dealings with a Native American tribe. But Cameron was charming and well liked, and he told great stories, just as Lincoln did. On the first night that the two met, while enjoying each other’s company, Cameron suggested that Lincoln appoint him as

Leading at Work

Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield

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ometimes it’s not a talented person who is spotted by a leader—it’s a product. And a good leader can spot a winning idea when he or she comes across one. When Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield decided to start a business, it was an idea for a multiple-player Internet game that they wanted to call Game Neverending. Neither Fake nor Butterfield had gaming experience. Fake worked in marketing, and Butterfield was a web designer. The idea behind their game was that anyone could (continues)

Stewart Butterfield and Catarina Fake (above, in a Flickr photo booth), founders of the popular photo-sharing site Flickr, found success by developing a good product and treating their employees well.

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make, trade, buy, sell, and interact with other people all over the world through the game from the comfort of their own computer. They both liked the original idea behind the Internet: If you needed information about anything, you could communicate with an expert from anywhere in the world in seconds. They felt the Internet had moved away from that idea, and they wanted to bring it back. In November 2003, the two were ready to take their game to the State of Play conference in New York. The conference was set up to discuss the kinds of legal and social issues that might come from creating a virtual world over the Internet. Fake and Butterfield needed to impress the people there. They were already behind on developing the game and needed to raise money to keep going. In a 2006 interview with Inc.com, Fake revealed that at the time they were “trying to figure out what furniture [they] should sell to make payroll.” Their seven employees needed to be paid. But on the way to the meeting, Butterfield suddenly decided that they should do a photo-sharing site instead. The idea did not come out of left field. One of the designers working on making the game developed a system that allowed anyone to share a photo on the Internet quickly and easily. Butterfield suddenly recognized the potential of this to be a business all by itself. By December, Fake and Butterfield led their backers to support the photo-sharing site. In February 2004, four months after Butterfield’s idea, the Web site Flickr was born. Fake and Butterfield were leading the way in a new kind of web content, created by Internet consumers themselves. By July 2004, the pair had attracted the attention of search engine giants Yahoo and Google. Sixteen months after they had launched the site, Fake and Butterfield sold Flickr to Yahoo for $30 million. Rather than leaving behind the people who had supported them, Fake and Butterfield moved their entire staff from Canada to Silicon Valley in California to work with Yahoo.

Leading at Work treasury secretary. He further suggested that Lincoln put it in writing. Lincoln did so, after having Cameron promise to keep the appointment secret, but he immediately regretted his actions. He later wrote a letter to Cameron asking him to withdraw his name from consideration, and in return, he would be given another position. Cameron refused to reply. He also told his friends about the appointment and showed them Lincoln’s letter. When Lincoln finally met with Chase, their meeting was strained. Chase was upset because Lincoln could not offer him the position of secretary of the Treasury Department until he resolved the situation with Cameron. Nevertheless, Chase desired a cabinet position so much that Lincoln was able to string him along for months before he made the offer official. During that time, Chase considered withdrawing his name from consideration, but never did. Lincoln calculated that his desire to be part of the administration would outweigh his embarrassment about how he was named. Again, Lincoln had gambled and won.

The Rival Southerner Judge Edward Bates of St. Louis was Lincoln’s final political rival. He farmed the land he owned and preferred his home life, his wife and 17 children, and nearly a dozen grandchildren to life in politics. After he ended his political career, he was repeatedly asked to run for office again. He always declined, but during the 1860 election, he decided to run one last time. When he lost the nomination to Lincoln, Bates was happy to retreat back to his farm life. He would not give speeches on Lincoln’s behalf, but he wrote a letter of support for Lincoln that made his old supporters throw their support to Lincoln. In his book, The Diary of Edward Bates, 1859–1866, Bates expressed that if “peace and order” remained in the country, there would be no reason for him to re-enter public life. However, after Lincoln won the election, several states

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being a leader and making decisions announced their intention to secede, or leave, the Union. That made Bates feel that he had to put aside his personal feelings and help the country stay together. As a Southerner, he would have some support from Southern, slave-owning states. This was very important, as some people in Southern states began planning an assassination attempt against Lincoln almost from the moment he was elected president. When Lincoln went to Washington after his election, he immediately attended a peace convention to meet the Southern officials who had gathered there. It was the first time that many of the Southerners would meet the president-elect. Rather than finding the uneducated and unpolished person they had imagined, they found Lincoln to be a man very much in charge. One Virginia congressman, William Rives, said, “They have looked upon him as an ignorant, self-willed man, incapable of independent judgment, full of prejudices, willing to be used as a tool by more able men. This is all wrong. He will be the head of his administration, and he will do his own thinking.”

The Strongest Man By the time Lincoln made it to his inauguration, his cabinet was filled with men who probably felt that the other men had been wrongly nominated. In her 2005 book, Team of Rivals, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin reports that when asked why he had chosen a cabinet of people with opposing views, Lincoln replied, “We needed the strongest men of the party in the Cabinet. We needed to hold our own people together. I had looked the party over and concluded that these were the very strongest men. Then I had no right to deprive the country of their services.” Lincoln recognized that to be an effective leader of a country that was falling apart, he needed to find a way to bring everyone together. During his presidency, Lincoln ended slavery and kept the country from splitting apart in war. He was helped by his clever ability to see the best in people despite opposing views, and an ability to make people of differing views work together for a common good.

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there is nothing more diffi cult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. —Niccoló Machiavelli (1469–1527), Italian diplomat and philosopher

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eaders are able to see problems in their world and find ways to effectively solve those problems. They are not stopped by objections to their new way of thinking. They simply continue onward with their ideas of finding a better way to do the things. Maria Montessori revolutionized teaching. Tim Berners-Lee revolutionized communication. Muhammad Yunus revolutionized banking. They each did it because they saw a need and found what they thought was a simple solution.

Maria Montessori doctor and teacher

Maria Montessori grew up in Italy in the late 1800s. At that time, girls did not get the same kind of education that boys did. They learned to sew and recite lessons. Their

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being a leader and making decisions education ended at primary school. The boys could continue their education as far as they wanted. Montessori was good at needlework, but she was also good at mathematics. Unfortunately, reciting lessons was very boring to her. When it was near the time for her to graduate from primary

Young Golf Star

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hen Time magazine names its “100 Most Influential People in the World,” it’s not unusual to see politicians, religious leaders, and movie stars. What is unusual is finding a 16-year-old high-school girl looking forward to prom. In 2006, when Time named Michelle Wie to its list of the most influential people, she was looking forward to college, but was already well into her career in golf. She started playing at age four in her native Hawaii. She said that the first time she held golf clubs, she knew she was going to play for the rest of her life. Wie was already the number two women’s player when she was honored by Time. She had achieved a great deal before getting there. At age 10, she was the youngest player to qualify to play in the Women’s U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship. At 11, she became the youngest player to qualify for the United States Golf Association (USGA) Amateur Championship. At age 12 she became the youngest player to qualify to play in the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA). She didn’t qualify to play in the LPGA tournament at age 12, but the following year, she made it into the LPGA finals. A few months later, she became the youngest person ever to win the USGA tournament. She was also the youngest person to make it into the U.S. Women’s Open and the 2004 Professional Golf Association (PGA) tour. In her teens, 6-foot-1-inch-tall Wie got used to getting attention for her height as well as her playing skills. A week before her sixteenth birthday, she announced that she was turning professional. Her wins from the previous year would have earned her hundreds of thousands of dollars

Leading the Way school, Montessori told her mother that she wanted to go to technical school. Her mother encouraged her, but her father was not happy because only boys went to technical school. Finally, she and her mother were able to convince her father to allow her to go.

Teen golf star Michelle Wie swings at the Omega European Masters in 2006, as her dad, BJ, watches. Her talent earned her top honors at a very young age, which enabled her to become an influential and inspiring athlete.

if she were not an amateur player. Her decision to turn pro also brought with it contracts to be a spokeswoman for Nike and Sony. Wie is now at the top of her game and at the top of the pay scale, earning about $10 million a year. She has used her talent, charm, and fame to lead the way in attracting more people to the sport.

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being a leader and making decisions At the technical school, Montessori found that even subjects that she enjoyed, such as mathematics, could become boring if they were taught in unexciting ways. Most young women who continued their education eventually became teachers. Montessori felt that a teacher was the last thing she wanted to become. Instead, Montessori decided to become an engineer. The subject was considered unladylike, as only boys studied engineering. Her father was unhappy again because he felt that engineering was too masculine for a woman. However, Montessori made him very happy when she decided to give up engineering for medicine. Medicine was also a field full of men, and getting into a medical school was difficult for Montessori. She met Dr. Guido Baccelli, the head of the medical faculty at the University of Rome, but he refused to help her get into school. Still, she knew that she would get in somehow. When she finally was able to attend the University of Rome’s La Sapienza Medical School, she found life there to be difficult. Because she was a woman, she had to be taken to and from school by her father. She also had to wait outside each classroom until all the male students had gone in before her. Sometimes the other students would tease her, or make sure that she didn’t have a seat when she finally got into class. Montessori never let that stop her. In fact, one day she walked through a snowstorm to get to class. When she got there, she was the only student who had shown up. The professor was impressed she had come to class, and he gave his lecture to her alone. During her last two years at school, Montessori studied children’s medicine—a field called pediatrics. She worked at a children’s hospital in Rome and was especially interested in the study of mental health through psychiatry. At her graduation, all seniors were required to give a lecture to the graduating class and their families. After Montessori’s lecture, she expected criticism, but instead, everyone applauded—even her father. When she graduated, Montessori’s diploma had

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to be changed to read dottoressa, which is Italian for “female doctor.” She was the very first dottoressa in Italy. After graduation, she kept up with psychiatry and pediatrics, the two fields that she had discovered in her last two years at school. She was appointed to be a surgical assistant and she worked with her university’s psychiatric clinic. At the clinic, she worked with children who were considered

Maria Montessori sits with students at the Gatehouse School in London, where her revolutionary teaching methods were used, in 1951.

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being a leader and making decisions mentally challenged and unable to be educated. The children had nothing to do all day, except sleep and eat. There were no toys or books for them. In Barbara O’Connor’s book Mammolina, O’Connor describes that “the children would crawl around on the floor, looking for the crumbs of bread that had dropped there. . . . Suddenly, a new idea occurred to [Montessori]. Maybe these children weren’t grabbing for crumbs because they were hungry. Maybe they just needed something to look at or touch. The bread crumbs were their only toys.” Montessori continued to observe the children. She used her scientific training as a doctor, as well as her former engineering training, to think of ways to help the children. She felt that she needed to learn what they were like so that she could teach them. Montessori remembered her own years as a student—memorizing lessons and sitting in quiet rows. She felt that there was a better way to teach children. She thought about what kinds of toys would interest the children, and then worked to train teachers to work with them. She also helped create the kinds of learning materials that she wanted the children to use. In 1898 she gave a lecture at the Educational Congress in Torino, Italy. She talked about how the disabled could be trained better. Dr. Baccelli, who had refused to help her get into medical school just eight years before, was at the conference. Now, he was the Italian minister of education. He was so impressed by her speech that he offered her a job as the director of Scuola Ortofrenica, a school for the mentally challenged. It was time for Montessori to test her theories in the classroom. She accepted the position.

The Montessori Miracle One of the groups Montessori worked with at the school was a group of eight-year-old children who had mental and emotional problems. She created her own materials and taught them meaningful activities, such as how to pour water and

Leading the Way how to use a handkerchief to blow their noses. She also gave them opportunities to develop their self-esteem. The students responded so well that Montessori decided to let them take state exams. These exams were taken by all Italian students to test reading and writing ability. Normally, the children Montessori was working with would not have had the opportunity to take the test because they were considered mentally or emotionally challenged. No one thought they could pass such a test. However, Montessori’s students not only passed the test, they received higher than average scores. Montessori received widespread recognition because of her results with these special children. Montessori realized that she could help all kinds of students with her methods. She decided to open a school in the poorest area of Rome. Within a year, people came from all over the world to see her results. Before age five, her students were beginning to read and write, and they seemed to be doing so on their own. Unlike most other children under age five, they preferred work to play and they were able to concentrate for long periods of time. Montessori believed that the environment that children were learning in was just as important as what they were learning. She was the first person to equip her school with furniture that was perfectly sized for small children. Before that, children sat in adult-sized chairs and desks. Montessori continued to observe her students and learn from them about the best way to teach them. Within two years, three more schools modeled on Montessori’s first Casa Dei Bambini, or “Children’s School,” opened. In the three years after that, Montessori schools began opening up all over the world. Montessori was concerned that so many schools were opening. She wanted to make sure that the teachers were properly trained in her methods. By that time, Montessori was 40 years old, and she decided to devote herself full-time to leading the development of her schools.

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being a leader and making decisions Montessori revolutionized the way children were taught. Her schools exist now all over the world and have led education in a different direction.

Tim Berners-Lee Creating the Web

Tim Berners-Lee is the son of two mathematicians who encouraged him to do math even while at the dinner table. He grew up in London, England. When he was 11, he went to a school that was between two railway tracks. This sparked his interest in trains, and he created a model railway in his bedroom. Eventually, Berners-Lee’s interest shifted from the trains he was running to the electronics that made them run. He became quite good with electronics in general. In college, he bought an old television for about $7 and made it into a computer. His interest in computers led him to try to hack into his university’s computer system with a friend. They were caught, and Berners-Lee was banned from using the university computers. Berners-Lee graduated in 1976 with a degree in physics, and then he went to Oxford University. After graduating, he began his professional life as a computer programmer. Within a few years, Berners-Lee began working for an organization called CERN, which runs a particle physics laboratory outside Geneva, Switzerland. CERN studies highenergy physics, or the physics of particles that are smaller than atoms. Huge machines are used to detect the time particles so that they may be studied. Berners-Lee soon turned his attention to the computers that held his research. “I found it frustrating that, in those days, there was different information on different computers, but you had to log on to different computers to get at it,” explains Berners-Lee. He was referring to the time before the Web was built when many of the computers used different programs, so users had to learn a lot of different computer

leading the Way languages to use all the computers they needed. The people who worked at CERN came from all over the world. They all had different types of computers with different operating systems and many different software programs. To solve this problem, Berners-Lee wrote some programs that changed information from one computer system so that it could be used in another one. It was a temporary fix. It might have solved the problem for two different programs on two specific computers, but if Berners-Lee needed information from yet

Tim Berners-Lee took initiative when he created the World Wide Web after imagining how great it would be to have a place where people could share and access documents from anywhere in the world.

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being a leader and making decisions another program or yet another computer, he would have to write a whole new program. Berners-Lee saw the need for people to communicate in one place. He began to think about a permanent fix. His idea became the seed for the World Wide Web. He pitched the idea of a global project in 1989. It would allow people to create a web full of documents. That way, people could share information. It would make finding information much easier because all information would be available on the same computer and would use the same program to share it. He started work on it in 1990, and by the summer of 1991, the World Wide Web made its debut.

Running the Web Berners-Lee is quick to insist that he did not invent the Internet. All the pieces that he needed to create the Web were already there. Someone had already created Internet Protocol, or IP, which is the method by which data is sent via computers. Someone else had figured out how to give each Web site its own name. People were already using programs that made e-mail. The idea of linking from one bit of information to the other was thought of even before computers were invented. The hard part about the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee said, was getting everyone to join it. To help him do this, Berners-Lee started the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, in 1994. He describes it as “a club of people and companies who feel the Web is important.” Even today, they work to make the Web better, more powerful, and continuously running. Berners-Lee is still an active spokesman for how the Web should work. He believes that everyone should have access to the Web, no matter what kind of device they are on, whether it’s a desktop computer or a mobile phone. He thinks that the majority of effort going into the Web should be spent on communicating, sharing scientific data, and developing high standards and new technology for using the Web.

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Bottom-up Leadership

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s doctoral students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin set out to create a new way to search the Internet. The PageRank program they created could rank pages for a search by the number of links each page had. Then, they decided to expand their work. On September 7, 1998, the two created their company and its search engine and called it Google. In the next 10 years, Google revolutionized the Internet industry. It led the way in a number of areas, from employee relations to marketing and corporate culture. Google was able to attract the most creative and talented workers, and the company became the most successful search engine company, without even a single ad. While its competitor Yahoo spent millions on advertising, Google grew by word-of-mouth. The secret to its success is no secret. The company gained a reputation for hiring the best people, treating them well, and listening to their ideas. (continues)

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin playfully pose at company headquarters in Mountain View, California, in 2004. They found enormous success in building a company that encouraged its own employees to be leaders themselves.

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Even though Google pays its employees less than the average company for the same work, it gets about 7,000 resumes every day. Fortune magazine rated Google first in its list of “100 Best Places to Work” in 2007 and 2008. At the Googleplex, the company’s headquarters in California, there are several cafeterias led by top-notch chefs, a gym, laundry room, play areas, and a shuttle bus that brings employees to and from work—and all of it is free for employees. One of Google’s great ideas is called “innovation time off.” Employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time, or one day per week, on projects that interest them. “People work better when they’re involved in something they’re passionate about,” employee Bharat Mediratta explains. And many cool technologies have their origins in 20 percent time, including Gmail, Google News, and even the Google shuttle buses that bring people to work. Then employees can get other people involved in an idea by talking about it or getting a group together. Google works from the bottom up, Mediratta says. That seems to be the thing that other companies find perplexing. “Lots of organizations talk about giving power to frontline people and skilled people that they hire,” says Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford Business School. “Google actually does it. . . . Ironically, the hardest thing to copy at Google is not the free food or massages or parking, which anyone can do. The hardest thing to copy and for corporate leaders to get in their heads is that if you hire intelligent people you actually let them use their intelligence.” Google seems to be a leader in the Internet industry in large part because it gives its employees the ability to be leaders themselves.

Berners-Lee has received many awards for his work. In England, Queen Elizabeth knighted him. Finland awarded him with the first Millennium Technology Prize, which came with a cash award of about $1.5 million. Germany awarded him the Quadriga Award, which represents four

Leading the Way things: harmony, friendship, valor, and state wisdom for the benefit of all. For all of that, Berners-Lee still thinks that there is much more to the Web than what he started. On his Web site (www. w3.org), he writes, “I want you to know that you too can make new programs which create new fun ways of using computers and using the Internet. I want you to realize that, if you can imagine a computer doing something, you can program a computer to do that. Unbounded opportunity . . . limited only by your imagination. And a couple of laws of physics.” Berners-Lee imagined the Web, and with hard work, a commitment to his beliefs, and strong leadership skills, he took the world to a new age of communication.

Muhammad Yunus Helping the Poor

In 1974, Bangladesh, a country in South Asia, fell into famine. Bangladesh’s citizens were reduced to extreme poverty. With nothing to eat and nowhere to live, more than a million people died in the streets. Muhammad Yunus, an economics professor at Bangladesh’s Chittagong University, watched this happen through his windows. In his book Banker to the Poor, Yunus describes death by starvation as “the most unacceptable of all.” While he was teaching economics, which was supposed to rid the world of the kind of poverty he was witnessing, he felt almost ashamed by the uselessness of his own lectures. He went to villages near the university and tried various ways to help the people there. Some worked and some did not. One group of women whom he met made furniture from bamboo. They had to buy the bamboo, but because they were poor, they had to take out a loan to buy it. No regular bank would loan them money because they could not prove that they owned anything of similar value. Yunus realized that even a very small loan would make a huge difference in the lives of these women. He decided

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Muhammad Yunus (right) poses with Grameen Bank representative Mosammat Taslima Begum as the two hold Nobel medals and diplomas in 2006. Yunus went against traditional ideas of banking to help the people of Bagladesh and, ultimately, revolutionize banking.

to loan them $27 of his own money. With that, the women were able to buy their materials and make a profit of 2 cents. It might not seem like much, but if they had borrowed from a local businessperson, which was the only other option available to them, they would have had to pay back so much money that they would have not made any profit at all. Yunus’s loan allowed the women to re-invest the money in themselves and their business, and to get their family what they needed. Yunus realized that small loans like these to the

Leading the Way very poor could make a big difference in their lives. That was how Grameen Bank began.

A Different Kind of Bank On the bank’s information page at www.grameen-info.org, Yunus writes: Grameen Bank methodology is almost the reverse of the conventional banking methodology. Conventional banking is based on the principle that the more you have, the more you can get. In other words, if you have little or nothing, you get nothing. As a result, more than half the population of the world is deprived of the financial services of the conventional banks. Conventional banking is based on collateral [meaning if you own things, you can be loaned money of a similar value]; Grameen’s system is collateral-free.

Yunus found that the majority of traditional bank customers are men. Yet, of Grameen’s customers, 97 percent are women. Most conventional banks are located in business centers, but the branches of Grameen Bank are built in rural areas, near the homes of the poor. Most banks will take customers to court if they cannot pay back their loans, but Grameen Bank will try to help its customers out of financial difficulty so that they are able to pay back their loans. Most banks continue to charge interest on loans for as long as the loan is unpaid. Sometimes, the interest that the person ends up paying becomes more than the original amount they borrowed. At Grameen, this never happens. When the interest becomes the same as the original amount borrowed, the bank stops charging interest on the loan. Grameen also has educational programs that give scholarships to the children of their customers. The bank is run by the members themselves. They form groups called micro-credit groups, and they elect a leader

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being a leader and making decisions and have meetings that get them involved in the community. They help each other be successful. Since the borrowed money comes from the community, it is in everyone’s best interest that people are successful, so that they are able to pay back their loans. For some people, even this responsibility is a hardship; they must beg to have any money at all. Beggars often find themselves in this position because of divorce, death of the family earner, or natural devastation such as flooding or river erosion, all of which may create homelessness. Some people are unable to recover from their financial difficulties and find they must beg for money for the rest of their lives. Grameen Bank has a special program called the Struggling Members Program, which seeks to help people who beg for their living. The program loans struggling members about $9 and the members decide on a schedule to pay it back. The program teaches them to have a product on hand as they beg, so that they eventually move from begging to selling. When they start to earn a real living from their work, they change their lives, thanks to Grameen Bank. It might be strange to think of an economist running a bank that goes against every banking tradition that he was taught. But Yunus has found that his method works for the poorest people who would not have a chance to earn and grow otherwise. He hopes that these small, collateral-free loans—called micro-credits—will go a long way to end poverty all over the world.

Social Business In 2006, the Nobel Prize Committee awarded Yunus and Grameen Bank the Nobel Peace Prize. In its statement, the committee noted, “Muhammad Yunus has shown himself to be a leader who has managed to translate visions into practical action for the benefit of millions of people.” In June 2007, Business Week magazine named Yunus one of its “Greatest Entrepreneurs of All-Time.” In Business Week’s list of 30

Leading the Way people, he was named alongside Bill Gates, the multibillionaire developer of Microsoft; Henry Ford, the inventor of automation and the maker of Ford cars; and Madame C.J. Walker, the daughter of African slaves who created a commercial empire from products specifically formulated for black hair. In an article for The Christian Science Monitor in February 2008, Yunus talked about what he called “social business.” This expands the idea of micro-credit and asks businesses to think more about the community when they do business. “Social business is not a charity,” he wrote. “It aims to maximize the positive impact on society while earning enough to cover its costs, and, if possible, generate a surplus to help the business grow. The owner never intends to take any profit for himself.” Although he feels that capitalism—the traditional means of making money—has been good, Yunus thinks it is time for a new way to look at business, one that does not leave some of the poorest people behind. “The urge to do good exists in all of us—right along with self-interest. We can harness that urge to do good in addition to human ingenuity to help the world’s poor become self-sustaining with dignity and self-respect.”

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When leAdershIP Goes BAd

A good reputation and respect are worth much more than silver and gold. —Proverbs 22:1

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good leader makes ethical choices. Ethics involves decisions about what is right and wrong. The community, not one person, decides what is right and wrong. A leader with integrity will consider the needs of the group over his or her individual needs. However, not all leaders have integrity. Some use their talent for leadership for their own gain, and do so in a way that hurts others.

enron

the Golden Boys In the late 1990s, Enron founder Ken Lay was sitting on top of one of the richest companies in the world. He was a very rich man himself, donating $2 million to George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign to become president of the United States. In 15 years, Lay had managed to build a company that made

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When Leadership Goes Bad $100 billion a year. Fortune magazine named it the seventh largest corporation in 2000. Enron owned companies all over the world and was responsible for trading stock. It bought and sold stock mainly in electric and gas companies. A sign in Enron’s lobby announced its goal to become “the World’s Greatest Company.” It seemed well on its way, but by 2001, the company was in complete disarray. For years, Enron had made itself the go-to company for stock trading. Because Enron both bought and sold stock, the amount of money the company made was the difference between the price for the stock it bought and the price for which it sold the stock. The company set its own prices and never revealed what those prices were. Imagine buying a shirt for $10 and then selling it for $300 without the buyer or seller having access to the sale prices. That is what Enron did with stocks. It was against the law. In addition, the company owed a lot of people large sums of money. This debt was in the billions of dollars. To hide how much it owed, Enron became partners with other companies that could share the debt. This way, Enron would not appear to owe so much. “The story of Enron is the story of unmitigated [pure and complete] pride and arrogance,” Stanford Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer told The Washington Post in December 2001. “My impression is they thought they knew everything, which [is] always the fatal flaw. No one knows everything.” In the same article, Lay himself admitted that there were “a few people at Enron that were cocky.”

Unraveled By 2001, what was holding Enron together began to unravel. The CEO, Andrew Fastow, had to reveal publicly that the company had to repay nearly $700 million in debt immediately. Within the next year, it had to pay an additional $6 billion. The news led many investors to sell their stock in Enron. In a short time, Enron’s stock was worth half of what it had been

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Former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow leaves a courthouse in Houston in 2006 after receiving a six-year prison sentence. Fastow and other Enron executives showed poor leadership skills when they left their employees without stock or retirement savings as they took care of their own wealth.

When Leadership Goes Bad a year before. Lay tried to sell the company, but when the buyers became fully aware of how much trouble Enron was in, they backed out. While Lay and Fastow made millions as the company’s leaders, the 21,000 employees of the company did not have that kind of wealth. Many employees, some of whom had worked for the company since it started, had retirement savings tied up in the company’s stock. This meant that when they retired, they could sell their Enron stock for the money it was worth. At its best, the stock was worth $90 per share. Investors were told that the price of the stock could go as high as $140 per share. Meanwhile, Enron executives who knew what kind of trouble the company was in started to sell their stock. Lay sold $70 million of his stock while telling his employees that they should buy more stock. On November 28, 2001, Lay’s wife sold $1.2 million of her stock between 10 a.m. and 10:20 a.m. The announcement about how much Enron was in debt came at 10:30 that morning, and within minutes of the announcement, the stock had dropped to less than $1 per share. It was a low blow. The executives had taken care of themselves and left their employees with worthless stock and no retirement savings.

Bad Decisions In an interview with The Washington Post in 2000, Fastow said that Enron was the kind of company where people make money by “doing the right thing.” After the company’s downfall, and while it was being investigated, it became clear that Fastow hadn’t been doing the right thing for years. He had demanded that the company allow him to make deals that made money for himself. He secretly brought friends in on deals so that they could make money, too. He pressured other Enron executives to give breaks to the companies that were partnering with Enron so that he could make money from them on the side. In the end, Fastow’s own behavior led to

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being a leader and making decisions his downfall. Other executives became upset with Fastow’s double-dealings, and the kind of money that he was getting from it. In turn, they uncovered the deals that he was trying to hide. Fastow paid for his misdeeds. He was sentenced to six years in a federal prison. He was also ordered to pay $50,000 toward a fund for the victims of the Enron collapse, mainly the employees. Others went to jail and were fined as well. Lay was convicted of 10 counts of securities fraud. He faced 10 to 30 years in prison for his crimes, but three and a half months before his sentencing, he died from an apparent heart attack. Mark Koening, who had helped the company create false financial reports, made a public apology, stating, “I didn’t make the right choices in my last year at Enron. I am profoundly sorry for that.” Fastow never apologized for his unethical leadership.

Al Capone

From Brooklyn to Chicago Al Capone is probably the most famous American gangster of all time. He was the head of a Chicago crime gang in the 1920s and 1930s. His ability to lead, plan, and execute plans, along with his lack of ethics, kept him at the top of Chicago’s list of dangerous people for more than a decade. From a young age, Capone showed an attraction to violence. He dropped out of school in sixth grade at age 14 after punching a teacher in the face. He then joined a series of “junior” gangs, such as the Junior Forty Thieves and Five Points Juniors, before he graduated to adult crime by joining the Five Points Gang. During his time with the Five Points Gang, Capone stole, murdered, and had his face slashed with a knife, earning him the nickname “Scarface.” It took a while for Capone to rise to leadership in the crime world. His early life in Brooklyn, New York, taught him the

When Leadership Goes Bad violent side of the business. The head of the Five Points Gang sent him to Chicago after he put a rival gang member in the hospital. Once in Chicago, Capone became extremely helpful and valuable to crime boss Johnny Torrio. Torrio immediately noticed Capone’s ability to be creative and to lead, and took him under his wing.

Running the Town In 1920, Capone bought a house and moved his entire family from Brooklyn to Chicago. The following year, after an attempt on Torrio’s life, Capone took over Torrio’s gang and all its dealings. Torrio’s men liked, respected, and obeyed Capone. They affectionately called him “The Big Fellow.” However, Capone himself was anything but affectionate in his business. Capone bribed and bullied his way into nearly every aspect of Chicago life. His gang owned speakeasies (secret bars that were illegal), gambling operations, horse racing tracks, nightclubs, and alcohol production businesses. He also became a partner in the largest cleaning and dyeing plant chain in Chicago. Capone paid off judges, police officers, regular people on the street, and public officials to be able to do his business freely. Even Chicago Mayor William Hale Thompson Jr. had Capone to thank for his election to office. Capone’s thugs went to polling places and bullied voters into voting for Thompson to ensure that he would win. One rival of a Capone-supported politician found himself run off the road and shot to death. Capone was never linked to any of the crimes that his gang committed under his direction. While he was good at planning “hits,” as gang killings were called, he also carefully planned every alibi. Whenever a crime was committed, Capone was nowhere in the area. Because gang members did not talk to police, even if they belonged to a rival gang, it was impossible to arrest Capone on any charge.

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Gangster Al Capone encouraged violent crime and illegal business dealings, which led to the deaths and arrests of many of his associates.

In one famous hit, called the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Capone’s gang killed seven men—six of whom belonged to a rival gang headed by “Bugs” Moran. It was a bloody attack in which the seven dead had a total of 150 bullet wounds. Capone’s men were able to gain access to Moran’s gang because two of them had dressed like police. Members of Moran’s gang thought the police were there to raid their business, so they dropped their weapons. This allowed Capone’s men to proceed without any resistance. Although the police and Moran felt sure that Capone was responsible, Capone was at his Florida house at the time of the attack. Moran’s business went bad after that shooting since most of his main men were killed. When asked if he thought Capone was responsible, Moran said, “Only Capone kills like that!”

When Leadership Goes Bad Following the massacre, Capone was jailed for 10 months on the charge of possession of a weapon. Being in jail helped him avoid the multiple attempts on his life that followed the massacre.

Jim Jones

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eople look to their spiritual leaders as trustworthy people who can help them live better lives. In the 1970s, a charismatic leader named Jim Jones offered that and more. In addition to spiritual guidance, Jones said he wanted to create a world of equality. He would include African Americans in his church at a time when they did not have equality. His church, located in California, was called the People’s Temple. Jones used his followers’ money to help support the political campaigns of people who could help him. He stole money from his parishioners and successfully split up families so that he could better control individuals. By the time Jones was found to be faking faith healings, using armed guards, and allegedly participating in the murder of the political rival of a candidate he supported, he had gathered together a small fortune and tricked thousands of people into following his lead. Jones then fled to Guyana, a country in South America, where he was building a community called Jonestown. Before his arrival, his son said that the community was a paradise. But after Jones’s arrival, the people there were forced to take “tests” of their faith with fake suicide drills and loudspeakers at all hours blasting Jones’s teachings. San Francisco Congressman Leo Ryan traveled to Jonestown with family members of people who had followed Jones to Guyana. He planned to investigate news of abusive behavior by Jones. When they arrived, some people agreed to leave immediately. Ryan sent them ahead and waited for a second airplane. While he waited, he was shot and killed by People’s Temple members. At the same time, Jones and his followers committed suicide by drinking poisoned Flavor Aid. Some were forced to drink at gunpoint. That day, 913 people died because of Jim Jones’s orders.

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End of Business Capone was careful to do all of his financial transactions in other people’s names. At least on paper, it was his wife, not Capone himself, who owned the house in Florida. Capone’s business card said that he was a used furniture dealer. He also used an antiques dealership and a doctor’s office as fake “fronts” for his business. A ledger—a book containing accounts to which credits and debits are posted—finally brought Capone down. Frank Wilson of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Internal Revenue, now called the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), found the ledger during a warehouse raid. When Wilson found Capone’s name in it, he knew that he had found something that linked Capone to the money he made. Later, Capone’s tax lawyer, Lawrence P. Mattingly, admitted in a letter to the government that Capone did in fact have an income. A new

Can Bullies Become Leaders?

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ullies get all their power from the fear of others. The stories of the executives at Enron, and the lives of Jim Jones and Al Capone, show that bullies can become successful leaders through the use of fear, pressuring, disguising the truth, and the ability to persuade people to believe them. According to some experts, the kind of leadership that is based on power and authority seems to be coming to an end. A 2006 U.S. News & World Report article, “Bad News for Bullies,” describes a newly popular kind of leadership called “servant leadership.” The idea of servant leadership is that the leader works to help the group, and it is making a big splash in business. The bosses at Google, discussed earlier, are an example of this kind of leadership. Yet, even the bully leader can be changed with the right kind of program. Stephen L. Wessler is the executive director of the Center for

When Leadership Goes Bad law passed in 1927 began taxing money made from illegal dealings. This meant that Capone had to pay taxes on whatever money he made, regardless of how he made it. Since Capone had never paid taxes, he was tried and convicted of tax evasion in 1931. Capone was ordered to serve 11 years in prison. He was sent to an Atlanta prison considered to be the toughest of all the federal institutions. However, after 10 months, Capone was moved to Alcatraz, an island-based prison in California. In the Atlanta prison, he had been able to take control of fellow inmates and the authorities. His cell was furnished with a mirror, typewriter, rugs, and a set of encyclopedia. Yet, once he was moved to Alcatraz, Capone had no contact with the outside world and had no more influence. Capone realized he was defeated and became a model prisoner. He was released in 1939 for good behavior.

the Prevention of Hate Violence (CPHV). In the book, The Respectful School, he writes about a high-school junior whose school adopted the CPHV program. Teachers were asked to find “negative” leaders—that is, students who led, but not for the betterment of their school community. One girl was considered by the principal to be the main “harassment problem in the school.” The principal said that the girl used slurs when referring to certain groups of students, and expressed that she didn’t care what anyone thought about it. After a one-day CPHV program, the student said, “Tomorrow when I get to school I am going to go find the kids that I have been harassing and apologize to each of them.” By the end of the school year, the former bully had changed dramatically. She now had the opportunity to be a positive leader, and the opportunity changed her. The principal reported that it was the first semester in four years that she had only been suspended once.

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being a leader and making decisions He was free, but while in prison he had become ill and mentally deranged. He moved back to his Florida home, where he died on January 21, 1947 of a heart attack. In an article about Capone’s death in the Post-Dispatch of St. Louis, Missouri, on January 27, 1947, a reporter noted, “The latterday Capone, no longer the swash-buckling head of a murder syndicate, whimpered: ‘I don’t want to die, shot in the street.’ Scarface Al must have been thinking of the agonized screams of hundreds of his victims in Chicago.” Capone was a powerful leader to his gang, but his lack of ethics made him public enemy number one to the people of Chicago. He was interested only in his own gain. Even those who worked for him risked their lives for his benefit, and he happily allowed it, making sure that he was never in danger of being caught.

HOW YOU CAN BE A GOOD LEADER

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It’s true that I am only one, but I am one. And the fact that I cannot do everything should not prevent me from doing what I can do. —Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909), American author

START IN YOUR COMMUNITY Muhammad Yunus and Mother Teresa looked at the people around them and saw situations they felt needed changing. Then they found a way to use what they knew to help the people who needed it most. A micro-loan like the ones from Grameen Bank could have made a difference to Iqbal Masih, the young debt slave featured in Chapter 3. If his family had access to money from a lender willing to help them, Iqbal might have been able to have a normal, healthy childhood. He might even still be alive. Being a leader means first identifying a problem and then finding ways to solve that problem. You may not have to look far. Look around your school or neighborhood. Is there a

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being a leader and making decisions problem that you think needs to be fixed? Something might need improvement, or total change. It could be as simple as finding an elderly neighbor who needs help getting his or her lawn mowed. It could be something bigger that involves the support of a city or state official. Some community problems may include homelessness, drug abuse, gang violence, vandalism, graffiti, litter, pollution, and theft. Talk to other students, teachers, parents, and neighbors to hear what they have to say about the issue. They may have ideas that you might not think about on your own. If the problem you find is a communitywide problem, you might be able to contact your city or town offices to get help. Most communities now have Web sites. You can also visit your local library to find the names and contact information for

What Do Your Shoes Say About You?

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2008 study by Mindset Media found that people who buy more than three pairs of sneakers a year are 61 percent more likely to have the qualities of a modern leader. Mindset Media defined modern leaders as people who have ideas, vision, and a style with other people that is inclusive and decisive. That is, they allow others to actively feel they are taking part and they are able to make decisions and stick with them. Mindset Media interviewed 7,500 people to get the survey results. Interviewers found that people who buy multiple pairs of sneakers were 50 percent more likely to be very assertive and 47 percent more likely to act spontaneously, or by instinct. “What is interesting is that these personality traits held true across the board, regardless of age, income, or gender,” Lauren Arvino, a spokesperson for Mindset Media, told the Associated Press in an April 2008 interview. The old saying, “You can tell a lot about a person by the shoes they wear,” now has some evidence to back it up.

How You Can Be a Good Leader city officials, or look up the information in your local phone directory. Find a way to make everyone’s ideas work together if you have asked for help. Plan out what you are going to do. Ask for help if you need it, and get permission to implement your plan. Then, go for it! Afterward, take some time to reward yourself and your team for a job well done, with a party or a small gathering.

Organizations and Clubs You may be nervous to tackle a problem on your own. You may also find that a problem you want to help with is difficult to manage by yourself. In that case, find an organization that does things you are interested in and become a member. You can use the phone directory or an Internet directory to find local charitable organizations. On an Internet search engine, type in the keywords “charitable organization” and the name of your city and state. If you know what kind of work you want to do, you can use that as the keyword. If you don’t find what you want, consider starting your own club. Other people might be interested in joining you for your cause. First, gather information on what you want to do. Talk to experts, and use the library or Internet for references. Then, publicize your club with the help of a parent, guardian, or teacher. Create posters to display around your school or in the windows of local businesses. Be sure to get permission to place posters in public places. You can also create flyers to hand out at sports or community events or busy shopping areas. Be sure that your posters or flyers are clear about what your club is, what it plans to do, and how people can help. It should also have information about the club’s meeting place and time. When your club meets, discuss goals and work out an action plan for what you and your club members are going to

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being a leader and making decisions do. Be the model of change for your club. Encourage others to follow your lead.

Make Decisions and Solve Problems To solve a problem, you first need to identify that there is a problem. In Barbara Lewis’s book, What Do You Stand For?, she suggests the “choose a shoe” game. In it, everyone takes off one shoe and places it in a pile. Then everyone gets blindfolded and tries to find a shoe that fits other than his or her own shoe. The idea is to figure out how difficult it is to solve a problem if you can’t identify the problem easily. Once you have identified the problem, you need to find out as much as you can about it. You can’t solve a problem until you know everything that is involved. Then ask for help. Experts, teachers, parents, and even city officials may be able to lend a hand. Think of a solution to the problem. For example, if a particular corner in your neighborhood has many accidents, a solution might be to place a traffic light or stop sign in that area if there isn’t one. Once you have a potential solution, make a plan to follow it through to see if it helps the situation. If it does not, you may need to take additional steps.

Real World Solutions An effective plan can help to identify and prevent problems before they start, such as in the case of Ohio resident Mike Woods’s cardboard cutouts slowing traffic, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and its efforts to prevent deaths from tsunamis.

Stopping Fast Drivers Mike Woods of West Salem, Ohio, had a problem. Right before his house, his street’s speed limit changed from 55 miles per hour to 35 miles per hour (88 kilometers per hour to 56 kilometers per hour). However, many people still sped through his neighborhood well above the speed limit. Woods decided

How You Can Be a Good Leader to remind motorists of whom they were putting in danger by driving at such high speeds. He created life-sized cardboard cutouts of his children and put them a few feet from the curb. “First when (motorists) saw them, it scared them that the kids were so close to the road,” Woods said in a July 2007 interview for his local news station. Woods and his family found that the cutouts worked to make drivers slow down. Now, other people are trying the same thing. One man stopped at Woods’s house to buy a cutout from him directly. “He wanted to put one in his front yard to slow the traffic down going past his house.” Woods is now selling the cutouts to parents and law enforcement agencies.

Stopping Dangerous Waves The Indian Ocean Tsunami in December 2004 caused the destruction of parts of many countries—including India, Somalia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Indonesia— and the loss of millions of lives. After this devastating event, IUCN researchers discovered that the tsunami caused 6,000 deaths in one city in Sri Lanka, an island off the south coast of India, but only two deaths in another coastal city. They also learned that this happened because the second city had mangroves around the coast. Mangroves are trees that grow along the coast in some tropical areas. Mangroves have a thick root system that grows above and below the water line, firmly rooted in the ground beneath the water. It is their massive root system that works to lessen the effects of large waves, such as tsunamis. Further research showed that even coral reefs were able to recover quickly after the disaster. Areas where coral reefs were destroyed did not recover as quickly. Both mangroves and coral reefs provide good habitats for fish. For local fishermen, a good amount of fish means a steady income. The habitats not only save lives in a natural disaster, but also provide a more solid lifestyle and income for the local residents.

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being a leader and making decisions In September 2005 the IUCN started a program called Mangroves for the Future. IUCN officials are working with all of the countries that were affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami. The goal is to conserve and restore ecosystems to sustain human livelihoods, increase resilience, and reduce vulnerability among coastal communities along the Indian Ocean.

Be Your Own Leader Do the Groundwork

Being a leader means finding a purpose for your life. You need signs that point you in the right direction. If you know what you want to do in life, then figuring out how to get there is simple. You’ll need to find out what you can about doing that kind of work and then take the classes, or do the training necessary to get there. You may need to research the best schools that will take you where you want to go, and then do the work necessary to be accepted into the kinds of programs that interest you. Decide if you should go to college or a trade school. As part of your planning, think about ways to pay for your education.

Discover Your Purpose If you are not sure what you want to do in the future, you need to start by interviewing yourself. Who are the people you admire? Whom do you like to be around? What kinds of things do you like or not like to do? Where do you like to do them? List your talents and skills. Think about what you find easy or hard to do. For example, you might not be good at fundraising, but you may be a great illustrator. That kind of talent could play a part in your role as a leader. Think about what you do in your spare time. These interests may spark an idea for an organization, or may be a skill needed to execute a plan. Then, think about your ideal world. How would it be different from the neighborhood, community, country, or world you live in today? What among your talents, skills,

How You Can Be a Good Leader the things that you like to do, and the kinds of people you would like to be around could help to make your ideal world a reality?

Interview with a Mentor

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n September 2005, Tara Bramble and fellow teacher Olivia Dyson began a mentorship program for girls in middle school and high school in the Bronx borough of New York City. Bramble says she was inspired to create the program after being on a class trip with some of the middle-school girls. “I observed their social behavior, especially with people who weren’t part of their community, and I was disturbed,” she said in a 2008 interview. She found their body language and verbal responses to be rude. She believed that their behavior was due to a lack of education about the right way to present themselves. They lacked character. Bramble knew that the girls needed to be educated in how to express themselves. That way, when they had a negative experience, the girls would know how to express what they were feeling, rather than simply having a bad attitude. Soon afterward, the Young Ladies Leadership Council was born. Bramble believes that the principles of character can be applied to any person. “This is the framework. If a person follows it, they can become the best of who they can be,” she says. Bramble starts by having the girls think of the image they want to be. Then she teaches them the character tools they need to become the image they have in their minds. She finds that as students embrace the tools, they become better suited to interact with everyone in society. Bramble gained the girls’ trust by not judging them and by being totally honest with them. She asked them to do the things they knew how to do in any situation. Then she observed their behavior so that she could figure out how to help them change their behavior and make it more appropriate. After a few years, Bramble still feels that success is still a little way down the road. She sees the girls are “thinking and processing. The rules become law within them.”

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Set Goals Once you have identified what you want to do, set some goals for accomplishing the things you want to do. Setting a time line for the goals can go a long way toward helping to motivate you to do them. Barbara Lewis suggests three types of goal setting: First, set your long-range goals. These are the things you want to accomplish in the next 10 years. Then, put them in order of importance, or what you want to accomplish most. After that, set medium-range goals for the next three to five years. Finally, set short-range goals for the next year. Once all your goals are put in order of importance, you can put your list of goals in a place where you can see them as you work. You may change your goals, or the importance of each goal, as you go along.

Find a Mentor Something that helps with goal setting is having someone to turn to for help. This person is called a mentor. There are many mentorship programs in the United States. You can find a mentor or become a mentor yourself. One place to try is www.mentoring.org. MENTOR/The National Mentoring Partnership believes that each young person can uncover his or her potential with the help of an adult. The organization supports mentorship programs so that every young person who wants a mentor can find one. MENTOR also supports mentoring buddy programs, where kids of the same age group can become buddies and support each other. On the organization’s Web site, Lindsey Keeler, a Peer Buddy, wrote about her mentoring relationship with Chad Dunphy. The pair rode their bikes in the Volvo Hearst Castle Challenge in 2005 to show support for the Best Buddies program. Best Buddies International pairs intellectually disabled young people with nondisabled peers. Lindsey described how difficult it was to bike the hilly course in the Volvo challenge. She said that she and Chad were one of the last pairs to get

How You Can Be a Good Leader off the starting line, but at the end of the day, they had won the challenge. She describes her relationship with Chad as one that benefits her. They have made a life-long friendship. “Chad was born with Down syndrome, but he isn’t willing to let anything stop him from leading a normal high school life. Together we play videogames, go see the latest movies, cheer on the football team at games, and so much more. I know every time we hang out I will have a great time because of his unique spirit and compassion towards others,” Lindsey explains.

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Glossary abolish  To do away with abusive  Treating badly or hurtfully alibi  An excuse to avoid blame civil war  War between two sides in the same country conquered  Defeated or taken by force diagnosis  A decision made about what sickness a patient has, based on the medical examination of the patient disarray  Disorder or confusion evasion  An act of escaping or avoiding something famine  Extreme scarcity of food in a country or large geographical area implement  To put into effect, carry out invade  To force into an area as an enemy leper  A person who has leprosy, an infectious disease that affects the skin and nasal passages. It sometimes results in losing the affected part of the body. massacre  The murder of a large number of people rally  To draw people together for a common purpose refugee  A person who runs for safety to another region or country during war or violence revolutionize  To cause radical change in something slum  Highly populated, run-down, dirty part of a city where many poor people live

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Bibliography Ahrens, Frank. “Xerox CEO Mulcahy Joins Post Co. Board.” The Washington Post, January 18, 2008. Chicago Historical Society. “History Files: Al Capone.” Available online. URL: http://www.chicagohs.org/history/capone. html. Accessed October 20, 2008. Alphin, Elaine Marie. Germ Hunter: A Story About Louis Pasteur. Minneapolis, Minn.: Carolrhoda Books, 2003. Auchmutey, Jim. “An Asterisk, Not a Star, of Black History.” Cox News Service, February 7, 2005. Beale, Howard K., ed. The Diary of Edward Bates 1859–1866. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1933. Beato, Greg. “Twenty-Five Years of Post-it Notes.” The Rake, April 2005. Behr, Peter. “Fastow Wove a Web of Ruinous Partnerships.” The Washington Post, February 3, 2002. Berners-Lee, Tim. Weaving the Web. San Francisco: Harper, 1997. “The Best & Worst Managers of 2004.” Business Week, January 10, 2005. Brainard, Jeffrey and Matthew Kalman. “Liviu Librescu.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 27, 2007. Bramble, Tara. In phone conversation with the author, July 8, 2008. Butterfield, Stewart and Caterina Fake. “How We Did It: Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, Co-founders, Flickr.” Inc. Magazine, December 2006. CBS News. “Kid Fights for Life, And Africans.” Available online. URL: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/01/ earlyshow/series/heros/main670874.shtml. Accessed October 20, 2008. Chittenden, L.E. Recollections of President Lincoln and His Administration. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1891.

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being a leader and making decisions Chu, Jeff. “One of 100 People Who Shape Our World.” Time, April 30, 2006. The City University of New York, Press Release. “2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus Inspired Assembly.” U.S. Federal News Service, February 19, 2008. CNN. “Mother Teresa: A Profile.” Available online. URL: http:// www.cnn.com/WORLD/9709/mother.teresa/profile/index. html. Accessed October 20, 2008. Copeland, Larry. “Parks Not Seated Alone in History.” USA Today, November 29, 2005. Dau, John Bul. God Grew Tired of Us. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2007. DeLano, Marfie Ferguson. Helen’s Eyes: A Photobiography of Annie Sullivan. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2008. Deng, Benson, Alephonsion Deng, and Benjamin Ajak. They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky. New York: Perseus, 2005. Dillon, Leslie. “Qualities of Successful Leaders.” Leader’s Digest, March 2008. The Fistula Foundation. “Dr. Catherine Hamlin.” Available online. URL: http://www.fistulafoundation.org/press/tools/ hamlinbio.html. Accessed October 20, 2008. Ford, Carin T. Helen Keller Lighting the Way for the Blind and Deaf. Berkeley Heights, N.J.: Enslow Publishers, 2001. Gaither, Chris. “At Google Innovation is Not Just Fun, Games.” The Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2006. Gergen, David. “Bad News for Bullies.” U.S. News & World Report, June 11, 2006. Gerzon, Mark. Leading Through Conflict. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 2006. Giraffe Heroes Project. Available online. URL: http://www. giraffe.org. Accessed October 20, 2008. ———. “Giraffes have been sighted in MA.” Available online. URL: http://www.giraffe.org/hero_Iqbal.html. Accessed October 20, 2008.

Bibliography ———. “Michael Munds.” Available online. URL: http://giraffe. org. Accessed October 20, 2008. Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005. Google. “Our Philosophy.” Google corporate Web site. Available online. URL: http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings. html. Accessed October 20, 2008. “Grameen America: Dr. Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate and Founder of Grameen Bank, Will Speak on Eliminating Poverty in America at the JFK Library Saturday, June 7.” Women’s Health Weekly, June 5, 2008. Greenberg, Joel. “Prof’s Final Lesson: Intro to Bravery.” Chicago Tribune, April 21, 2007. Hargrove, Jim. Abraham Lincoln: Sixteenth President of the United States. Encyclopedia of Presidents Paperback. Chicago: Children’s Press, 1989. Hornick, Ed. “For Obama, Lincoln was Model President.” CNN. January 18, 2009. Available online. URL: http://www. cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/17/lincoln.obsession/index. html?iref=newssearch. Accessed June 4, 2009. Iyer, Pico. “Jigme Singye Wangchuk.” Time, April 30, 2006. ———. “The Unknown Rebel.” Time, April 13, 1998. Karnes, Frances A. Leadership for Students: A Practical Guide for ages 8–18. Austin, Tx.: Prufrock Press, 1995. Karnes, Frances A. and Suzanne M. Bean. Girls and Young Women Leading the Way. Minneapolis, Minn.: Free Spirit Publishing, 1993. Katz, Ian. “Flickr, Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield.” The Guardian, November 4, 2006. Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2003. Kellerman, Barbara. Bad Leadership. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 2004. Kirsh, Sharon. Fabulous Female Physicians. Ontario, Canada: Second Story Press, 2001.

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being a leader and making decisions Klein, Joe. “Obama’s Team of Rivals.” Time. June 18, 2008. Available online. URL: http://www.time.com/time/ politics/article/0,8599,1815849,00.html. Accessed June 4, 2009. Lewis, Barbara. What Do You Stand For? A Guide to Building Character. Minneapolis, Minn.: Free Spirit Publishing, 2005. Local 6. “Cardboard Children Used to Slow Neighborhood Speeders.” Available online. URL: http://www.local6.com/ news/13775524. Accessed October 20, 2008. Lupo, Alan. “For the Love of Crime.” The Boston Globe, February 12, 1994. Mangroves for the Future. Available online. URL: http:// mangrovesforthefuture.org. Accessed October 20, 2008. Martin, Roger. “How Successful Leaders Think.” Harvard Business Review, June 1, 2007. McCabe, Katie. “Like Something the Lord Made.” The Washingtonian, August 1989. Mediratta, Bharat. “The Google Way: Give Engineers Room.” The New York Times, October 21, 2007. MENTOR: The National Mentoring Organization. Available online. URL: http://www.mentoring.org. Accessed October 20, 2008. Montessori, Maria. Montessori Method. New York: Schocken Books, 1964. Morgan, Judith and Neil Morgan. Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel: A Biography. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 1996. Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Available online. URL: http:// motherteresa.org. Accessed October 20, 2008. Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. New York: Doubleday. 2007. Mother’s Wisdom. Available online. URL: http://home.comcast. net/~motherteresasite/wis.html. Accessed October 20, 2008. Nelson, Stanley. “American Experience: Jonestown Life and Death of People’s Temple.” PBS. Aired April 9, 2007.

Bibliography Nestle. “History of the Toll House Cookie.” Available online. URL: http://www.verybestbaking.com/products/tollhouse/ history.aspx. Accessed October 20, 2008. Nobel Prize. “Mother Teresa: Nobel Lecture.” Available online. URL: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/ 1979/teresa-lecture.html. Accessed October 20, 2008. O’Connor, Barbara. Mammolina: A Story about Maria Montessori. Minneapolis, Minn.: Carolrhoda Books, 1993. Pearlstein, Steven and Peter Behr. “At Enron, the Fall Came Quickly; Partnerships Kept Problems From Public View.” The Washington Post, December 2, 2001. Quittner, Josh. “The Flickr Founders.” Time, April 30, 2006. Reuters. “Always Buying Sneakers? It’s the Sign of a Leader: Poll.” April 1, 2008. Available online. URL: http://www. reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSSYD13590720080401. Accessed October 20, 2008. Schnepper, Jeff A. “Jonestown Massacre: The Unrevealed Story.” USA Today, January 1999. “Searching for the Best Place to Work?” CBS News. Aired August 31, 2008. Shoveller, Herb. Ryan and Jimmy and the Well in Africa That Brought Them Together. New York: Kids Can Press, 2006. Sullivan, Robert. “Mobsters and Gangsters from Al Capone to Tony Soprano.” Life, 2002. Thomas, Vivien. Pioneering Research in Surgical Shock and Cardiovascular Surgery: Vivien Thomas and His Work With Alfred Blalock. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986. Time-CNN. “Mother Teresa: Saint of the Gutters.” Available online. URL: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/ 0,29307,1655636_1434340,00.html. Accessed October 20, 2008. TribLocal. “Kendall Ciesemier: Her Fiery Compassion Ignites Love.” Available online. URL: http://triblocal.com/ Wheaton/List_View/view.html?fb_page_id=5976336143&

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being a leader and making decisions type=stories&action=detail&sub_id=11162. Accessed October 20, 2008. Tsiantas, Dody. “Fortune 500 Women CEOs.” Time, April 30, 2006. Turley, Jonathan. “The Door to Room 204.” USA Today, April 25, 2007. Tyrell, R. Emmett Jr. “Jonestown Revisited.” The American Spectator, April 1999. Van Biema, David. “Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith.” Time, August 23, 2007. Viegas, Jennifer. Beethoven’s World. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2008. Welles, Gideon. 1862 Diary of Gideon Welles. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911. White, Ryan. My Own Story. New York: Penguin Group, 1992. “Whole Planet Foundation and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus Partner with Natural Foods Vendors, Pledging Over $1 Million to Help Combat Poverty.” Obesity, Fitness & Wellness Week, March 22, 2008. Williams, Terrie. Simple Life Lessons for Teens. New York: Scholastic, 2001. World Wide Web Consortium. Available online. URL: http:// www.w3.org. Accessed October 20, 2008. Younge, Gary. “She Would Not Be Moved.” The Guardian, December 16, 2000. Yunus, Muhammad. “How ‘Social Business’ Can Create a World Without Poverty.” The Christian Science Monitor, February 15, 2008. Yunus, Muhammad. Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty. New York: PublicAffairs, 1999. Yunus, Muhammad. Creating a World Without Poverty. New York: PublicAffairs, 2007.

Further Resources Covey, Sean. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide. Salt Lake City, Utah: Franklin Covey Company, 2008. Adams, Richard. Tales from Watership Down. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009. Lewis, Barbara. What Do You Stand For? Minneapolis: Free Spirit Publishing, 1998. Williams, Terrie. Stay Strong: Simple Life Lessons for Teens. New York: Scholastic, 2001.

Web Sites National Character Education Center http://www.ethicsusa.com The National Character Education Center’s mission is to develop respectful and responsible people. Kids Caring 4 Kids http://www.kidscaring4kids.com The official site of Kendall Ciesemier’s charity to help AIDS orphans in Africa includes information about the charity’s ongoing projects and a link to donate. Character Education and Civic Engagement Technical Assistance Center http://www.cetac.org This site provides support to programs in character education. Character Plus http://www.characterplus.org

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being a leader and making decisions Character Plus is an educational agency that strives to develop positive character traits in young people. Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning http://www.casel.org The mission of the organization is to promote social and emotional learning as part of everyday education. The Search Institute http://www.search-institute.org The Search Institute is a nonprofit organization that promotes healthy children, youth, and communities by communicating new knowledge and bringing together community, state, and national leaders. The Ethics Resource Center http://www.ethics.org The Ethics Resource Center promotes high ethical standards in public and private institutions. Lions Quest http://www.lions-quest.org A youth program of Lions Clubs International, Lions Quest provides school-based programs that promote positive development and unite home, school, and community. Wise Skills http://www.wiseskills.com Wise Skills is a K-12 program in character education. Project Wisdom http://www.projectwisdom.com One of the oldest character education programs in the United States, Project Wisdom uses thought-provoking messages to inspire and teach.

Further Resources The Giraffe Heroes Project http://www.giraffe.org Ann Medlock’s organization, which started in 1984, provides news about the heroes among us. Good Character http://www.goodcharacter.com A resource for character education for K-12. MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership http://www.mentoring.org This group has been working for more than a decade to support mentoring programs to meet the needs of every child. Absolutely Whootie: Stories to Grow By http://www.storiestogrowby.com Whootie the Owl presents stories that promote positive values such as cooperation, generosity, perseverance, and honesty. Character Counts http://www.charactercounts.org/ This site promotes the “Six Pillars of Character.” It links students to other schools that are doing projects related to character education. Institute for Global Ethics http://www.globalethics.org/default.html A new ethical dilemma is presented each month for students to discuss. The “Picturing Tomorrow’s World” project uses art to promote ethics.

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PICTURE CREDITS Page: 15 Burt Steel/AP Images

71 Newscom

21 Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library

74 Library of Congress

22 AP Images

77 Christopher Halloran/Shutterstock

26 AP Images

79 Newscom

35 Scott Wintrow/Getty Images for the Tribeca Film Festival

85 Photogolfer/ Shutterstock

41 Gunnar Ask/AP Images

87 Jack Esten/Popperfoto/ Getty Images

45 AP Images

91 Newscom

49 Farrar, Straus and Giroux/AP Images

93 Ben Margot/AP Images 95 Daniel Sannum Lauten/ AFP/Getty Images

55 Dominique Faget/AFP/ Getty Images

102 James Nielsen/Houston Chronicle/Rapport Press/Newscom

61 Kidscaring4kids.org 63 Fred Chartrand, CP/AP Images

106 Library of Congress

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Index A

bowling, 19 boycotts, 48–51 Bramble, Tara, 117 bribery, 105 Bridgman, Laura, 45 Brin, Sergey, 93–94 Bronx, 117 Browder, Aurelia, 48 bullies, 108–109 buses, segregation and, 48–51 Bush, George W., 9, 100 Butterfield, Stewart, 79–80

Adams, Richard, 13 Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, 47 Africa, 59–65 age, leadership and, 20–23 agriculture, 11 ahimsa, 39 AIDS, 24–30, 59–60 Alcatraz, 109 Alexander the Great, 20 Anagnos, Michael, 45–46 anthrax, 18 Aristotle, 10 Arvino, Lauren, 112 attitude, importance of, 28, 30 Auchmutey, Jim, 51 authors, 14–16

C

Calcutta, 53 Cameron, Simon, 78–81 Capone, Al, 104–110 carpets, 41–42 Casa Dei Bambini, 89 cash crops, 40 Cat in the Hat (Seuss), 16 Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence (CPHV), 108–109 CERN, 90–91 character education, overview of, 9–10 Character Matters (Lickona), 9 charitable organizations, 113 Chase, Salmon, 78, 81 cheating, 8 chemists, 16, 17–18 Chicago, 104–110 child labor, 41–42 childbirth, 47 China, 29–30, 33 chocolate chips, 18 cholera, 17–18 Ciesemier, Kendall, 58–65 Civil War, 77 Clinton, Hilary Rodham, 78 Clinton, William, 64 Colvin, Claudette, 48–51 composers, 16–17 Congressional Gold Medals, 11

B

Baccelli, Guido, 86, 88 bamboo, 95 Bangladesh, 95–99 banking, 95–99, 111 Bates, Edward, 81–82 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 16–17 beggars, 98 Bell, Alexander Graham, 48 Benite (orphan), 60 Berners-Lee, Tim, 90–95 Best Buddies International, 118–119 Bhutan (King of), 22 Biden, Joe, 78 Blalock, Alfred, 67–72 blindness, 44–48 BLLF. See Bonded Labour Liberation Front blue baby syndrome, 69–70 Bojaxhiu, Agnes Gonxha, 52–58, 111 Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF), 42 Borlaug, Norman, 11 Bow Wow Bling Bling, 62

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132

Being a Leader and Making Decisions Congressional Medals of Honor, 9 constitutions, 22 cookies, 18 coral reefs, 115–116 CPHV. See Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence crops, 11

D

Darjeeling, 53 Dau, John Bul, 31–38 deafness, 17, 44–48 Debrauwere, Lauren, 7 debt slavery, 41–42, 111 decision-making, 114 democracy, 29–30 Dillon, Leslie, 66 Dinka tribe, 31 discrimination, 28, 40, 48–51, 68–69 diseases, 24–30, 53, 57, 59, 119 doctors, 47, 86 Down Syndrome, 119 drinking water, 63–64 Dunham, Jason, 8–9 Dunphy, Chad, 118–119 Dyer, Reginald, 42–43 Dyson, Olivia, 117

E

earthquakes, 33 economists, 95–99 education, 23, 25–28, 37, 42, 44–48, 53, 67. See also Montesorri, Maria elections, 22 Elizabeth I (Queen of England), 23 engineering, 86 Enron, 100–104 ethics, 8–10 Ethiopia, 32–35, 47 executions, 23

F

Fake, Caterina, 79–80 Fastow, Andrew, 101–104 feeding tubes, 28

fermentation, 16 fistulas, 47 Five Points Gang, 104–105 Flavor Aid, 107 Flickr, 80 following, importance of, 14 Ford, Henry, 99 freedom of press, 29–30 Fry, Arthur, 19

G

gambling, 105 games, 79–80 Gandhi, Mohandas “Mahatma”, 39–43 gangsters, 104–110 Gates, Bill, 11, 99 Gayle, Browder v., 48 Geisel, Theodore, 14–16 Gettysburg Address, 76 Giraffe Heroes Project, 19, 58–59 Giving (Clinton), 64 glue, 18–19 goals, 118 God Grew Tired of Us (Dau), 32 Golden Age, 23 golf, 84–85 Goodwin, Doris Kearns, 82 Google, 80, 93–94, 108 Grameen Bank, 95–99, 111 Gray, Fred, 51 Great Depression, 67 Greece, 20 Greenleaf, Robert, 66 Gross National Happiness, 22 Guyana, 107

H

hacking, 90 Hamlin, Catherine and Reginald, 47 Hao, Lin, 33 Hargrove, Jim, 73 heart surgery, 70 hemophilia, 24 Henry Ford Hospital, 68–69 high blood pressure, 69 Holocaust, 37

Index homelessness, 53–54 Hreljac, Ryan, 63–64 Hunter Commission, 43 hypertension, 69

I

illiteracy, moral, 7–8 illustrators, 14–16 India, 39–43, 53 Indian Ocean Tsunami, 115–116 innovation time off, 94 inspiration, importance of, 14 Internal Revenue Service (IRS), 108–109 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 115–116 internet, 79–80, 90–95, 113 Internet Protocol (IP), defined, 92 IP. See Internet Protocol Iraq War, 8–9 IRS. See Internal Revenue Service IUCN. See International Union for Conservation of Nature

J

Jackson, Michael, 30 Jainism, 39 Jimmy, Akana, 64 Joan of Arc, 20–23 John, Elton, 30 Johns Hopkins University, 69–72 Jones, Jim, 107 Josephson Insitute of Ethics, 8 Junior Forty Thieves, 104

K

Keeler, Lindsey, 118–119 Keller, Helen, 44–48 Kids Caring 4 Kids, 62 Kilpatrick, William, 7–8 King, Martin Luther Jr., 43 knighthood, 94 Koening, Mark, 104 Kolodiejchuk, Brian, 54

L

Lay, Ken, 100–104 learning, importance of, 14 leper colonies, 57 Lewis, Barbara, 114, 118 Librescu, Liviu, 36–37 Lickona, Thomas, 9 Lieberman, Joe, 77 Lincoln, Abraham, 72–78, 81–82 Lincoln Memorial, 76 listening, importance of, 14 liver transplants, 60 Loades, David, 23 loans, 95–99, 111 Lost Boys, 31–38 Lost Girls, 38

M

Macedonia, 20 malaria, 57 Mammolina (O’Connor), 88 Mandela, Nelson, 43 mangroves, 115–116 Marlowe, Christopher, 23 Masih, Iqbal, 41–42, 111 massacres, 43 Mattingly, Lawrence P., 108–109 McCabe, Katie, 67 McDonald, Susie, 48 Mediratta, Bharat, 94 Medlock, Ann, 58–59 MENTOR, 118 mentoring, 117–119 micro-credit groups, 97–98 midwives, 47 Millennium Technology Prizes, 94 Mindset Media, 112 Ming, Yao, 33 Missionaries of Charity, 54, 57 mistakes, learning from, 17–19 money, importance of, 10 Montessori, Maria, 46–48, 83–90 moral illiteracy, 7–8 “Moral Instinct, The” (Pincker), 10–11 morality, 8–11 Moran, George “Bugs”, 106

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134

Being a Leader and Making Decisions Mother Teresa, 52–58, 111 Mulcahy, Anne, 71–72 Munds, Michael, 19 Musele, 60–62 musicians, 16–17 My Own Story (White), 26

Post-it Notes, 18–19 pregnancy, 50 Presidential Medals of Freedom, 11 press, freedom of, 29–30 protests, 29–30, 42–43

N

Q

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 48–50 National Character Counts Week, 8 National Mentoring Partnership, 118 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 10 Nobel, Alfred, 54–56 Nobel Peace Prizes, 11, 47, 54–56, 98 Northern Illinois University shooting, 7 nuns, 52–58

O

Obama, Barack, 76–78 O’Connor, Barbara, 88 Oklahoma City bombing, 19 Oprah Winfrey Show, The, 59, 64 Order of Australia, 47 orphans, 59–65

P

Page, Larry, 93–94 Pakistan, 41–42 Parks, Rosa, 48, 50–51 Parmenter, Dan, 7 Pasteur, Louis, 16, 17–18 pasteurization, 16 pediatrics, 86–88 Peer Buddies, 118 People’s Temple, 107 Perkins Institution for the Blind, 44, 46 perseverance, 14–16 Pfeffer, Jeffrey, 101 Pinker, Steven, 10–11 pneumonia, 57

Quadriga Award, 94

R

rabbits, 13–14 rabies, 18 racism, 40, 48–51, 68–69 Raleigh, Walter, 23 refuge camps, 32–35 rejection, 16 religion, 34, 35, 52–58 retirement savings, 103 Rives, William, 82 Romania, 36 Rowlatt Act, 42 Ryan, Jim, 107 Ryan’s Well Foundation, 64

S

St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, 106–107 Saxon, Eileen, 70 Scarface, 104–110 scientists, 16, 17–18 Scuola Ortofrenica, 88 search engines, 93–94, 113 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 71 segregation, 28, 48–51, 69 Serbia, 52 servant leadership, 66–67 Seung-Hui Cho, 36–37 Seuss, Dr., 14–16 Seward, William Henry, 75, 78 Shakespeare, William, 23 shoes, 112, 114 shootings, 7, 36–37, 42–43 Silver, Spencer, 18–19 Sisters of Loretto, 52–53 slavery, 41–42, 73, 78, 111 Smith, Mary Louise, 48 social business, 99

Index South Africa, 39–40 speakeasies, 105 speed limits, 114–115 Stark, Jane, 37 starvation, 95 stealing, 8 stillbirth, 47 stocks, 101–103 Stovall, Jim, 10 Struggling Members Program, 98 students, cheating and, 8 Sudan, 31–38 Sudanese Lost Boys Foundation of New York, 38 suicides, 107 Sullivan, Annie, 44–48 surgery, 67–68, 70

T

tank man, 29–30 tax evasion, 108–109 Team of Rivals (Goodwin), 82 Teresa (Mother), 52–58, 111 Tewksbury, 44 theft, 8 And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street! (Seuss), 16 Thomas, Harold, 68 Thomas, Vivien, 67–72 Thompson, William Hale Jr., 105 3M, 18–19 Tiananmen Square, 29–30 Time magazine, 22 Toll House cookies, 18 Torrio, Johnny, 105 Truth, Sojourner, 50 tsunamis, 115–116 tuberculosis, 53 Tubman, Harriet, 50

U

Uganda, 64 Ultimate Gift, The (Stovall), 10 University of Rome, 86 Unknown Rebel, 29–30

V

vaccines, 17–18 Valentine’s Day Massacre, 106–107 Vanderbilt University, 67–69 Vatican, 53 Virginia Tech University, 36–37 Volvo for Life Award, 65 Volvo Hearst Castle Challenge, 118–119

W

W3C. See World Wide Web Consortium Wakefield, Ruth, 18 Walker, Madame C.J., 99 Wang Weilin, 30 Wangchuk, Kigme Singye, 22 WaterCan, 63–64 Watership Down (Adams), 13–14 Weilin, Wang, 30 Welles, Gideon, 73, 75 Wessler, Stephen L., 108–109 What Do You Stand For? (Lewis), 114 White, Ryan, 24–30 Why Can’t Johnny Tell Right from Wrong? (Kilpatrick), 7–8 Wie, Michelle, 84–85 Wilson, Frank, 108–109 Woods, Mike, 114–115 World Vision, 60–62 World Wide Web, 90–95, 113 World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), 92

X

Xerox Company, 71–72

Y

Yahoo, 80, 93 Young Ladies Leadership Council, 117 Yunus, Muhammad, 95–99, 111

Z

Zambia, 60–62

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About the Author and Consultants Tracey Baptiste is the author of the young adult novel Angel’s Grace, which was named one of the 100 Best Books for Reading and Sharing in 2005 by New York City public librarians. She has also written the nonfiction title Overcoming Prejudice, and two books for the Who Wrote That? series, Jerry Spinelli and Madeleine L’Engle. Find out more about Baptiste at www. traceybaptiste.com. Series consultant Dr. Madonna Murphy is a professor of education at the University of St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois, where she teaches education and character education courses to teachers. She is the author of Character Education in America’s Blue Ribbon Schools, First & Second Edition and History & Philosophy of Education: Voices of Educational Pioneers. She has served as the character education consultant for a series of more than 40 character education books for elementary school children, on the Character Education Partnership’s Blue Ribbon Award committee recognizing K-12 schools for their character education, and on a national committee for promoting character education in teacher education institutions. Series consultant Sharon L. Banas was a middle school teacher in Amherst, New York, for more than 30 years. She led the Sweet Home Central School District in the development of its nationally acclaimed character education program. In 1992, Banas was a member of the Aspen Conference, drafting the Aspen Declaration that was approved by the U.S. Congress. In 2001, she published Caring Messages for the School Year. Banas has been married to her husband, Doug, for 37 years. They have a daughter, son, and new granddaughter.

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