Alignment
November 22, 2011
During a question-and-answer period following a speech in 2006 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts spoke about communication, and he did so in terms that are important for us to hear today. Judge Roberts said in 2006: “People talk of him (Ronald Reagan) as ‘The Great Communicator.’ He was a great communicator . . . because he communicated great ideas with the sincerity of a deeply felt and abiding belief in those ideas.”
It was great ideas and great belief in those ideas that generated the great communication.
The Chief Justice continued: “It’s vitally important to examine ideas that underlie your conduct and actions, and to make sure you’re content with those and then stick with them.”
I firmly believe that the happiest among school sports leadership today, the most content and fulfilled among us, are those whose beliefs and actions are in alignment. They are those people who have examined the ideals of educational athletics, the core values of school sports, and allow them to guide their actions.
Because they believe in the ideals of school sports, they are content in their work, and are able to stick with it and survive it even in these most difficult times. Difficult times reveal durable leaders, and durable leaders believe in what they’re doing.
See What You Say
July 31, 2012
Edward Morgan Forster is an English novelist who died as I was graduating as an English major at Dartmouth College in 1970.
Like many creative writers, E. M Forster traveled the world; and of his six novels (each of which was made into a film), it is A Passage to India, written in 1924, that was most popular.
He also wrote many short stories, plays, film scripts, essays, literary criticism, two biographies and even a libretto. He was, to say the least, a prolific writer.
The secret of his productivity is probably the genius and tortured soul which drives so many great authors. However, there is one quote from E. M. Forster that may be especially revealing. He said: “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” He was a writer in order to be a better thinker.
I have neither genius nor a tortured soul; but what has driven me to write throughout my administrative career – and what has kept me blogging twice a week for three full years as of today – is that I cannot be sure what I know – or what I believe and will stand behind – until I can see it in writing and know that it will be read by others. That’s when I begin to know what I really think.