Terry Newell is currently director of his own firm, Leadership for a Responsible Society. His work focuses on values-based leadership, ethics, and decision making. A former Air Force officer, Terry also previously served as Director of the Horace Mann Learning Center, the training arm of the U.S. Department of Education, and as Dean of Faculty at the Federal Executive Institute. Terry is co-editor and author of The Trusted Leader: Building the Relationships That Make Government Work (CQ Press, 2011). He also wrote Statesmanship, Character and Leadership in America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and To Serve with Honor: Doing the Right Thing in Government (Loftlands Press 2015).
Sound judgment is by no means the only capability essential in a president, but it is the one capability whose absence we accept at our peril.
When we get our facts correct and integrate them appropriately with our feelings, our actions can help wonderful things happen. But when we act on feelings alone, as if they are facts, we have only half of what we need to build good lives and strong societies.
Why do we think someone can be president with no training or experience in politics? Indeed, the lack of both seems to many voters a plus.
Science - and scientists - in real life often get much less respect. How can we explain this disconnect?
Religion and politics share a joint interest - fostering healthy people, families, and communities. Yet religious values are often ignored in fostering or opposing political views.
Anger seems plentiful in America. While it has uses, it can be easily overdone, degrading our personal and civic lives.
As the National Rifle Association puts it, any parent who owns a gun must “absolutely ensure that it is inaccessible to a child." Unfortunately, this is expecting too much of too many parents.
Government workers, business leaders, financial titans and everyday citizens increasingly shout to politicians to "get off my back." Yet those politicians are often there because responsibility is not.
People divide across police lines, air waves and cyberspace. In so many ways we separate ourselves from each other, often loudly, sometimes violently. If this is not the America we want, we need to change.
Leaders want recognition for their successes but too often expect exoneration for organizational failures. They claim they were clueless about what was going on. Why might this be so? Does it excuse them from culpability?
Americans used to admire leaders with the humility to doubt themselves. Today, that is taken as a sign of weakness. We should rethink that.
Today, most Americans associate honor with military service but tend to view those who enter civil service as "feds" and "bureaucrats." They think "the best and the brightest" are or should be in the private sector. This is healthy neither for the nation nor the public service.
The Compilation of Federal Ethics Laws has 109 pages. Why then did staff at the Department of Veterans Affairs falsify patient appointment wait times? Why did the IRS single out conservative groups for special scrutiny? Laws are not enough.
The real issue for Hillary Clinton, and for us, is about ethics and character, both much more essential in a Secretary of State - and president - than how she handled her emails.
While it’s important, of course, what if we put aside the argument about what's causing global warming? Might it help liberals and conservatives seek agreement on at least some principles to guide us in dealing with our warming earth?
Who our graduates become as people not just what jobs they get, as adults of character not just competence, matters. If it does not, that is a loss to them - and to all of us.
There are some experiences I don't want to end. I want to savor them, to freeze time because of the lift in my spirit. But those moments pass, as they have to do. That is a good thing.
The feeling of failure is just an emotion, not a statement about who we are. That feeling is a road sign that we are advancing rather than a roadblock whose emotional baggage is a detour on the road to a fulfilling life.
In society today, every group seems angry at some other group. Instead of collaboration we get condemnation. Welcome to tribal America.
Last February 6th, my mother celebrated her 100th birthday, as we clapped our hands and sang. On July 29th, she passed away quietly as I held her hand in the silence of the early morning. How can you describe and honor a life that lasted a century?
