"Being a leader is like being a lady. If you have to go around telling people you are one, you aren't."
- Margaret Thatcher, 1925-2013
"I begin to feel like most Americans don't understand the First Amendment, don't understand the idea of freedom of speech, and don't understand that it's the responsibility of the citizen to speak out." - Roger Ebert, 1942-2013
In the last two week we lost two groundbreaking leaders. Both of them cleared new territory for those who came after them. Both of them paid little heed to what had been done before but rather looked forward and acted on the possibilities of what could be. I am talking about Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, and Roger Ebert, the film critic for the Chicago Sun Times.
I am pretty sure that there won't be too many articles or blogs that will discuss the passing of both of these two rather unique individuals. However, to my mind, they had much in common. Both Thatcher and Ebert broke new ground in their respective fields. Both were divisive leaders, loved by some, despised by others.
Whatever you thought of her politics, it is hard to deny that Margaret Thatcher was a leader. The first and only woman to serve as Prime Minister in the United Kingdom, I also believe that she had one of the longest tenures in recent history. She was a towering figure in history and an impressive leader.
Articles and books have been and will continue to be written about Margaret Thatcher and her leadership style. Margaret Thatcher, if only because of the historic nature and length of her tenure as Prime Minister and her very visible style of decisive leadership will be a subject of study for some time.
Roger Ebert was a leader of a different ilk. An early adopter of new media, Roger expanded the perception of what a journalist is or could be. He took one of the more mundane parts of the newspaper, movie reviews, and created an empire. He teamed up with Gene Siskel to talk about the big screen on the little screen. He was an early and voracious blogger. When he lost his jaw to cancer and could no longer speak normally, he found numerous other ways to make sure his voice was heard.
Like Thatcher, there were many who despised Ebert for his showmanship, for his insistence on writing his own rules. Like Ebert, Thatcher paid less attention to critics than to the voice driving her to break new ground and achieve great things.
Leaders begets other leaders. Martin Luther King wouldn't have had the success or visibility he had without Rosa Parks and Malcolm X. Mark Zuckerberg might have been just another Harvard dropout without Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Some have postulated that without the walls (and ceilings) that Margaret Thatcher knocked down, we wouldn't have had Angela Merckel in Germany or Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama in the US. Without Roger Ebert, would we have had the early adoption of the internet by critics? Would we have cared whether or not movie reviews were on the internet? Would we have understood the Facebook thumbs up symbol?
The point is that tomorrow's leaders are in the wings, watching what today's leaders are doing and learning from their triumphs and their failures. As each new generation of leader breaks new ground in style or inclusiveness or social consciousness, the leaders who follow find it easier to do so. They can do this because they are standing on the shoulders of the generation that went before. And hanging onto the shoulders of the other leaders of their generation.
As Margaret Thatcher indicates in her quote at the start of this blog, most lessons in leadership are better shown than talked about. The world has been shown a lot by the two leaders we lost this month.
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The recent tragic events at the Boston Marathon leave me in a quandry as to how to respond or whether I should respond. I will simply say to the people that were there and to those who were impacted by what happened there, the thoughts and prayers of a nation are with you. I would also make a plea that as a society we work harder to find less violent ways to express ourselves. Thank you.
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