Thoughts on Leadership

The following remarks are Thoughts on Leadership by colleagues and partners in the WLI community.

Sterling Freeman, Eecutive Director of WLI
2001-2003 William C. Friday Fellow

A New Suit of Clothes

“…I always knew that there were high familial and community expectations. Those high expectations were great motivators and confidence builders. In fact, as parent, I am about the business of raising the bar for my daughter. Her ability to achieve is a regular conversation of ours. At the same time, I have learned something interesting about high expectations and how they can potentially land with young people. High expectations can have a dubious effect. There can be a tendency for high expectations to empower and constrict, motivate and debilitate, enhance potential, yet stifle creativity. What I am offering is not something that I heard but something that I experienced…”

Closing the Gap

“…Closing the gap requires commitment to core values and courage to integrate them in our daily practice. [Bill Grace] noted immanent scholar Cornel West, who suggests that we must speak truth to power in love. To power and in love are not mutually exclusive, but inextricably linked. Without the former, those figures who are in positions to help stimulate the moral barometer are left unchallenged and change is left stuck in the proverbial fantasyland. Without the latter, incivility and combativeness heightens the risk of aborting proposed change…”

Musings on Leadership

“…So we want to improve human relations by building a community, the members of which are bound by a common experience that engenders colleagueship and collaboration in their efforts to lead in this state. We believe the leadership practices of integrity, intention and inclusion are tools for building this community and for use by its members in their various leadership roles. We take a three-pronged approach in order to deliver this model…”

Thinking and Acting for the Public Good

“…Time for reflection leads me away from the conversation with the following thoughts. I must be willing to consciously identify and pursue aspirations hewn out that most basic element - our common humanity. I must be willing to hear and respond to the complex cry for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by the multitude of voices that wail for a better way of being. I must be willing to respect the power that I do hold and realize that all I have is not all there is. Others have power too, it might be my job to help them recognize and use it…”

William C. Friday
President Emeritus, University of North Carolina
Keynote: Selection Weekend for the 2006-08 William C. Friday Fellows

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“…Generations before you have met such challenges. Some of us lived through the Great Depression, World War II and that period of very harsh suffering. Through sacrifice and by caring for one and another, North Carolina turned around and rebuilt the economy in a time of far greater stress than we are experiencing today. The fact is, history will judge us not so much by our material gain, but by our demonstrated sense of compassion, caring and good will. History also singles out those who, in times of such crisis, raise their courageous voices in a call for bold action and that time has come again in North Carolina. Where are you going to stand?…”

Keynote: Opening Celebration of the 1999-01 William C. Friday Fellows

“…You have before you an awesome and unprecedented personal challenge. Indeed it is an enormous opportunity for growth and learning and especially for learning about yourselves. You will soon discover how willing you are to change. You will find out how tolerant you are of a point of view that conflicts with your own. You are going to discover how much courage you really have in challenging demagoguery, hypocrisy, expediency, and misdirected ego. You will find out how willing you are to do and not just to observe. The Blumenthal Foundation has in fact given you a public trust. Guard it carefully; enter it with gusto and personal dedication…”

Lloyd (Vic) Hackley
President and CEO, Hackley and Associates
Keynote: Selection Weekend for the 1999-01 William C. Friday Fellows

“…We have no right to judge a person's intrinsic value, for we have little capacity of knowing what it is. But we have an obligation in this society to state the content behavior represents for humanity, if that behavior were the universal representation for human conduct. Of course, behavior will define a person’s internal code. If you care not to judge behavior, i.e., "who am I to judge," then you are willing to flip a coin to determine whether Ted Bundy or Mother Theresa should baby-sit your children…”

Lois MacGillivray
Sociologist and Consultant in Program Evaluation and Planning
Spirituality: The Fulcrum of Leadership

“…I see spirituality as the relationship that links each of us to our true selves, the world around us, and to the ultimate reality. Like any relationship, spirituality is born of both gift and practices of discipline. The gifts are: the gift of life/being, the gift of the whole created universe, and the gift of being called and the courage to respond to a something (I would say a Someone) calling us beyond what is immediately evident…”

Leslie Takahashi Morris
95-97 Friday Fellow, Unitarian Universalist minister and co-pastor of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Charlottesville, Executive Director of WLI from 1997-2001
Keynote: Graduation of the 1999-01 Friday Fellow

“…Transformation is required of ourselves, and also of the ways in which we lead. To me, one of the essential challenges of taking leadership in this particular, peculiar time when we can see so clearly that the old models do not work and yet have little to definitely offer in their place. The whole concept of leadership is undergoing change, is on a journey, if you will. From my vantage point, it is a journey full of fearsome detours and untold violences, as well as mile markers and pitfalls encountered along the way…”