Articles
Love & Leadership Go Hand in Hand
MOTIVATED Magazine, September 20, 2011
As the founder and CEO of the financial literacy nonprofit organization, Operation HOPE, I've been blessed with the opportunity to meet many great leaders – powerful men and women such as President Bill Clinton, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and civil rights icons Dorothy Height and Ambassador Andrew Young, just to name a few.
After spending some time with these amazing people and having had the privilege of being mentored by Ambassador Andrew Young, I started to see a pattern. The leaders that I admired most were the ones willing to give the most of themselves. I began to study their habits and tried to understand more about their leadership qualities. My research led me to develop "The Five Principles of Love Leadership." Somewhere between my need to share my findings and my colleague's enthusiasm, I was convinced to write a book on the subject... and so I did... read more
Don't forget why you came to Washington
The Federal Couch, Washington Post, October 19, 2010 05:33 PM EST
Question (from Tim Fox): What advice do you have for young leaders?
Andrew Young told me that you can't have a movement without young people, and I never understood that before but I do now. Young people need to understand that what they lack in wisdom the world needs in passion. But it's not an either-or proposition. The world also needs them to be wiser than their years. [So,] find something you're passionate about; because if you don't, you will fail.
Understand that it's what you don't know that's killing you. Go get the wisdom that you don't have through mentors and role models. Find purpose that's larger and more important than yourself. Be curious about everything. I asked Quincy Jones how he got so smart, and he said, "I'm just nosy as all hell." [Finally,] be humble, be oblivious, lead lovingly and never give up.... read more
Why BP Is Toast
Posted on The Huffington Post, July 22, 2010 05:00 PM EST
I believe that BP is pretty much, well, toast. Does that mean that they are out of business tomorrow? No it does not. They may in fact be operating as an entity called BP for some time to come, and for legal reasons, others that are interested in assets of the company probably would want to purchase the assets and leave the corporate shell alone. That said, they have lost the most precious asset a corporation could ever attain -- the trust, respect and confidence of customers, investors and the body politic. Furter, they have lost the respect and trust of their brand. And such a shame, as even I had begun to buy into their amazing television commercial campaign of late 2009. Too bad the company did not put as much attention into protecting its brand as it did promoting it.... read more
A Type of Learning That Pays Dividends
Posted on Bloomberg BusinessWeek, April 15, 2010 05:00 PM EST
Making financial literacy a new civil right will give millions of Americans a shot at prosperity and do the U.S. economy a world of good.
Even now, as the dust from the financial crisis settles, there's surprisingly little agreement on what just happened. As the banks, mortgage brokers, financial-products innovators, and regulators argue over who deserves more blame, it's obvious that a vast number of American consumers were simply out of their league. They spent more than they earned, willingly signed up for trip-wired housing loans, and piled ... read more
The God Crisis
Posted on The Huffington Post, May 24, 2010 11:53 AM EST
Building on the August 2009 release of my now-bestselling business book, Love Leadership: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass), I have spoken around the world, to everyone from heads of organizations to Heads of State, on how, in a world where we should be asking, "What do I have to give?", far too many of us are simply asking, "What do I get?"
I also outline how what we are experiencing in this global economic crisis is no normal recession, that in fact it is "not a recession, but a reset." I have written on my definition of a "reset" here in previous articles on the Huffington Post.
I have gone further to suggest that this crisis is the story not so much of the failure of free enterprise and capitalism as of the failure of greed ... read more
Reset: Jobs and What We Need to Do Now
Posted on The Huffington Post, February 22, 2010 05:00 PM EST
In August 2009, Jossey-Bass released my new, now bestselling book LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World, which spoke to a crisis of "virtues and values" amongst leaders at every level, all around the world, and the need for "a new way."
In December 2009, I wrote a piece entitled "Reset," which made the case that what we are going through now is not a recession but a reset.
I have subsequently written here in the Huffington Post that we have "Lost Our Story Line."
Today, I speak again on reset, but in a new series of pieces again inspired from my work at the organization I founded, Operation HOPE, and Love Leadership, which seeks to frame out and set forth a vision of "where we need to go from here." Remember, I said we need a "reset," and not a "reboot."... read more
Stop Trying to Get Rich!
Posted on Forbes.com, October 22, 2009 12:40 PM
What we're going through is not just a recession, it's a reset.
Sure, the impact of the crisis is being felt economically, but the root cause isn't economics, nor is it the failure of free enterprise and capitalism. The problem is the abuse of free enterprise and capitalism--greed.
The problem is that we have lost our story line, as a nation and as a world.
My friend and mentor Quincy Jones, the musician, who is one of the people I profile in my new book, Love Leadership: A New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World, once told me that "it takes 20 years to change a culture." Well, over the last 20 years we changed it for the worse. We made dumb sexy. We even celebrated dumb. Over the next 20 years we have to make smart sexy again... read more
Leading With Love: G iving to Your People
Gets Results
Posted on Huffington Post, October 10, 2009 06:49 PM
Giving is as old as the ages, and is even cited in the original business plan for life, the Bible, but very few people see giving as a value added, core competency in business.
Unfortunately, society seems to be teaching us that taking succeeds and suckers give. Well, "suckers" like Bill Gates, Ted Turner, Warren Buffett, former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, Oprah Winfrey, and entertainment icon Quincy Jones have not done so bad with this giving thing. And some of the most generous "givers" in the corporate space, such as Wells Fargo and US Bank, are also some of the same companies that have emerged on the other end of this global economic crisis with their balance sheets and their businesses still intact ... read more
Why Change and Love Leadership are First Cousins
Posted on Huffington Post, October 1, 2009 07:47 PM
I make the point in my new book, Love Leadership: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World that "fear is the ultimate prosperity killer." I also say that fear is one lazy bastard. Fear simply hates change, and work too.
I have found that change requires a sense of personal security, and for lack of a better description, a sense of purpose and mission that is greater than what is right in front of your nose. But fear -- fear depends so much on what I call "clutching and keeping," that fear is sometimes even willing to kill for it. Witness, the era of Adolf Hitler in the Germany of 1940 ... read more
