1951

The following is our excerpt of GeorgeSouthwick's speech on leadership at the Lexington, Mass., High School graduation June 6, 1985. His speech was applauded for its very timely and thought-provoking message: "Members of your class have in great numbers, performed myriad services within the school, the community, at churches, and temples in behalf of the Lexington citizenry, your families, and, most importantly, yourselves. You deserve an extra special 'thank you' from all of us.

"It is within the context of these notable services and accomplishments that I want to share with you my thoughts concerning our desperate need here in the United States for continuous generational leadership. There exists an ongoing critical need for leaders in the arts, sciences, medicine, crafts, the trades, music, athletics, and critically in the political arena. We need leaders to point the way to vigorous, meaningful, and participatory citizenship. We need you now, and. we shall need you even more as our generation passes on the mantle of responsibility and challenge to you.

"Leadership is the ability to intervene in a way that helps a group of people identify their objectives and then go about achieving those objectives. Leadership is not synonymous with management.

"Managing means controlling; leading means enhancing, growing, and facilitating. In a world as complex as the one in which we currently live there is not time for any leader, worthy of that designation,

to pursue only his/her own personal agenda. People want results from this government. But, I believe, they also want government to represent their interests with compassion for even the weakest among us.

"I urge you all to recognize our need to band together to use our resources, our energy, our creativity, and our talents to generate within this country the "good life" for all of the people. We cannot afford to curtail or to reject the opportunity for any one of us to contribute. In 1953, Dartmouth College President John Sloan Dickey reminded a Commencement audience that 'anything worth serious thought often seems to involve complexities beyond the very bounds of human bothering' and that 'everything of any consequence is found fastened at one end to the past and at the other to the future.'

"That tie of the past to the future is our mutual challenge in this rapidly changing world. A leader cannot be preoccupied with political survival. A leader today must have the courage to energize people and to join in the debate concerning the tough issues of our time peace, nuclear disarmament, defense, energy resources, pollution, food, jobs, technological developments. The list seems to go on and on.

"Leadership attracts those people who are personally secure. Officeholders or managers are most frequently concerned with the source of ideas; leaders are concerned with the quality of ideas. The source of an idea is totally irrelevant to a leader because he/she requires all the good ideas available and will then choose from among them on the basis of quality. Officeholders/managers worry about others getting credit for good ideas, but I have never known an effective leader with this tendency. Leaders want other people to come forth with good ideas. Leaders respond to good ideas and better yet, produce some of their own. No matter what the field business, medicine, law, etc. leaders energize groups of people. Effective leaders stimulate debate and even intellectual conflict. Leaders create dissension and, yes, even difficulty for some people, and yet the dynamics which tend to whirl around leadership offer the best hope to and for mankind.

"Leaders understand that blame and credit go hand in hand. If a leader is entitled to credit for achievement, then he/she also must accept the blame for lack of achievement when things go wrong. Leaders also understand that the group might achieve with more effective leadership because leadership is important to any group. There is nothing wrong with taking credit for achievement, but it goes hand in hand with accepting blame for the lack of achievement. Leadership cannot be legislated. Leadership cannot be delegated; leadership cannot be achieved through derogation or denigration of other people. Leadership truly belongs to whoever is a leader.

"There has never been a time or condition in this nation's history when leadership in every line of human endeavor is so desperately needed, as is the case now. Our society must encourage the use of intelligence and imagination by us if this society of ours is to foster the cultures from which leadership may continue to emerge.

"Leaders of our times are not accidents; they are the products of an open society a society which reaches out in the challenge expressed by George Bernard Shaw: 'You see things and you say, "why?" But I dream things that never were, and I say "why not?" ' Alexis DeTocqueville wrote, 'Providence has not created mankind entirely independent or entirely free. It is true that around every man a fatal circle is traced beyond which he cannot pass, but within the circle he is powerful and free.' The opportunities are out there. Take advantage of those opportunities whenever and wherever possible. The strength of this nation rests on the shoulders of the active, interested, and imaginative young people who are willing to accept the challenges which any leadership role poses."

George closed his speech thus: "In the words of an old Irish verse: 'May the road rise up to meet you; May the wind be always at your back; May the sun shine warm upon your face; And the rains fall soft upon your fields; And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand."

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