By now, pretty much everyone has heard of the elevator speech. You know the drill, describe what you're working on, why it matters and what the other person can do to help in 60 seconds or less. I've read lately that the Tweet is the new elevator speech. Can you describe what you're working and why it's important in 140 characters or less? It's all about the idea behind the famous line from T.S. Eliot, "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." It takes time and effort to boil down the essence of what you're trying to do to a short and memorable idea.

In her weekly Wall Street Journal column, Peggy Noonan built on this point by telling the story of what 20th century renaissance woman Clare Booth Luce once said to John F. Kennedy: "A great man is one sentence." As Noonan explains, "His leadership can be so well summed up in a single sentence that you don't have to hear his name to know who's being talked about."

Someone once said that strategy is as much about what you're not going to do as what you're going to do. Great leaders know how to focus and to keep the group's attention focused on the most important things.

If you were to focus on crafting a short sentence that you hope would sum up the essence of your current work as a leader what would it be? While you're thinking about it, take a look at the following short clip from the well known cowboy philosopher Curly for some inspiration (but beware, there's one word in the clip that may not be appropriate in your work environment):

I've been thinking a lot about the light side and the dark side of the human condition this week. A lot of this has been driven by the news and some of it has been driven by some reading I'm doing. For so many leaders, the passion and energy that drives them to the top of their fields has a dark side in the form of an ego that is looking for additional validation in all of the wrong places.

Until the death of Michael Jackson yesterday, the story of the week was South Carolina governor Mark Sanford's acknowledgement of a secret trip to Argentina to rendezvous with his girlfriend. The Sanford story has some unusual elements with its hiking on the Appalachian Trail cover story, his unscripted press conference to admit his adulterous affair and his use of state funds to travel to Argentina. Still, it seems like we have a politician cheating on his wife story about once or twice a month lately. In fact, on Hardball last night, Chris Matthews' Big Number was 23. That's the number of prominent political sex scandals (e.g. Elliott Spitzer, John Ensign, John Edwards to name a few) that have come to light since the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in 1998.

It makes one wonder, what's with these guys? One of the standard answers I hear to this question is that their egos are out of control and they feel entitled to whatever they want. Maybe so, but I think it could be something else. Instead, it could be what Eckhart Tolle describes in his book, A New Earth:

"Whatever behavior the ego manifests, the hidden motivating force is always the same: the need to stand out, be special, be in control; the need for power, for attention, for more... The ego always wants something from other people or situations. There is always a hidden agenda, always a sense of 'not enough yet,' of insufficiency and lack that needs to be filled. It uses people and situations to get what it wants, and even when it succeeds, it is never satisfied for long."

In other words, as Tolle goes to on to write, it's about fear - the fear of not being enough. That would seem to explain a lot of inexplicable behavior wouldn't it?

Which, sadly, brings us to Michael Jackson. As Joel Achenbach blogged for the Washington Post, "Michael Jackson may not have been perfect, but he was part of the soundtrack of our lives the last 40 years. At his best, he was the best." There has already been so much written in the past day about the deep contradictions in Jackson's life. If you just take a look at him as a 10 year old prodigy fronting the Jackson 5 or a phenomenon dancing in the video for "Beat It," I don't know how anyone could conclude other than he was a person with tremendous gifts that, for a time, made the absolute most of them. Of course, we also observed in Jackson a life in which "the insufficiency and lack that needs to be filled," led to a series of choices which were deeply damaging to himself and others. One of the more astute comments I read this morning came from Michael Levine, a publicist who worked for Jackson in the 1990s:

"I must confess I am not surprised by today's tragic news. Michael has been on an impossibly difficult and often self-destructive journey for years. His talent was unquestionable but so too was his discomfort with the norms of the world. A human simply cannot withstand this level of prolonged stress."

So, by now, you may be asking yourself, "What does all of this have to do with leadership? Isn't this supposed to be a leadership blog?" Yes, it is and here's what I think the connection is. To lead others, you first have to take care of yourself. A big part of that, I think, is acknowledging to yourself that you're already enough. The opportunity that any of us have is to take whatever talents we've been given or developed and use them to the fullest. And, then, to believe that that is enough.

Regular readers of this blog and anyone who's heard me deliver a presentation lately know that I am a huge fan of Tiger Woods. His level of focus and commitment to continuous improvement are great examples for leaders. So, I was mildly bummed when Tiger wasn't able to overcome an 11 shot deficit and ended up finishing four shots behind the winner of the U.S. Open this past weekend.

You're not tuning into this blog for a sports report, however, so it's fair to ask, "What's the point on leadership?" Well, sometimes we can learn as much from less than perfect examples as we can from the perfect ones. Tiger provided us with a couple of those at Bethpage Black last weekend.

If you paid any attention to this year's tournament, you know that the golf course was subject to torrential rains throughout the weekend. Play was delayed for hours at a time and most of the golfers ended up playing from early in the morning until nightfall on Saturday and Sunday to get in the holes that were missed on Thursday and Friday. The tournament finally concluded on Monday. The U.S. Open is always a physical, mental and emotional test for the best players in the world. With the weather and conditions, that was probably doubly the case this year.

When Conditions Change, Adjust Your Plan

All of that had an interesting impact on Tiger Woods. Among many other attributes, Woods is known as the consummate planner. He comes into major tournaments with a well mapped game plan. But, as the well known philosopher, Mike Tyson, once said, "Everyone's got a game plan until they get hit." As Tiger himself acknowledged when the greens at the Open became soaked with rain, he was not able to adjust his putting to the much slower than expected conditions. Some of the putts that he left just outside the edge of the cup were likely the difference between his 4th place finish and winning the Open.

Don't Obsess on What You Can't Control

Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins noticed something else about Tiger at the Open. The mud generated by all the rain didn't just get on his shoes, it got into his head. Here's a quote from Jenkins' column that sums up her point:

"The problem with mud is not that's it's dirty, but that it's unpredictable, and it has clearly introduced an element of chance into the U.S. Open that is unwelcome to Woods. 'It is what it is, it's potluck,' Woods said glumly after his opening-round 74 left him 10 strokes off the lead. Mud sucked at his spikes and slowed down play, and it clogged the dimples of his ball and made the flight of it fickle. 'I had about four mud balls today,' he said unhappily."

After reading this column on Saturday morning, I noticed that almost the first thing Tiger mentioned in his post round interview on Saturday afternoon was how muddy it was out there. Apparently, even Tiger Woods sometimes allows his focus to be overwhelmed by factors he can't control.

Keep It Simple

So, what can Tiger or any leader do when things don't go as planned? A good place to start might be to follow what Tiger recently told Fortune magazine was the best advice he ever got (Thanks to Next Level reader Marty for the tip on this!). Here's how Woods told the story:

"When I was young, maybe 6 or 7 years old, I'd play on the Navy golf course with my pop. My dad would say, 'Okay, where do you want to hit the ball?' I'd pick a spot and say I want to hit it there. He'd shrug and say, 'Fine, then figure out how to do it.' He didn't position my arm, adjust my feet, or change my thinking. He just said go ahead and hit the darn ball."

The protests over the elections in Iran present one of those rare instances when you know in the moment you're watching history being made. The courage and dreams of the Iranians in the streets demanding democracy are inspiring.

As many have commented, one of the fascinating aspects of the protests is the use of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook as organizing tools for the leaders of the movement. What's equally interesting to me is the debate that's emerging over the use of the tools and what it means for the future. In an opinion piece in the Washington Post called, "Reading Twitter in Tehran?," the authors write:

"Twitter's own internal architecture puts limits on political activism. There are so many messages streaming through at any moment that any single entry is unlikely to break through the din, and the limit of 140 characters -- part of the service's charm and the secret of its success -- militates against sustained argument and nuance."

This strikes me as a pretty good example of missing the point. No one has said that Twitter is a substitute for reasoned argument. In the case of Iran, it's a tool (one of the few available) for disseminating raw news and for leaders who want to organize their followers. The people using the tools don't care about the pros and cons of the platform, they just care that it works. They're platform agnostic leaders.

This morning, I read on social media guru Chris Brogan's blog about a new service in alpha testing called Babel With Me. This site connects with Twitter, Facebook or e-mail to allow users around the world to have real time conversation with simultaneous translation in 45 languages. That sound you just heard was one more example of how quickly the world is shrinking.

The implications for leaders are astounding. The tools or platforms that leaders use to organize their followers are changing faster than most of us can process. The opportunity is to engage followers in a way that encourages their participation and their own capacity to lead themselves. The challenge for leaders will be to maintain strategic perspective and direction in a world where the masses can organize themselves so quickly and effectively.

Those are just two observations about the nature of leadership in a platform agnostic age. What are yours?

My goal this Friday is to leave you with some food for thought over the next few days. This has been a week when I've had the opportunity to coach leaders in a number of different situations and settings. I've been impressed and humbled in each instance by the conscious nature of leadership that I've seen. My main contribution has been to frame up some questions and create some space for the leaders to observe themselves and determine what their next moves should be. I thought I'd share some of those questions with you today.

On Monday night, I had dinner with a senior management team that has recently concluded that they need to do more to regulate the pressure on the leaders in their organization. We built the conversation around one of my all time favorite articles, "The Work of Leadership," by Ron Heifetz and Donald Laurie. In a relaxed dinner, the senior leaders talked through three questions with each other:

• In regulating the pressure, what do we push for? When and where should we back off?
• Where are we in the balance between support and control? What do we need to be doing more of and less of on that front?
• What are we doing to build and nurture confidence in the broader leadership team? What are we doing that breaks down confidence?

It was impressive to watch these folks really tune into what's going on with themselves and their organizations. They were honest with themselves and each other and, with great ease, came up with some insights that they had not stopped to consider before. They gave themselves the space to get up on the balcony and pay attention to what's going on and what's needed from them.

On Tuesday, I spent the day with a group of high potential leaders from a defense technology company who are participating in our group coaching program, Next Level Leadership™. This was the second of five sessions that we'll have over seven months and the broad topic was the Personal Presence component of executive presence. One of the frameworks that I usually introduce in session two is Tim Gallwey's brilliant equation:

P stands for performance, p stands for potential and i stands for interference. In other words, the only thing standing in the way of you performing at your full potential is whatever interference you create for yourself in your mind. (As it happens, the Wall Street Journal ran a great article on the impact of one's inner critic this week.) As we often do in group coaching, I asked the group members to pair up and coach other around some simple questions like:

• What words describe your most common versions of interference?
• When do you notice the interference?
• What happens when it becomes too loud?

When we did the debrief, I was so impressed by how articulate everyone was in describing their interference scripts. What was also cool was how much power some folks were seeing in recognizing and articulating that interference. When you're conscious of it, you can make choices about how to focus on the potential rather than the interference.

On Wednesday, I spent a couple of hours as a speaker in an orientation program for about 50 new executive level leaders for a global energy products and services provider. Through our work with our Next Level 360 instrument, I've learned that the number one opportunity for rising leaders is to pace themselves enough to leave space for thinking about what they're trying to do and how they need to do it. This point seemed to resonate with these new execs.

Everyone immediately engaged with each other in pairs around these two questions. For any given event coming up on my calendar next week:

• What's the outcome I'm trying to create?
• How do I need to show up to make that outcome likely?

There was so much energy in the room around those questions that I had a hard time bringing everyone back when it was time to do a debrief. When you're a new executive you find yourself doing a lot of things that you've never done before. That can be a confidence killer. By asking yourself those two questions about the desired outcome and how you need to show up you can develop a level of consciousness that will build your confidence. What can be even better than asking those questions of yourself is to do what the folks did on Wednesday and pair up with a colleague where you each spend five minutes asking those two questions of each other to help your peer get up on the balcony an visualize what success will look like and how they need to show up to make that likely.

So, here are a couple of questions for you. First, which of these questions or stories hit home the most with you? Second, what questions have you been asking yourself lately?

A couple of days ago, I put out a question to my LinkedIn network on the best conferences for plugging in to fresh thinking on innovation and leadership. The answers are still coming in, but so far the overwhelming favorite is the series of conferences known as TED. If you're not familiar with TED, the good news is that the organizers have a very robust web site with dozens of videos of their best speakers online.

I've been spending some time browsing the site and one of my favorites is a four and a half minute clip of advertising exec and expert rock climber Matthew Childs talking about nine lessons he's learned from rock climbing. I'm not a rock climber myself (although I'm very proud of the fact that I've scaled the 40 foot high rock climbing wall at a local sporting goods store. Kind of like staying at a Holiday Inn Express last night.), but I appreciated the applicability of Childs' lessons to leadership in general.

Here are five of my favorites from Childs' TED talk:

• Don't let go - This sounds sort of obvious but Childs makes a really interesting point. In rock climbing, you typically think about letting go long before you actually do. The best climbers use that time to think through the rest of their options.
• Have a plan - Again, it sounds obvious on first blush. The less obvious point is that climbers often focus their planning and maximum effort on the hardest part of the climb and then find themselves without a plan or any gas left for finishing the climb. Plan it through to the end.
• Know how to rest - I actually learned this at the sporting goods store. Climbing (and leadership) is a full body experience. Your muscles (literally and figuratively) get tired. It's important to build in some rest breaks on the climb up. Otherwise, you lose your grip.
• Fear sucks - Childs makes the great point that all fear does is focus your energy and attention on the consequences of failing rather than figuring out how you're going to advance up the rock.
• Know how to let go - Sometimes you can't go any further without getting hurt. Childs advice is "don't hang on until the bitter end." (If you have thoughts about how to distinguish between when to choose rule one or rule five, I'd love to hear them.)

The entire talk is worth a look. You can check it out here:

Sunday's Washington Post ran a front page feature article reviewing the first two years of Michelle Rhee's tenure as the chancellor of Washington, D.C.'s public school system. Thanks in part to extensive national coverage like the Time magazine cover to the right, Rhee has become the face of education reform in the United States. As the article notes, what's playing well nationally isn't playing so well at home. In fact, it begins by recounting the story of D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray asking Rhee when the Time cover came out, "Michelle, why would you agree to be photographed with a broom on the cover of Time magazine?" He had a couple of follow up questions for her including "What does it get you to constantly bash those you're trying to get to help you?" and "Why did you let the picture be taken in the first place?"

Those are some pretty good questions the Chairman asked. Rhee herself acknowledges that she has made some missteps in her first two years in the job and that the grade for the DC public school system thus far is an incomplete at best. Reporter Bill Turque does a nice job of summarizing Rhee's lessons learned thus far as:

Lesson 1: Fame Can Backfire - Rhee's national celebrity has alienated some of her key constituencies like DC teachers and parents.

Lesson 2: Money Doesn't Always Talk - A potential 61% increase in base pay for teachers won't get you very far if they don't trust you.

Lesson 3: Politics Matters - As Willy Loman's wife, Linda, said in Death of a Salesman, "Attention must be paid." If you're working in a political environment as Rhee is, you have to pay attention to the politicians.

Lesson 4: Beware Unintended Consequences - It's called a school system for a reason. As is the case with any system, when you change one variable (e.g. closing schools, reducing central staff, adjusting pay plans), the entire system changes, sometimes in unexpected ways.

Being a smart and talented person, Rhee has adjusted her approach in some ways, perhaps most notably in paying more attention to the City Council and teachers' unions. Still, in reading between the lines of Turque's article, I think I see some indicators of potential future trouble for Rhee. These add up to caveats for any leader charged with securing radically different results. Not that she's asked, but here's my advice for Rhee and leaders in comparable situations:

Don't put all your eggs in the boss's basket - Hiring Michelle Rhee was one of the first things Adrian Fenty did when he was elected mayor of DC in 2007. Back then, Fenty was getting great press and had a lot of power. Lately, though, he's been showing some chinks in his armor thanks to spats with council members over relatively silly things like free tickets to baseball games. Like a lot of leaders, Rhee relied on her boss's authority and power to get things done. The problem with this approach, of course, is if your boss's power diminishes, yours does too. It's important to have other supporters besides your boss.

Build a network of allies - Not doing this can leave you way out in front of the crowd with everyone figuratively shooting at you from behind. When she took over, Rhee had to make it clear that she was an agent of change. It's rare, however, to bring true change without having stakeholders engaged. The Post article points out that Rhee didn't do much in her first two years to get the teachers' unions on her side. Perhaps it's not too late. She's recently started conducting small group discussions with teachers and sent a letter of apology for pushing so many initiatives at once. That sounds like a good start.

Respect those who don't fit the vision - This is the old thing about disagreeing without being disagreeable. The people who remain are watching and noting how you're treating the ones who leave.

The meta message is the one that matters - The cover of Time is not the place to make subtle points. When asked in the Post if she had regrets about the cover, Rhee said no. "Her message, she said, was not about sweeping out teachers. 'The point of that was about cleaning house and sweeping change,' she said, referring to such moves as firing central office staff employees and upgrading operations so that teachers were paid on time and had textbooks delivered." It's sort of amazing to me that Rhee is hanging on to this rationale for the cover photo when, for her local audience, a picture was clearly worth a thousand words.

Own, acknowledge and correct your mistakes - Rhee said in the interview that "her message hasn't changed, only that she's worked to communicate more directly so that her views aren't 'warped and diluted' by the media or central bureaucracy. 'We weren't doing a good job of communicating,' she said." This leaves me wondering who the "we" is. As out front in her style as Rhee is, there is very little "we" in the communications strategy. She appears to be the communicator in chief. If it's not working, she needs to acknowledge it and make the appropriate adjustments on her own.

Effectiveness is more important than being right - This would be a good place to start in making the adjustment. When faced with the choice between being effective and being "right," Rhee seems to lean toward the latter. Toward the end of the article she's quoted as saying, "If I go down at the end of the day because I didn't play the political game right, that's okay with me. At least when you're making decisions that you believe are in the best interests of kids, you may not win in the end, but at least you can operate with a good conscience." Apart from the implicit us against them mindset in this statement, there's a big element of self taking precedent over mission. Which brings me to my last piece of advice for Chancellor Rhee and any other leader leading disruptive change -

Remember, it's not about you.

Years ago, when I was a corporate executive myself, I read and re-read Kevin Cashman's Leadership from the Inside Out. (A second edition has recently been released which I encourage you to buy.) With its emphasis on the leader as a whole person, Kevin's book really helped me get up on the balcony and look at the bigger picture of what I was trying to do, what really mattered and how I need to show up to make all of that more likely. The time I spent with Leadership from the Inside Out had a lot to do with why I became an executive coach eight and a half years ago. As Kevin would say, coaching is my "sweet spot."

So, being such a fan of Kevin's work, you can imagine how happy I was to hear him deliver the keynote presentation last week at the annual meeting of the Washington, DC chapter of the International Coach Federation. He did not disappoint. In his talk, Kevin shared 11 things he's learned in 30 years of coaching leaders. It was all good, but here are a few of his points that hit home with me that I want to share with you:

A crisis is seldom what it appears to be. As an immediate example of this principle, we're not in a financial crisis right now. We're in a character crisis. If you really look at how we got here, you almost have to conclude that he's right.

Leaders go beyond what is while managers improve what is. The point here is not that management is bad and leadership is good. They're both needed, often within the same person. Here are a few of Kevin's examples of the difference between the two:

In addition to IQ points, effective leaders need to have four other types of intelligence - emotional, learning, innovation and global. Kevin's belief is that going forward innovation will be as important to the practice of leadership as "green" is becoming to the economy.

If you're interested in stretching your perspective of what it means to be a leader, check out Leadership from the Inside Out. What else has been stretching your perspective lately?

My friend, Dan McCarthy of the Great Leadership Blog (Dan just gives, gives, gives and never takes), is hosting his monthly Leadership Carnival with the wit and/or wisdom of more than 30 leadership bloggers including yours truly.

There are a lot of great posts there. A couple in particular that I wish I was clever enough to write include this provocative poem on corporate reorganizations by David Zinger and Loraine Antrim's pass along of Jamie Quatro's take on how things might have come across if God had texted the Ten Commandments. Just goes to show you that custom fit communications does matter! It's right up there with one of my all time faves - if Abraham Lincoln had used PowerPoint to deliver the Gettysburg Address.

Enjoy.

Based on a study of 11,000 360 degree surveys reported in the Harvard Business Review, leadership feedback gurus Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman have identified ten behaviors found in the bottom 10% of leaders.

The top five mistakes they make are:

1. Lack energy and enthusiasm
2. Accept their own mediocre performance
3. Lack clear vision and direction
4. Have poor judgment
5. Don't collaborate

Pretty easy to see how leaders in the bottom 10% would have characteristics like that. But what about leaders in the top 10% or 20%? How do they run off the rails? (And they do up to 40% of the time.)

In our Next Level Leadership™ group coaching program, we've run a 360 over the past three years on the skills and behaviors that rising executives need to exhibit to make successful transitions. We've run it with almost 400 executives at this point and, out of 72 specific behaviors, the bottom five in our database are:

1. Paces himself/herself by building in regular breaks from work.
2. Manages workload so that he/she has time for unexpected problems or issues.
3. Spends less time using his/her functional skills and more time encouraging team members to use theirs.
4. Regularly takes time to step back and define or redefine what needs to be done.
5. Focuses less on day to day operations and more on identifying and taking advantage of strategic opportunities.

If you're like me, when you see a list of ten mistakes to avoid, you immediately start scanning it with the question in mind, "OK, am I doing any of these?" If you find that you are, pick one to work on that you think will make the biggest difference and enlist the help of some trusted colleagues for advice on how to be better.

Earlier this week I was coaching a group of high potential leaders moving up to the executive level. Our topic was "organizational presence," which was on point since many of these folks are working on expanding their networks beyond their immediate areas of responsibility.

When I lead a group coaching session, I like to have everyone share examples of what they're doing to improve their leadership skills in "real life". It was striking to hear the results that several leaders were getting by being intentional about asking more questions in meetings. There were two big tips in the stories. Here they are along with a "bonus tip" I shared with the group.

The first is that these leaders are shifting from asking questions that start with why or how and are asking more questions that start with the word "What." As I've written here before, "What" questions open up possibilities and give the other person room to think and be creative. Think about your own experience on the receiving end of questions. Would you respond better to "Why do you think that?" or "What do you think about that?" For most people, the answer is obvious. Asking "What" questions builds relationships and relationships build networks. I sometimes joke that the only bad "What" question I can think of is "What in the hell were you thinking?" You probably want to use that one sparingly.

The second theme I heard from these leaders is that they're being intentional about slowing themselves down enough to ask a few questions about the other person. These are not rocket scientist questions that only world class networkers can come up with. They're questions like, "What did you do this weekend?" or "How are your kids?" The key, of course, is listening to the answer and then asking a few follow up questions based on what the other person says. It's called having a conversation and, believe it or not, it only takes about five minutes more to turn a business conversation into a personal conversation that strengthens the relationship that in turn strengthens your network.

In talking with the group about this, I shared a story about a client I worked with a few years ago who was viewed by his fellow executives as being difficult to work with. After a couple of meetings with him, I could see why. No matter what I asked him or how I asked it, he would answer with the fewest words possible and then come to a dead stop. He gave me absolutely nothing to work with. One day after about 15 minutes of a very terse conversation, I asked him if I could share an observation. He said, "Yes." (Literally, that's all he said.) In response, I said, "You are probably the most difficult person to have a conversation with that I've ever worked with." He looked truly shocked and asked why. I replied that, in my experience, when I asked people questions about what was going on they'd give me more than a few words of response and, oftentimes, would keep the conversation going by asking me a question or two in response.

Honestly, I thought I'd lost him at that point. He was more or less silent and I wrapped up the meeting thinking that was probably it for that engagement. That was until I talked with him on the phone two or three weeks later. There was an unprecedented (for me anyway) level of excitement in his voice as he told me, "I've been doing what you told me to do and I can't believe how well it works!" My thought was that I'd only made an observation and hadn't really told him to do anything so I asked, "What have you been doing?" He said, "When I'm in a meeting and I'm feeling like it's at the point where there's nothing else to say, I ask one more question. I can't believe what I'm getting back from asking one more question and am finding that some of these people are actually pretty interesting and have some good ideas."

Guess what? When I checked in with his colleagues a few months later, everyone commented on how much easier he was to work with and how they were enjoying working with him.

So, in addition to "What" questions and asking about the other person, there's a third idea for you on how to build your network with questions. When you think the conversation is over, ask one more question.

The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor has sparked an interesting public discussion on the place of empathy in the justice system. As usual, there are people lining up on the left and the right to argue for or against empathy playing a role in forming the opinions of a judge.

When people are engaged in a debate on a word, I think it's usually a good idea to first look up the definition of that word. Here's how Dictionary.com defines empathy:
"the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another."

Burt Solomon, in an insightful piece in the Washington Post, points out that the life experience of Supreme Court justices has always influenced their opinions. He provides a number of interesting historical examples which are summarized by this observation from the late Justice Felix Frankfurter:
"The words of the Constitution are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life."

Just as her experience of growing up poor in a Bronx project shaped the perspective of Judge Sotomayor, the experience of growing up as the son of a corporate executive has shaped the perspective of Chief Justice John Roberts. They both have empathy or "intellectual identification" with others; it's just that their empathy is informed by different life experiences. As Solomon points out in his article, you can see their different experiences at play in their opinions. I'd argue that neither perspective is good or bad, they just are.

And that brings me to a point about all leaders whether or not they find themselves on the U.S. Supreme Court. We bring our life experience, our empathy, our intellectual identification with us. Our decisions and actions are influenced by the unique life experience and perspective we bring to the leadership role. Let's not kid ourselves that they're not. The best we and our followers can hope for is that we as leaders recognize this. When we recognize that we're never truly objective, we stand a much better chance of listening to and paying attention to all of the stakeholders in a given situation.

So as I was thinking about this post, I tried to come up with a leader who actually could be truly objective. The best I could do was Mr. Spock. But, as you'll know if you've seen the new Star Trek movie, not even Spock makes decisions based purely on objective logic. That darn human part of his heritage keeps getting in the way. As it is with Spock, so it is with us. Live long and prosper.