There’s an Aesop’s fable about The Bat, the Birds, and the Beasts. In short, the Birds and Beasts are going to have a major battle
with each other. Not sure who will win, the bat refuses to commit to either
side (planning to avoid suffering any ill effects from the fight), but instead
PEACE breaks out, so the bat tries to crash the celebrations in each camp, only
to be shunned and driven out by both.
In most renditions of this story, the moral is stated as “He
who is neither one thing nor the other has no friends”, but what this is really
about to me is COMMITMENT. If you won’t stand for something, why would anyone
else want to stand with you?
It’s hard to trust people who won’t make a decision because
they don’t want to be caught making a mistake. It’s even harder to trust them
when they try to palm their decisions and mistakes off on someone else.
None of us are perfect, and no one has a crystal ball. We are
given free will (freedom to make decisions) not a free ride (freedom from
consequences.) A sign of true leadership is to empower others around you to
make decisions and doing what you can to ensure their success, while owning the
failures along with them. Responsibility is about stopping the buck, not
passing it.
So how did we wind up with a leader (misnomer) who leads from
behind? Who sticks his finger in the air to see which way the winds of opinion
polls are blowing before he makes a decision? Who only takes credit for good
things that happen and is never responsible for the bad, regardless whether he
was involved in either? (really, the answer is simple – he never committed to
any one thing, and so the hope-filled and hope-seeking voters interpreted his
forceful lack of commitment as a commitment to WHATEVER they wanted to see.)
There seems to be a pathology at work here.
How can someone say it wasn’t their idea to withdraw our
troops from Iraq (which opened the door for ISIL), and then in a speech about
stopping ISIL a couple of weeks later take credit for that same withdrawal?
And if you can’t back up your decision with firmness instead
of backing away from it with a parsing of words, how do you expect to come up
with anyone willing to truly commit to a coalition of the willing?
If only he could act (or be) committed.
Just saying…
<<<>>>
William Mangieri’s writing (including his latest
ePublication: “Close Enough”) can be found in many places, such as:
- His Amazon Author page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B008O8CBDY
- Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/william-mangieri?store=book&keyword=william+mangieri
- Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/NoTimeToThink
- Createspace: https://www.createspace.com/pub/simplesitesearch.search.do?sitesearch_query=william+mangieri&sitesearch_type=STORE
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