The Global Contrarian – Blog 3

Leaders Behaving Badly – Part 1

The first in a series of two blogs about why global leaders fall down and how they can stand up again

 

Barely a week goes by without news of some prominent leader somewhere in the world getting caught behaving badly and having to pay a hefty price for his – most sinners are male – transgression.

In the last month alone, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has gone from the hero of ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel to the target of mass protests after an unprecedented power grab at home; the prestigious British Broadcasting Corporation fired its director general George Entwistle in the wake of a series of uncharacteristic reporting scandals; widely respected US Army general David Petraeus resigned after revelations of an extramarital affair; and even the world’s most popular sport has had to deal with the fallout from openly racist behavior of star players in England and brazen cheating by highly paid forwards throughout Europe.

In this first blog of a two-part series, we will explore what makes these leaders and others at the pinnacle of their careers abuse their power and risk their reputation and why it seems that more and more of them are getting found out.

The second blog will delve into what these and other tainted leaders can do to stand up again once they have fallen and more importantly,what current and future leaders can do to stay on the high road and avoid this kind of irresponsible behavior altogether. 

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The Global Contrarian – Blog 2

The Third Narrative

A crucial leadership challenge after the US Presidential Election  

So far, there have been two main storylines emanating from US President Barack Obama’s surprisingly comfortable re-election on November 6.

The first is that President Obama won not so much because of his policies but because of organization and demographics, with his highly functioning “ground game” galvanizing a broad coalition of “diverse” Americans to come out to vote for their multicultural leader. 

The second is that the Republicans failed to recognize and embrace this social and demographic change and must now revamp their party’s focus and platform to be able to come back in from the electoral wilderness in two years time.

But there is a third narrative that has not been explored so much as yet and it relates to this blogger’s personal diversity journey.

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The Global Contrarian – Blog 1

Leadership Lessons from the US Presidential Debates

The three recent US presidential debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were each watched by about 60 million people in the USA and many more millions on TV and the web around the world.

They may not have decided the eventual outcome of the closely fought election on November 6 but they have given us some invaluable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of both contenders as a future global leader.

The media pundits have already ripped each candidate to shreds for all their supposed missteps and mistakes. So this column will take an even-handed look at what both men did right:

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