Passing the buck seems to be one of America's favorite pastimes Actually, I shouldn't pick on the US. Passing the buck is something that people seem to do generally. As you probably know, passing the buck means passing responsibility on to someone else. The phrase seems to have originated with the game of poker. In the old frontier days a knife (a buck) was placed in front of the person whose turn it was to deal. When it was your turn, and you did not wish to deal, you could simply pass the buck on to the next person. Thus, passing the buck became synonymous with passing responsibility.
If I
were to ask you to list America's greatest Presidents I would imagine
you would mention names like Lincoln, Washington, FDR and maybe
Kennedy or Reagan. One name that probably wouldn't end up on your
list is Harry Truman. And that would be rather unfortunate because
Truman is an excellent example of superb leadership. Leadership is
currently a very sexy topic and there's no shortage of books on the
subject. A lot of talk is about the attributes and character traits of leaders. But what we know now is that leadership isn't about
characteristics, it's about behavior. Leaders do what needs to be
done. And they come in all shapes and sizes.
As we
know, Truman was a rather unassuming man from Missouri. Harry was
selected to serve as Vice President, under Franklin D. Roosevelt,
because he was totally concerned with domestic issues. The reason
being because it was generally accepted that the end of World War II was
near. With the end of the war most people assumed the nation would
return to an almost complete focus on domestic issues.
From a
1999 book, “Truman had never shown the slightest interest in
foreign affairs, knew nothing about them, and was kept in total
ignorance of them. He was still totally focused on domestic affairs
when, within a few weeks after his ascendancy, he went to the
Potsdam Conference after Germany surrendered. There he sat for a
week, with Churchill on one side and Stalin on the other, and
realized, to his horror, that foreign affairs would dominate, but
also that he knew absolutely nothing about them. He came back from
Potsdam convinced that he had to give up what he wanted to do and
instead had to concentrate on what he had
to do, that is, on foreign affairs. He immediately ... put himself into school with General Marshall and Dean
Acheson as his tutors. Within a few months he was a master of foreign
affairs and he, rather than Churchill or Stalin, created the postwar
world – with his policy of containing Communism and pushing it back
from Iran and Greece; with the Marshall Plan that rescued Western
Europe; with the decision to rebuild Japan; and finally, with the
call for worldwide economic development.”
So
what are we to learn? Most importantly, leaders don't ask, “What do
I want to do?” Rather, leaders ask, “What needs to be done?”
This is an extremely important distinction. A lot of people do only
what they want to do. That is, whatever might be comfortable or
familiar. And this is a big part of the reason why a lot of people
aren't leadership material. But the fact of the matter is, the world
needs leaders now more than ever. The world needs as many people as
possible who are willing to do whatever is necessary rather than just
what's convenient.
A
lot of great things happened in the 1960's. But one event that has
backfired was the creation of the, “Do your own thing,” mindset.
The billboard for that generation's mentality might have been Timothy
Leary's famous advice to, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Don't get
me wrong. Nobody should be required to act, in any one way, all the time.
Sometimes we do need to do our own thing. The problem is that the
pendulum has swung too far. Sometimes we also need to do what needs
to be done. That is, to face the difficult issues.
Leadership
is about people. Society is compromised of people. Society needs
leadership. A society of people all doing their own thing would fall
apart at the seams. So what I'm really saying is that leadership is
about taking responsibility. Responsibility for what needs to be
done. This had a lot to do with why Harry Truman was such an
effective President. Below is a picture of President Truman and the
sign he had on his desk. The plaque has become quite famous and
simply read, “The buck stops here!”
