Former N.Y.C. mayor addresses leadership, terrorism
Jessica Patchett / Editor-in-chief
He’s always been a man to dart into burning buildings,
steer the meek to safety and banish opportunist thieves from
the scene. He did it on his lunch hour while working at a law
firm in Manhattan and he did it during his eight-year term as
mayor of New York City. He became a hero to many New Yorkers
long before he became famous worldwide for his courage and
leadership following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
And for all the trials he has undergone and the terrors he
has seen, Rudolph Giuliani remains hopeful, charismatic and
witty.
In the swanky voice of a mafia father, Giuliani opened an
address on leadership at a U.S. Trust luncheon in Greensboro
March 3. He had seen a showing of “The Sopranos”
at Radio City Music Hall the night before.
“I used to spend like 4,000 hours in a little room
listening to men talk that way,” Giuliani said,
referring to work that shaped his ability to raise New York
City back to life and into the safest large city in the
United States.
“Most of their conversations you couldn’t
distinguish from those of regular people. And then
you’d hear something like this,” Giuliani said.
He slipped back into his mafia voice. “Hey, I think
tomorrow night’s the night we gotta wack Rocko,
isn’t it?” Giuliani’s audience, expecting
to hear a stern speech regarding America’s war on
terror and the horrors of Sept. 11, took the bite.
Giuliani used the laughter to approach his address regarding
leadership with a well-balanced perspective that he seems to
have maintained throughout his trials.
Giuliani spent his morning discussing emergency preparedness
and leadership development with local emergency first
responders.
“Leaders are trained, whether they know it or not, by
the experiences of their lives, by the things they learn from
other people,” Giuliani said.
Giuliani shared what he learned about leadership from
tackling cancer:
“I was sitting in my office May 2000. I had a very,
very full day. I got a call from my doctor. He said he had
gotten the results from my tests back.
I said, that’s good. He said the results were
positive.
I said, that’s good. I was about to hang up and then I
said, positive to you – is negative to me. So, we
planned it all out, what we were going to do.
The next day the front page of the Daily News said
‘Mayor has cancer.’ I picked up the Post and it
said ‘Mayor has cancer.’
They don’t usually agree. Then it suddenly dawned on
me that I was the mayor and that I’d have to reevaluate
my life.”
Giuliani said the single most important thing about a leader
is the leader’s ideas, principles, values and beliefs.
In some cases, he said, those beliefs are more important than
life.
Freedom, democracy and belief in God are some of
Giuliani’s most important values.
“Before you can be a leader you have to have a sense
of what’s really important,” he says. When a
challenging situation arises, these values become key to
getting through the day.
What got Giuliani through Sept. 11? His faith in God, he
said.
“I’d pause for a second. I’d say: Dear
God, I have no idea what I just decided; I don’t know
if it’s right; but you have to make it work.”
Giuliani’s faith in the American people to have
tremendous strength to confront problems calmed him further,
he said.
“People who live in freedom will prevail over people
who live in oppression,” Giuliani said. His deep
commitment to these beliefs was the same before Sept. 11 as
it was after, he said.
Giuliani said his hero, Ronald Reagan, had a similar
dedication to principles.
“He had a very strong sense of beliefs that he
crafted. Not because of public belief, but because they were
principles,” Giuliani said.
Because Reagan believed in these values, developed them when
they were popular and unpopular, and stuck to them, he was a
model for leadership, Giuliani said.
In addition to valuing beliefs and principles, you have to
be an optimist to be a leader, Giuliani said.
“In fact,” he said, “You should be an
optimist anyway. It’s more fun.”
But to be a leader, you have to become the calmest person in
the room, Giuliani said. And then you’ll see the exit.
You’ll see the one that isn’t blocked.
“It means always thinking of the solution to the
problem.”
Giuliani’s third principle of leadership is relentless
preparation.
“You have to be prepared and you have to confront the
reality of the world that you live in.”
And in this world, teamwork is vital, Giuliani said.
“Nobody ever achieves anything substantial without a
good team.”
Finally, Giuliani stressed this characteristic of leadership
to young people especially.
“You should not want to do it unless you love
people,” Giuliani said. “In any organization you
gotta be there for people for the bad times – you gotta
support them when they make mistakes.”
One of Giuliani’s pet phrases he took from his father.
“It’s more important to go to a funeral than a
wedding,” Giuliani’s father used to tell him. At
a wedding everybody’s happy. It’s at the funeral
that people really need you, he said.
Giuliani was there for people through the bad times. Does it
hurt to talk about them?
“No, it helps me,” he said. “I’ve
learned that the talking about it helps a lot; I actually
didn’t talk about it for a long time.” For two
months after Sept. 11, Giuliani was so busy, he didn’t
have a chance to talk about it. When he finally did, he said
it gave him a sense of relief. He could move on.
Will he move on politically? A person in the crowd asked
Giuliani if she could vote for him in 2008. Giuliani left the
window open.
“I don’t know what the future holds. We’ve
gotta get through ’04 first. Then we can think about
’08.”
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