Character: the Essence of Leadership

1. Why is character the center pole of the leadership tent? Give an example of a leader in your life who has demonstrated character and how that affected you.

Character is the center pole of the leadership tent because character is the essence of leadership. Without character, a leader has absolutely no chance of being effective. To me, character is consistency of action in ethics, honesty, and integrity to the point where it is internalized to the very core of the person. An example of a leader in my life who demonstrated Character is President Squires, my Mission President.

2. Share one or two things from the lesson that impacted you personally.  Why? How will you apply it to your life?

I was personally impacted by three principles/insights from last Monday's lesson:

1) It is never too late to be what you might have been: I greatly appreciated being reminded of this principle. I think it is far to easy to get down on yourself and regret about your current deficiencies and past mistakes. I think I find myself doing this occasionally. This time regretting is pure waste, thinking of this principle can motivate one to 

2) Challenge your stories: I loved the challenge to do this. I believe a good leader is always willing to challenge his own paradigms and incorporate the ideas and perspectives of others. I think that this is one of the things that I need to improve on.

3) Take action today: I had a similar experience as the young women who deleted all of here pirated music. I think it's easy to put of little things that dent your character until later--they are important but not necessarily urgent. However, as long as there are dents in your character, you are not as an effective leader as you could be.