Near the end of a long and unusual career, it is affirming when caregivers say, "Erie, you changed my life. You discovered a strength I didn't recognize."
Today, I realized those two sentences signal very different processes. The first implies "changing" another. The second honors what was already there.
The second approach rings truest today.
Kirsten, my profoundly encouraging wife of 58 years, elicits my best. Her ability to expose my weaknesses highlights better paths.
The best aspects of parenting our children Tyler and Tia, honored their potential. Luckily, that offset some mistakes.
We are grateful rather than proud of them and the parents they became. We did not change them. We encouraged.
Good leaders, like OhioHealth's first HR Senior VP Mark Evans, mirror good parenting. He focused his team's energy on strengths rather fault-finding.
For years, I have campaigned for leadership that catalyzes positive powers. This Journal contrasted this Presidential campaign's leadership styles as a learning for all leaders.
In fact, this election taught a huge lesson I did not foresee.
President-elect Trump, the same leader who incited a mob to stop the Senate from certifying his loss, recognized that America's frustration was not a trickle but a raging river. He opened the floodgates for Americans, who were "mad as hell and wouldn't take it any more!"*
Anger's energy can be converted for good. What Trump does with the immense resource of American's frustration is far more important than winning the election.
Will he lead like President Theodore Roosevelt who saw the potential of America's natural resources and founded our national parks. Or, had he been President then, would Trump have envisioned the Grand Canyon as a real estate development?
Will he change our lives by revealing our best, like Lincoln, or incite our worst like Jefferson Davis**?
-Erie Chapman
Photo: National Park Service/M. Quinn
*Paraphrase from "Network" (1976)
**President of the Confederacy
