This week’s Pearl of Leadership Wisdom is on….

Principles

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” – Dwight Eisenhower

Leaders have high principles. They use these principles as rules or standards that act as a basis for their reasoning and their conduct. Followers see this, and if they judge the principles to be fair, the leader has legitimacy.

But the leader faces constant demands to compromise these principles.

All aboard…

Ronnie Biggs is let out of jail on compassionate grounds. “Why should we show compassion to him, he never showed any remorse” chorus the appalled.

Say “cheese”…

CCTV cameras on every street corner. “Well if you do nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to worry about” trill the righteous.

Ticking bomb…

Extraordinary rendition? “We’re only trying to save lives” justify those who out-source torture in our name.

The thing about our principles…

…is that they are ours.

It’s not about the other guy.

Ronnie Biggs failed to show remorse. So are we are going to let his failing compromise our principle of compassion. Are we so easily corrupted by such a little man?

Big Brother…

There’s a massive CCTV camera just installed in the park where I take my children. It’s right by the children’s play area. I am sure there are noble reasons for this installation but I will bet money that within a year there’s a story in the local paper about how this camera identified and led to the prosecution of the owner of an illegally poo-ing dog. So my children play in the shadow of Big Brother (and worse – grow up thinking this is normal) and the benefit is less petty crime…maybe. That’s a crap deal.

They died for us…

Torturing people abroad is not only unprincipled, it’s anti-principle. And most people don’t give a damn because the suspects involved are bad guys. So do we allow these bad guys to make us bad guys too by riding roughshod over the principles that our antecedents died to establish for our benefit?

It’s not always easy…

…to do the right thing, when the mob desires vengeance and retribution. But vengeance and retribution are not principles.

We have principles because we believe they are better than an endless stream of knee-jerk reactions to events. Our principles are precious. Let’s uphold them.