Rudolph Giuliani's principles For Well and With Conviction (Essay Sample)

[Name] [Instructor's name] [Course] [Date] Introduction Rudolph Giuliani's 2002 bestseller ‘Leadership'  was written in a period of time spanning the terrorist attacks on New York City of September 11, 2001 (Giuliani, 2002, p. xxi ). After the attacks, he enclosed his pre-9/11 work with new first and last chapters describing the attacks, their aftermath, and recovery. At that time Giuliani was the mayor of New York City. In chapter eight of his book Leadership, Giuliani talks about the principle of developing and communicating strong beliefs. He explains that great leaders lead by ideas. Ideology is enormously important when running any large organization. And everyone, from the people who work for you to the media who watch from the outside know how you see the world. According to Giuliani, politicians who explain their beliefs risk failing to achieve goals stemming from their beliefs and disagreement from the voters. He favours leaders who have achieved something meaningful outside the political realms, unlike those who have been in politics for a long time and have become spin artists instead of thinkers. Young people who dive directly into leadership are at a risk of losing the ability to think critically. For any given issue, one must figure out the substance, judging it critically before deciding their position. Once someone knows where they stand it is perfectly natural for them to present their views in the most favorable case. He warns that this should be avoided, instead three critical stages should be followed. The first stage is that of developing beliefs. The second stage is that of communicating them and then taking action. In the first part of the topic, Giuliani talks about the practise of developing strong beliefs. The ideas that form the basis of leadership can develop in a number of ways. Some come from parents like his own and others from teachers, friends or even rivals. For the first eighteen years of his life he had two vocations in mind, medicine and priesthood. Both satisfied a feeling he had to serve a greater cause-helping others. His father was always trying to help people find jobs or help relatives get to hospital. Although neither of his parents were devout Christians he felt a calling to experience grace by hiving to others. All through his high school years at Bishop Laughlin in Brooklyn he would discuss religion and notions of service with any of his teachers. Before he completed school there, he signed up to join the Montfort Fathers in Bay Shore, Long Island. This was a religious order devoted to helping the most underprivileged. But then he realized he didn't have what it took to live a life of denial and give priesthood his all. So he enrolled at the Manhattan College hoping to be better prepared for celibacy after a couple of years. In college he entered pre-med program. But as much as he loved learning biology, he liked ideas better than science. At the time the only kind of doctor he thought of becoming was a surgeon but however how skillful and knowledgeable that calling was, is seemed somewhat mechanical. He turned away from medicine. Since he had started dating, vocational life was no longer for him. He began to view his love of debate as pointing toward a new calling, of law. When he first had the idea of becoming a lawyer, he thought he would become swamped with meaningless memorization and obscure statutes. Nonetheless, he took course in American history and American constitutional history. Both in college and law school, his fascination with the western civilization blossomed. He started believing in the contributions of western thinking such as political and religious freedom, democracy, right to own property, free economy all shared a common root. They had all evolved from the principal of human dignity. It made sense that a society that believed in the rights and value of individual human beings allowed democracy and freedom of expression. And that democracy had to be invented. Giuliani is reflecting back on the choices he made that directed the course of his life until that time when he became a mayor of New York City. He addresses the major lessons he learnt during his career to his readers and gives them examples of how someone invents their destiny. The purpose of the speech is to teach people how to be strong willed leaders who can and will talk from the heart rather than read written speeches when addressing the public. According to Giuliani, in his earlier chapters, the key to being a successful leader are to prepare relentlessly, surround yourself with great people, under-promise and over-deliver, and accountability. He emphasizes on accountability and states that when he was mayor he analyzed crime trends and tailored police resources depending on community statistics [Giuliani 2002, p 74.] According to Giuliani great leaders are made and not born, and one has to constantly improve on his leadership skills in order to achieve a high level of leadership. One of the key principles of leadership is speech [Giuliani 2002, p 171.] Leaders need to use speech as a tool of communicating their own...