Leslie H. Wexner. Tomorrow 2008

I'd like to be brief and probably just looking at the audience to demonstrate some leadership skills. One, it's very important to listen, so I had the pleasure of listening to Professor Drawer yesterday and today, and I have to say that I agree with his propositions and I agree with his thinking. I wish I had been a full-time student of his. The second thing in terms of demonstrating what leaders do is they're influenced by mentors, role models, people whose paths they crossed, and so I take this opportunity to recognize three of mine. One was Rabbi Herb Friedman who passed away recently. Second was Max Fisher, an American philanthropist and community leader, and third, Aubry Abe. All of them should have been here because all of them were important in the creation and the founding of the State of Israel, and all of them contributed significantly to Jewish life. Also, in terms of techniques of leadership, one of the things I've learned, and I just shared three simple ones with you, it's a longer list, is one, very important for the leader to be here now, be in the present and recognize the situation. And so I couple that with listening and learning, so I'd ask all of you to be here now, kind of pay attention, not to think about your cell phones or your dates tonight or your dinner plans or whatever, but focus on the subject of this meeting. Secondly, listen for understanding, not judgment. I would expect everybody here is quite capable of having judgments, but it's very hard to listen for understanding and meaning and then subsequently get to judgment. And for all of us, assume that we have positive intent; our motives aren't selfish, we're trying to learn from each other and share those learnings with you. To the subject: grooming of future leadership in Israel and of the Jewish people. Three things: what is leadership, why Jewish leadership, and how to think about it, maybe what we should do. First, leadership is very complex. I'd like you to think about it not as a subject or in a continuum, but think about it on multiple axes and in depth. It's a cube, maybe, and maybe that isn't, it doesn't even describe the complexity. Let me go through this. Very often we talk about leaders that are successful, that makes them good leaders, but that success has to be judged over time. Many leaders appear to be successful, and both they and their followers have vertigo; that is, they simply haven't had enough time to judge the value of their ideas. And I think leaders are sensitive to their own judgment, their own vertigo, and they recognize that their success is measured over time; history is the best judge. History, leaders debate, they discuss, and even then there's a paradox between the leader who's the negotiator, the conciliator that can bring people together, and the leader who's stubborn, determined, passionate about his or her point of view and doesn't let go of it. And leadership, when we're just trying to open up your mind, is leadership we often think about as personal, but very often it's collective. In a negative example, when we think about Adolf Hitler as a leader, we've had one frame of reference; when we think about the Nazi Party and Nazism, we think about another; and yet when we think about the German people and the Holocaust, we have yet another measure of leadership, and that's collective. Leaders inevitably see beyond, whether beyond is the next minute, the next hour, the next year, or the next century. And very often, that leader if he's too far out on the continuum is a daydreamer, and so part of the leader is the balance of realism, because leaders have to be doers, they have to get things done, and they have to influence other people in their followership to get things done. And leaders take courage, and leaders have to accept that in leadership you're changing people's thinking, you're changing organizations. What Professor Dora talks to is almost political revolution, that takes enormous strength of character for leaders to say that we have a system and what got us here isn't going to get us there, and that's a collective vision of leadership. Quickly, Jewish leadership. Judaism is what connects Jews to Jewishness, and the role of the Jew in the world from a leadership point of view, I think, is the catalyst for our survival, for our future, and it has to be constant reminder. The very foundation of leadership is values: good values, positive values, moral values, or they can be contemptuous, ugly values. Hitler had a strong sense of values that would be repugnant to most of civilization, but he was clear, he was firm, and direct about his values. We would hope that the model of leadership that the Jewish people presents to the world is not just, were we the cradle of civilization, we are the oldest civilization. We began the subject of ethics and values, of justice, of the Ten Commandments, of Torah, of Talmud, of democracy and freedom, and we believe in collective morality. What I would try to influence us is that it is important in a positive way to lead and have a moral compass. I believe the Jewish people invented that moral compass, as complex as it is; it has more than 360 degrees, it has more than a north and south, but it is the moral compass of humanity and civilization. And that notion that we should be a light unto the nations, 'l'or lagoim,' comes from the basis of our values, and those values are our problem and they're our pride because we impose those values first of all on ourselves, but we evangelize them, and hopefully we are enlightened to the nation holding them to the highest moral values. So those who have lesser values always pick an argument with us first, and I think our future is dependent on us recognizing those foundational values, talking about them, and recognizing that that's what separates Jewish leadership, whether it's Jewish political leadership, lay leadership, civic leadership, that is foundational to us. And how I think about the future of leadership, I think about it like medicine. Something more than 100 years, medicine began to be taught in schools; before that, it was learned from wizards, witch doctors, and anybody who wanted to be a doctor could learn it the way he or she wanted to and practice it without any standards. So the rationalization of medicine, I think, is relatively new to civilization. The rationalization of leadership is relatively new. I think there's two significant parts: one is the academic part, there has to be a curriculum of leadership. If there is no curriculum, there aren't teachable points of view, it isn't history, it isn't tested, it isn't proven, then it becomes anecdotal. And the clinical practice is about mentoring, about case study, about organizations of all sides recognizing that you learn not only from the academic perspective but from the political perspective. The difficulty in this, and I think Professor Doris speaks to it, is teaching and beginning to accept leadership. The way I would have you remember it, it's like finding eagles, finding eagle trainers, and then teaching those eagles to fly in formation. No easy task, but necessary if we are going to be a light unto the nations and if we are going to repair the world. We are in serious need of leaders.