Continuing the Discussion of Leadership: The Little Dutch Boy on the City Council

In my last blog, The Narrowing of Leadership, I wrote about how leadership can become confined within a single way of seeing, how a frame, once set, begins to limit what is noticed and what is allowed to be questioned.

I suggest that Rocky Mount’s City Council shows evidence of this tendency, and this needs to be addressed as part of our ‘troubles.’

There is the old notion that you are what you eat. I have come to believe you are what you read, because reading expands both place and time. Because I read I now have an imaginary salon filled with those I have encountered on the page.

Here are the men and women who have helped shape the world I’ve grown up in. I join them as I please. John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen have recently joined this distinguished group.

They both interest me because of their thinking. Their influence was not confined to decisions. but created the frame through which decisions were made.

Leadership is under a microscope in Rocky Mount, NC. I have been writing about what good leadership is. Reading The Brothers, has helped me to understand ‘more better’ how once a frame becomes settled, it no longer invites inquiry.

On the City Council we have heard more than once, “How dare you question.”

One of the defining ideas of my life has been that to whom much is given, much is expected. Many of our American leaders were formed under that expectation. The standard was not optional. It was assumed. We are paying the cost for the loss of this admonition.

The recent State Audit names the City Council for a lack of leadership and oversight. That is not a small matter. It speaks to whether the habit of questioning, of testing what is in front of us, is still possible.

Do you remember the story of the little Dutch boy, the child who placed his finger in the hole of a dike and held back the sea? The story endures because it speaks to responsibility. Someone noticed something small, and stayed when it mattered most.

Today, the atmosphere surrounding the Council feels less like a place of inquiry and more like a waiting room, where families sit hoping for good news. When every issue is approached through a single, settled lens, what should be examined is instead managed. What should be questioned is allowed to pass.

The little Dutch boy reminds us that leadership is sometimes as simple, and as difficult, as recognizing the moment when something must be held in place, a moment when something must be questioned before it becomes fixed.

When I count votes on the city council today I keep coming up with 5-2. How about using this majority to change the framework decisions are being made through. How about that vote count changing the way Rocky Mount does business. Try it, I know the voter would like that.