Leaders Include Everyone

Dignity, respect, and love are at the origins of success

Official Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt by Frank O. Salisbury, 1947 (White House Historical Association)

“It is shameful and inhuman to treat men like chattels to make money by, or to regard them merely as so much muscle or physical power.” — Pope Leo XIII, 1891

People want to be part of something bigger than themselves.

This was one of the guiding principles I used when I served as a leader for Ford Motor Company’s digital communications and social media strategy.

It’s a universal human truth. People want to feel like they’ve made a difference.

But that doesn’t happen by accident. To motivate people, to make them feel as if they matter in the process, we need leaders to acknowledge the dignity in every single person.

For millennia, humans have contributed toward the improvement of society in numerous ways — better tools and technology that have allowed us to accomplish more in every succeeding generation; thoughtful architecture that has served a functional purpose and made surroundi…