What do you think goes into being a good leader?
I had a chance to meet lots of them yesterday. They are all sophomores in high school.
I took part in the annual Delaware County Youth Leadership Academy put on at Penn State Brandywine by the Youth Council of the Delaware County Workforce Development Board and the Foundation of the Delaware County Chamber of Commerce.
I was part of the media panel.
The idea - or at least the way I approached it - was to try to impart some life experiences that shaped who you are and helped on the journey into a leadership position.
I told them about several seminal events in my life that I believe shaped who I am and what I do for a living. I of course started with the house I grew up in and my parents, who would not for one second consider starting a day without consuming at least one or more likely several daily newspapers.
I relayed the effect of eights years under the loving - but rather firm - guidance of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for eight years at Assumption BVM School in West Grove, Pa. Yes, I can diagram a sentence like nobody's business.
But I was somewhat surprised when each of the five groups of kids who rotated into my table failed to note the significance of another seminal event in my life. None of them seemed to grasp the importance when I told them that for the first two years of my college experience, I had the high honor and distinction of attending classes at Lincoln University.
Usually, especially when I'm speaking to adults, when I offer that piece of information, I'm greeted with quizzical looks. So I asked each group of kids if they knew why some people might consider it a bit odd for me to have attended Lincoln University.
Nothing. Blank stares.
Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we're moving past old stereotypes.
But I'm thinking it's something else. I'm worried that these young people don't understand just what Lincoln is and what it stands for.
The school, just outside the little town of Oxford, Pa., where I grew up, is one of nation's oldest, most acclaimed institutions of higher learning traditionally dedicated to the education of African-American students.
Or, as it was often referred to on campus, the "Harvard of black schools."
I then asked the kids if they understood why that experience was so important to me, and why it had such an effect.
Again, I was met with silence, although this time I think they simply may have been modest.
So I asked one young person in each of these groups to look around the room and tell me what they saw.
What they saw is exactly what I saw every day growing up in Oxford, and what I am guessing they see most days in their own experiences. They see a bunch of faces that look just like mine, and theirs.
And then I told them of the experience of walking into a packed classroom at Lincoln University, looking around and realizing mine was the only fact that looked like that.
I urged them at some point to try to gain that kind of experience, either socially, in school or at work. I use the lessons I learned at Lincoln University every day, in terms of how I deal with people and how I hope people deal with me.
I told the kids I also think this country would be light years ahead of where we are, in dealing with the same social issues that have dogged us for years, if every person had at least a small taste of that kind of minority experience.
You want leadership. What I encountered at Lincoln counts.
I hope those kids took that lesson with them when they left Penn State Brandywine yesterday.
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