Leadership, according to journalist Chris Satullo, "can be boiled down to six Yoda-esque, pithy statements."
Satullo, longtime columnist and former editorial page editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, spoke to a group of about a dozen students and faculty yesterday over dinner as part of the Fox Leadership Speakers Forum.
He began the intimate presentation by listing these six key points that define great leadership.
First, "if you want to lead, you must learn to listen - to friends and enemies alike," he said.
Second, "you must absolutely be about the work, not about the power, the perks or the long-term benefits. You must commit."
Third, "you have to devote more energy to praising the people who work for you than criticizing them," a rule, he said, leaders often forget in trying to get the job done.
Fourth, "when you screw up, admit it." Moreover, as rule five dictates, "learn to celebrate good failures. Learn from good failures." He cited the mid-'90s Inquirer editorial project "Common Ground" as an example of something that failed but taught him how to do better next time, which he applied to the recent "Great Expectations" project.
Finally, "don't spend too much energy specializing. Be omnivorously curious. Learn everything you can and about as much as you can," he said, mentioning that his own experiences as a French and English major has left him "totally unprepared for the shrinking '70s job market."
He proceeded to tell several more anecdotes illustrating these points as they applied to his own career, including a time when the editorial page he was heading accidentally printed a hoax story. He took full responsibility for the error despite the fact that several other editors had signed off on it because "when you take the head job, you agree to take the hit. You never throw the people who work for you under the bus."
His advice to aspiring journalists is to "embrace the liberal-arts education. Learn to reason and feed your creativity. Don't narrow your focus too soon, and in the job search, leave room for serendipity."
He said that we are "in the midst of a technological watershed, [which is] as big a change as Gutenberg's invention of the printing press. This generation of journalists will define the future of the field."
College freshman Angela Poe enjoyed the presentation because of its fairness: "He wasn't biased toward any particular newspaper or even any type of journalism. His was an engaging speaker with advice relevant to people our age."
Chuck Brutsche, associate director of the Fox Leadership Program, said, "We invited him because he's a leader in his field and has a lot to say about the importance of civic engagement. He had tremendous insight, and I especially liked his discussion about electronic journalism, the Internet age and where we're headed."
