Active Citizen

Character and Contribution in Service to Your Communities

Active Citizen invites you to explore your character as a citizen and your capacity as a leader in your organization and in your communities.

Citizens are the essence of our community – any community. Whatever the scope of your community – work, home, school, neighborhood, town, troop, church, support group, sports team – your active participation in efforts to better that community and improve life for all is an act of citizenship. Citizenship is active. Citizenship, like leadership, challenges you to extend yourself, to give rather than take, and to contribute to the world around you. Leaders contribute by engaging the enthusiasm of the many citizens of a community to participate and to serve and to act collectively. And so, in this first seminar of The Citizen Leader, I will ask you to explore the deep truths about your commitment to be an active citizen and an engaging leader in your community. These truths about your commitment will serve as a basis for your own enthusiasm to participate, and as the foundation for your capacity to engage the enthusiasm of the many other members of your community to serve, to act and to persevere to make meaningful contributions in the world around you.

Character

Each one of us is known to the people around us by what we say and what we do. We express our true character through our behaviors, our words, our choices and our actions. We build bonds with the people around us (or we build barriers) by virtue of our character. Active Citizen offers you a progression of concepts and queries to help you explore and discern the authentic content of your character. There is no judgment attached to the answers. What is important is that you be rigorous, seek honesty, and own the truth.

Equipped with your own truth, you can know if you are leading a life of personal integrity.

Equipped with your own truth, you can better approach the question, “Who am I that anyone would want to follow?”

Equipped with your own truth, you can decide on your priorities for change, and commit yourself to fine-tune, adjust and shape the ways you express yourself so that your words and your actions are entirely consistent with who you are or who you strive to be as a human being, as a citizen and as a leader.

Contribution

Finally, equipped with your own truth, you can turn your energies to being an active citizen – to actively participating in or leading efforts that better your community and improve life for all.