By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy
Here’s an idea to reaffirm your personal leadership style. Reading time: 4:16
Wearing only his pajamas and a bathrobe, he stood on the back of a train. In the middle of the night. In the middle of nowhere.
He waved to a couple of hundred well-wishers, saying: “I am sorry I had gone to bed. But, I thought you would like to see what I look like. Even if I didn’t have on — any clothes.”
Two months later Harry S. Truman was elected President of the United States of America.
Yes, the same self-effacing Harry S. Truman — the one-time farmer and failed businessman; the only U.S. President in the 20th Century who did not graduate from college.
Yes, the same Harry S. Truman who grew up a “bespectacled momma’s boy,” and a “sissy who would always run from fights” according to newspaper accounts.
However, Harry S. Truman put up a heck of a fight as a presidential candidate. He defied the pundits and taught all of us a lesson in leadership.
Be Yourself
Just check the record books. Truman was five points down in the polls just before election day. And just three weeks before his election, the top 50 reporters covering the presidential race voted AGAINST Truman.
So how did this plain-spoken Missourian pull off the most famous political upset in U.S. presidential campaign history? By being himself.
