Love Leadership and Legal Responsibility

Love Leadership and Legal Responsibility

with Joe Richardson, Esq.

www.joespeakesq.com

www.campuspeak.com/richardson

Description:

Too often, students have little grasp on their legal duties, and, neglect to use their common sense life lessons to tap into ethical duty, which makes legal duty easy to fulfill. Wanting to help campus stakeholders understand what the law expects of them, Joe provides legal expertise with a “reality flavor,” to make legal lessons both informative and interesting. In this keynote, Joe encourages individuals to recognize legal duty as a benchmark for survival and to discover moral duty as imperative to catapult our campuses, communities and societies into great and necessary success. In using examples from the law and from his life to demonstrate larger principles, Joe inspires audiences to become groundbreaking citizens in leadership and integrity

Three Key Questions:

1. What is Love?

2. Where Does Love Take You?

3. How to be Best Campus Member You Can Be?

Question 1: What is Love?

Love =Passion: Strong liking or devotion to activity, cause or concept.

Question for Thought: What are you passionate about? When did you find your passion? How does your passion show up in your daily activity?

Identifying Passion-Your passion will always showcase your special gifts, and will be something that you enjoy doing.

Thoughts on Passion

-Being passionate about something will fuel your excellence at it.

-Your greatness depends on you finding and embracing things that you are passionate about.

Personal Stories-Communication, Helping Others Through Involvement

Question 2: Where Does Love Take You?

Leadership

Question for Thought: When you think of “leadership,” what comes to mind?

“Men are governed only by serving them; the rule is without exception.” V. Cousin

Definition of Leadership: (Merriam Webster): the capacity to lead; the act or instance of leading.

The Essence of Leadership: The essence of leadership is having a special place, or role, in a group while realizing the most important role is as an active, service-oriented member of the group itself.

Note: HOW you do something is just as important as doing it.

How to Lead: Listen Objectively and Labor Consistently

A. Listen Objectively

To hear what’s going on, and understand what the needs are, leaders have to do more listening than talking. This way, they can initiate with a clear understanding of the needs of the people, groups, and interests they represent, which gives them a greater chance to be effective. Related, this is why all participants are potential leaders; simply, to take part in the activities that go on around you is what we ask of our leaders in the first place.

Amphitheater Theory

“We are all part of one garment of destiny; one inescapable web of mutuality.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Name some factors that shape what a person’s world view may be, or how they feel about a particular issue.

Has there been a time in your adult years where you felt like another person was not open to trying to understand your point of view? How did you deal with that?

Have you ever thought that anyone on the other side of a particular issue did not deserve to be listened to? How did you deal with that?

-Communication is Vital, even on “hot button” issues in your world, BECAUSE they are hot button issues.

B. Labor Consistently

Labor-Putting in work!

To be a good leader, you can’t be afraid of a little hard work! Leading by example means being a “hands-on” leader. When you’re side by side with your group, they can see themselves in you, and true leaders make people around them better.

Name a couple of leaders you have never met that you believe exhibit characteristics such as strong self-image, good listener, and seeking dialogue with others, and how:

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Name a couple of leaders in your life that exhibit these characteristics, and how:

What’s Your Goal as a Leader…is it “Put Down” or “Uplift”? Whether you know it or not, how you act in your team environment will always facilitate one or the other.

Put Down-Blame=rooted in fear.

When something goes wrong, identifying whose fault it may be should not be the primary objective for an interconnected group. Truth be told, if you live long enough, something will be “your fault” sometime or maybe even next time (if it wasn’t last time). Remember that emotional finger pointing/blaming will often naturally (offend) the object of the blame, which has the effect of breaking down instead of building up. You need to build up people that are part of your group, because you will get your chance to feel the way they may feel at the moment of blame.

Important thought: Understand that blame is rooted in fear. You blame someone to feel better about a less than ideal situation, but the problem happens when you’re interconnected with who you are blaming, as if you don’t need them. Blame would be great if it fixed a problem, but it won’t. Remember, finger-pointing to tear down and make one self feel better is emotion at work; objectively identifying a problem and a solution while recognizing mutuality is wisdom personified.

Think of some group situation, be it student, faculty, or otherwise, where someone would make a mistake that had an ascertainable cost. Talk about how blame can be passed around, and the underlying fear that can motivate the blame.

Now, identify ways you can take the same situation, knowing that you are depending on the person(s) that may have made mistakes, to objectively come up with solutions.

Uplift: Leaders Identify Themselves by Taking Responsibility for Outcomes.

Regardless of how unfair a group situation seems, if the group did not achieve the desired result, you should first consider what you could have done to produce a better outcome. If there is an answer, then that’s where the focus belongs. Working on improvement, regardless of other forces, gives you ownership of your destiny and primary responsibility for a better outcome. If everyone in the group thinks this way, things will get done!!

Recall a situation (personal or group) where you feel like you were not primarily to blame for things going awry, but took some responsibility for the outcome. (If you can’t think of one, recall one where you could have taken some responsibility but chose not to.) How did you work through it? How were you perceived for taking the stance you did?

Question 3: How to Be the Best Campus Member Possible?

Question for Thought: If you were walking down the street, and happened upon someone on the ground in obvious distress, and you weren’t responsible for putting them in that circumstance, would you have a legal duty to help them? Why/why not?

Legal Responsibility

The definition of legal is “something that is permitted by law.”

A. Applicable Laws (Federal, State, and Local Levels)

Of Significance: Laws that have to do with your existence on campus

-Federal Law (Title IX)

-Campus Accountability and Safety Act (CASA)-Didn’t Pass

-State Law

B. Anti-Hazing Statutes

-Missouri-Defines Hazing as Willful act… directed against a student or prospective member of an organization....which recklessly endangers the mental or physical health or safety,

-includes requiring someone to break the Law

Punishment: Class A Misdemeanor or Class C Felony (substantial risk to student’s life)

-Campus Must form policy

C. Rape/Sexual Assault Law:

Missouri Chapter 566: Lists sexual offenses

Can be Felonies (Class A-D), ranging from 4 years or less, to 10-30 to life;

Misdemeanors (Class A), giving One Year or Less.

-Campus Policies and Procedures

As a general statement, why is the law Important?

Do you have a “favorite law?”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Can you name a principle, or moral, given to you early on (maybe a saying or a phrase) by a family member or teacher?

Negligence Analysis

Negligence: Missouri is a Pure Comparative Fault State

Elements: Duty, Breach, Causation and Damages

Law aside, hat is your duty to yourself, your group(s)of involvement (class, fraternity, student government, leadership), your community and your world?

Comparing Legal and Ethical Duty. (Ethical Negligence)

What are some ethical duties that you have as a college community member?

-To be focused students with the goal of graduation.

-To bring a positive element to every campus involvement, be it classes, groups or activities. -To keep clear of circumstances that call your integrity into question, or could jeopardize accomplishment of the primary goal of graduation and good career prospects.

-To move the lives of those in your sphere of influence forward, and not backward.

Legal Duty vs. Ethical Duty

Assume that an individual was hazed, and legal duty may have someone that was in the room, or knew about what was going on, say “technically I didn’t do anything wrong....it wasn’t me that ‘did it;’ it was my bros or my sorority sisters. In fact, I wasn’t even there so I’m not responsible.” If that person was operating based on ethical duty, what might they do?

In a sexual assault situation, legal duty may have you claim there was no sexual assault at all because consent was supposedly clear, (even if your head may not have been so clear after a few beers).

What would ethical duty have one do?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________However, ethical duty says you will do all you can to approach sexual situations responsibility, including being intimate with someone you truly care about, and confirming consent and avoiding ‘gray area’ situations through eliminating the influence of alcohol.

How can ethical duty figure into a student’s studies?

How can wanting to “belong” collide with ethical duty?

Question: State something you like about your best friend, treasured family member, or mentor.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Is this more of a “legal point” or an “ethical point?” _____________________________________

Related Thought: If “above and beyond” is a key feature of people that you love and admire, it should also be the goal for your standard of conduct on a day to day basis.

Finally, What Now?

1. Love-Love what you do more than you fear the responsibility related to it.

(It helps get emotions and egos out of the way)

2. Leadership-Do the listening and laboring necessary.

3. Responsibility-Do What’s Right (Going Above and Beyond)

Related Thought: Your individual decisions will encourage the building and maintaining of ethically responsible groups, and ultimately, a like-minded campus community.

What are some short-term and long-term goals that would be helped along by the principles in this handout/presentation?

Contact information:

Joe Richardson, Esq.

www.joespeakesq.com

For bookings:

www.campuspeak.com/richardson

844.745.8570