Character: Life Lessons in Courage, Integrity, and Leadership
Robert L. Dilenschneider
Citadel Press/Kensington Publishing Group (March 2025)

“An ideal world would be one in which everyone gets to be all they can be.” Mitzi Perdue

That’s Mitzi Perdue’s answer to a question she frequently asks others: “What is your vision of an ideal world?” Answers vary, of course, and some are much more self-centered than others. I like hers because her emphasis is on fulfillment rather than aspiration.

Character is what people are and their behavior is what they do (including what we say). I also realized long ago that what people do not say and do not do also helps to indicate who they are.  In his classic work Divine Comedy, Dante reserves the last and worst ring in Hell for those who, in a moral crisis, preserve their neutrality.

Robert Dilenschneider shares lessons to be learned from exemplars in one or more dimensions of character: Leadership (e.g. Mother Teresa), Innovation (e.g. Walt Disney), Resilience (e.g. Susan B. Anthony and Emmeline Pankhurst),  Breaking Barriers (e.g. Bill Russell), Courage (e.g. Arthur Ashe), Loyalty (e.g. Eleanor Roosevelt), Integrity (e.g. Margaret Thatcher), Transparency (e.g. Jimmy Stewart), and Transcendence (e.g. S.P. Hinduja). You will recognize most of those he discusses.

FYI, my own list would include many of them as well as (in alpha order) Abigail Adams, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jim Henson, John Lewis, Dolly Parton, Fred Rogers, Jonas Salk, Fulton Sheen, and Roger Staubach. Who would be on your list?

Dilenschneider shares lessons to be learned from those who have done — and in most instances continue to do — so much to help others to be all they can be. They are best viewed as role models for one or more of the aforementioned dimensions of character. The remarks that follow indicate why he wrote this book:

“By studying these stories, and then delving deeper into the lives of these exemplars, I hope you’ll find both hope and a blueprint of what character is and can achieve, and how to recognize and cultivate character in future leaders, including yourselves.

“In some ways, our more complicated problems demand even stronger character and moral leadership and innovation and integrity than what is displayed by the people profiled in this book. Where is it going to come from? Hopefully, from you and those whose lives you guide and touch.”

However different they may be in most respects, all organizations need character-driven leadership at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise. So do families and communities, and even countries.

Character or lack thereof is contagious, for better or worse.

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Robert Dilenschneider’s other published works include The Ultimate Guide to Power and Influence (2023), Decisions (2019), 50! (2015),  and Power and Influence: The Rules Have Changed (2007).