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Charles Garcia: Leaders Act With Integrity

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 11:15:47 -0400

In their personal and professional lives, great leaders demonstrate integrity at all times. When I was a college student at the U.S. Air Force Academy, we vowed to live by an honor code which states, “We will not lie, cheat, or steal nor tolerate among us anyone who does.”

As Chairman of the Cadet Wing Honor Committee my senior year, I was responsible for teaching ethics, instilling a sense of honor among the cadets, and enforcing our honor code. During my year as Honor Committee Chairman, I conducted over 250 investigations and convened 108 Honor Boards. I personally served as Chairman –which is like being an administrative judge– on 72 of those Honor Boards. Eight cadets were chosen at random to serve on juries that studied evidence and heard witness testimony in each case.

In this quasi-judicial role, I participated in the questioning of witnesses and sat in on the deliberations to ensure that the cadet jurors remained focused on the case at hand. Sixty of the 72 boards over which I presided culminated in the dismissal from the Academy of the cadets found guilty of violating the honor code.

One senior cadet who was a friend of mine had completed all his academic classes and was awaiting graduation when some friends from high school decided to visit him. As his parents drove across the country from Maine for the ceremonies, my friend partied with his buddies late into the night before deciding to take them on a midnight tour of the dorms.

The problem was, however, that civilians were not allowed in the cadet dormitories. When the rowdy bunch entered the dormitory, they were stopped by an underclassman in charge of dormitory security who challenged their right to enter. The graduating cadet pulled out his identification card and lied, saying the visitors were also cadets. With the graduating cadet’s assurance that they were all authorized visitors, the underclassman allowed them access but decided to report the incident after the long hair of the civilian visitors attracted his attention.

The graduating cadet had committed an Honor Code violation by lying to the underclassman. An Honor Board was convened and my friend was kicked out, and not allowed to become an officer in our nation’s armed forces. He earned his academic degree, but never fulfilled his dream of becoming a combat Air Force fighter pilot.

An example of the difficult struggle to maintain integrity in the face of overwhelming pressure is that of retired Admiral Charles “Chuck” Larson, a former Eagle Scout and U.S. Naval Academy graduate.

One of his first challenges came early in his Navy career after Larson was assigned as training officer. His squad was preparing for a major inspection, and a superior officer discovered that the squad had not completed some of the required training.

“He called me in and asked me to fake the training records and make it look like we’d had all these lectures. I refused to do it,” Larson said. “I told him that I would put a good training program together and I would guarantee we would execute it, but I wasn’t going to fake stuff we didn’t do. I told him that if he wanted someone to do that then he’d better assign someone else as training officer. He backed down. Yes, we took hits on the inspection, but then we put in a good training program. I learned that if you compromise on the little things when you’re a junior, it’s murder to stand up for the big things when you’re a senior.”

It wasn’t long after the training incident that Larson was selected to be a military assistant to President Nixon. Again, his honesty was tested when a two-star admiral asked him to poke around the White House for certain information.

“He said there were some things they needed to know. He wanted me to snoop around in the in-baskets and find some stuff – to be their spy and bring information back to them,” said Larson. “I told him I’d always be loyal to the Navy and I’d always represent the Navy well, but I support the Commander in Chief and my loyalty is there, and if he wanted that sort of person in this position then he’d better tell the White House they selected the wrong guy and send me back to sea. He backed down and I was never asked to do anything like that again.”

His integrity intact, Larson went on to have a stellar career. He served twice as U.S. Naval Academy superintendent and also served as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, the highest ranking officer in charge of all American forces in the Asia-Pacific zone.

These two very different stories –Larson, who managed to remain true to his own sense of right and wrong, and my senior cadet colleague, who was more easily swayed to forgo his principles– exemplify the harsh truth that we all will be called upon to uphold our own code of honor.

It is impossible to lead if you have no credibility with the people in your organization, and in too many organizations, integrity is just a catch-phrase. Leaders must reinforce the company’s ethical standards, and it’s not enough to just put them in an employee handbook.

The penalties for violating the rules must be enforced and punishment must be more than a verbal slap on the wrist. A true leader finds a way to exemplify the principles of honesty at all times and gets others to follow these same tenets, regardless of the consequences.

Pete Dawkins' Lesson: Great Leaders Have a Laser-Like Focus on their People

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 12:23:56 -0400

Pete Dawkins has amassed one of the most impressive lists of leadership credentials I have ever seen.

From the time he was a young boy, Dawkins was determined to be a winner. When he was eleven years old, he was diagnosed with polio — a disease that often left its victims paralyzed. In the 1940’s and 50’s, before Jonas Salk introduced his lifesaving polio vaccine in 1955, the highly contagious and occasionally fatal disease raged across the United States in frighteningly epidemic proportions.

Determined to survive, Dawkins underwent months of grueling physical therapy to regain use of his limbs, eventually beating the disease. From that victorious moment onward, Dawkins was unstoppable in his pursuit of personal excellence, rising to meet one extraordinary challenge after another.

After defeating polio, Dawkins won a scholarship to Cranbrook Kingswood School, a prestigious private school outside Detroit. He excelled academically and also on the playing field as both captain of the baseball team and one of the league’s leading quarterbacks.

Dawkins turned down the chance to attend Yale University, opting instead for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. There, he played halfback and was captain of the football team, assistant captain of the hockey team, brigade commander, class president, and was in the top five percent of his class academically.

His achievements were so outstanding and his future held such immense promise that he was profiled in Life Magazine and Readers Digest.

In 1958, Dawkins won two of college football’s most prestigious awards – the Heisman Trophy and the Maxwell Award – putting him in the same company as gridiron greats like Tony Dorsett, Marcus Allen, Vinnie Testaverde, Roger Staubach and Paul Hornung.

Upon graduating with honors from West Point, he attended Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. After earning a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford, Dawkins completed Infantry School and Ranger School and assumed duty with the 82nd Airborne Division where he commanded a Rifle Company.

He served as senior advisor to the Vietnamese 1st Airborne Battalion in Vietnam. He won two Bronze Stars for valor, and was a battalion commander in Korea, a brigade commander at Fort Orb, and was the Division Chief of Staff in the 101st Airborne Division.

After serving twenty-four years in the Army, Dawkins retired as a Brigadier General and launched his career in the private sector with a partnership at Lehman Brothers, a global investment banking company. He then served as vice-chair of Bain and Company, a business and strategy consulting firm; CEO for Primerica, a financial services company; and CEO of Diversified Distribution Services for The Travelers Group before becoming vice chairman of Citigroup.

Throughout the process of achieving these noteworthy goals, Pete Dawkins gleaned an immense body of knowledge about what it takes to be a successful leader. But there is one simple thing he claims is the key to his leadership success: he keeps a laser-like focus on his people.

Whether he was leading an airborne company parachuting into enemy territory, a corporate board trying to widen the company’s profit margin, or a football team striving for a perfect winning record – his people always occupied the center of his attention.

“People skills are simple but essential. In any team or organization, people need to believe that their leader knows them, understands them and cares about them,” Dawkins explained. “That doesn’t mean that you’re their buddy; it doesn’t mean that you aren’t tough. I don’t think people want their leader to be their buddy – they want to respect their leader. Of course you have to have skill competence; you have to know what you’re doing. But you also have to have people competence.”

Dawkins says to have ‘people competence’ is simply to have regard for the individuals who are part of your team or organization. He knows the names of all the nearly 20 associates in his office, and he greets them warmly whenever he sees them. He knows the names of all the people who clean his offices at night.

“The folks who work closely with me, I know if they’re married, unmarried, who their kids are, if they’ve had an accident or been sick, what they do for fun,” said Dawkins. “You don’t learn those things as a mechanical checklist, you just do it naturally. In doing so, you build a reservoir of trust and regard where people understand that you care about them not just because of what they can do for you or for the organization, but because they are human beings. That is much more powerful than people seem to regard it.”

No organization is better than the people who run it. If you want to be a great leader, put people first. This lesson is so simple it’s easy to overlook.

Why is it that most managers identify their business by the product it creates or the service it provides? The fact is that you are in the people business – in the business of hiring, training, and managing people to deliver the product or service that you provide.

If the people are the engine of your success, then to be a great leader you must be in the driver’s seat with your eyes focused laser-like on the team of people around you.

Pastora San Juan Cafferty: Leaders Root Out Prejudice in Themselves and Others

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:03:26 -0400

A sure sign that a true leader is in charge is when everyone in that workplace knows they will get a fair shake.

One man who specialized in dealing out fair shakes was former U.S. Secretary of Transportation John A. Volpe. The son of Italian immigrants, Volpe had launched his own construction business before beginning his political career and being elected governor of Massachusetts in 1960. During his time as governor, Volpe signed legislation that promoted equality in education, and also expanded public housing for the poor.

In 1968 he made an unsuccessful bid for president, and in January of 1969, the winner, President Richard Nixon, appointed him to head the Department of Transportation. Later that year, Volpe chose Pastora San Juan Cafferty, a native of Cuba, as his Special Assistant.

Cafferty, an instructor at George Washington University, had been a Wall Street Fellow and a Smithsonian Research Fellow before she was selected to be a White House Fellow and Secretary Volpe’s special assistant.

Her time at the Department of Transportation (DOT) taught her a lasting lesson about how a leader fosters change.

“Volpe used to get together with his immediate deputies for lunch on Saturdays at the Coast Guard mess. The upside of that was the Coast Guard mess had the best food in town – far better than anything at the White House,” Cafferty recalled.

“And one day Volpe said that I ought to join the group for lunch on Saturdays, and I told him that I couldn’t go – they didn’t allow women in the Coast Guard mess. He said that was inappropriate, and he made them change the rule. I was the first woman to ever have access to the Coast Guard mess.”

Volpe was also appalled when he realized that all those working on the upper two floors at the DOT building were white and those working on the lower floors were predominately black.

“He called his assistant secretaries together and he told them that was unacceptable and that he wanted those floors integrated within the year. And you know what? They were integrated within the year,” Cafferty said. “He integrated that department beautifully, it was amazing. I learned a great deal about setting the right tone to change a culture.”

“Secretary Volpe taught me a great deal about leadership in the sense that the number one person has to set the agenda for change, and has to make it very clear that the markers are measurable, that there’s a timeline and that he is going to keep track of it. And once a week in Volpe’s office we went over recruitment and promotion statistics to look at diversity. I learned that if a leader said something had to be done, and then measured it and held people accountable for it, it happened, no matter how difficult it was to do. The DOT was completely segregated when he moved in – in fact, it’s hard to believe how extremely segregated the entire city was at that time.”

Cafferty became a leading scholar on race and ethnicity at the University of Chicago as well as a leader in the Latino community. She received government appointments from four U.S. presidents, an Illinois governor, and three Chicago mayors.

In 1976, at the age of 36, she was invited by Kimberly-Clark to become one of the first Latinas to ever serve on a Fortune 500 board. At the time there were only seven other women sitting on Fortune 500 boards. She later also joined the boards of Harris Financial Corporation, Integrys, Peoples Energy, and Waste Management. Cafferty also was a board member of the Chicago Regional Transportation Authority for many years and sat on non-profit boards such as the Lyric Opera of Chicago and what is now Rush University Medical Center.

It was with great sadness that I learned on April 16th, 2013 that my dear friend Pastora San Juan Cafferty died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma at the age of 72. Colleagues would describe her as fearless in the face of obstacles, and deeply devoted to the needs of others.

Cafferty experienced firsthand that great leaders recognize that talent and leadership abilities are distributed randomly. Therefore, they do not form predisposed judgments about a person based on their ethnicity, gender, religion, age or any other factor. They root out prejudice in themselves and others, and insure that there is an equal opportunity at all levels for everyone to rise to a position of leadership in their organization based on merit and character.

Charlie P. Garcia: Sheriff Donny Youngblood Deserves to Be in Jail

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 11:51:55 -0400

Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood is a disgrace to all the good men and women who wear the law enforcement uniform.

I believe he is criminally negligent, by his total failure of leadership, in the brutal deaths of Jose Lucero and David Silva.

Four Kern County, Calif. sheriff deputies went to Jose Lucero’s home on December 18, 2010, in response to repeated 911 calls from Jose claiming that a female friend was being assaulted in Lancaster.

Jose, a recovering drug addict who struggled with mental health issues, was living at the home of his elderly parents, Florencio and Lilia Lucero. Prior to that day, reports indicated he was on the road to recovery, but on that day he had relapsed.

The deputies decided to take Jose Lucero into custody for abuse of the 911 system, and his elderly parents witnessed the entire incident.

How did four deputies take down this unarmed man?

Step one, pepper spray.

Pepper spray causes intense pain, involuntary closing of the eyes, considerable tearing, as well as temporary paralysis of the larynx which causes subjects to lose their breath.

Step two, Taser guns.

The Taser X26 used by the Kern County deputies deliver a 50,000 volt charge. Compressed nitrogen propels a pair of “probes”—aluminum darts tipped with stainless steel barbs connected to the X26 by insulated wires—at a rate of over 160 feet per second. Removal of the barbed probes requires hospitalization so that a doctor can remove them with a scalpel.

The manufacturer maintains that the full 50,000 volts do not enter the victim’s body; rather, it claims the X26 only delivers a peak voltage of 1,200 volts into the body, and an average current of 2.1 milliamps for 5 seconds. As a comparison, the electric chair administers 2,450 volts at about 5 amps for 20 seconds.

When the deputies became violent, Jose hid behind his father for protection, but the police ordered Florencio Lucero to step away, making Jose an easy target for two of the deputies to shoot Jose with their Taser guns.

The impact is as powerful as it is swift. The electrical impulse from a Taser instantly overrides the victim’s central nervous system, paralyzing the muscles and rendering the target limp and helpless. Once the steel barbs are lodged on the body, the officer can deliver continued electricity by pulling the device’s trigger again. For safety reasons, most police department policies recommend no more than four jolts with a Taser.

The following video shows a dozen police officers in training being shot -- just once -- with a Taser gun during a training session. Note that the barbs did not enter their skin but pierced a vest on their back.

This training video shows the painful result of just one Taser blow, even when the victim is held in the protective grasp of two colleagues.

In November 2007, the UN Committee Against Torture released a statement saying “use of Taser X26 weapons, provoking extreme pain, constitutes a form of torture, and… in certain cases, it could also cause death.”

Jose Lucero, who was unarmed, was electrocuted with the Taser 29 times. Yes, 29 times. At 5 seconds per Taser, that is a total electrocution time of 2 minutes and 25 seconds! What kind of sick person would do that to another human being?

And if you think it couldn’t possibly get worse, step three – steel pipes.

The typical police baton is simply a steel pipe, the use of which can have lethal consequences. Like brass knuckles, it can crack your head open, break your bones, and cause permanent injury to your bodily organs.

The four deputies pummeled Jose mercilessly with their batons 33 times which, coincidentally, is the number of times Rodney King was clubbed by the L.A.P.D.

These four thugs certainly have nothing on the most heinous torturers of our times.

Jose’s horrified parents awaited the impartial results from the coroner’s office on the cause of death.

Imagine their surprise when the official cause of death was cardiac arrest following police restraint in association with methamphetamine intoxication.

But now get this. Who do you think is the Kern County Coroner?

That’s right, Sheriff – Coroner – Public Administrator Donny Youngblood. All three positions were consolidated in 1995 by the Board of Supervisors.

Coroner Youngblood decides the cause of death of the innocent victims who die while in the police custody of Sheriff Youngblood. Nice. It’s like Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde coming to life in Kern County.

And for a judge and jury, this was just too ridiculous a lie to swallow.

In November 2012, after three and a half weeks of trial and five hours of deliberation, a unanimous jury found that the County of Kern, the Kern County Sheriff's Department, Deputy Ryan Greer, Deputy Daniel Willis, Deputy Angelo Gonzalez and Deputy Jonathan Juden were liable for wrongful death, and negligent infliction of emotional distress resulting in an award of $4.5 million in total damages to Florencio and Lilia Lucero.

Sheriff/Coroner Youngblood maintains the four deputies did nothing wrong, and instead of excising this malignant tumor from the police force by filing criminal charges against these savages, he allows the cancer of police brutality to metastasize into the culture of the sheriff’s office by doing nothing.

And that’s how, through Sheriff Youngblood’s incompetence, on the night of May 7, 2013, serial killer Ryan Greer came to meet David Sal Silva, the 33-year-old father of four young girls.

Ruben Ceballos awoke around midnight to sharp cracks and piercing screams. The 19-year-old rushed to the kitchen door and saw Kern County sheriff’s deputies beating David Silva in the head as he lay still on the ground.

“I saw two sheriff’s deputies on top of this guy, just beating him,” Ceballos said. “He was screaming in pain … asking for help. He was incapable of fighting back — he was outnumbered, on the ground. They just beat him up.”

And then there’s 34-year-old Salina Quair who was just leaving the Kern Medical Center, and saw David die. It turns out that David had sought help at the medical center, but a security guard asked him to leave. David barely made it across the street before passing out.

Ironically, Salina called the police on the police.

In the chilling 911 call she said, "There's a man laying on the floor and your police officers beat the sh** out of him and killed him," said Salina. "I have it all on video camera."

She continued shouting into the phone:

"I am sitting here on the corner of Flower and Palm right now and you have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight Sheriffs. The guy was laying on the floor and eight Sheriff's ran up and started beating him up with sticks. The man is dead laying right here, right now."

My favorite witness is Jason Land who was so upset he told his story to a local news station saying the police acted like “animals” when they brutally beat David to death right in front of him. A few hours later, police arrested him and charged him with being on PCP. Jason said this was completely untrue, and the deputies tried to coerce him to change his story.

Other witnesses said the first deputy to arrive found David passed out on the ground and gave him a knuckle rub on the chest, ordering him to wake up. David got up on his knees, but being intoxicated he passed out again. Not following police orders somehow became “resisting arrest” and the deputy called for backup.

The backup to help him with this passed out unresponsive man was a K-9 German Shepherd police dog released from his car in the attack mode that ferociously sunk his sharp teeth into David’s flesh, who was only wearing a t-shirt, shorts and sneakers.

The autopsy revealed deep bites on his legs, arms, hands and torso. Even for days after the attack you could see David’s blood all over the ground.

This unprovoked attack by a vicious animal finally did awake David because he began to fight for his life by trying to choke the dog before it killed him. And that’s when the eight other officers arrived to savagely kick him and beat him over the face, head, neck and body with their bone crushing steel batons.

Silva's uncle described what he saw after seeing his nephew's body at the coroner's office. "Bruised up face, chin, ear, busted lip, broken nose, black eye, all marks all over his face," he explained.

The cover up began immediately after the crime.

At 2 a.m. deputies began knocking on witnesses’ doors, detaining them for hours and demanding they turn over the footage on their cellphones. Is anyone really surprised that the most incriminating videos are missing from the mobile phones when they were finally returned?

Sheriff Youngblood maintains Silva's "arrest" was handled in accordance with department policy. Coroner Youngblood declared David Silva's death as "accidental" with the official cause of death listed as "cardiac hypertension."

These absurd conclusions are no more believable then those made when Jose Lucero was tortured to death.

Sheriff Donny Youngblood should be fired immediately and criminally prosecuted.

Charlie Garcia: The Balance of Leadership

Wed, 29 May 2013 08:49:39 -0400

When her telephone rang at 6 a.m. on that bitterly cold January morning in 1973, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin knew exactly who would be on the other end of the line. Since leaving the White House for his Texas ranch, former president Lyndon Johnson often roused her for an early morning chat. His dependence on Goodwin’s assistance with his memoirs had deepened, and over the years the young woman had become his trusted confidante.

Goodwin worked directly for LBJ as one of the first women selected as a White House Fellow in 1967, and her 1976 New York Times best-seller, “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream,” launched her career as a world-renowned presidential historian.

“He was speaking very softly when he called that morning, and he sounded incredibly sad,” Goodwin recalled. “He had read Sandburg’s biography on President Lincoln, which made him think about how he was going to be remembered, and he was afraid that ordinary people in the future would forget him. I tried to cheer him up by promising to put a question about him on every exam I gave at Harvard for the duration of my teaching career, so everyone would remember him. Well, he kind of cut me off abruptly, which was odd, and demanded that I listen to what he was telling me. He told me to get married, have children, and spend time with them. He talked about how he should have spent more time with his family, because that’s a different and more worthy kind of posterity than the public one that he had been seeking throughout his entire political career. That would be our last conversation, because he died of a heart attack two days later – but what a wonderful thing to leave me with.”

Years later, Goodwin had the opportunity to put Lyndon Johnson’s words of wisdom into practice when she was under consideration for head of the Peace Corps during President Jimmy Carter’s administration. Since his death, she had followed LBJ’s advice and had gotten married and had children, and at the time she was also writing a book about the Kennedys. “I’m not sure I would have gotten that job anyway, but there was no way that I could have taken it,” Goodwin explained. “I had a family – two young children – and that job would have eliminated any possibility of balance because I would have been traveling all the time. So I did not try for it. Lyndon Johnson’s advice also helped me not just in that moment, but later on when I decided to take a longer time to write these books so I could be home with the kids. I decided that it didn’t matter to the world if the books came out in five years versus ten years, but I like to believe that it mattered to the kids that I could be home when they were little and also when they came home from school. And I think seeing Lyndon Johnson so desolate in his later years did have an impact on my trying to strike a greater balance in my own life.”

Goodwin believes that, although it’s natural to think career achievement will bring happiness, those who live the richest lives manage to achieve a healthy balance of work, love, and play. “To commit yourself to just one of those spheres without the others is to leave open an older age filled with sadness, because once the work is gone you have nothing left – no hobbies, no sports,” Goodwin said. “Your family may love you, but they are not in the center of your life as they might have been had you paid attention to them all the way through. And I always argue that the ability to relax and replenish your energy is absolutely essential.”

Seven years ago, Goodwin published Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which Steven Spielberg used as the basis for his Oscar-nominated movie “Lincoln.” She recalled how Lincoln set aside his worries by attending the theatre over 100 times during the Civil War, and how Franklin Roosevelt diverted his attention from the immense burden of leading the nation through World War II by hosting a cocktail hour every evening in the White House. “The rule was that you couldn’t talk about the war. You could only gossip about people or discuss the books you’d read or the movies you’d seen, so for a few precious hours he could forget that the war was raging,” Goodwin said. “And then when Churchill would come the two of them would stay up talking, smoking and drinking until two a.m., and at one point Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor, came in to see them and said, ‘Isn’t it time for you two little boys to go to bed?’ Roosevelt also relaxed by playing poker. John F. Kennedy would go to Hyannis Port and sail and play touch football. All those men knew that there was more to life beyond the pressures they were under, and it made them more effective leaders.”

It is the remarkable mastery of this delicate balancing act that sets the stage for great leadership. The deep reserves of energy and stamina required to sustain leadership need to be replenished by balancing the relationships with the people we love, the things we are passionate about, and quiet time for reflection and spiritual nourishment. While achieving this balance is never easy, it is this tightrope over which all great leaders must carefully walk in order to reach their full potential.

Jessica Landeros: Changing the Face of Combat Leadership

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:30:13 -0400

When Jessica Landeros raised her right hand and joined the Navy at age 19 following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, she had no idea she would become a three-tour combat veteran, a wounded warrior, and a pioneer for equality.

The first American woman to serve in combat during the Second Battle of Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004, Landeros helped pave the way for the recent decision to officially allow women on the front lines in all wars beginning in 2016.

As part of a construction battalion tasked with building bases and other infrastructure in a military theater, five-foot-two, 100-pound Landeros was tapped for two stereotypically unfeminine jobs: plumber and convoy machine gunner. Embedded for months at a time in places most people only read about – often as the only Western woman among hundreds of men – she witnessed countless acts of heroism and leadership. But one day during her final deployment, Landeros herself had to step up and lead in the line of fire.

Part of Landeros’ team’s job was providing nighttime security escorts for supply vehicles and personnel throughout the perilous Al Anbar province. But one summer day in 2006, the team was assigned daytime security detail for a crew repairing a critical road damaged by bombs. Three hours into the mission, a loud explosion and a plume of black smoke erupted less than 25 meters from Landeros’ vehicle, where she was manning her turret gun.

“I jerked my head around in time to see a Hum-V tire reach its apex at 15 feet skyward,” she recalls. “Then I saw bodies writhing in the sand like fish out of water; two teammates had been hit. One of them was pulling a knee to his chin; the other was flailing as though his whole body was suffering at once. Even today I can’t drown out their screams. I felt my chest tighten as I flashed back to an earlier deployment when one of my teammates, my friend, lost his life to a mortar round. But I quickly snapped back to reality and forced myself to look away from my fallen colleagues and remember my mission: provide security for the road workers and now for the wounded and the medics who were moving them to safety. I grabbed my radio and shouted to the gunners to keep their sector of fire.”

Having successfully conducted her life "Mission First" during her previous two combat tours, Landeros understood the weight of her demeanor at this critical moment. She had recently transferred to this battalion of 625 personnel – none of whom had experience in the region. As potshots from AK-47s came in from the field, Landeros suddenly realized that the guys inside her truck had not moved since the commotion started. She looked down to find three frozen, wide-eyed men just beginning to thaw. She knew they needed to be engaged to stay safe and sane.

Landeros shook one by the shoulder and asked him to man the gun. He nodded resolutely and moved into position. Then she suggested that the second teammate help move equipment from the downed truck to their vehicle for safekeeping. He took off eagerly. She turned to the third.

“Ryan, were the guys still moving when they were hauled off?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yeah.”

“That’s good,” Landeros replied. “A moving person is a living person. They'll be OK. Hurry, make room for their equipment."

It didn't take long for the men to complete Landeros’ petty assignments, and she soon noticed that the distractions were quickly wearing off; they were slipping into the dangerous territory of their own dark thoughts. She knew from experience that it was too soon for them to let their emotions take hold. If they were going to fulfill their mission, she needed them to stay in the moment and not become numbed by grief or fear.

“So I did what any smart woman would do: I appealed to their machismo,” Landeros said. “I reminded them how scared the poor road workers were, and how we were able to handle it because we were used to this stuff. I convinced them it was our responsibility to remain calm and in control, because the workers were terrified. And it worked. You could literally see their chests swell and their focus return. That was all it took to occupy them until we made it safely back to Camp Fallujah a few hours later.”

Anyone who has been in the military will tell you that one of the first things you learn in boot camp is that the mission is everything. Without it, people are left to flounder – and ultimately to fail. However, as Landeros’ experience demonstrates, missions are more than just a set of objectives. A mission cannot be accomplished without people, and people cannot work to full capacity if they are not tasked in a way that challenges them and channels their strengths.

As a woman on the front line, Jessica is the embodiment of an extraordinarily powerful leadership trait: the ability, despite societal and historical barriers, to articulate the mission and instill in others the passion to get the job done. It is that ability to issue the challenge and set the stage for its successful completion that is the mark of a true leader – a leader like Jessica Landeros.

Nelson Mandela: Leading With Dignity

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:02:18 -0400

Recent footage of a dazed and frail-looking 94-year-old Nelson Mandela surrounded by laughing politicians in his living room was condemned on social media as an undignified public relations stunt.

South African President Jacob Zuma and his cronies were criticized for exploiting the Mandela brand as they gear up for the upcoming election. “Mandela survived 27 years in prison only to become a prisoner of the ANC marketing machine,” said one South African on Twitter.

President Zuma insists this was a sincere effort to show the world that the ailing leader is still alive.

Clearly, Mandela’s health is deteriorating. He’s been hospitalized three times in the past four months for a recurring lung infection. Each time, we hold our collective breath as we continue to reflect on his life story.

It was 1964 when Mandela disembarked on infamous Robben Island where he would spend 18 of his 27 years behind bars. Perhaps as a warning to all those that now seek to exploit his name, Mandela wrote in his autobiography that “Prison and the authorities conspire to rob each man of his dignity. In and of itself, that assured that I would survive, for any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose because I will not part with it at any price or under any pressure.”

When Mandela got off the boat, he refused to jog to the prison gate as was expected. A prison guard warned him that unless he obeyed immediately, he would be killed and his family would never know about it. He continued to walk.

Minutes later, Mandela courageously stood his ground when a prison officer he’d dared to question moved to hit him. “If you so much as lay a hand on me, I will take you to the highest court in the land, and when I finish with you, you will be as poor as a church mouse,” Mandela warned. The officer stared in astonishment and backed off.

It was while behind bars that Mandela learned his most valuable lessons in leadership. As he himself has acknowledged, prison was the crucible that shaped his character. He went in an angry, immature man convinced that the only way to free his people was through guerrilla warfare. Yet he learned that revenge through violence brought only fleeting satisfaction. By studying his jailers, Mandela discovered he had far more in common with his white countrymen then he thought. In 1990, he came out of prison with the wisdom that forgiveness, compassion, and respect were the most powerful weapons in his arsenal.

The amazing thing is, Mandela didn’t just profess these lofty ideals – he embodied them, leading by quiet example even in the most commonplace of circumstances. Rutgers Professor Ron Quincy witnessed Mandela’s leadership skills in action while spending time at Mandela’s side as the executive director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

In 1993, the King Center undertook a project working with a group of American students and their South African counterparts to help train 50,000 South Africans in the upcoming election process.

“We hosted Nelson Mandela at the King Center in Atlanta as part of this effort and then I had the privilege of flying back with him to Johannesburg,” recalled Quincy.

At one point during the 18-hour South African Airways flight, Mandela and Quincy were conversing in the aisle when a male flight attendant demanded that Mandela sit down so dinner could be served.

“I was shocked. The white male attendant shouted at Mandela in a loud, rude, and disrespectful manner. I was hardly able to restrain my own anger because I’m a part of this humiliation,” recalled Quincy, who decided to hold his tongue, opening the door for a powerful lesson in leadership.

“Mandela then turns and points to me and says, ‘Actually sir, I’m with him,’ shifting the blame to me as if I was the culprit, the important American. He said it jokingly in a mischievous way, grinning with a wink of the eye, completely disarming the situation and returning to his seat.”

Quincy watched as this man of enormous international stature chose to sit down quietly.

Mandela later told Quincy that when he was active in the African National Congress as a young man, he “learned that the leaders who last are those who understand that every battle is not the end of the war. That little incident was not the war. It was not even important, absolutely of no consequence.”

Mandela cautioned Quincy to “never take your condition so seriously that it impedes you from accomplishing your personal mission, which, in my case, is a free democratic election in South Africa.”

Less than a year later, Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first democratically elected black president, his landslide victory a glowing testament to his courage and perseverance.

Effective leaders display the brand of confident humility, dignity and courage under pressure that Mandela exemplifies. They demonstrate a relentless focus on executing their mission, refusing to be distracted by the petty jealousies, insecurities, and prejudices of those around them.

What last month’s public relations stunt demonstrated is that despite his obvious fragility and old age, politicians still want to bask in the radiant glow of Nelson Mandela’s character. If only his powerful dignity could seep into their souls.

Words Can Be Powerful Weapons

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 13:29:03 -0400

The terms "illegal immigrant" and “illegals” were first used in 1939 as slurs by the British toward Jews who were fleeing the Nazis and entering Palestine without authorization. Today, the racially charged terms are regularly leveled at people who reside in the United States without authorization, particularly Hispanics. What’s worse, their use has been officially sanctioned.

Since 2004, the Associated Press has directed journalists to use "illegal immigrant" and other combinations of the word “illegal” when referring to people in this group. Most of the national media follow the Associated Press Stylebook, which is the industry bible for the appropriate use of language, and consequently the majority of U.S. media outlets refer to undocumented immigrants as “illegals.” University of Memphis journalism professor Thomas Hrach conducted a study of 122,000 news stories published between 2000 and 2010. He found that 89 percent of the time journalists used the terms "illegal, illegal immigrant or illegal alien."

But after much criticism and pressure from the Latino community, AP Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll announced on Tuesday that AP is changing its stylebook and calling on media outlets to stop using the term “illegal immigrant.”

It’s too early to tell if this change will cause our current political leaders, like John McCain, Paul Ryan and Secretary Janet Napolitano to stop ardently promoting this slur, which they continue to use despite the pleas of the Latino community.

Far too many journalists and commentators chalk these pleas up as another example of political correctness run amok, despite strong arguments to the contrary. New York Times editorial writer Lawrence Downes, for instance, says the term "illegal" is often "a code word for racial and ethnic hatred.“

Linguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff has also warned journalists that language is not neutral. Lakoff explains that, if you study the way the brain processes language, “every word is defined with respect to frames”. Each frame triggers ideas and emotions that subconsciously lead you to certain choices. When the brain hears and reads “illegals” and “illegal aliens” over and over again, these hate words spread subconsciously, triggering fear and resentment that America is a dangerous place under attack by hordes of invading aliens.

Why does any of this matter? Because words can be loaded guns.

In May 2011, Juan Varela was in his front yard in Phoenix when he was shot by his white neighbor, who was yelling "Go back to Mexico or die!" Juan was a fifth-generation American.

In May 2010, in the Arizona border town of Avivaca, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father Raul were gunned down in their house by a Minuteman vigilante group. The group first killed her father. Then, as the little girl begged “Please don’t shoot me,” her head was blown off at point blank range in front of her mother, who survived the attack. Both father and child were natural-born U.S. citizens.

In November 2008, in Long Island, N.Y., seven white teenagers admitted to the perverse sport of “beaner hopping.” One of their victims was Marcelo Lucero, who was waiting for a train around midnight. They terrorized him with racial slurs, and then beat and stabbed him to death. Marcelo was a church-going Ecuadoran foreign national who worked at a local dry cleaner to help feed his family.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg — over the past decade there has been a spike in hate crimes against Latinos. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Latinos in 2010 made up 66 percent of ethnically motivated violence, up from 45 percent in 2009.

Hill + Knowlton Strategies, one of the world’s leading communications firms, conducted eight focus groups in Phoenix, Charlotte, Houston and Chicago to better understand current public opinion about Latinos among Anglo-Americans. The full study will be released next Friday during Hispanicize 2013, which brings together Latino newsmakers in journalism, film, social media and marketing. One of the most disturbing findings was that nearly 80 percent of Anglo-Americans believe Hispanics are involved in criminal activity — “illegal” activity, in other words. And the public’s view of the percentage of undocumented Hispanics in the U.S. is greatly skewed — 75 percent overestimate the proportion of Latinos in the U.S. who are undocumented.

If most Anglo-Americans believe I’m an unauthorized immigrant involved in criminal activity because my last name is Garcia, then it’s clear to me that this is not simply about political correctness. Words matter.

The incessant use of the racial slur “illegals” and “illegal immigrant” is perpetuating negative sentiments of the Latino population, and putting a target on the back of innocent Hispanics.

Now, it’s up to the likes of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times to stop sitting there like the three monkeys who “see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil" and to cease using language that promotes misconceptions and hatred.

Latinos Locked Out of Fortune 1000 Boardrooms

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:16:54 -0400

Latinos are the fastest growing purchasing bloc in the United States.

The Selig Center for Economic Growth estimates that the Latino community is projected to flex its purchasing muscle to the tune of $1.5 trillion dollars by 2015, up from $1.2 trillion today. To give you an idea, if you compare the U.S. Latino purchasing of $1.5 trillion a year against worldwide gross domestic product figures you’ll realize that if Latinos were separate nation they would be the 13th largest in the world.

Consequently, big business is pulling out all stops to attract Latino consumers with multi-lingual marketing and products. Walmart told suppliers last week that it plans to double its advertising budget to over $100 million this year to localize and competitively target Latino consumers, and McDonald’s launched its new “café con leche,” which is an espresso with steamed milk.

Businesses might be spending millions of dollars developing strategies to win over the Latino market but they have failed to understand one simple fact: the key to a winning Latino-consumer strategy is including Latinos on their boards. Failure to do so is not only systemic discrimination, but bad business.

A new survey published last week by Senator Robert Menendez reveals that even though Latinos represent 16.7 percent of the U.S. population yet they are severely underrepresented on corporate boards across the United States. How bad is it? A study released in 2012 by recruiting firm Korn/Ferry found that there were 870 companies in the Fortune 1000 without a Latino on their board. According to Korn/Ferry Senior Client Partner Victor Arias, “[a]s our country climbs out of a recession, growth opportunities and financial success should absolutely include tapping into the Hispanic market. Companies that overlook having Latinos on their boards risk missing those opportunities.”

An article published by the National Association of Corporate Directors, “Tapping Into the Growing Hispanic Market,” states that companies "ought to have people on their boards who understand how Hispanics think, how they live, how they work, what they value, what they trust, what they don’t trust.”

The inclusion of Latino leadership on corporate boards will result in better insight into cultural differences, community members’ likes and dislikes and important considerations that are most likely lost when Latinos do not have a place at the conference room table.

For six years I sat on the Board of Directors of Winn-Dixie Stores, a Fortune 500 supermarket in the southeast, with 20 percent of its stores in Hispanic neighborhoods. I witnessed how a Hispanic perspective in the boardroom is critical and can go right to the company’s bottom line. Richard Rivera, the former president of Darden Restaurants, and I were both on the board and we worked closely with its members, the CEO and the management team to assist them to become the supermarket of choice for the Hispanic consumers. Our Hispanic clustered stores consistently outperformed other stores by sales/per square foot, and other metrics we regularly measured.

The arguments were purely factual. Our initial data showed that Hispanics spend $133 a week on groceries, compared with $92.50 by other shoppers — an impressive $40.50 difference. And we found that Hispanic shoppers made almost twice as many trips to the grocery store as non-Hispanic shoppers. Over the course of a year, that $40 difference between the weekly grocery expenditures of Hispanics and non-Hispanics adds up to $2,106.

In a business with thin margins, this represents a considerable financial upside, which easily justified our reallocation of corporate budgets and resources to more effectively pursue the Hispanic shopping dollar. These facts repeat themselves across industries.

Additionally, Latino consumers want to be represented on the boards and leadership teams of the companies that they are supporting. According to the Garcia Trujillo Hispanic Consumer Insight Survey: Latinos’ Emotional Connection with Companies and Brands, conducted by Newlink Research in 2011, over 64 percent of the consumers interviewed indicated that it is “very important to them” that companies include Latinos on their boards of directors, while more than 62 percent of those interviewed stated that it was “very important” to them to ensure that U.S. companies employ Latinos in management positions. Finally, 66.7 percent of those surveyed said that they would be more inclined to buy products from companies that demonstrate a commitment to the Latino community.

Corporate commitment can be shown in a variety of ways. First, companies should include Latinos on corporate boards and in leadership positions throughout the organization. Second, companies should use culturally appropriate marketing strategies, and conduct community-targeted outreach and engage in charitable giving that benefits the Latino community.

Businesses only stand to win. A number of studies have found that inclusion of diverse board members resulted in positive gains for companies, including higher Dow Jones and NASDAQ returns, stock market gains and improved financial success .

If Fortune 1000 companies hope to reap real and sustained rewards from the Latino consumer base, then they need to reverse their shortsighted practice of systemically locking out Latinos from their boardrooms.

Why Great Leaders Compromise

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 11:49:57 -0500

A leader needs to learn the art of compromise. As former President Gerald Ford once said, “Compromise is the oil that makes governments go.”

Retired Judge Nelson Diaz learned that effective leaders also know that compromise and loyalty go hand in hand. A White House Fellow during the Carter administration, Diaz was only the second person of Puerto Rican ancestry to ever work for the White House, and his principal was Vice President Walter Mondale.

Diaz had worked as an activist on economic development issues for poor minority communities in Philadelphia before his fellowship. He recalled that one day, he and Mondale were flying to Los Angeles on Air Force Two to plan a birthday party for President Carter when they heard a surprising announcement: The President had just signed an arms sale agreement with Saudi Arabia.

Mondale did not know Carter was going to consent to such a deal, and he knew it would be extremely unpopular with the Jewish community, of which Mondale was a strong supporter.

“The Vice President had a choice to either turn the plane around or to continue on the trip,” Diaz said. “Mondale consulted with Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan, who was also on the plane, and we decided not to plan the birthday party but rather to proceed to Los Angeles to meet with Jewish leaders.

"When we got there the leaders were somewhat somber, but the vice president explained the genesis of President Carter’s decision to them and asked how we could be more responsive to their concerns. He never gave a hint that he had no idea the deal was going to happen. He made something positive come out of it. I witnessed his loyalty to the President and his ability to compromise. Having been an activist on the streets I hadn’t learned much about that, but on that trip I learned that sometimes half a loaf is better than no loaf at all,” he said.

Diaz would convert that concept into action years later when he was tapped to be general counsel to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by then Secretary Henry Cisneros. Diaz and Cisneros met through the White House Fellows program in the 1970s. Years after finishing his Fellowship, Diaz was working as a judge to reform Philadelphia’s court system by ridding it of a seven-year backlog and making changes that resulted in savings of $100 million.

When Cisneros, who had been mayor of San Antonio, Texas, was appointed HUD secretary by President Clinton, Cisneros called on his old friend Diaz to serve as general counsel. “I didn’t want the job. I didn’t want to go work for a friend, and I turned him down three times,” Diaz admitted. “But because I trusted Henry and he trusted me, and we were both White House Fellows, I ultimately decided to go ahead and take the job. It turned out to be a very successful period.”

As General Counsel to HUD, Diaz used litigation settlements to implement Cisneros’ policies. Diaz arrived at HUD during the most litigious period in the department’s history. He resolved 23 major cases that had been pending for a decade, and hired as his deputy the lawyer who had brought more suits against HUD than anyone else.

“I wanted to demonstrate my willingness to be a listener and to develop a strong trust relationship so we could resolve all those cases,” Diaz said. “And I was very aware that I had to use the art of compromise to resolve these very contentious cases. During my time at HUD I also applied what I learned from Vice President Mondale about the need to be loyal to your principal. Compromise and loyalty do go hand in hand. I learned that you must do everything you can to directly and openly engage the individuals with whom you disagree. However, loyalty demands that once a decision is made by the leader or a consensus is reached by the management team, you need to practice the art of compromise and proceed with the final decision as if it were your own.”

Whether you’re leading a business or a non-profit organization, a committee or a board, an athletic team or a family, you must learn when to compromise and when to stand firm. Although it’s not possible to resolve every conflict through negotiation and concession, it is feasible in most cases.

The tougher decision is when not to compromise, which often puts your livelihood, your reputation, and the organization you lead at risk. While a leader must clearly stand firm on matters of integrity, if you can resolve the matter through give and take, staying loyal to your core beliefs, then find the middle ground. You’ll soon discover what Judge Diaz already knows: Compromise is the art of making everyone a winner.

Sharing a Bourbon and Branch Water with LBJ

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:50:47 -0500

For a young man, Air Force Major John Pustay had already accomplished a lot. The New Jersey native had served as a military officer in South Korea and Japan, earned a doctorate and taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Although only one military officer had made it into the first class of fifteen White House Fellows in 1965, he decided to apply to the prestigious program anyway. After a grueling selection process, he was chosen in 1966. He was assigned to work for Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

In his first month as a Fellow, Secretary Rusk sent him to the Oval Office to take notes for him at an impromptu meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and some of his most trusted foreign policy advisors. The Vietnam War was in full swing and the meeting was to discuss our response to an insurrection within South Vietnam’s leadership, and to select bombing targets in North Vietnam. Pustay recalled the small group huddled around LBJ: Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms, and General Earle Wheeler, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The young major listened intently and took notes so he could give Secretary Rusk a proper briefing on the important meeting. “So everybody leaves, and I am the junior guy so I am going to be the last guy out,” Pustay recalled “And as I’m leaving the president taps me on the shoulder and he says, ‘Would you like to have a bourbon and branch water?’ I didn’t know what the heck branch water was, but if the Commander in Chief asks you to have bourbon and branch water, you probably ought to do it.”

The president summoned a steward who produced a bottle of bourbon and a pitcher of clear liquid. Pustay discovered – much to his relief – that “branch water” is just a Southern term for fresh water. The two men settled onto the sofa in the Oval Office, Pustay sipping his bourbon, the president his scotch and soda, while engaging in small talk for almost an hour. During a lull in the conversation, Pustay swirled the amber liquid in his glass and marveled at the fact that he was actually sitting in the Oval Office sharing a drink with the president. He smiled to himself and took another sip, enjoying the whiskey’s rich flavor and smoky aroma, and he was about to congratulate the president on his fine taste in bourbon when he looked up to see Johnson’s eyes welling with tears. “Mr. President,” Pustay said. “I didn’t realize, perhaps, the gravity of the situation we discussed in that meeting, and the decisions that you had to make there.”

“No, that’s not it,” Johnson said in his soft drawl. “I am very sad right now because this is still Jack Kennedy’s house. Jack had charm — he was witty, and handsome. And here I am, just a poor Texas school teacher, a dirt farmer. Since we got back from Dallas, the only one who has ever accepted me here at the White House is Lady Bird.”

Pustay sat with President Johnson, reflecting on the private thoughts of the man who dominated public life with the historic passage of sweeping Great Society legislation aimed at eliminating poverty and racial injustice. President Johnson continued to talk about some of the burdens of this great office. Starting to feel self-conscious that he was taking up too much of the president’s valuable time, Pustay said, “Sir, I think it’s probably time for me to leave.”

“Yeah, young man,” Johnson said. “You know, thanks for listening.”

Whether or not he intended it, President Johnson had opened a window for Pustay to witness firsthand how our nation’s top leaders personally cope with the burdens of immense responsibility, impossible expectations and often-brutal public criticism – a side of their essential humanity the general public rarely gets to see.

That experience showed Pustay early on that even the most powerful leaders are human, and at the core, it’s emotion that drives human behavior. It taught him that if you want to be a great leader you must have a laser-like focus on your people — so simple, yet easy to overlook. He recalled that lesson often throughout his distinguished military career. It undoubtedly helped guide him as he rose to the rank of three-star general, served as the lead advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and led the National Defense University as its president.

Far too many managers identify their organization by the product or service it provides. The fact is that we are in the people business — hiring, training and managing people to deliver the product or service we provide. If people are the engine of our success, then to be great leaders we have to put our people first.

Opinion: How Journalists Use Hate for Profit

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 09:55:03 -0400

Wetbacks. Beaners. Spics. Illegals. Illegal aliens. Illegal immigrants.

The brain hears: Undesirable. Repulsive. Un-American. Criminals. Invaders. Expel.

These hate words spreads like a poison triggering fear and resentment that America is under attack and that we live in a dangerous place.

Few people know how to exploit the scientific advances in our knowledge of the brain to trigger specific emotional responses better than pollster Frank Luntz. In October 2005, he issued a 25-page secret memorandum that would radically distort public perception of the immigration debate. It was so widely adopted by media pundits and politicians that you can almost hear Mitt Romney parroting the words and phrases from the memorandum on the campaign trail.

Luntz said talk about “border security” because after 9/11 this “argument does well among all voters – even hardcore Democrats” as it conjures up fears of terrorists. And this advice, sure to promote fear and hate: “This is about overcrowding of YOUR schools, emergency room chaos in YOUR hospitals, the increase in YOUR taxes, and the crime in YOUR communities.”

In his book, “Words that Work,” Luntz explains how a phrase repeated over and over can permanently label someone. For example “never say undocumented worker, instead say illegal immigrant” because this generates negative connotations.

These racial slurs and offensive, hate-language not only frame Latinos as criminals, they also subconsciously call up the sheriff Joe Arpaio in all of us, rather than the Good Samaritan.

In 2010, University of South Carolina journalism professor Sei-hill Kim and Auburn University professor John Carvalho researched newspaper articles and television transcripts between 1997 and 2006 and found the terms illegal alien, illegal immigrant, or just plain illegals are everywhere on television, in newspapers, and on talk radio. They also discovered journalists attracted the largest audiences with crime stories, so linking immigrants to a crime drama was preferred because it increased ratings and profits.

This sleazy practice was confirmed by Fox News host Geraldo Rivera who recently urged his colleagues to drop these biased and racial epithets, charging that media companies “are making a killing demonizing undocumented immigrants” because few issues work so well for ratings in cable news and talk radio.

In the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the landmark Arizona immigration case on June 25th Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and three other justices made clear that foreign nationals residing unlawfully in the U.S. are not -- and never have been -- criminals. They are subject to deportation, through a civil procedure where judges have wide discretion to allow them to remain here. The Court also ruled that it was not a crime to seek or engage in unauthorized employment. Groundbreaking also was what the Court omitted: the biased and racially charged words “illegal immigrants” and “illegal aliens,” except when quoting other sources.

While most Americans believe the majority of foreign nationals here sneak across our southern border in the middle of the night, the reality is that almost half of them enter the U.S. with a valid visa and just overstay, becoming “out of status”. Many go to school, find a job, get married, and start a family.

Many migrants do sneak across the border.

Jose Gutierrez was orphaned when he was 8, forced to fight for survival in a dangerous slum outside Guatemala City. Jose was desperate to stay alive and he made a harrowing 3,000 mile trek by foot and train to America. This economic refugee was sustained by his strong faith in God, and gratefully received sanctuary in a foster home in California. He graduated from high school and was studying architecture at Harbor Community College where he was recruited to play soccer. But things changed for him after Sept. 11, when he told his foster sister “From what I’ve seen Saddam has to be confronted. It’s my job. It’s also my duty.” Jose enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez was killed in a tank battle, the first combat solider to die in Iraq. For his bravery he was awarded American citizenship posthumously. There are another 38,000 soldiers in American uniforms – mostly Latinos – who are not American citizens. President Obama in a private White House ceremony yesterday to commemorate the July 4th holiday swore in twenty-five new citizens, all members of the armed forces, including ten Latinos.

The reason journalists get away with dehumanizing Latinos with coded hate language for profit lies in large part on the Associated Press Stylebook which is the media industry bible for the appropriate use of language. Since 2004, AP directs the media to use "illegal immigrant" as the most “accurate and neutral” term.

Suggesting that “illegal immigrant” is accurate and neutral is like Chief Justice William Rehnquist defending his use of the term “wetbacks” for Mexican children. He once argued with a shocked Justice Thurgood Marshall that this racial slur still carried “currency in his part of the country.” Rehnquist practiced law in Phoenix for sixteen years.

Not surprisingly the 19-member board of directors of the Associated Press doesn’t have a single Latino on its board. If it did, I’m sure management would be chastised for the use of “illegal immigrant” which is not only inaccurate and biased but highly offensive.

Why does any of this matter? Because words can be loaded guns.

In May 2011, Juan Varela was in his front yard in Phoenix when he was shot by his white neighbor yelling "Go back to Mexico or die!" Juan was a fifth-generation American.

In May 2010, in an Arizona border town, Raul Flores and his nine-year-old daughter Brisenia were gunned down in their house by a Minuteman vigilante group. Both were natural born U.S. citizens. After she witnessed the group murder her father, the frightened little girl begged "Please don't shoot me." Brisenia’s head was blown off at point blank range in front of her mother, who survived the attack.

In November 2008, in Long Island, N.Y., seven white teenagers admitted to the perverse sport of “beaner hopping.” One of the known victims was Marcelo Lucero who was waiting for a train around midnight. They terrorized him with racial slurs, and then beat and stabbed him to death. Marcelo was a church going Ecuadorian migrant working at a local dry cleaner to help feed his family.

While the media has made Trayvon Martin a household name did you ever hear of Juan Varela, Raul and Brisenia Flores, or Marcelo Lucero?

According to the FBI, hate crimes increased toward Latinos rose from 45 percent in 2009 to 66 percent in 2010. Keep in mind that most hate crimes go unreported.

How many more Latinos need to be shot and beaten to death before the Associated Press -- sitting there like the three monkeys who “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" -- take the target off the backs of innocent Latinos?

10 Reasons Companies Fail to Reach Latinos

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:43:01 -0500

In my experience working with Fortune 500 companies, I have found 10 reasons why management teams fail to capture a significant share of Hispanic consumers.

1. There is no company-wide alignment on making the Hispanic market a strategic initiative

Halfhearted efforts result in failure because they lack the rigor and discipline applied to every other aspect of the company’s business. For example, when entering an emerging market for the first time, a company conducts qualitative research to uncover customer insights that leads to innovative new products and services, followed by quantitative research to confirm, clarify and measure results.

This is routine practice when deploying a high impact go-to market strategy in an emerging market, yet many U.S. companies today cannot get their minds around an emerging market within their own borders.

2. Companies fail to allocate a minimum level of resources including budgets, people and time

Making this a “nice to have” budget item won’t work.

3. Companies fail to treat Hispanics as a true emerging market

Many Fortune 500 multinationals have invested wisely in pursuing business in Brazil, Russia, India, and China – markets with large populations, growing economies and consumers starving for western products and services. Yet they ignore the U.S. Hispanic market, which will soon become one of the 10 largest economies in the world.

According to the U.S. Census, Hispanic purchasing power will exceed $1.5 trillion by 2015 – only nine economies in the world are larger. If Hispanic-America were a nation, it would be a member of the G-20. In fact, Hispanic-America's purchasing power per capita (at $20, 400) exceeds that of each of the four BRIC countries – Russia ($15,900), Brazil (10,800), China ($7,600) and India ($3,500).

That is an emerging market worth pursuing.

4. Not establishing clear return on investment metrics to track opportunity and progress

Companies must use both internal and external resources to monitor every aspect of their Hispanic business, from procurement to human resources to product development, marketing and sales.

5. Not selecting the right product or marketing mix

Companies must do the research it takes to properly size up the opportunity and define the right product and marketing combo, and spend accordingly.

6. Not investing in the human talent and research tools it takes to understand this unique consumer

Segmenting Hispanics simply by language preference and acculturation is not a best practice, but it’s what most companies do. There are several outstanding firms that specialize in understanding and reaching the Hispanic consumer; they can help companies develop a winning strategy.

7. Lack of innovation

Most consumer products companies have robust R&D teams. As insight into the Hispanic market becomes more focused, these teams can develop new products or revise existing ones to attract Latino consumers.

8. Having a short-term view with unrealistic expectations about outcomes

Successful companies deploy a long-term strategy, adjusting and refining it based on results against realistic milestones. This insures continued market growth and sustained profitability.

9. The absence of a Hispanic link in the value chain

From supplier diversity to recruiting Latinos at every level of the organization, the company’s Hispanic business strategy should be holistic and all-encompassing. Whether it is in the makeup of the board of directors or the company’s social responsibility initiatives, the Hispanic consumer and the Latino community overall must be part of the entire value chain.

10. When companies only see the Hispanic business model through a marketing lens

Hispanics are not only consumers; they are preferred manufacturers and vendors, dedicated employees, active community members, and yes, loyal consumers.

Companies that avoid these pitfalls will realize a much higher return on their investments in connecting with this growing emerging market – right within our own borders.

Charles P. Garcia, an entrepreneur, best-selling author and Latino motivational speaker, is a managing partner at Garcia Trujillo LLC.