The Way Up

CHAPTER 10Grow by Giving Back: Experience the Power of Public Service and Selflessness

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.

—Muhammad Ali, legendary American boxer and activist

Lessons of leadership can be learned from a worldwide variety of sources, including public service. If there is one thing I learned, it is this: just because someone has the title of boss does not mean they are a leader.

A famous fellow Fordham University alum, Donald McGannon, once said appropriately, “Leadership is action, not a position.”¹ And rightly so. Donald McGannon was one of the most influential broadcasting executives in America during the 1960s and 1970s. He became the President and Chairman of the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company (WBC) at the ripe old age of 35.²

At the time, Westinghouse was made up of four television and five radio stations, which made it the largest independent TV–radio ownership operation in the entire country. McGannon owed much of his success to having a strong mentor, Chris J. Witting, who convinced him to leave the oil and coal industry and join Witting in the media industry at the DuMont Television Network in 1951. When Mr. Witting was promoted to Vice President of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the parent company of WBC, he made sure McGannon assumed his former position that had been left vacant.³ This is merely one of thousands of stories that punctuate the importance of mentors and champions.

McGannon strongly believed ...