The Man in the Arena

“TR strove to transform himself into a leader worthy of the causes and people he would serve. He understood that the shared humanity revealed in his limitations and failures made his example all the more applicable and compelling.” ~ James M. Strock (Theodore Roosevelt on Leadership)

Much has been written about the life and leadership of Theodore Roosevelt (TR) the larger than life 26th President of the United States. ‘Teedie’ as he was called grew up in New York City one of four children of a well-to-do family. He is known to have been frail and sickly and suffered from asthma as a child. As a teenager, he would take on gymnastics and weight-lifting to ‘make his body.’ He became an outdoor enthusiast of hiking, riding horses and swimming - eventually he took up boxing and wrestling as well.

TR faced the double tragedy of losing his mother and his young wife within days of one another in 1884. As an antidote to his grief he threw himself into a strenuous life out West in the Dakota Badlands where he invested in two ranches and a thousand head of cattle. He reveled in the frontier lifestyle; riding for days, herding cows, hunting grizzly bears,and even chasing outlaws as a frontier sheriff. These experiences helped to shape his body, mind, spirit and his larger than life persona.

Back in New York and politics a few years later, Roosevelt was appointed to the U.S. Civil Service Commission and then as the president of the New York City Police board where he made a name for himself by demonstrating honesty, integrity and service. This would lead him to being named assistant secretary to the Navy. He would later resign this role and volunteer to lead a unit of the US. Volunteer Cavalry known as the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War. He later wrote about this time, "I would rather have led that charge and earned my colonelcy than served three terms in the United States Senate. It makes me feel as though I could now leave something to my children which will serve as an apology for my having existed."

Now a war hero, TR ran for governor of New York and won. Governor of a large influential state like New York led the political machine to talk about his future. As governor, Roosevelt had at times stood his ground on matters against the Republican political machine of his time. According to author James M. Strock, “Roosevelt holds our attention, because in addition to being an effective leader, he strove to be a moral one.” This willingness to stand for what he believed in in order to serve his constituents led to him being ‘parked’ into the U.S. Vice Presidency - which held nearly no power, influence or authority at the time - which TR only agreed to with great reluctance. No one could have predicted that just six months after McKinley and Roosevelt took office that McKinley would be assassinated and the Rough Rider would become the youngest person to assume the presidency.

It is said that Roosevelt created the modern presidency and the ‘bully pulpit’ as he called it. As he had done in other roles earlier in his career, TR would bend, transform and reform the presidency. Among other accomplishments he acted to envision the concept of the ‘square deal’, put in place groundbreaking natural resource conservation, sealed America’s reputation on the world stage and built a world class naval fleet. Roosevelt was proud to claim that his administration reduced the national debt by $90 million.

TR lived and modeled a number of leadership lessons that we’ve touched on in this blog. He was a life-long learner, a voracious reader, an observer of life, a deep listener and he understood the value of learning from life experiences. He understood the need to lead from where you are, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Roosevelt lived and believed that leadership is service. Strock states, “Theodore Roosevelt crafted a masterpiece of service. He served people in every aspect of his life. His legacy was transformational, encompassing his family, his nation and the world.”

What will you take away from the life and leadership lessons of Theordore Roosevelt? What will your legacy be?

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;” ~ TR, The Man in the Arena, April 23, 1910