What most people want in a leader is something that’s very difficult to find: we want someone who listens. Why is it so hard to find a leader who can listen? Because it’s easy to confuse listening to individuals with “going with the crowd” or “following the polls.” It’s easy for a leader with a vision to give up on listening because, after all, most people want you to be average, and that doesn’t get you anywhere. If Henry Ford had listened, the old saying goes, we’d have better buggy whips today, not cars. The secret, Reagan’s secret, is to listen, to value what you hear, and then to make a
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