Ambassador offers leadership lessons to hometown Saugus crowd

SAUGUS – In a lecture filled with anecdotes of a national security crisis, conversation with heads of state and sprinting to avoid rockets, ambassador Jim Jeffrey wanted his audience to remember one thing above all.Looking out to his crowd in the Town Hall auditorium, Jeffrey said, “The whole world you live in, the peace you enjoy, the products you buy all over the world ? are based on the role of the United States keeping the world safe and secure,” said Jeffrey.The Saugus High School graduate of the class of 1964 recalled passing by the World War I memorial on the front lawn of Town Hall. “Little did I know growing up that I would see other plaques around this building,” said Jeffrey, a former Army Ranger himself who served in Vietnam. “All of these deaths, all of these sacrifices, all these services ? were not just for a greater American cause, but for a greater cause.” Jeffrey returned to his hometown to be the first presenter in the Ellen Burns Speaker Series, sponsored by the Saugus Public Library Foundation. With years of experience serving as an ambassador, foreign officer, diplomat and adviser in Germany, Turkey, Kuwait, Albania, Iraq and in the White House, he had the room rapt with attention as he shared his doubt for total peace in the Middle East, laughed over a memory with Hillary Clinton and recalled his dissatisfaction when President George W. Bush once didn?t agree with him.?I was totally rejected, like how you would be rejected from a date,” he laughed. “I would go off and sulk, ?Why didn?t the president like my idea??”He compared the cabinet and advisory staff to that of a club, where no one wants to insult the other by calling him or her wrong, but he said the ones who were loudest and most assured typically were.?Advisors will say, ?Don?t do it, what if it goes wrong??” he said. “The person at top has to be leader ? if you always worry about risk, you will never accomplish anything, and we live in competitive world where someone else will take that risk.”Jeffrey talked at length about advising for both the Bush and President Barack Obama administrations and the different yet capable minds for which he served. When telling a story of how Bush handled the economic collapse of 2008 or how Obama commanded the military in the Middle East against his own ideals, Jeffrey told his audience that the final word on criticism was, “Presidents make decisions.”Jeffrey reminded everyone that the rules of leadership are not quite so different at the top of the federal government as they are at the municipal level.Leadership is simple thing,” said Jeffrey. “It?s knowing what right thing is ? and knowing how to mobilize resources to get that goal accomplished.”