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Columnist

Robert L. Dilenschneider
Chairman
The Dilenschneider Group

You, Too, Can Be a Hero

We can all find individual opportunities to perform small heroic actions on a daily basis to make the world a better place. Here are some practical suggestions.

My brother, Jack, one of my heroes, is a lawyer who went down South in 1963 at the request of Bobby Kennedy to use the legal process to help end discrimination. Just recently, he told me how dangerous that adventure really was. The movie “Mississippi Burning” was just the tip of the iceberg, he said. He would get threatening phone calls at two o’clock in the morning. He was called a Communist. One night, red paint was tossed on his driveway. Those were frightening times.

But then, heroes always emerge in frightening times. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s essential. It’s as important now as it was during the Civil Rights era.

How do we shrug off our complacency and encourage heroic actions in ourselves and in the people we know?

Obviously, very few can match the exalted achievements of most of the heroes in my new book, “A Time for Heroes,” but we can all find individual opportunities to act heroically.

Heroic Actions on a Smaller Scale
Here are some practical suggestions that anyone can take up:

• Believe that you can actually make a change. There are so many things we try to do during the course of our lives, and so few of them create significant change. It’s easy to get discouraged. Unless you believe that it’s possible to create change, it won’t happen.

• Motivate yourself by reading about heroes. Put John Grisham or Danielle Steele down, difficult as that can be, and start reading about the real heroes in society. Check out the biography section of a bookstore or library. Virtually every book there is about a person who conquered major obstacles to do something important. Whether you’re reading about Charles Darwin or Katharine Graham, Lance Armstrong or Louis Armstrong, you will find that it’s possible to extract from their lives a few lessons that can be applied to yours.

• Don’t allow yourself to believe, even for a moment, that you’re too young or too old or too powerless to do something significant.

• Set your personal agenda aside. Heroism isn’t about you. It’s about others.

• Identify an area of concern. It’s easy to sit around complaining about war, famine, terrorism, fraudulent business practices, failing schools, poverty, AIDS, the obesity epidemic, a health care system in need of an overhaul, a disintegrating infrastructure, global warming, PCBs in the salmon, or problems of communication with Islamic countries (the issue that most concerns me). The world is full of problems. Where to start? Identify areas that are of particular concern and interest to you. Then pick one.

• Express yourself through the conventional channels. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper or to a public official. Even if you do nothing more than articulate your concern over, say, Head Start or racial profiling or problems in our intelligence program, your message will draw attention to that issue.

• Be willing to sacrifice, at least a little, on behalf of the cause you have identified. I’m not talking about attending elegant fundraisers or even writing checks. Writing a check is the decent thing to do, and you should do it. But it doesn’t make you a hero either, especially if you are well off. Being heroic means sacrificing, if nothing else, your time. It does not mean sacrificing dinner at Alain Ducasse.

• Being heroic means doing something hands-on. One way is to volunteer with an organization you support, whether it’s a political party or the PTA. You don’t have to join the Peace Corps, although you could. As of this writing, the Peace Corps has 6,678 volunteers in 70 countries, and some of those people are well along in years. For a few hours a week, you can mentor a child, tutor an adult in a literacy program, help address hundreds of other problems in an ongoing way. Is this heroic? Maybe not. But it means more than writing a check (which you should also do). You will energize yourself and motivate your colleagues and maybe even help to eliminate the problem. Plus, by working with an actual human being, you will gain a sense of what’s going on in the community that you simply cannot get from a fancy-dress ball, no matter how worthy the cause.

If you’d like to work with a particular organization, contact them directly. If you’re looking for an opportunity without having anything in particular in mind, go to the Internet. Check out the USA Freedom Corps, Idealist.org, the American Red Cross, or VolunteerMatch.com. Then contact that organization directly – résumé in hand.

Missed Opportunities
The chance to perform great big dramatic heroic actions comes along seldom or never. But opportunities to perform small heroic actions appear on a daily basis. Keep your eyes open and you cannot fail to see them.

Stepping up to them is another story. Writing this book, I’ve tracked the daily opportunities that come along, and I can tell you it’s easy to be so preoccupied that you simply miss them.

That’s why it’s important to create a structure for being heroic. Tutoring a child, initiating a letter-writing campaign, volunteering as a patient advocate at a local hospital, spending a year with “Doctors Without Borders” ... actions like these make the world a better place. And while it’s true that heroism is not something that can be slotted into a Tuesday-Thursday niche like so many hours of community service, it never hurts to have a schedule.

Robert L. Dilenschneider formed The Dilenschneider Group in 1991 after having served as president and CEO of Hill & Knowlton Inc. from 1986 to 1991. He counsels major corporations, professional groups, trade associations, and educational institutions on strategic communications issues, and assists clients in dealings with regulatory agencies, labor unions, and consumer groups, among others. He has served on numerous corporate boards and is a member of the Directors & Boards editorial advisory board. He is the author of eight books, including the best-selling “Power and Influence” and “A Briefing for Leaders.” The above article is excerpted from his latest book, “A Time for Heroes,” ©2005 by Phoenix Press, Beverly Hills, Calif. For the book's listing on Amazon.com, click on the book cover image below.