Duke prof. talks leadership

By: Ruthie Harper

Posted: 2/26/10

Murphy Auditorium may have felt overheated Tuesday night to many of the 150 or so students, faculty, staff and community members gathered there, but some students said they felt the lessons retired Army Col. Joseph LeBoeuf Jr. taught were worth the temporary discomfort.

As a professor of practice at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, LeBoeuf has experience presenting on leadership, according to Jessica Schiefer, graduate assistant for the Leadership Center at St. Bonaventure.

LeBoeuf opened the presentation, sponsored by the Center for Activities, Recreation and Leadership (CARL), with jokes, including one regarding his wife.

"I married up," he said with a smile.

If nothing else, he married into the St. Bonaventure University family. He married retired Army Brig. Gen. Maureen Keenan LeBoeuf, '76, an aviator, Olean native, member of the St. Bonaventure University Board of Trustees and a former head of the department of physical education at West Point, according to a press release on the university's Web site.

According to the university alumni Web site, 21 members of the Keenan family have attended St. Bonaventure, including three who are currently enrolled. Also, the Martine-Keenan Grant honors the late Leo E. Keenan, Jr., '47, a former English faculty member, and is awarded to deserving faculty members, according to the university Web site.

LeBoeuf's presentation became more serious when he asked, "Who are you?" He said to achieve success as a leader, people must know themselves and who they want to be. He also stressed two important criteria successful leaders must have: competence and character. It's fairly easy to be competent or intelligent, he said. However, character is something more difficult to achieve; having character means caring for others, possibly over self, he said. He added the recent economic recession was fundamentally a malfunction of character.

LeBoeuf also touched on other important aspects of leadership, including courage, self-awareness and adaptability.

In addition to speaking about leadership and using a PowerPoint presentation, LeBoeuf showed numerous film clips from recent movies, including "Remember the Titans" and "300."

Some students, including Jeffrey Butler, a fifth-year MBA student who attended the speech with his MBA Business Policy class, found the presentation engaging.

"I thought he did a great job speaking about leadership in a way that students could relate to more than some of the others we've had," Butler said. "He adapted his material to fit his audience."

Schiefer wrote in an e-mail she felt the movie clips helped with student engagement.

"By pulling different movie clips, I believe he was able to engage students while still effectively portraying his message that leadership comes from within," Schiefer wrote.

Ashley Sandau, a senior dual-degree journalism and mass communication and integrated marketing communications (IMC) student attended the presentation with her IMC Marketing Research class. Sandau said she enjoyed the movie clips, especially one from "Remember the Titans" featuring Louie Lastik (Ethan Suplee), an overweight and under-confident, but positive, Titans football player.

"(Lastik wasn't) really smart, (but) he could still be a leader," Sandau said. "He could still be successful in life. He just had to ask for help."

Saundau also said LeBoeuf's discussions of self-awareness and confidence helped her see the aspects of leadership differently. These aspects and others helped Sandau enjoy the presentation.

"(The presentation) was really good, not just for people who are going to be leaders, but it was good for anyone … because they were good things to learn for life skills," Sandau said. "Not just becoming a leader, but leading a good life in general."

e-mail: harperra@sbu.edu