Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani spoke at the Amarillo Civic Center on Oct. 16. The Underwood Law Firm presented him in honor of their 100-year anniversary. Topics of his speech included six qualities of being a leader.

The evening started off with Alan Rhodes, a lawyer at the Underwood Law Firm, introducing Rudy Giuliani. He wanted the audience to know that the work they do is about the public.

“It’s not about us, it’s about our town. It’s about Laura, Susan, Bobby and Jack. We want you to know it’s not about us, or me it’s about you; the community,” Rhodes said.

Many members in the community joined the Underwood Law Firm to hear Giuliani speak.

Giuliani began his speech by pointing out his appearances in various television shows and his recent encounter on NBC.
“I have to get out of New York City, because I appear a lot on Fox, CNN and NBC; which no one has the courage to go on, except me because I like to fight,” said Giuliani.

He then went on to talk about the six qualities of being a leader.

“I’m going to talk to you about leadership. I wrote a book about leadership and I realized I took what other people knew about it and applied it to my own life,” said Giuliani.

Giuliani said the first quality of being a leader was to have a strong set of beliefs.

“You can’t lead unless you have a goal,” he said. “People can’t follow you if you don’t know where you’re going. Figure out where you want to take your business, life, etc. and spend time thinking about what your goal is.”

According to Giuliani, the second quality of being a leader was that you have to be an optimist.

“The real leaders are people who become problem solver,” he said. “You want to be a leader, come with a solution. I can always spot the young people who are going to succeed by their attitude.”

The third leadership quality was having courage.

“You have to be able to take a risk, because every successful person in history has had failures,” said Giuliani. “You’re going to fall over and over, but you can use your failures to learn from them. It takes courage to be willing to risk failure.”

Giuliani’s fourth quality of being a leader is being prepared.

“You don’t win a case in court; you win a case in the office preparing,” he said. “If you’re going for a job have someone play the interviewer and ask you questions. Relentlessly prepare. If you’ve prepared enough, you’ve probably anticipated the unexpected.”

His fifth leadership quality was teamwork.

“You can’t do anything without really good people around you,” said Giuliani. “When I was governor of New York City, I had strengths and weaknesses. I didn’t know very much about the economy so I had to go and find people that did. A team is a combination of strengths and weaknesses but a leader has to realize that in order for it to work.”
Communication was the sixth leadership quality Giuliani talked about.

Giuliani mentioned a situation that occurred when he was the mayor Of New York City. He said that crime was happening in the subways of New York, so they placed police officers on the subways to prevent the crimes. This however did not work, because the crimes weren’t happening on the subways themselves, but on the platforms.

“Crime went down 70 percent because police were now on the platforms where the crimes were really being committed,” said Giuliani.

Giuliani ended the evening by saying that loving people is essential to having a great organization.
Proceeds from the speaking event went to the Center City of Amarillo and Amarillo City College.