Explorations in Black Leadership

Co-Directed by Phyllis Leffler & Julian Bond

"Doing the Best Job" as a Leadership Philosophy

BOND: Do you have a kind of a general philosophy that guides you through life that may be different from the vision, the leadership vision, a philosophy?

BRAUN: For me, the philosophy is back to Edna's advice. I just try to do the best job I can where I'm planted. I mean, every day — we are not guaranteed tomorrow, and every day— you know, good, bad or indifferent, and I have my bad days like everybody else— but every day you have to find something that you can be proud of and that you want to celebrate, and that's what I strive to do every day. And I reckon if you do it on a day-by-day by day-by-day basis it really is in the small steps. It's not in the big brushes. It's in what you do, how you treat that individual that you run into, how you treat somebody who's bigger than you, how you treat somebody that's ostensibly smaller than you. You know, that's where the measure of a person is taken, so issues of character and honor— and it sounds corny again, but that's what motivates me.