Grasslands Agency
September 16, 2024
This week on The Weedsmith, we are pleased to be kicking off a new season with the father of the legal cannabis industry, Steve DeAngelo. Founder of the Last Prisoner Project, host of #RadioFreeCannabis, this activist, author, global speaker and visionary shares his thoughts with us about how he developed his leadership skills around hippies. The Weedsmith runs Tuesdays on Grasslands LinkedIn and Instagram pages.
Transcription:
Ricardo Baca:
You are listening to The Weedsmith, a show about modern cannabis leadership. And today I'm thankful to be sitting across from my dear friend Steve DeAngelo. Steve, this is a show, as I mentioned, about cannabis leadership.
So, in your opinion, what makes a good leader? Does it come naturally at this point in your career? Or is it something you have to be more conscientious about to make sure that you're the kind of leader you know you need to be?
Steve DeAngelo:
I think good leaders see themselves as servants of the people that they lead. I grew up, honed my leadership skills around hippies. Hippies are some of the most independent, anti-authoritarian people you’ll ever encounter.
And so I learned in that crucible that if you’re going to lead people, that you have to lead with an example, that people need to believe what it is you say, they need to see you do what it is that you say that you’re gonna do. They have to know that there’s not anything that you would ask of them that you would not be one hundred percent willing to do yourself.
They need to know that you’ll be honest and they need to know that you’ll be fair. I find myself thinking about leadership a lot. It’s something that’s really important to me because I think in general in our society, leadership has been exercised very poorly. And so I hope to be able to provide a different style and a different example of leadership in the world.
Those are big and difficult things to do. But I think that's the basic qualification.
