Tasty Quote on Leadership

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Someone could write, and probably has written, a book on the differences between a Boss and a Leader. However, this quote sums up nicely (and succinctly) the major difference ...

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SOURCE: New York Times Sunday Magazine | Generally Speaking | July 1, 2007

Comments

[Ken]

While that's a nice sentiment for the civilian world, I'm sure that any still-active military people -- officers and enlisted alike -- are laughing themselves silly at that quote. The whole point of basic training is to break down 18 years of individualism and to remold the person so that he's easier to boss around. MacArthur and Patton were considered great leaders, and they sure did their fair share of bossing, badgering and verbally abusing their underlings. The fact is, when you're about to order a group of men to rush in and kill another group of men, you don't necessarily want to be persuading them (especially if the other group is shooting at you).

And if Clark's such a great leader, who was it -- when faced with a civilian staff -- that let his presidential candidacy spin so completely out of control?

(Just playing devil's advocate!)

[johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)]

Ken ... I am able to separate the message from the messenger. On its own, that is one tasty quote for any business-minded person to gnaw on. (Which is exactly how I tried to present it.)

[Red State Dem]

Ken ....

Officer training is only tangentially related to 'basic' training. I'm laughing myself silly thinking there's someone who believes they are the same.

It's interesting that you use a couple of WWII/Korean war generals as examples. It's certainly not the way things work today in the military. But then, even the top-down / don't-ask-questions / do-as-you're-told corporate management style has gone the way of the dinosaur.

Clark has expanded on what it takes to lead in TODAY's military.

Today's soldiers haven't been drafted, they've chosen to be there. During the proverbial 5-minute firefight, you may be correct about giving and receiving orders, but for the rest of the day.... Clark recognizes that those officers who only know how to give orders won't effectivly lead their men or obtain their objectives.

The reality is different from your simplistic view.

"When you're in the military, a lot of people think that it's about giving orders, but mostly it isn't. You start as a company commander, and you go to your first unit, you realize, even though you're the guy that signed the property book and you're responsible for the company, 100 people, $10 million worth of equipment, you go to the first sergeant your first day and say, `Top, what do you think we ought to be doing today?'

It starts at that level, because you recognize that leadership is not about giving orders, it's about working with others, bringing out the best in the people who are working with you, developing their confidence, relying on their expertise, developing your own proficiency, technically . . .

You know, you don't get anybody to come into the armed forces unless they want to be there. And they won't stay unless you persuade them that they want to stay. Sixty percent of the armed forces are married. And so if the wife doesn't want to stay, the soldier won't stay. So you're in the business of selling your organization to your own people.

There's a lot of internal marketing, to put it in a business term, that has to be done. Unlike American corporations, where I've been on the boards of numerous of these corporations, and there's not pricing power for labor in today's market. But there is a pricing power, the analog of that, in the armed forces. Because when a person's enlistment period is up, they can leave. And they will if they don't like it.

-----Wesley Clark, Boston Globe, Leadership is about working with people, 1/1/2004

[xkenx]

Wes Clark, as SACEUR, had the responsibility to lead the military and many diplomatic efforts of 19 member NATO nations. Everything that got done in the effort to rid the Balkans of Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing, had to be approved by Washington and all of our NATO partners. Clark, as SACEUR, had head-of-state status, meaning that he dealt directly with the European heads of state. When you consider how hard is it is to get a group of friends to pick a restaurant for dinner, Clark's accomplishments are amazing. Wes Clark knows something about leadership.
And Clark's campaign did not "spin out of control." He simply got in too late, didn't do Iowa, concentrating instead on NH.
When Kerry took Iowa, the momentum became irreversible. Clark actually beat John Edwards in more primaries where both were entered before Clark exited to support Kerry. And Howard Dean's lengthy campain DID spin out of control. And Kerry then ran a crappy campaign in the GE.

[reader]

So glad that the response to your misinformated opinion and reactions to Wes Clark quote was answered; the netroots have more sense of responsibility for accuracy and fact checking than the main stream media ( is that your background ?) who have fallen down on the job of informing the citizenry and supporting democracy; you can be sure that your blog will be fact checked for accuracy, and any opinions, if they should misrepresent or misinform, will be answered.

[patmcgraw]

John, thanks for the expanded quote from Clark (above)...I was halfway down the path of one of my smartass responses focusing on 'persuade' versus 'engage' and 'collaborate' when I saw the following which stopped me dead in my tracks:

It starts at that level, because you recognize that leadership is not about giving orders, it's about working with others, bringing out the best in the people who are working with you, developing their confidence, relying on their expertise, developing your own proficiency, technically . . .

[Chetan Dhruve]

John,

“Someone could write, and probably has written, a book on the differences between a Boss and a Leader” – you’re right!

I've written a book on exactly this. At the risk of plugging it, it’s called “Why your boss is programmed to be a dictator”. I also wrote a ChangeThis manifesto by the same title (http://www.changethis.com/19.BossDictator)

Fundamentally, my argument is that by definition, a leader is someone is who is elected. A leader can be good or bad, but before he can be called a leader, he must be elected.

If someone has power over you, and you don’t have power over that person, by definition that person is a dictator. A boss is a person with power over you, without you having power over him in return. That means all bosses are dictators by definition. The workplace 'system' becomes that of a dictatorship, and the corresponding behaviors inevitably follow.

[ouija repairman]

I think Clark was channeling Eisenhower, who's quoted: "Pull the string and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all."