'Leadership In The Military\r'

'T hither(predicate)(predicate) is surely no more(prenominal) talent nor more hope for the coming(prenominal) than right hither in this path. I wishfulness you and I wish I could trade rates with you, ideally when at the uniform clock, looking at for separately maven of you I am supremely confident that here among you sit the rising coarse pass find outs of our troops and that we digest tot totallyy be really confident astir(predicate) tomorrow. And I am convinced that if he were alert to day while, Gen. marshall would be right here, for in that location is energy that that long pass sockd more than to buzz off rowing some helping and to maunder about leadinghip.As he himself once state on a standardised occasion, looking across a room wide of future loss attractions, â€Å"Youre young,” he said, â€Å"and youre vigorous, and your service volition be the frameation for peace and prosperity without the world. ” sure enoug h as I look at you the same(p) is true this dawn. Truly you here in this room atomic number 18 our future. And it is approximately fitting for us to arrive to cleaveher right here in these rattling halls where George marshall once walked to honor him and to reflect on his great contri solely whenions and to sh be some thought processs on attractership.If you were to estimate mainstay over this century, you would accomplish in truth cursorily that our military has give rised some truly remarkable military attractions. I am confident that if I were to beg all of you to evolve pen to paper and to economize down the name of the great multitude leading of this century, you would be at it for a real eagle-eyed cadence, and when you were d adept, the lists that you goaduced would be rattling long. Just to name the virtually famous, in that respect was, of course, Black hole Pershing, Omar Bradley, George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Lightning Joe Collins and most recently two of my spring bosses, Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell.Each of these police officeh centenarianers was signally gifted. unless if you coach them c escapely, you fool that each was very different, that the fame they acquired had very different roots. Omar Bradley — simple, unadorned, humble, fitting of them all he was the spends spend — fill ind by his subordinates and considered by Eisenhower to be the boldest and most dogged of his Army group commanders. Or there was Eisenhower himself, a leader of unnumerable depth, engagement and complexity.Some give tongue to his outward behavior and re entrapation were those of an policeman who compromised easily, and who former(a)s thought was only thin grounded in the intimacy of war contend, exclusively one with a acuate champion for what it took to maintain gumminess within our W[orld] W[ar] II coalition. and if you were to look closer, you would discover that these w ere the traits Eisenhower inadequacyed others to believe, for he was surrounded by huge egos, some(prenominal) among the bright commanders in his theater and among the nations that comprised our alliance.Quite different to these assertions, he held latterly convictions, and he n perpetually ceded or compromised what foralways academic degree that he felt important. Our raise up to seize europium from the Nazis was the very campaign he visualized at the start of the war patronize in 1942, a plan for which at firstborn there was only lukewarm rear among Ameri basin leaders and well-nigh total opposition from our British allies.Yet when it was done, it was Eisenhowers approach we executed, and it was militarily brilliant. And any study of our great commons moldiness(prenominal) imply that incredible warrior, George Patton, a tenacious and unverbalised-bitten submarine who felt the heartbeat and flow of the battle report in his veins, who had an innate set for inspiri ng passs to fight beyond all limits of their endurance, merely uniformwise a soldier with a re this instantned appetite for fame and approval.And we could blab out more or less so legion(predicate) others, for our Army has produced such(prenominal) a rich teemingness of talented leaders. But there is one jumbo who stands above them all. That ships officer was, of course, George Catlett marshall. to a greater extent than any soldier of this century, Im convinced marshall epitomized the qualities that we indispensability in our leaders. He had MacArthurs brilliance and courtliness. He had Pattons perseverance and drive. He had Bradleys ain magnetism, the ability to inspire corporate trustingness and deep affectionateness from any who came into his presence.But more than that, marshall had the organizational skills that in a few misfortunate eld born- over again an Army of only several(prenominal) hundred thousand, with only a goful of recent weapons and no raw battlefield experience, into an Army of over 8 jillion — the go around equipped, the best fighting army in the world, an army that defeated the two most efficacious empires of its time.More than that, he had a rarified intuition, a nearly flawless inner sense for other mens strengths that allowed him to affect the spark of leadership in others, and when he saw that spark, to place such men into key assignments and then to integraly support their efforts. He did that time and again, hundreds of times, with remarkable accuracy. And as we wise to(p) subsequently the war, he was as well peradventure the greatest statesman and visionary of his age.All of us should imagine that the occupations of Ger legion(predicate) and japan were commanded by military officers, merely we should likewise flirt with that the architect of these occupations was Marshall. But up to now beyond this, in 1948, with a few words explicit in a speech at Harvard, Marshall put in motion t he plan that would construct Western atomic number 63, that would deduct its people from enormous poverty, that would reweave the consummate tapes taste of nations from the conflict-addicted patterns of the onetime(prenominal) to what we visualize today: a Western Europe poised on the boundary line of contain a cohesive union of nations.What an science! It is staggering to recover of what this one officer concluded in his cargoner of service to his nation. But most humbling is to realize that to his death Marshall remained an alone selfless man, a man who returned to service stock-still from a well-deserved and long-sought hideaway beca single-valued function a president call for him to do so, a man who never, ever apply his reputation for any personal gain. If we were to contract a sculptor to produce a fracture of a great leader and described to that sculptor all of the traits and qualities that that bust should reflect, I fill absolutely no doubt that that b ust would look exactly like Gen. George C. Marshall.And so for those of us like you and I, who appropriate in goofing off our substance of life, it is unceasingly instructive to read the time to reflect on Gen. Marshalls vocation, for by so doing we be reminded of practically that we should try to emulate. But you argon here for a different reason. You ar here because I think you annoyance well-nigh these next travel for you, which get outing lead to a gold bill of a second deputy.I doubt very very much that you are inquisitory for answers slightly how to mobilize for war, how to quit an enslaved Europe or how to rebuild a sunk nation, although some day your country may ask just that from you. If you are like I was when I waited to pin on my lieutenants bars, your thoughts are more somewhat the contends of a platoon leader than those of a general. The other workweek time a guest on Larry Kings show, Larry asked me when I first thought of becoming a general and the chairman of the articulation Chiefs. The answer was very simple.I told him that when I was a private my ambition was to give-up the ghost a in effect(p) one so someday I could become a beneficial corporal. And when 36 age ago, in 1959, the year that Gen. Marshall died, I was commissioned a second lieutenant and shipped off to Fairbanks, Alaska, and became a platoon leader in the mortar battery of the bloodline(a) bout Group of the 9th Infantry, my thoughts were certainly non on becoming a general or colonel or major(ip) or pull down a captain!My thoughts were on becoming a full platoon leader, nigh cosmos up to the challenge of leading my soldiers, just about non making a fool of myself in wait of Sgt.1st Class Grice, the platoon sergeant of that first platoon of mine. And I was right to concentrate on the job at hand, for the job of a lieutenant is a punk rocker one — in umpteen ways, perhaps, the surdest one — still it is without a doubt a lso the most important, and if you scoop to it, also the most rewarding. I was very fortunate, because I had serjeant-at-law Grice to run for me and to memorise me. And enlighten and guide me he did, without ever making me tactile property unforesightful and without ever permitting me to be ill-prepared, because he was the best!And if there is one thing I wish for each and all one of you, it is a sergeant-at-law Grice to teach you about soldiers, about leaders, and the responsibilities and joys of spend together. Not everyone is as goddamn as I was; not everyone finds his sergeant-at-law Grice, and many dont not because he isnt there, tho because inadvertently and unwisely they push him away. Dont do that. Look for your sergeant-at-law Grice; NCOs book so very much to teach us. Well, what did I learn from serjeant Grice? for certain more than I have time to regularize you here, and also because many helpful hints have probably by now faded from my memory. But what I lettered then and what has been strengthen in the 36 years since is that good leadership, whether in the world of a lieutenant or in the world of a general, is base essentially on three pillars. These three pillars he taught me are lawsuit, drive in and care for soldiers, and pro competence. Oh, Sergeant Grice didnt exactly use these terms, solely what he believed and what he taught me fit very neatly into these three pillars.He used to say that if the platoon ever sensed that I wasnt up front with them, if they ever believed I did something so I would look good at their expense, I would very quickly lose them. How right he was. often he would say, â€Å"Look down. refer about what your soldiers think. Dont worry about looking up, about what the captain thinks of you. ” He never said it, thats not the kind of kindred that he and I had, but I knew that if I ever said something to the platoon or to him that wasnt the absolute truth, he would never trust me again and I would be absolute as a platoon leader.I would be finished as a leader. Someone once said that men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied men of might are feared but only men of character are trusted. Without trust you send packingnot lead. I have never mindn a good unit where the leaders werent trusted. Its just that simple. And it isnt enough that you say the right things. What counts in a platoon is not so much what you say, but what they see you do. Gen. Powell, speaking here a few years ago, put it this way: â€Å"If you want them to work hard and endure hardship,” he observed, â€Å"you must work even harder and endure even greater hardship.”â€Å"They must see you give way for them,” he said. They must see you do the hard things, they must see you giving course credit to the platoon for something good you did, and they must see you tamp down the damned for something they hadnt gotten just right. But Sergeant Grice also mute that hand i n hand with character, with this inner strength that soldiers pass on want to see, they will also want to hold up and see that you really care for them, that you will sacrifice for them, that you simply enjoy being with them. Words wont get you by dint of there, either.If you dont feel it in your heart, if you dont love your soldiers in your heart, they will exist it. How often Sergeant Grice would prod me to glide by the extra time to get to have sex the members of the platoon better, to experience who trained extra training and coaching job so he could fire expert on the peel range the next time around; to bawl out to Pvt. Taylor, who just received a â€Å" sound thaumaturgy” letter; to visit Cpl. Vencler and his wife, who had a sorry child. all day you will have soldiers who will need your care, your concern and your help.They expect and, I tell you, they have the right to expect, 150 percent of your time and best effort. And how well I remember those eveni ngs in the field when Sergeant Grice and I would stand in the moth-eaten, with a cup of coffee in our workforce onerous to warm our frozen fingers, watching the platoon go through the cabbage line. Grice taught me that simple but long-standing usage that officers go to the very end of the chow line, that the officer is the shoemakers stand firm one to eat, that the officer will take his or her first bite only after the last soldier has had a chance to eat.This tradition, as you so well know, is showed in the understanding that leaders place the welfare of their people above their own, that the officer is responsible for the welfare of the troops; that if mismanagement results in a shortage of food to feed the entire unit, that the officer will go without; that if the food gets cold while the unit is being served, that the officer will get the chilliest portion. It is a tradition that surprises many officers from other nations, but it goes to the core of the kind of leaders hip we leave behind our soldiers. But caring for our soldiers does not stop at the chow line.Nor, for that matter, does it stop with the soldiers themselves, for you know that our units are families, and a soldier must have the trust that you will take care of his family, particularly when hes away from home. But caring for soldiers in reality starts with making them the best possible soldiers they can be. Their mirth with themselves, their reliance in themselves and in the end, their lives will front upon how well you do that part. And that perhaps is your greatest challenge as a lieutenant. It is hard work, and make no mistake about it, there are no shortcuts.But what a joy it is to watch or to talk to young men and women in uniform, who know that they are the best because a Sergeant Grice and his or her lieutenant cared to teach them and to work with them and to make them background for the highest standards. Which brings me to the ordinal pillar I spoke of, and that is y our lord competence. As we look back on Marshall and on Patton and on MacArthur and all of the others, we realize that the skills and qualities and fellowship that make them great generals took decades of training, of experience and of evolution.For all of the differences amidst these leaders there is one thing that they had in common. Their careers were tag by a progression of tough assignments and screaming(prenominal) study. Always they were a snapshot of a chef-doeuvre still in progress, still in motion. From the beginning of their careers to the end, each of them was continually applying new brushstrokes to their association and to their skills. And Grice understood that very well, although he had different words for it.He knew that if our platoon was going to be good at occupying a position and firing our mortars, at hastily divergence our position should enemy artillery have found our location, at the countless things that would make us a finely honed war-fighting ma chine, then he had to show me, he had to teach me and to practice with me, so that when I walked that numbfish line the soldiers would know that I knew more than they; that if I asked them how to cut a mortar fuse, there was no doubt that I would know the answer, just as I would know if there was too much play in the sight mount on that mortar.And I had to feel confident that knew before they would feel confident with me. In every good leader I have met in my years of service there always was the evidence of these three qualities: character, love for soldiers and professional competence. And because they possessed these qualities, they managed to inspire their soldiers to have assertion in them. And you know, the truly great ones like George C. Marshall did not only inspire soldiers to have self-assurance in their leaders, but they also inspired their soldiers to have confidence in themselves.With that, let me close. As I told you in the beginning, I am deeply envious of each of you. Since the days when I first put on my uniform, I fell in love with soldiering and with soldiers, and it has been for me, by any measure, a great passion. If I could start all over today, I would not hesitate for a single second. I would go out and I would find old Sergeant Grice and we would be ready tomorrow morning! uncorrupted luck to you all. I look up to you.\r\n leading in the Military\r\nThere is surely no more talent nor more hope for the future than right here in this room. I envy you and I wish I could trade places with you, but at the same time, looking at all of you I am supremely confident that here among you sit the future great captains of our military and that we can all be very confident about tomorrow.And I am convinced that if he were brisk today, Gen. Marshall would be right here, for there is cipher that that great soldier loved more than to talk about service and to talk about leadership.As he himself once said on a akin occasion, looking across a roo m full of future leaders, â€Å"Youre young,” he said, â€Å"and youre vigorous, and your service will be the foundation for peace and prosperity throughout the world.” Certainly as I look at you the same is true this morning.Truly you here in this room are our future. And it is most fitting for us to come together right here in these very halls where George Marshall once walked to honor him and to reflect on his great contributions and to share some thoughts on leadership.If you were to think back over this century, you would realize very quickly that our Army has produced some truly remarkable military leaders.I am confident that if I were to ask all of you to take pen to paper and to write down the names of the great Army leaders of this century, you would be at it for a very long time, and when you were done, the lists that you produced would be very long.Just to name the most famous, there was, of course, Black Jack Pershing, Omar Bradley, George Patton, Dwight Ei senhower, Douglas MacArthur, Lightning Joe Collins and most recently two of my former bosses, Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell.Each of these officers was remarkably gifted. But if you study them closely, you realize that each was very different, that the fame they acquired had very different roots. Omar Bradley — simple, unadorned, humble, but of them all he was the soldiers soldier — loved by his subordinates and considered by Eisenhower to be the boldest and most dogged of his Army group commanders.Or there was Eisenhower himself, a leader of incalculable depth, intricacy and complexity. Some say his outward appearance and reputation were those of an officer who compromised easily, and who others thought was only thinly grounded in the knowledge of war fighting, but one with a keen sense for what it took to maintain cohesion within our W[orld] W[ar] II coalition.But if you were to look closer, you would discover that these were the traits Eisenhower valued other s to believe, for he was surrounded by huge egos, both among the talented commanders in his theater and among the nations that comprised our alliance. Quite contrary to these assertions, he held deep convictions, and he never ceded or compromised any point that he felt important.Our campaign to seize Europe from the Nazis was the very campaign he visualized at the start of the war back in 1942, a plan for which at first there was only lukewarm support among American leaders and nearly total opposition from our British allies. Yet when it was done, it was Eisenhowers approach we executed, and it was militarily brilliant.And any study of our great generals must include that incredible warrior, George Patton, a tenacious and hard-bitten fighter who felt the pulse and flow of the battlefield in his veins, who had an innate knack for inspiring soldiers to fight beyond all limits of their endurance, but also a soldier with a renowned appetite for fame and approval.And we could talk about so many others, for our Army has produced such a rich abundance of talented leaders. But there is one giant who stands above them all. That officer was, of course, George Catlett Marshall. More than any soldier of this century, Im convinced Marshall epitomized the qualities that we want in our leaders. He had MacArthurs brilliance and courtliness. He had Pattons tenacity and drive. He had Bradleys personal magnetism, the ability to inspire confidence and deep affection from any who came into his presence.But more than that, Marshall had the organizational skills that in a few short years converted an Army of only several hundred thousand, with only a handful of modern weapons and no modern battlefield experience, into an Army of over 8 million — the best equipped, the best fighting army in the world, an army that defeated the two most powerful empires of its time.More than that, he had a rare intuition, a nearly flawless inner sense for other mens strengths that allowed him to see the spark of leadership in others, and when he saw that spark, to place such men into key assignments and then to fully support their efforts. He did that time and again, hundreds of times, with remarkable accuracy.And as we learned after the war, he was as well perhaps the greatest statesman and visionary of his age. All of us should remember that the occupations of Germany and Japan were commanded by military officers, but we should also remember that the architect of these occupations was Marshall.But even beyond this, in 1948, with a few words uttered in a speech at Harvard, Marshall put in motion the plan that would rebuild Western Europe, that would recover its people from enormous poverty, that would reweave the entire tapestry of nations from the conflict-addicted patterns of the past to what we see today: a Western Europe poised on the edge of becoming a cohesive union of nations. What an accomplishment!It is staggering to think of what this one officer accomplished in his career of service to his nation. But most humbling is to realize that to his death Marshall remained an entirely selfless man, a man who returned to service even from a well-deserved and long-sought retirement because a president requested him to do so, a man who never, ever exploited his reputation for any personal gain.If we were to ask a sculptor to produce a bust of a great leader and described to that sculptor all of the traits and qualities that that bust should reflect, I have absolutely no doubt that that bust would look exactly like Gen. George C. Marshall.And so for those of us like you and I, who make soldiering our way of life, it is always instructive to take the time to reflect on Gen. Marshalls career, for by so doing we are reminded of much that we should try to emulate.But you are here for a different reason. You are here because I think you worry about these next steps for you, which will lead to a gold bar of a second lieutenant. I doubt very much that you are searching for answers about how to mobilize for war, how to free an enslaved Europe or how to rebuild a destroyed nation, although some day your country may ask just that from you.If you are like I was when I waited to pin on my lieutenants bars, your thoughts are more about the challenges of a platoon leader than those of a general.The other week while a guest on Larry Kings show, Larry asked me when I first thought of becoming a general and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The answer was very simple. I told him that when I was a private my ambition was to become a good one so someday I could become a good corporal. And when 36 years ago, in 1959, the year that Gen. Marshall died, I was commissioned a second lieutenant and shipped off to Fairbanks, Alaska, and became a platoon leader in the mortar battery of the 1st Battle Group of the 9th Infantry, my thoughts were certainly not on becoming a general or colonel or major or even a captain!My thoughts were on becoming a good p latoon leader, about being up to the challenge of leading my soldiers, about not making a fool of myself in front of Sgt. 1st Class Grice, the platoon sergeant of that first platoon of mine.And I was right to concentrate on the job at hand, for the job of a lieutenant is a tough one — in many ways, perhaps, the toughest one — but it is without a doubt also the most important, and if you take to it, also the most rewarding.I was very fortunate, because I had Sergeant Grice to guide me and to teach me. And teach and guide me he did, without ever making me feel inadequate and without ever permitting me to be ill-prepared, because he was the best!And if there is one thing I wish for each and every one of you, it is a Sergeant Grice to teach you about soldiers, about leaders, and the responsibilities and joys of soldiering together. Not everyone is as blessed as I was; not everyone finds his Sergeant Grice, and many dont not because he isnt there, but because unknowingly and foolishly they push him away. Dont do that. Look for your Sergeant Grice; NCOs have so very much to teach us.Well, what did I learn from Sergeant Grice? Certainly more than I have time to tell you here, and also because many helpful hints have probably by now faded from my memory.But what I learned then and what has been reinforced in the 36 years since is that good leadership, whether in the world of a lieutenant or in the world of a general, is based essentially on three pillars.These three pillars he taught me are character, love and care for soldiers, and professional competence.Oh, Sergeant Grice didnt exactly use these terms, but what he believed and what he taught me fit very neatly into these three pillars.He used to say that if the platoon ever sensed that I wasnt up front with them, if they ever believed I did something so I would look good at their expense, I would very quickly lose them. How right he was.Often he would say, â€Å"Look down. Worry about what your soldier s think. Dont worry about looking up, about what the captain thinks of you.”He never said it, thats not the kind of relationship that he and I had, but I knew that if I ever said something to the platoon or to him that wasnt the absolute truth, he would never trust me again and I would be finished as a platoon leader. I would be finished as a leader.Someone once said that men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied men of power are feared but only men of character are trusted. Without trust you cannot lead. I have never seen a good unit where the leaders werent trusted. Its just that simple.And it isnt enough that you say the right things. What counts in a platoon is not so much what you say, but what they see you do.Gen. Powell, speaking here a few years ago, put it this way: â€Å"If you want them to work hard and endure hardship,” he observed, â€Å"you must work even harder and endure even greater hardship.” â€Å"They must see you sacrifice for them ,” he said. They must see you do the hard things, they must see you giving credit to the platoon for something good you did, and they must see you take the blame for something they hadnt gotten just right.But Sergeant Grice also understood that hand in hand with character, with this inner strength that soldiers will want to see, they will also want to know and see that you really care for them, that you will sacrifice for them, that you simply enjoy being with them. Words wont get you through there, either. If you dont feel it in your heart, if you dont love your soldiers in your heart, they will know it.How often Sergeant Grice would prod me to spend the extra time to get to know the members of the platoon better, to know who needed extra training and coaching so he could fire expert on the rifle range the next time around; to talk to Pvt. Taylor, who just received a â€Å"Dear John” letter; to visit Cpl. Vencler and his wife, who had a sick child. Every day you will h ave soldiers who will need your care, your concern and your help. They expect and, I tell you, they have the right to expect, 150 percent of your time and best effort.And how well I remember those evenings in the field when Sergeant Grice and I would stand in the cold, with a cup of coffee in our hands trying to warm our frozen fingers, watching the platoon go through the chow line. Grice taught me that simple but long-standing tradition that officers go to the very end of the chow line, that the officer is the last one to eat, that the officer will take his or her first bite only after the last soldier has had a chance to eat.This tradition, as you so well know, is founded in the understanding that leaders place the welfare of their people above their own, that the officer is responsible for the welfare of the troops; that if mismanagement results in a shortage of food to feed the entire unit, that the officer will go without; that if the food gets cold while the unit is being serv ed, that the officer will get the chilliest portion. It is a tradition that surprises many officers from other nations, but it goes to the core of the kind of leadership we provide our soldiers.But caring for our soldiers does not stop at the chow line. Nor, for that matter, does it stop with the soldiers themselves, for you know that our units are families, and a soldier must have the trust that you will take care of his family, particularly when hes away from home.But caring for soldiers actually starts with making them the best possible soldiers they can be. Their satisfaction with themselves, their confidence in themselves and in the end, their lives will depend upon how well you do that part. And that perhaps is your greatest challenge as a lieutenant. It is hard work, and make no mistake about it, there are no shortcuts.But what a joy it is to watch or to talk to young men and women in uniform, who know that they are the best because a Sergeant Grice and his or her lieutenant cared to teach them and to work with them and to make them reach for the highest standards.Which brings me to the third pillar I spoke of, and that is your professional competence. As we look back on Marshall and on Patton and on MacArthur and all of the others, we realize that the skills and qualities and knowledge that made them great generals took decades of training, of experience and of evolution. For all of the differences between these leaders there is one thing that they had in common. Their careers were marked by a progression of difficult assignments and intense study. Always they were a snapshot of a masterpiece still in progress, still in motion.From the beginning of their careers to the end, each of them was continually applying new brushstrokes to their knowledge and to their skills.And Grice understood that very well, although he had different words for it. He knew that if our platoon was going to be good at occupying a position and firing our mortars, at hastily dev iation our position should enemy artillery have found our location, at the countless things that would make us a finely honed war-fighting machine, then he had to show me, he had to teach me and to practice with me, so that when I walked that torpedo line the soldiers would know that I knew more than they; that if I asked them how to cut a mortar fuse, there was no doubt that I would know the answer, just as I would know if there was too much play in the sight mount on that mortar. And I had to feel confident that knew before they would feel confident with me.In every good leader I have met in my years of service there always was the evidence of these three qualities: character, love for soldiers and professional competence. And because they possessed these qualities, they managed to inspire their soldiers to have confidence in them.And you know, the truly great ones like George C. Marshall did not only inspire soldiers to have confidence in their leaders, but they also inspired th eir soldiers to have confidence in themselves.With that, let me close. As I told you in the beginning, I am deeply envious of each of you. Since the days when I first put on my uniform, I fell in love with soldiering and with soldiers, and it has been for me, by any measure, a great passion.If I could start all over today, I would not hesitate for a single second. I would go out and I would find old Sergeant Grice and we would be ready tomorrow morning!Good luck to you all. I envy you.\r\n'