10 Principles of Leadership

Whether you’re still serving in uniform, transitioning from active duty to Veteran status and preparing to enter the job market, or a Veteran already working in public service or the private sector, it’s important to really understand what your leadership beliefs are, and understand how those beliefs informed your life experiences. And understanding that—what you’re really about—should be a very personal experience, a lifelong exercise.

When it comes to the leadership principles that define you and your style of leadership, you can’t fake it, not with any sense of personal and professional fulfillment, and usually not very convincingly. We have to be ourselves. We owe it to ourselves and to those we serve to be authentic, and we are at our best when we’re authentic. So our leadership principles should be born out of our own experiences, not the experiences of others.

However, we can, and should, learn from others’ examples. Sometimes we may witness or read about leaders whose principles align exactingly with our own experiences and values and, so, embrace this or that principle. On other occasions, we may learn from those around us exactly what not to do, exactly how not to act, exactly what won’t work for us or what contradicts our morals or values. In both cases—and all the subtle cases in between—we should be very thoughtfully defining and refining, becoming more and more in tune with, our own personal set of leadership principles.

There’s no end to that process, and for most of us, that process started at a very early age, even before we entered the military. For me, as I look back, it started when I was a very young man, a Boy Scout. It was during my scouting days that I learned that I found personal fulfillment serving others, helping make others’ lives better. In fact, that’s why I chose the West Point and military service. Over the more than four decades since, as I’ve changed and experienced more and more about people and more and more about the world, I’ve continued to study and learn about leadership and naturally refine my own understanding of my leadership principles.

For a while, now, I’ve relied on 10 leadership principles that have served me well, and helped me serve others well, too. They resonate with my experiences, my morals, and my values. So to begin what I hope will be a series of blogs and discussions about leadership, I’ll first share my 10 leadership principles in general terms. In subsequent blogs, I’ll expand on each principle in more detail.

Here are 10 principles I believe in, that drive my behavior every day.

1. Living a life driven by purpose is more meaningful and rewarding than meandering through life without direction.

2. Organizations and companies must do well to do good, and must do good to do well.

3. Everyone wants to succeed, and success is contagious.

4. Putting people in the right jobs is one of the most important jobs of the leader.

5. Character is the most important trait of a leader.

6. Diverse groups of people are more innovative than homogeneous groups.

7. Ineffective systems and cultures are bigger barriers to achievement than the talents of people.

8. There will be some people in the organization who will not make it on the journey.

9. Organizations must renew themselves.

10. The true test of the leader is the performance of the organization when they are absent or after they depart.

While several of these principles may at first seem relevant only to those leading in business, they are a product of my experiences serving as an infantry officer in the Army, in the private sector with Procter & Gamble, and in the federal government as Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. And they serve me well in my day-to-day life. There’s a great deal leaders in private industry can learn from the military, and there’s a lot leaders in the military can learn from the private sector, because leadership is about people, about human nature. No matter where you serve or where you work, leadership is about serving people well.