How do you define leadership?

BG Pete, I agree about providing vision and direction...sharing vision with appropriate action and a sense of urgency may have a greater impact. We don't live in a Utopian society so there are many challenges in vision sharing. Like minds think alike. We would like to think that the military organization would have like mindedness as a whole, such as sharing the same language, performing in teams and working together, yet our military is a system and follows a certain systemic phenomena, that is, military leadership. 

I like it

Spot on! Your leadership potential is what earns you the privelege of gaining rank!

Best example of leadership - "This is what I want, make it happen."  

My personal view of leadership is inspiring your men, or women, to take pride in oneself, the organization, and their leaders. Insure that they understand following orders or accomplishing tasks whatever they maybe improve their piece of the pie. Leaders should work alongside their subordinates, to show that we are not exempt to the suck. When that pride is obtain the subordinate will function independently toward the common goal. Whether that goal maybe a laundry list of administrative task or a mission that is crucial to the overall operating picture, the subordinate will complete the task above standard because they have that pride. If they fall short, they will feel disappointed in themselves and minimum correction will need to be made, because they will fix the issue on their own. This is simply done and all any subordinate will need is a task, a purpose, the commanders intent, and an endstate.

Always make another pot of coffee if you take the last cup!

Seriously though, I'd encourage soldiers at my stage of the game to start developing the capacity to eat crow gracefully.  Learn that it's okay to ask for help instead of trying to power through everything like I tried to do -- I usually complete the mission, but it was a lot more of a headache than it should have been.  Ask questions.  Own your mistakes, LEARN from them, instead of trying to be every other "hooah hooah ra-ra" meathead in uniform these days.  Get to know your soldiers; I can't stress this enough, and it infuriates me to no end to see commanders and section leaders that have no idea what their own soldiers are like, especially since it's a simple as inviting them over to sit down with you at lunch.


Just a little story:

I had some growing up to do after AIT, but my biggest problem was asking for help.  At that point in my life, I would have rather taken a fail than accept help from anyone else.  When I found myself unemployed and nearing homelessness several months after AIT, I failed an APFT.  Thankfully, I was in what I still consider to be the best unit in the MIRC at the time, and nearly immediately, the battalion commander, company commander, first sergeant, platoon sergeant, and my new squad leader, a SGT M, started asking me what was going on.  At that time, I was couch-surfing over at different friend's houses and rationing $.25 packs of ramen.  At 6'3, I weighed in at about 145 lbs. 

My 1SG and I had a long talk, and he eventually got me enough guts to ask my dad to move back home, which happened.  SGT M personally mentored me with getting back in shape and getting back to where I needed to be.  A few months later, I got a job at Best Buy, which sucked, but hey, it paid the bills and I could actually buy my own meals for the first time in a long time.  Money was still tight, so the deal was that I would drive over to SGT M's house and catch a ride up to Ft. Huachuca to use the gym up there.  One day, we came back to his house to pick up my car, and his wife, another SGT in the unit, had packed about three big paper grocery bags with a lot of food in them, just for me.

I don't like admitting it, but I ugly-girl cried the entire way home.  They just had their first child, SGT M was going to school, and his wife worked as an instructor on post.  Where they got the money, I have no clue.


I've had to eat a lot of humble pie in my short lifetime and short career in the military.  I think about it, and a lot of the heartache could have been avoided if I could have dropped whatever pride I was holding onto and just asked for help.  Even on this deployment, there's a lot of instances where I think back and know that I could have made things easier for myself and others had I just the damned sense to know that I didn't have to do it all on my own.  I suppose that's the core of the military: the team.  How well it functions, how well those soldiers work with each other, how well they know each other... it all (hopefully!) comes together in the end.

Agree CSM U., the ability to move a group of people from one place to the next does wonders not only for leader self-confidence, but subordinate confidence in the leader.

The capacity to create a positive environment which induces people to produced desired results.