How important is wisdom in today's military leadership?

A wise man will get men to follow readily. Without wisdom men are made to follow. Not leadership, IMO.

wisdom (or lack thereof) has never been an operant criteria for leadership (as far as i know)

As true wisdom can only come from both experience, successes, and failures, it is very uncommon with current leadership. The Army of today is so risk averse that only those officers who have had no failures, can really make rank. The absence of failures in military operations actually indicates an officer who lacks the will to stretch the envelope to accomplish a mission and generally lacks the willingness to throw out the book and think for him or herself. These are the prime prerequisites, of carrierism, timidity and the ability to scapegoat other officers for their own poor decision making. One example, what general worth his salt would have an affair with one of his junior officer's wife! Who would send his assets into an unknown situation, with inadequate intelligence, no emergency exfil plan or QRF prepped, and no air support already in the air or in a forward position? A four star General "H".

Leadership without wisdom is a scary thought. Anyone can follow the regs, training manuals-but I think wisdom provides the temperance to do it smartly, humanly -letting you guide your people instead of hammering them. To my mind i it also curbs a lot of " Do as I say, not as I do".

COL Mikel J. Burroughs We have leaders, but some do not have much wisdom. Wisdom is learned through trials, and storms. Some leaders never have felt that because they always had what they wanted.

Wisdom tends to follow unwise choices.

I had several C O's that had wisdom, they started as E M's, a couple I had tried to tell me how to drive the vehicle when I was C O's driver, they were the ones that normally backed into trees or ran something over when they grabbed the vehicle.

COL Burroughs, good question and food for thought. I once had my Company Commander, Who by the way was a Mustang Officer like myself asked me the same exact question you are asking us. First I would ask what is the difference between wisdom and the other leadership attributes or characteristics? Then I would give my best advice or answer. Which I believe I said to my C.O. “Wisdom is something you learned from making mistakes in the past so in the future you won’t do it again. Funny thing is we all know about history and our lessons learned whether in combat or peacetime.But do we have the Wisdom to learn from our past mistakes and not keep on repeating them over and over again. Again just this Marines opinion. Semper Fi COL B... Have a great day Sir!

I rank wisdom up there as a needed attribute for effective leadership. I think wisdom is is taught through a combination of personal drive by reading and studying, formal military education, and by personal experiences. There is a saying that to be old and wise you must have had to to be young and stupid. There is a lot of truth to that in my book. I think to be an effective leader you would have had to have the life experiences and education so that you can effectively lead the ones you work for as a servant leader. I think there is more book wisdom and square filling for wisdom in our senior ranks today because we promote folks who have "completed appropriate PME" versus those who have continuously deployed and graduated from the school of hard knocks. To answer the last piece, I don't think we need to force emphasis on "Wisdom" at the junior ranks...that is where they learn form SNCO's and lifes uh ohs but encourage them to read and learn. Just my two cents worth. Lt Col Charlie Brown SMSgt Lawrence McCarter Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen COL Mikel J. Burroughs Maj Marty Hogan

Hello Col. Burroughs and RP members. Where would I rank "wisdom" in the hierarchy of leadership? In my opinion, it would not be first but somewhere after "Respect". Yes, missions may be accomplished but not smoothly without it. As for "wisdom", I sort it into two categories - academic/educational; common sense. I know of engineers who are well qualified in their particular fields of engineering but lack common sense knowledge. To be a successful leader, the two areas of wisdom cannot be separated but must be in conjunction with each other. If they do not coexist within a "leader", it can lead to unpleasant attitudes by subordinates. I'm sure you all have heard the phrase more than once - "I respect the rank, not the person". Why? Is it because the leader has"widom" in only the academic category, not both? That is my belief in "wisdom" in the hierarchy of leadership.