What is “leadership”?
Posted By Marc on August 30, 2009
This is a question that has been gnawing at me for some time now. Recently, two totally different events came together for me, and I wanted to take some time to reflect on what it might be.
Event 1
The first event was getting an email from the new Headmaster of my old school, Royal Saint Georges College in Toronto. The new Headmaster wanted to get a “handle” on what the school meant to people and, more specifically, what was referred to as the “Georgian Spirit”. I couldn’t give him a definition, although I knew exactly what it meant to me. I finally came up with this
you view the world as a place to explore and try to leave better than you found it. You don’t let fear control you – you do what you believe should be done and try to have fun along the way
Saint George’s was probably the toughest school I ever went to. It was (is) modeled on an idealized form of British public (North American private) school that emphasizes public service, personal success and, above everything else, the belief that rights are balanced by duties and responsibilities. In many ways, it epitomizes the colonial elite ideal of the old British Empire. The style of leadership taught there, and they taught us leadership, was the “by example” form.
This style has the advantages and disadvantages that go hand in glove with any private school education. You are pushed harder than most kids, and the recognition you get while there is quite limited. It can be all too easy to think that you are “better” than other kids as well but, if you can learn to overcome that temptation, you can pretty much take almost anything in stride.
Perhaps most importantly, leadership at Saint George’s was about balance in life – a balance between Art and Science. The school was originally founded as an Anglican Choir School, and that is where I had my first real exposure to Baroque music, which is still, today, a passion of mine. Choral training at Saint George’s was no less rigorous than the academic or athletic training we got. They formed a whole that produced and defined Georgians. It was a style of training and education that helped you find your passions and hone them.
Event 2
Earlier this month, I was part of the Small Wars Journal contingent of live bloggers at the TRADOC Senior Leaders Conference. One of the words, and concerns, that kept coming up was leadership and training leaders for the future (both civilian and military). I’m not going to talk much about what they viewed the qualities of a leader as, but I will comment on the constant use of the term “train” in juxtaposition to the concept of “educate”.
Train or Educate “Leadership”?
It seems to me that the terms “train” and “training” have, at their core, a view that there is a specific skill set that can be inculcated in an individual. Part of this skill set is the ability to a) define the skill set, b) measure the absorption of that skill set (usually in quantitative forms), and c) reduce the practice of that skill set to an automatic response which is triggered at d) the appropriate time (defined by sensory variables within the skill set).
The effect of training is to reduce the choices available to the individual within a prescribed setting while, at the same time, decreasing the time to reach a decision. While training may reduce choices, it increase reaction speed. This is a critical survival mechanism in many situations and is not to be sneered at. In Boyd’s terms, it’s shortening the OODA loop.
Where training falls down, at least in terms of developing leadership, is in two areas. The first are is in training people in an insufficient number of areas, while the second is in what might be called “sensory selection processing” or, to use the proper term, “education”.
An insufficient number of areas
One of the greatest flaws of training systems is that they train people in an insufficient number of areas that are too closely related. While this is necessary in order to produce someone who can operate in certain environments, it severely restricts what they can do. A common, vernacular, saying is “Give a person a hammer and everything looks like nails”. The danger, then, becomes one where you have a “leader” who is highly trained at hammering and nothing else. They are, as a result of their training, exceptional at hammering and pretty much useless at anything else.
This creates a serious limitation both for the individual and for the organization. At the organizational area, this limitation is potentially fatal when the organization is required to be “agile” (i.e. able to rapidly adapt to a shifting external operational environment). How can an organization be agile when it’s members are not?
Sensory Selection Processing
This one requires a bit of knowledge about how the brain works, so bear with me. Training operates primarily by constructing and reinforcing neural connections in the brain and body such that the actions that are “trained” become sub-conscious. One of the classic examples of this is learning how to tie your shoe laces; when you are first learning to do it, it is really hard but, gradually, it becomes easier and easier until you are no longer conscious of how you do it. At the conscious level, you might just think “tie shoes” and your training (aka neural programing) takes over.
Now, what happens at the conscious level is that you have a set of sensory input / output criteria – “states” if you will – that evoke a trained response. Think about that feeling you can get when your shoes just aren’t right, they are a bit loose, so you automatically look around for a place to re-tie them. Sensory selection processing works by taking a bunch of sensory input and processing it until it evokes either (or both) a trained response or a mental symbol requiring choice. The latter happens when the sensory input triggers off more than one trained response of roughly equal weight.
What does this have to do with “leadership”, you might be asking? Well, one of the functions of a leader, especially in hierarchical organizations, is to tell the people they are leading which set of training response to invoke. This means that the leader has to be able to, in part, step outside of their trained responses and bring in other options that are not part of them; at least until they are certain that what they are perceiving fits those trained responses. In effect, part of leadership is being able to comprehend a situation and select the most appropriate response beyond the normal trained ones.
Selecting responses
Being able to select a response pattern is crucial, and a large part of doing so comes with knowing what the specific objectives are. In the military, there is a phrase “commander’s intent” that should describe exactly what the commander sees as the primary problem set while, at the same time, giving an overarching guidance on how to achieve that intent. Seem simple, but it isn’t.
Where it gets truly messy is in the application and, especially, in “offensive” (in the military sense) situations. This messyness holds true for military organizations, government bureaucracies, or any fairly large group. Part of the reason why it is messy, is that a commander must rely on their subordinates to follow a plan while, at the same time, encouraging them to take advantage of fleeting opportunities. Another part of the reason why it is messy is that, as the old saying goes, “no battleplan ever survives contact with the enemy”.
There are some very interesting examples of what happens when you do get a very clear commander’s intent and a solid briefing: Hezbollah’s defensive actions against Israel in the recent war are a good example, but so, too, is KLM Royal Dutch Airlines corporate culture restructuring of the late 1970′s. In both cases, and numerous other ones, decision making – “leadership” – was devolved to the front line person within broad guidelines; in effect saying “you are all leaders”, and requiring those same front line people to think beyond their training.
This is where things start to get “interesting” and where we move from training into education.
Education and, especially, a liberal education, requires people to learn about things outside of their supposed area of interest. Part of the reason for this is “traditional” – “A gentleman should be able to do X, Y and Z” – and part is institutional inertia. But there is a reason why this type of education is “traditional” – it worked, and produced leaders who could draw from a variety of disciplines.
This variety is essential in producing a leader who is capable of thinking outside the training box. Without it, “leaders” are too predictable and, once someone is predictable, they can be manipulated into a no-win situation.
JWC on 
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Marc on
Interesting article! I found some difficulty trying to transition from being an Infantry Officer where I had TTPs or battle drills to go off of to being a cop where there is very little of that. I will have to re-read this and reflect more on this.
Hi John,
Thanks and I’ll be interested in your reflections
. One of the things that has been gnawing at me is that we can usually recognize a leader intuitively, but some of it doesn’t seem to be trainable.
On shifting from TTPs to operating as a cop, i can certainly understand the difficulties! I’ve seen a very similar process with people coming out of, say, quantitative Sociology and trying to “do” ethnographies. My suspicion, and that’s all it is, is that qualitative research, leadership, being a cop, etc. all involve a neural network that is aimed at sensory pattern recognition and sorting, rather than the more stimulus-response form of training. Now if I could only get access to an MRI…
As a history type (military history flavor), I probably do more pondering than is healthy regarding leadership and if it’s an innate or trainable commodity. At least in the context of what I study, leadership seems to be a combination of both elements, with a bias towards innate ability. That may be why others can recognize it (the “I know it when I see it” syndrome), but why in some cases certain individuals simply do not seem to be able to learn it. What I’m still unsure of is how much of that “innate leadership” is biological and how much stems from an individual’s upbringing and education (especially in the early years). I’ve been focusing the bulk of my current study on officers in the Frontier Army who also served with distinction during the Civil War to see if there are barriers to the transition of leadership capability from large units to small units, or from one style of conflict to another. Not sure yet where it will take me, but it’s proving an interesting trip.
Steve,
Apologies for the delay in approving your comment! In mitigation, I’m doing fieldwork in Toronto right now and only online spottily…..
On the nature-nurture question, I’m coming to the conclusion that there is too much interaction to really pull it apart simplistically. Anyone, IMO, can be trained in some form of leadership, but that form may not be recognizable or correct in certain settings and/or situations. I’m beginning to think that “leadership” is a highly situationally variable….
I’ve long believed that our training methodologies are a jumbled mess of useful instruction provided in the wrong order. In my opinion, law schools and medical schools have got the system of developing professionals down to a pretty good system.
Medical schools and law schools do a great job of creating professionals – largely through their process of giving students a foundation of explicit knowledge through an initial period of academically rigorous education for the first year (for law) or two (for medicine), followed by internships and practical work (both heavily encouraged in law school) or by a residency period with supervised OJT (required for doctors – and generally what a lawyer experiences in his first few years, if he opts to go into practice). Part of this stems from the ability of law schools and medical schools to draw students from a pool of individuals who already have a liberal education. The Army relies upon recruiting cadets much earlier, obtaining a commitment from them by financing their education, assigning them to a branch with little regard for actual compatability, and then wasting much of their time in the Basic Course teaching explicit knowledge that could have been taught much earlier, at the expense of imparting upon the Officer a baseline of professional (tacit) knowledge.
The Army model is a horrible mix of liberal education (university) and simplistic field training (ROTC), which PRECEDES the foundation of explicit knowledge that one gleans upon commissioning and enrollment in one’s branch-specific Officer Basic Course. The Army relies upon a convoluted system that forces cadets to simultaneously receive their liberal education and some explicit military knowledge. Then they get assigned to a branch which may or may not interest them, and they get more of the baseline explicit knowledge that all Officers should possess (BOLIC, or whatever the latest term is for it), and then they go on to their branch-specific Basic Course. This does not seem like an ideal way to produce professional military leaders.
Ideally, they would get the liberal education first, then the baseline military knowledge that ROTC is supposed to impart (analogous to the first year of law or first two years of medicine), and then get commissioned. Then get assigned or choose a branch and attend that Basic Course (analogous to the 2L and 3L years for law or the residency for medicine). Then show up to their first unit as prepared for their first duty assignment as the typical new lawyer or doctor is for a first assignment (not a seasoned pro, but certainly more ready than the typical cherry 2LT who must be spoon-fed by a PSG).
ROTC’s only actual contributions under the current system are to 1) begin the process of indoctrination into the Army culture and ensure compliance with minimum standards upon commissioning, such as body fat composition, 2) to provide a catalyst for cadets to learn more quickly once they arrive at their first TRADOC school (largely achieved through the indoctrination process), and 3) to provide a means by which cadets commit to the Army early (before completing their junior year of college) and follow through on it (they are required to serve upon graduation, unless a deferment is granted).
It is time to re-think whether military science could be an undergraduate major. This could have the effect of giving undergraduate students a three-year liberal education at a university, with an academic minor – the foundation liberal education. This could be followed by one-year of focused study and education in military science (the equivalent of what cadets and Officers are supposed to learn in ROTC and BOLIC), culminating in a commissioned officer who has an undergraduate major in military science and a minor in a subject of his/her choice. This would create an Officer who has the requisite baseline liberal education and explicit knowledge (military science) to begin a professional military education. The Officer Basic Courses could then kick off with actual professional education of Officers (learning how to tactically employ squads and integrate fires and other effects), rather than wasting the first month on individual skill level 1 tasks (land navigation, marksmanship, etc) and spending fully half of the remaining time being bored to death with classroom instruction that they could have received before commissioning.
Ugh. Sorry for the long post.
Hi Schmedlap,
No worries about the long post – there’s a lot to think about there!
Personally, I suspect that it would be extremely difficult to get a “military science” program together, outside of military colleges. And that’s leaving aside the many, hmm, let’s call them “questions” I have about the validity of calling what the military needs to do a “science”.
I think part of the problem is in parsing out what should usefully be training, education and experience. Still a lot to think about…
Military “science” as opposed to that military “art” – the latter being approximately what I think most would regard as “Professional knowledge” or at least “tacit knowledge” (difficult to teach) whereas the former would be explicit knowledge (easy to teach).
I think the actual curriculum could be structured similar to that of business administration. Most courses that I took as an MBA student had analogous subject areas in the military. Supply-chain = Supply System. Human resources = Personnel. Marketing = Information Operations. Financial and Managerial Accounting = Unit Supply and Accountability. Managerial Economics, Statistics, and Information Systems = Intelligence. Etc. The existing models of ROTC “basic camp” and “advanced camp” and West Point “beast barracks” provide a good framework for the first few months of indoctrination and basic Soldiering skills.
Hi Schmedlap,
Oh, I can see the analogies with an MBA program, I’m just not sure I would call it “Science” – “Engineering” would be a more appropriate term. It’s really getting at the difference between applied, experimental and theoretical and how that would cross over. My suspicion is that applied would = tactical & operational, experimental = operational and strategic, and theoretical would span the gamut and include grand strategic..
I would like to ring in one the subject of leadership because it is a metaphysical way of appreciating people as diverse as Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, Saddam Hussein, and even our own more benign presidents and military leaders in the West and throughout the world.
Carl Jung wrote a series of fascinating essays about the three dictators Hilter, Mussolini, and Stalin. His “reading” of them stemmed from his interest in primitive cultures. Jung states that there are two types of leaders: One, the shaman leader; Two, the warrior leader. These archetypes run strong, according to Jung, in the personality structures of modern-day autocrats who have over-identified with those archetypes.
Jung’s typologies begin with the physical presence of his three subjects and then proceeds to a discussion about their aesthetics, individualism (or lack thereunto), and their messages. He claims that shaman types hardly fit into their clothes. They are not individuals. Their egos are weaker than their warrior counterparts. Their utterances are the collective mass that speaks through them. Everything they do is for the mass. As long as he remains a messenger of his mass, he cannot be reasoned with. Neither can his mass, which would fall into a massive depression were they to separate from him, or he from them. He is visionary, transformational. Speaking of Hitler as having over-identified with the shaman archetype, Jung thought that there had been no one in a position of great power since Muhammad. I wonder what Jung would say about Osama bin Laden, who strikes me as a shaman-type leader.
There are other Islamic terrorist leaders, such as Muqtada Al-Sadr, who have a warrior complex, but they use religious terms to convey their message their people. Muqtada fills out his clothes. He is not a visionary, though he pretended to be. And we eventually found out that he could be pacified and so could most of the militants in his marjah in Sadr City. Warriors have enough individuality such that they and their collective can be persuaded to cease-fire.
Jung wrote that Stalin and Mussolini were individuals. Mostly they acted on behalf of themselves, although not in always very nice ways. They quite robustly filled out their clothes. Jung wrote that during a Nazi processional observed by Mussolini on his review deck, Mussolini witnessed the Nazi goose-step and was quite taken by it. He was indeed so individually amused by the aesthetics of the goose-step that he adopted it for his own troops.
Saddam was an individual, warrior-type who also pretended to speak for the mass but was really acting on behalf of himself, his family, and tribe. So were most of his military commanders. Perhaps the US-Iraq War would not have become so
messy if we could have found a way to just target this small portion of the Iraqi people, but in Iraq there were and still are many competing warrior types in conflict with one another who had activated after our invasion. The good news is that we started finding ways to reason with the warriors of Iraq.
If I were to look at US leaders, I’d have to say that George W. Bush was deeply conflicted about what kind of leader he really was. Some might think this is a bit crazy of me to say so, but I think Bush was a visionary, shaman type who was caught up in the contagion of the mass after 9-11. Then he shifted into gonzo warrior mode because he just did not have strong enough ego boundaries.
Obama is a shaman, visionary type, though by no means comparable to Muhammad or Htler. He is more benign. Positively ambiguous. Time will tell if he is so over-identified with his shaman identity that he can’t be an effective, transformational leader who can move a mountain and maintain the love of the people.