Musings on Leadership

To be an effective leader, you essentially need two traits: 1) the skill and competence to be promoted to a leadership position and, 2) the ability to attract willing followers. John Maxwell says, " If you think you're leading, but no one is following, then you are only taking a walk. " I was very careful, in that first paragraph, to qualify "followers" with "willing". You can absolutely be a leader with unwilling followers. I've often heard it said that the most difficult type of leadership is leadership in a volunteer organization. At your job, you HAVE to follow what your boss says or you'll be fired. In a volunteer organization, they don't HAVE to do ANYTHING you say. You have to MOTIVATE them to WANT to do what you ask. Good leaders, on the other hand, spend their time ensuring that their "followers" actually WANT them as their leader. Lieutenant General Hal Moore, the solder on whom the movie " We Were Soldiers " w...

This week's leadership lesson is inspired by the move, " We Were Soldiers ", starring Mel Gibson. The movie is based on a real life battle during the Viet Nam War. Mel played Lt. Col. Hal Moore, commander of the 1st Battalion of the 7th Calvary. On November 14, 1965, Lt. Col. Moore, and 450 of his men, were dropped by helicopter into the la Drang valley. They were immediately surrounded by around 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Thus began the first full-fledged battle between U.S. and North Vietnamese soldiers. Over the next two days U.S. soldiers were killed but they inflicted around 1,200 casualties and forced the Communist forces to withdraw. The movie, and the battle on which it was based teaches us 10 leadership lessons:(You can read General Moore’s  book .) Be head strong. when the setbacks come (and they will), a leader picks themselves up and keeps moving forward. There's always a way. Either you find one, or you make one. If you think you might fail in a giv...