About Leadership

There is so much talk and teaching about “management” in these changing times. However, there is a difference between “management” and “leadership.” My own world experience has taught me that under good leadership, a good team manages to get the job done. Yesterday I visited the Milken Institute to hear a talk entitled “Defining Great Leadership” by Warren Bennis and Joel Kurtzman, both experienced and celebrated writers and speakers on this subject. It was a full house.

Bennis, in describing the start of his life-study of leadership related his experience during World War II as a fresh Lieutenant in a combat hardened infantry unit in France. His discussion rang a bell with me as that was so similar to my first leadership experience. In Korea in 1955 I was transferred from a non-combat assignment to a tank regiment on the front lines. Bennis and Kurtzman stressed one is only a leader when there are loyal followers and they both agreed the Army was the best training ground for this. When I was placed as a tank platoon leader, it was the “loyal followers” who trained me to be a leader. The sergeants, all veterans of chasing Rommel across Africa and Italy, showed me how to be part of the team, and lead.

Today, those companies with outstanding and responsible leadership, with the professional and social skills needed to inspire and harness creativity in the high-tech world, will be our heroes of this century.

Bennis’ book Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership and Kurtzman’s Common Purpose: How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve the Extraordinary are available from Amazon and book stores.

Buy here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”