The Art of Command: Military Leadership from George Washington to Colin Powell

Introduction

Introduction Leadership for War and Peace Harry S. Laver and Jeffrey J. Matthews Few people would challenge the assertion by presidential biographer James MacGregor Burns that “leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth.”1 Yet, in the three decades since the publication of Burns’s seminal work Leadership, our understanding of the leadership process has improved tremendously. Among the most important developments is the widespread recognition that successful leaders, operating at any level of responsibility, are not simply endowed at birth with great leadership ability. As General William Tecumseh Sherman once observed, “I have read of men born as generals peculiarly endowed by nature but have never seen one.”2 Instead, leadership skills are learned and developed over the course of an individual’s life and career through education, mentoring, and experience. Today, there is no longer a debate on this question. Leadership can be learned and applied. What has not been fully recognized, however, is that leadership development is an active process that requires the conscious and consistent attention of aspiring and proven leaders. To fulfill their leadership potential, individuals must make deliberate choices to improve their leadership skills throughout their careers. This may seem readily apparent, but consider that one may have had the benefits of graduating from a prestigious educational institution, working with the best possible mentors, and gaining experience in a range of circumstances and yet still fail to lead effectively. One must want to become a better leader and strive consistently to achieve that goal. Leaders such 2 Harry S. Laver and Jeffrey J. Matthews as George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, and George Marshall worked to cultivate their abilities and fulfill their potential through effort and commitment. From their first days as junior officers to their appointments as commanding generals, time and again they chose the difficult path of working to improve their leadership. The most effective leaders have recognized that they can best enhance their abilities through diverse means. Hands-on, practical experience is perhaps the best way to learn the art of leadership. Learning by doing, however, must always be reinforced with learning by thinking . Those who aspire to improve their leadership—and their followership , for that matter—must reflect on their personal experiences and the experiences of others and learn from both. Consequently, a central component of informed leadership development is studying the past. The political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli provided wise counsel to the prince when he advised him to use history as a guide for political and military action: “A prudent man should always enter those paths taken by great men [of history] and imitate those who have been most excellent, so that if one’s own skill does not match theirs, at least it will have the smell of it.” While such counsel might seem obvious, there is growing concern that many of our contemporary leaders see little to be learned from the past. In their thought-provoking book The Past as Prologue, historians Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich lament that “few current civilian and military leaders seem willing to indulge in a systematic reflection about the past. . . . How else to explain political and military assumptions preceding the 2003 invasion of Iraq that largely ignored the history of the region, [and the] planning that discounted post-conflict challenges . . . and the slowness only thirty years after Vietnam to recognize and deal with the insurgency that followed the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime.”3 The primary purpose of our book is to provide both aspiring and experienced leaders, especially those in the military but also civilians in every field and profession, with a historically grounded exploration of leadership development, giving special attention to nine essential qualities of effective leadership. While their working environments Introduction 3 may be dramatically different, military and civilian leaders must exercise essentially the same skills. The themes and attributes emphasized here were derived from our experiences as military historians and professors of leadership and from countless discussions with active duty and retired military personnel. We identified nine leadership themes and then selected nine commanders whose leadership styles exemplified those themes. Not surprisingly, each leader personified many, if not all nine, of our key themes. For example, Ulysses S. Grant showed remarkable adaptability and fierce determination during the 1863 Vicksburg campaign. A century later, during the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, Hal Moore demonstrated flexibility and tenacity equal to...