Education for Leadership

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International leadership creates further burdens. So much of a leader's success rests on the little things--the hug or slap on the back, the tricks of speech, the small talk around campfire or water cooler or cafeteria table. Yet these are also matters in which culture plays an enormous role. In some societies, failure to establish physical contact means remoteness or lack of interest; in others it is an infringement upon an individual's dignity. In some cultures, informality is a sign of regard; in others the reverse is true, and so on. There is no rule here, save that of tact. Dwight D. Eisenhower showed a genius for international leadership when he fired his first American colonel for calling a fellow staff officer "you British son of a bitch." "I don't mind the 'son of a bitch' part," he is reported to have said. "It's the 'you British' that was unacceptable."

Nor should one assume that cultural leadership norms are rigid. Japanese managers have done remarkably well in motivating American automotive workers, not least by getting rid of many of the perquisites of special parking and cafeterias for managers that flourished in this nominally egalitarian country.

Quite apart from culture in this broadest sense, many other contextual considerations shape leadership. The kind of behavior that works effectively in one well-defined organization may fail miserably in another, even if the organizations appear outwardly similar. In this way, the versatile leader is a kind of amateur anthropologist before he or she is a practitioner, seeking to learn customs, rites and, above all, the physical environment before deciding how to act.

  

To take another military case: Leadership on a nuclear submarine is radically different from leadership of a Marine infantry battalion. Everything from the level of tolerable noise to the emphasis on physical conditioning is different, and even if one could teach Marine lieutenant colonels nuclear engineering and ship handling and bring nuclear submariners to a high level of athletic keenness and tactical acuity, it is unlikely that one could take the other's place without a substantial change in how they do business.

The size of an organization is also critical to leadership style. There are those who can spin up an organization of 200 people who would be at a loss to inspire one of 20,000. The reverse is equally true. Beyond the basic maxims, then, leadership challenges are infinitely variable.

Can leadership Be learned?

Leadership is a practical, not theoretical, art. There are, therefore, limits to how much of it can be imparted in a classroom. It is more a matter of self- study than of formal instruction; military organizations are probably unique in the opportunities they provide for modest doses of theory reinforced by massive quantities of carefully contrived practice and coaching. Most people, and certainly most SAIS students, are not likely to join the armed services and, for that matter, military leadership skills do not always translate perfectly into civilian equivalents. How, then, should one teach oneself leadership?

The depressing bookstore shelves crammed with meretricious primers on leadership (Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun and the like) are most definitely the wrong place to begin. But there are some classics worth pondering. One of the more interesting is the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the reflections of one of the last emperors from the Golden Age of Rome. The first section of this slim volume--which seems to have been written as a kind of philosophical exercise rather than a text--is an extended giving of thanks to those who molded his character and a sober accounting of what it was they taught. It highlights a central fact: One learns ways of conduct, including leadership skills, more by observation and emulation than study. Generations of leaders in many fields model the behaviors of those who precede them: Marcus's wise advice is to do so self-consciously.

Nothing matches struggling with the real tasks of leadership, but in its stead, vicarious experience is invaluable--which is why earlier, more literate generations studied Plutarch and why political leaders often have a passion for biography. Art, particularly in the form of theater and film, has much to teach, as well. "Twelve O'Clock High," Darryl Zanuck's 1950 tale of an American general who turns around a failing bomber group in England, but at a terrible price, is a staple of business school classes on leadership. Texts as old as the Bible or The Iliad or as contemporary as a Tom Stoppard play reveal leaders in moments of crisis as well as triumph--and in this they are far better than the mindlessly upbeat nostrums for success in public or private life proffered by popular authors. Nor should poetry be ignored: Read Robert Browning's "The Lost Leader" to know what it feels like to be betrayed by one who has sacrificed real leadership without title or glory for ignominy and "a riband to stick in his coat."

Education for Leadership

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One might think, in that case, that leadership is easy enough to pick up. And, in fact, the basics are readily enough taught, even to children. Consider the following episode from C.S. Lewis's children's stories, The Chronicles of Narnia. In A Horse and His Boy, Lewis tells the story of two princes separated at birth, the older of whom is brought up in a distant land by a fisherman. After various adventures, Cor is reunited with his younger brother, Corin, and their father, King Lune. To his dismay, Cor learns that as the older son he is to become king.

"But Father, couldn't you make whichever you like to be the next King?"

"No. The King's under the law, for it's the law makes him a king. Has not more power to start away from thy crown than any sentry from his post."

"Oh, dear," said Cor. "I don't want to at all. And Corin--I am most dreadfully sorry. I never dreamed my turning up was going to chisel you out of your kingdom."

"Hurrah! Hurrah!" said Corin. "I shan't have to be King. I shan't have to be King. I'll be a prince. It's princes have all the fun."

"And that's truer than thy brother knows, Cor," said King Lune. "For this is what it means to be a king: To be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there's hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land."

In a passage readily accessible to an intelligent 10-year-old, one has some fundamental principles of leadership at hand. Cor has already begun to learn the difference between responsibility and office and the importance of personal example in both prosperity and adversity, of cheerfulness in the midst of difficulty and, implicitly, of visible self-sacrifice for a larger good.

Good military organizations obsess about the importance of developing good junior leaders. Understanding full well the terrible stresses war puts on soldiers, they know that formal authority may count for very little in a pinch. During the siege of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, for example, the nominal commander of a beleaguered French base in the Laotian highlands was deposed by a committee of middle-ranking officers. The general ended up taking a backseat as a small band of majors and lieutenant colonels organized a desperate and, in the end, impossible defense of their surrounded outpost.

Modern armies seek not merely willing and intelligent obedience, but initiative--often in situations of ultimate difficulty. They, too, begin with the basics. In 1942, General William Slim led a badly battered polyglot army of Indian and British soldiers out of Burma: They had barely avoided annihilation at the hands of a Japanese force superior in virtually every respect. He had the task of rebuilding not only the form of the organization but its spirit, and for that reason his memoir, Defeat Into Victory, is well worth reading. One of his speeches to officers included this famous sentence: "I tell you, as officers, that you will not eat, sleep, smoke, sit down or lie down until your soldiers have had a chance to do these things. If you do this, they will follow you to the ends of the earth. If you do not, I will break you in front of your regiments."

As military organizations seek to create effective junior leaders, they pound into them these kinds of simple maxims: "The fellow in charge eats last." "Your priorities are, in this order, your mission, your men, yourself." "Don't ask your people to do something that you are not prepared to do." "The command is not 'forward,' but 'follow me.'" In a myriad of ways, they create circumstances in which junior leaders must put these maxims into practice and, in military organizations with well developed noncommissioned officers systems, they pair the new officer with a sergeant or petty officer who is a nominal subordinate (though 15 years or so older than the new lieutenant or ensign) but actually a kind of leadership coach.

The maxims of elementary leadership are thus quite simple--although, of course, often difficult to live by. One need only look at the wretched corporate scandals of recent months to see how easy it is for those at the top of organizations to think of perquisites as rights, to forget that simple mantra of "My mission, my men, myself." Nor is this any less true of governmental or nonprofit organizations than of