We have watered down, warped, and bastardized the meaning of leadership with all of our modern modifiers and caveats. It is time we return to what it is at its core: going ahead and showing others the way.
There are countless opinions on leadership — what it is and what it is not and what makes for a good leader and effective leadership. This is mine. A simple search of the word leadership turns up so many differing styles and conflicting “must-have” traits, the word leadership starts to lose its original significance. There is servant leadership, supportive leadership, transformational leadership, transactional leadership, task-oriented leadership, laissez-faire or free-range leadership (WTF?), autocratic leadership, and democratic leadership — to name a few. Some of these phrases are oxymoronic as they redefine leadership as, “do as I say, not as I do” or “you figure it out for yourself and report back to me.” And do not get me started on the “lead from the rear” or “lead from behind” “cheerleader” nonsense. Lead with humility? Absolutely. Empower others to lead? Yes. Allow others to take on all the personal risk while you watch from the sidelines? Oh, hell no! This is the antithesis of leadership.
The heart of leadership is guiding by example. The word leader is believed to come from the Old English word lædan which means “to go before as a guide.” Leadership, by definition, is active: “to go.” It is from the front and involves personal risk: “go before” or “go first.” And it is a collective pursuit between the leader and those followers she shows the way to “as a guide.” The book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, gives an even more mythical origin story to the word:
The word leader comes from the Indo-European root word leit, the name for the person who carried the flag in front of an army going into battle and usually died in the first enemy attack. His sacrifice would alert the rest of the army to the location of the danger ahead.
While we fortunately do not carry flags in front of our armies going into battle anymore, there is a modern-day equivalent of the leit called the point man. On any military foot patrol, someone has to be at the front. In any formation, someone has to be the guide. Someone has to go first. I love what Major Tom Schueman, founder of veteran nonprofit Patrol Base Abbate, has taught me, “in any endeavor, someone has to walk point.” This comes from the organization’s namesake, Sergeant Matthew Abbate (uh-baa-tay), who was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross. Matt’s “Rules of War” are memorialized in Bing West’s One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War and rule number 3 is: “Someone must walk the point (where you are sure to die).” While I am against applying most war-time concepts to civilian life, leadership is one that is so deeply rooted in this idea of self-sacrifice for the greater good in the face of danger and uncertainty, that I think we must return to its roots. Leadership demands personal risk from the leader. Leadership requires the leader to lean into the discomfort first and get others to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. How can you expect others to stick their necks out if you are not willing to do so yourself?
There is a popular misconception about the U.S. military, often perpetuated by those who never served, that it is all about Command-and-Control leadership (which is not really leadership). What I learned in the Marine Corps is that leadership is a courageous act of love for something bigger than yourself — for the mission and your fellow Marines. I learned that everyone, with practice, is capable of leadership. I learned that leadership is not a level, but something you want to encourage at all levels. Barking orders and demands and expecting blind obedience is not leadership. The only true form of leadership is leadership by example. I will show you the way. The official motto of Marine Corps Officer training is Ductus Exemplo: A Latin term that means lead by example. “It means that being a Marine isn’t about giving or receiving orders; it’s about behaving in a manner that inspires others.”
One of my favorite quotes about leadership comes from President Teddy Roosevelt’s “Citizenship in a Republic” speech. I love the famous part about how, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…” If you read beyond the famous quote, you will see a portion of the speech that I believe is even more relevant today as it was in 1910:
Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride or slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of the great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and the valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who “but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier.”
Sadly, we have an oversupply of successful and sheltered poltroons parading around as leaders. What the world needs now, is leadership as it was originally defined. We need leaders who are willing to be the first in the arena and the last to leave. We need leaders who are not afraid to have their faces “marred by dust and sweat and blood.” We need leaders who are willing to carry their own rucksack and the load of others when needed. We need leaders who take accountability in victory and defeat. We need leaders who do not expect others to do what they are unwilling to do themselves. We need leaders who are willing to “quell the storm and ride the thunder.” We need leaders who have the humility and the courage to walk point.
On what will you take point?
