Defining Leadership

1
Defining Leadership

• Presentation To COMETS Conference April 2004
• Dr. Stephen B .Springer
• Texas State University

2
Status

• What are the characteristics of a leader? How
  might we define the duties and scope of
  leadership?

3
The Leader as a Learner

• This link between leadership and learning is not
  only essential at the community level. It is even
  more indispensable in world affairs. Ignorance
  and misinformation can handicap the progress of a
  city or a company,but they can if allowed to
  prevail in foreign policy,handicap this countrys
  security.

4
The Leader as a learner continued

• In a world of complex and continuing problems,
  in world full of frustrations and
  irritations,Americas leadership must be guided
  by the lights of learning and reason-or else
  those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the
  plausible with the possible will gain the popular
  ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple
  solutions to every world problem.

5
From President John F. Kennedy

• Words taken from the speech President Kennedy
  never delivered in Dallas ,Texas November 22, 1963

6
Be, Know and Do

• MSG Gary I Gordon
• SFC Randall D. Shughart
• Posthumously Awarded the Medal of Honor For
  Actions in Somalia
• Leadership, duty or highest respect
• for others?

7
Knowing Oneself

• What must a leader know about himself or herself
  before taking action?
• Alvin C. York was promoted to sergeant
  and was awarded the medal of honor because his
  actions of 8 October 1918.

8
Standards

• Let us set for ourselves a standard so high that
  it will be a glory to live up to it, and then let
  us live up to it and add a new laurel to the
  crown of America.
• President Woodrow Wilson

9
Thinking Forward

• A good soldier, whether he leads a platoon or
  an army, is expected to look backward as well as
  forward but he must think only forward.
• General of the Army
• Douglas MacArthur

10
Win/Win

• Win/Win is a frame of mind and heart that
  constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human
  interactions. Win/Win means that agreements or
  solutions are mutually beneficial, mutually
  satisfying. With a Win/Win solution all parties
  feel good about the decision and feel committed
  to the action plan. Stephen R. Covey

11
Tolerance

• It is especially hard for powerful people to be
  tolerant of the quality worlds of people who are
  less powerful. If everyone could learn that what
  is right for me does not make it right for anyone
  else, the world would be a much happier place.
• Dr. William Glasser
• Psychiatrist

12
Seek Help

• Despite your idealism, which leads you to
  believe you can solve all problems for the
  betterment of mankind, and despite your youth,
  which makes you think you have time to accomplish
  all these things you will learn one thing early.
  You will need to seek help from those who can
  indeed make changes happen because

13
continued

• you will not have the authority, power or
  position to get them done yourself.
• From Kenneth Ashworths book
• Caught Between the Dog and the Fireplug or
  How to Survive Public Service

14
Division of Labor

• 21 Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the
  people able men, such as fear God, men of truth,
  hating covetousness and place such over them, to
  be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds,
  rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens 22 And
  let them judge the people at all seasons and it
  shall be, that every great matter they shall
  bring unto thee, but every

15
Division of Labor Continued

• small matter they shall judge so shall it be
  easier for thyself, and they shall bear the
  burden with thee.
• Jethro, Moses father in law, advice to
  Moses. Exodus 18 21-22
• The Holy Bible (King James Version)

16
Maintain Dignity and Integrity

• Based on my work in my dads campaigns,
  reporters and my opponents spent much of my 1994
  campaign waiting for me to blow up, to lose my
  temper. It never happened. They expected I would
  react the same way when they criticized me as I
  had when they criticized my father. But there is
  a big difference between being a

17
Maintain Dignity and Integrity

• loyal son and being the candidate. One is a
  follower, the other a leader. And from a great
  leader, my dad, I learned the most important
  lesson of all you can enter the arena, serve
  with distinction, absorb the slings and arrows,
  and emerge with dignity and integrity and the
  love of your family intact.

18
Maintain Dignity and Integrity

• From A Charge To Keep
• By
• President George W. Bush

19
Is This All That There Is?

• Leadership is difficult to define, difficult to
  teach and most of all difficult to put into
  practice. All of you in this room are leaders
  and you will define your own style, write your
  own script and make your own mark on the
  military, DOD and our nation as a whole. Choose
  your style.