Leadership Under Fire

Michael, thanks for the story and the video. It’s certainly sad when elected leaders, in fact those aspiring to the presidency, speak poorly of our true great leaders–those in the military. We need to do our best to make everyone around us aware of just how intelligent, courageous, and driven our military personnel are. We also need to display their importance to us personally and as a nation. An example of this is my cousin. He was a top student at Arizona State University and forewent his senior year to train to become a Navy Seal. In the second quarter of last year, after months and months of personal training and studies, he entered basic training and, just this month, started Seal school. He’s bright, athletic, adventuresome and looking for leadership opportunities. He claims he can finish school anytime but his window of opportunity to become a Seal was small. He is a prime example of those who enter the military today. He didn’t take this opportunity because there was nothing better, he took it because nothing else offered this type of challenge.

Good suggestion from the last comment. I too found “Leadership Lessons from West Point” and although I am only into the second chapeter right now I am very impressed with its content. We are actually beginning to use some if its concepts here at my company.
Great article Mike and thanks for the video feed.

Tes,

Yes, I deleted your previous comment. This is not a political blog, and I didn’t want to see a debate ensue. It’s completely off-topic.

Thanks,

Mike

Michael,

Thank you for your answer. I only wanted to stress that people can wholeheartedly follow the leader if the leader’s goal is noble and he can convince them that his intentions are right.

Best regards,

TesTeq – Krzysztof Wysocki

I was introduced to General Moore quite a number of years ago, but I had no idea who he was until I saw the movie. An article on Madeleine Stowe in a magazine we were advertising in mentioned that she had just completed filming a movie where she played the role of the wife of the greatest battlefield commander in Viet Nam. I had read The West Point Way of Leadership years before and gravitated toward the conclusion that leading troops in battle has to be the greatest leadership challenge imaginable. (And that the best education there is begins with four years at West Point.) It was a very uncharacteristic impulse buy for me when I came across a display of DVDs of We Were Soldiers in the supermarket, but the movie had a profound effect on me. (One minor point: Mel Gibson didn’t “make” the movie, though I think perhaps his production comany did. It was written and directed by Randall Wallace, who wrote the screenplay for Braveheart.) I devoured the book the movie was based on–which read more like an after-action report–but curiously nowhere could I find some of the most memorable lines from the movie (three strikes and you are not out, etc.). Subsequently, I’ve read them all in various pieces that General Moore wrote on military command. Of course, Randall Wallace had regular access to the General and other veterans during writing and filming. Finally, when Geraldo Rivera, was embedded with the troops during the great rush to Baghdad during Gulf War II, he reported on all of the impressive young American officers he was encountering, how well educated they are, and how capable they are. Any one of them, he said, could go home and run IBM or run General Electric or any of American industry. Agreed!

add on to doug’s comment, it is true, mel gibson was just a cast, in fact, that the film was produced by paramount (u.s.) and icon (owned by a german copmpany). it was a great movie, i think because it was the first war movie of vietnam produced by not just the u.s., which portraits various point of views on “the past”, unlike most of vetman movies came out back in late 70-80s (except stallone’s “first blood” whitch was written by a canadian writer david morrell). me too, i had known a little bit of “yellow-ish hair” moore, I have read about him when i was in school in japan, i got to know more through the movie. put aside of debate of rivera for now, one other thing what america needs learn besides “war” is film rating. it is ok to tell your kids about your war story like moore had, but you cannot show war movies to them. uh??