“He had
confidence. His knowledge about the job
and what needed to be done was superior to others. He had a sense of himself and what he brought
to the job. He had a vision of where he
would take the team.” *
This is
an excerpt from a US Army officer efficiency report for a certain lieutenant
colonel who was serving as a battalion commander in the early 1990’s. But what I would give if only it could be
said about me and I think most of you would like this to be said of you as
well. It almost seems like an epitaph,
something I think a lot of folks would like to be said as their eulogy, doesn’t
it?
When you
think about the qualities and skills required to be an effective leader, I’ve
written about some of these before. The
sense of confidence derives from the
next sentence, knowing the job well.
That confidence is spawned because this person worked harder than most
to know the job and knowing how to
communicate it to his subordinates. That
communication is often done in pieces, yet the leader keeps the gist of the
overall plan in play at all times. By
having a sense of himself, he took
into account his strengths and weaknesses, knowing, for each task, which to
emphasize and which to minimize or improve upon. And perhaps most importantly, he wasn’t just
trying to get the job done or make it until the next payday…he had vision, that extraordinary sense of the
next level of accomplishment. That extraordinary
sense of making his team better and, thus, more valuable to the
organization. That extraordinary sense
that goes far beyond the routine pluses and minuses of the daily grind of
micromanagement.
So who
was this Army officer? You probably
heard of him later in his career when he was promoted to be General David
Petraeus, now Director of the CIA. I think his superior who wrote that OER some
twenty years ago was pretty good at recognizing leadership talent.
*From
All In, by Paula Broadwell, The
Penguin Press, 2012
About the author:
David Ciarella is a Houston, Texas native. He has his bachelor’s
from the University of Texas at Austin and served four years as an officer in
the U.S. Army. He has experience in leading and building sales teams in the
chemical and power industries and has won numerous awards for his work.
Ciarella also has a U.S. patent and has written several articles for various
publications. For further information,
please see www.TopNotchLeadership.com
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