- Intro video: Leaders provide the spark, but also set the example
- Promote a clash of ideas
- Desires a clash of ideas—subordinates should be able to argue with the boss. If you don’t let people give their ideas, what’s the point of having them?
- People felt good because their ideas were listened to and challenged
- Plans and charts do not accomplish things, people do
- Leaders have the responsibility to provide an environment for followers to accomplish their task
- Leaders should take 1/3 of the time to plan, 2/3 for followers to plan
- Open office
- Invitied people to come talk with him
- Also had people outside the organization who would tell him the truth. (Kept a telephone that only he would answer and gave these people that number so that they could tell him the truth)
- Probe the organization
- Would have a consistent time and path for his walk around the barracks. This way soldiers could come and talk to him. He would then talk to the chain of command (the soldier might be selling him a bill of goods). When he found out about a problem, would solve it through the chain of command, then go talk to the soldier and say “thanks for telling me. We didn’t know about that problem.”
- Make sure you have fun
- Recognized that he was able to be Joint Chief of Staff because of what all the blak soldiers for 300 years did
- “Perpetural optimism is a force multiplier”
- It has to be real optimism
- People need to see your confidence in the goal
- Avoid war if at all possible
- War is the failure of diplomacy
- How does leadership change on the battlefield?
- Time is compressed, but still need to follow the analysis of the situation and the decision-making process
- Trust your instincts. If it seems impossible, it probably is
- The loneliness of leadership
- Would talk to his generals in the field every day and just let them talk to him and blow off stress, so that they are not alone. (There is no one else that they can talk to.)
- Church’s role
- The Church needs to find people who are not rich, suburban, who are hard to deal with, who will be hard to raise up
- Need to tell people: you are worth something, I see potential in you.