The Fundamentals of Leadership
Essential Tools of the Trade
by
Floyd Sheldon
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Floyd Sheldon on Smashwords
The Fundamentals of Leadership:
Essential Tools of the Trade
Copyright © 2010 by Floyd Sheldon
Originally published by Wheatmark®
610 East Delano Street, Suite 104
Tucson, Arizona 85705 U.S.A.
International Standard Book Number: 978-1-60494-403-7
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The Fundamentals of Leadership
To all my brothers and sisters in the United States Armed Forces and their families that give so much in the service to others and especially those who gave everything.
The ones I personally knew:
Sergeant Phillip Lear, December 20, 1989, Rio Hato, Panama (my ranger buddy)
Staff Sergeant Daniel Busch, October 3, 1993, Mogadishu, Somalia
Captain Travis Patriquin, December 6, 2006, Al Anbar, province, Iraq
Major Thomas Bostick, July 27, 2007, Kamu, Afghanistan
Lieutenant Colonel Paul Finken, November 2, 2006, Baghdad, Iraq
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CONTENTS
5: Leadership is a Relationship
6: You Must Learn to Lead Yourself
7: Lead from the Trenches, Not the Command Post
12: Leading in a Time of Crisis
15: Coaching, Teaching, and Mentoring
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I want to thank my team: No one does it alone.
My Family: To Melissa K. my beautiful wife of more than twenty years, thank you for your unwavering belief in me, support for my work and the years of waiting on me to return. To Daniel and Caitlyn for giving more of their father’s time than most. To my mom for always believing and encouraging me to do what I wanted to do. To my brother, Ernie, for being a leader to me, and to my sister for proving to me that no matter hard things can get tomorrow is a better day. To Clyde and Kaye for giving me a beautiful wife and loving me as their own. To Bud and Kay Shoults and Max and Thelma Marsh for adopting me as their own.
To my coaches, teachers, and mentors: for growing me as a person, soldier, and leader:
Roberta Sturgis, Brock Brown, Pat Ludwig, SSG Larry Spooner (ret), MSG Michael Clare (ret), Colonel David McBride, Colonel Edward Daly, Colonel David Osborne, Colonel Ralph Puckett (ret.), Major General Anthony Cuculo, Major General Jim Huggins, and Major General Michael Ferriter.
My distant mentors, for their mentorship through their writing and conferences: Stephen J. Covey and John C. Maxwell.
A special thanks to my niece, Erin Kissick, my editor and the entire Wheatmark staff for helping me make the impossible possible.
Finally, to the U.S. Army Noncommissioned Officer Corps who has taught me what right looks like.
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In the quarter century of being in the U.S. Army, I have had the great fortune to have served for and been led by some of the greatest leaders the army has ever had. I have worked for some of the worst leaders too, but only a handful. I only served one year before I was leading someone besides myself, and over the course of those twenty-four years of leading I have learned so much from my successes and more from my failures. Fortunately, my failures have not caused bodily injury or death to anyone I was leading.
I have seen many leadership styles, from the calm and collected to the loud, angry leader. I have seen the strengths and weaknesses in both. Bottom-line, they did influence their subordinates to act, but without a doubt, the calm, collected leader always prevailed better than the loud, angry leader.
I have been in tough leadership situations from combat to making a decision that was going to affect the life of someone I was leading. The leadership situations I remember and reflect on the most are not my successes, but my failures. No one said it was going to be easy, and not everyone can be a leader. If that was true then there would not be any followers.
The Fundamentals of Leadership is a compilation of what I have learned from my professional education, observation, recording, reading, and most of all from my personal experiences. I wrote this book to give the young leader a head start in their personal leadership growth. In the back of each chapter, I have put two things to help you develop your leadership. I put the AAR (After Action Review) and “Tools for Your Kit Bag.”
An After Action Review (AAR) is reflective thinking about what you or your team has done. It is a review of things done well and what needs to be improved; it is a summary. At the end of each chapter, I have an AAR for you to reflect on what you read and for note taking.
Tools for Your Kit Bag are lists of questions pulled out of the specific chapter for you to use to grow your leadership. They are not exhaustive lists and not all of them may apply to what you do. I encourage you to expand them to fit you and your business. I hope they cause you to think beyond the paper you are reading them from.
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If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.
—John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the United States of America[1]
Leadership Defined
The U.S. Army, civilian leadership books, and many leadership experts define leadership as the art of influencing others to do what they do not want to do. Webster’s dictionary defines leadership as the office or position of a leader, capacity to lead, the act or an instance of leading, Leaders.[2]
Consider these additional definitions:
Peter F. Drucker once said, “Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.”[3]
John C. Maxwell, in the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership said, “Leadership is influence—nothing more, nothing less.”[4]
Fred Smith, in Learning to Lead said, “If people are not following you, you are not a leader. You have the title, but that is all. Leader is not a title but a role. You only become a leader by functioning as one”[5]
All of these men are, or were, experts in leadership and with my quarter century of leadership experience, I add that a leader is the one that everyone looks to in a time of adversity.
Some men and women were born with the gift of leading, some naturally grow into leaders, and some work hard to learn to become leaders. I have seen all three in my twenty-five-plus years in the army, and each one of them had their own individual strengths and weaknesses. I do not think you can say one type of leader is better than the others, but you could say that the character of good leaders is often similar. They are passionate and committed to what they believe and those they lead, and all of it comes from the heart. Their character is what counts the most and is why they are able to influence others to follow them. Like me, most of you reading this book probably fall into the last category: working hard to learn leadership.
Leaders influence a person or a group of people to do something they probably would not have done otherwise. People follow leaders of strong character—the examples they set, and the actions they take. Leaders value the ones they lead more than they value themselves. Whether they like it or not, they lead because someone is following.
Captain Travis L. Patriquin
In February of 2002, SOCOM (Special Operations Command) pulled Lieutenant Travis L. Patriquin out of his platoon in the 82nd Airborne Division to deploy with their teams to Afghanistan because of his language skills. A month later, at first light on a cold March morning, he found himself moments from landing in a landing zone (LZ) in the mountains of Afghanistan during the beginning of Operation Anaconda. He stepped out of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, with members of the 10th Mountain Division to sporadic gunfire, which continued throughout the rest of the day and into the night. The next day they moved by foot through a valley to link up with the 101st, and around 0900 the insurgents opened fire; they had walked into an ambush.
The situation was deteriorating rapidly. For most of the soldiers, it was the first time they had been in combat. Lieutenant Patriquin started looking for who was in charge, but the men were looking at him. He was not their leader when they landed, but he became their leader for that specific moment because hewas the ranking soldier on the ground with the most experience.
In the movie Saving Private Ryan, as Captain Miller (played by Tom Hanks) reaches the base of the cliffs at Point Da Hoc, he asked fellow rangers, “Who‘s in charge?” They looked at him and said, “You are.” Like the rangers in Normandy, all the soldiers in Afghanistan with Lieutenant Patriquin were looking for leadership. Fortunately, Lieutenant Patriquin was a seasoned leader with years of experience leading in tough situations; in that moment he received a heavy mantle of leadership.
I met Travis Patriquin when he attended the U.S. Army Officer Candidate School (OCS) where I was a company commander. As part of the cadre at the OCS, we told the candidates, “When things get bad, people look for the person holding the mantle of leadership to lead them. In the army, it is typically the ranking person.” Between the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom, Lieutenant Patriquin served as an interpreter to Special Forces teams training the Kurdish Army. He was near fluent in multiple languages, specifically Arabic, Spanish and Pashtun. Early in life, he had taken a particular interest in other languages and cultures of the world. His experience prevailed that day and the days that followed in Afghanistan. Afterward, Lieutenant Patriquin sent an email to one of our mentors telling him that he and his team at OCS had been right. Lieutenant Patriquin would carry the mantle of leadership in combat again, but this time as a captain and it was in Iraq.
Four years later, in March 2006, we ran into each other at the Multi-National Force-Iraq’s (MNF-I) Counterinsurgency Center for Excellence (CCFE) in Taji, Iraq. His brigade just arrived in the Iraq theater of operation. I had already been there for more than ten months as a deputy inspector general for MNF-I. I was at CCFE doing an assessment for the MNF-I commander on how units employed the methods of fighting a counterinsurgency that were taught at the CCFE. Lieutenant Patriquin’s previous experience training the Kurdish and combat in Afghanistan, as well as his in-depth study of Arab culture would prove indispensable to him, his brigade, and the Iraqi tribes in the Anbar Province over the next nine months. His battalion went to the infamously dangerous city of Tal Afar in the north, then to the Fallujah and Ramadi area of the Anbar Province in western Iraq.
Captain Patriquin immersed himself in his job, first in Tal Afar and then in Anbar. He spent many hours sitting, eating, and socializing with the Sheikhs in both provinces. They talked about family, history, archeology, the insurgency, and building relationships with these people. He showed them that he considered them more than just people who needed help—they were important individuals who would lead their people if they were given the opportunity. Captain Patriquin focused on the small things to get to the big objective, which was having the Iraqis take responsibility for their tribes, districts, and provinces, and standing against the insurgency. His tireless effort was beginning to show progress and was hurting the insurgency.
Captain Patriquin made a PowerPoint presentation titled, “How to Win in Anbar.” It was a simple but effective tool to teach others how to approach the fight in Iraq. His summary simply proposed putting the Iraqis in police uniforms in front of their people to lead them. He knew the populace would eventually turn against the insurgency, and it would die. His concept has gone through the ranks and has reached some influential people in politics.
On December 6, 2006, Captain Travis L. Patriquin died of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device (IED) struck his vehicle in Ramadi, Iraq, while serving as the civil affairs officer for the 1st Brigade, 1st Armor Division. The day he died in Iraq, the Sheikhs in the Anbar Province wept. In 2007, the local Iraqi government officials and Sheikhs named the Ramadi police station after Travis L. Patriquin, honoring him as part of their wasta, a special friend they trusted. If we looked back at his life and career, we would see a leader rise from obscurity who strived for personal self-improvement and made extraordinary efforts to learn and teach his trade to his subordinates, peers, and superiors. He made extra efforts to add value to everyone around him. He was a leader who caredfor, trained soldiers, and never stopped growing them or himself. Travis’s passion and belief in what he was doing influenced people to follow him, both fellow countrymen and foreigners. Travis L. Patriquin died doing what he loved to do—leading soldiers by being a soldier and influencing through his actions and example.
Earvin “Magic” Johnson
Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s rookie year in the NBA was 1980, after being the first-round draft pick in the 1979 NBA draft. Although he was just a rookie he had already earned his nickname, “Magic.” When Earvin Johnson was in high school in Lansing, Michigan, Fred Stabley Jr., a sportswriter for the Lansing State Journal wrote an article about Earvin saying, “Watching Earvin play was like watching magic. His article sealed Earvin’s nickname.[6]
He entered the league with a passion and enthusiasm for basketball not seen on NBA courts in some time. He was a rookie among the giants on the L.A. Lakers, including Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Norm Nixon, Jamaal Wilkes, and Michael Cooper.
Magic Johnson was not the team’s leader at the beginning of the season, but by the end of the championship, it was clear that he would be the next leader of the L.A. Lakers. His athletic skills were remarkable for his age, but they were compounded by his passion for the sport, his desire to win, and his gift to lead the team on the court by playing to his teammates’ strengths. He believed that if he helped everyone else in their game, they would win.
The Lakers had an unbelievable season that year, winning more than sixty games. They pushed their way through the playoffs to the NBA finals to play the Philadelphia 76ers for the championship. In game five, disaster struck the Lakers when their team leader, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, severely sprained his ankle. Everyone on the team was convinced they would not win without Kareem—everyone, that is, except Magic Johnson.
As the team boarded their plane for their flight to Philadelphia, Johnson jumped into Kareem’s seat, saying, “We’re missing Kareem! Okay, fellas, I’ll be Kareem today.”[7]
Johnson took the tip-off in game six as center, and then later rotated through forwardand guard positions as well, scoring forty-two points and garnering fifteen rebounds, seven assists, and three steals. He astounded the crowd and the Philadelphia 76ers.
It also inspired his teammates to play at a higher level. He led them with a contagious passion, confidence, and enthusiasm, fueling his teammates to rise to the occasion to win game six, 123–107. After game six Philadelphia 76er guard Lincoln Hollins stated, shaking his head, “He is his name.”[8] The Lakers went on to win the 1980–81 NBA championship. The NBA named Magic Johnson the MVP of the play-offs, the only rookie to achieve such an honor.
Over the next eleven years, Magic Johnson led the L.A. Lakers to three more championships. Unfortunately, life dealt him a crucible. On November 7, 1991, Magic Johnson announced he was HIV positive and immediately retired. He did play in the 1992–93 season but fully retired from the game because fellow NBA players were concerned about contracting HIV from any of Magic’s blood that they might meet on the court.
Magic Johnson’s diagnosis was not a shining moment in his life, but he owned up to his mistake and has responded positively. Instead of lying around in self-pity, he started the Magic Johnson Foundation, a nonprofit charity that strives to improve the lives of young people around the world by working to develop programs and support community-based organizations that address the educational, health, and social needs of ethnically diverse, urban communities. During recent years, the Magic Johnson Foundation has awarded more than $1.1 million to community-based organizations that focus on HIV/AIDS education and prevention. It has supported more than 800 minority high school students with college scholarships through the Taylor Michaels Scholarship Program. It has opened twenty Magic Johnson Community Empowerment Centers located in underserved communities across the country, and provides a range of community-based initiatives, including annual children’s Mardi Gras and holiday toy drive.
Magic Johnson brought raw talent as an athlete to the NBA, but more importantly, he brought passion and enthusiasm thatenergized his teammates to play at a higher level, inadvertently causing his opponents on the court to raise their level of play too. Magic’s personal belief of working to add value to his teammates’ play so they in turn add value to his play speaks of his character and capability to influence others. He built a legendary team by focusing his influence on others.
In the face of adversity, Magic Johnson led the Lakers to incredible success on the basketball court. Off the court, he has brought influential people, businesses, and corporations together to help underprivileged children and improve impoverished neighborhoods through his foundation. Magic Johnson has led both his team and his foundation to remarkable success achieved with his leadership, enthusiasm, and willingness to put others before him, adding value to their lives and the lives of those around them.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Most of us have heard of Susan B. Anthony, but few of us know about the person who was at the forefront of the women’s rights movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was the behind-the-scene leader who set the agenda, wrote its documents and the speeches that Susan Anthony gave. Her actions led to the eventual signing of the 19th Amendment, the women’s right to vote.
Elizabeth Cady was born November 12, 1815, in Johnstown, New York. Her father was a congressional representative from 1814 to 1817 and notably also a judge. As a child, she was intelligent, active, and full of life and vigor. When she was eleven, tragedy set the course of her life. Eleazar, her only brother who had survived to adulthood, died.
She stated in her autobiography that she remembered that day vividly, especially what her father said to her. She recalled that her father was sitting in his chair, depressed about his only son passing away. She climbed up in his lap as she had done so many times before, trying to comfort him. He said to her, “Oh my daughter! I wish you were a boy!”[9] She understood she had to be educated and courageous, so from that day forward, she committed herself to learning and doing everything expected of a young man in the early nineteenth century.In his sorrow, her father distanced himself from the family, so Elizabeth turned to her neighbor, Reverend Simon Horsack, for her education. He taught her Greek, Latin, mathematics, philosophy, and even chess. Elizabeth also learned how to manage a horse and trained in athletics.
Her father and her brother-in-law, Edward Bayard, introduced Elizabeth to law at her father’s law office. It was there where she heard many complaints from weeping women. One in particular, was Flora Campbell. Mrs. Campbell’s husband had died and everything he owned passed by law to his sons, not his wife. And the sons treated her harshly. Elizabeth learned the cruelty of law; “They kept me in a constant condition of wrath.” She planned to cut the statutes out of her father’s law books before he discovered her plan. He told her that only legislature could change it. He supposedly said, “As soon as you get old enough you can do that.” As an adult she often cited this incident as what fueled her passion for women’s rights.[10]
She attended the Coed Johnstown Academy as a teenager, where she competed intellectually and academically with young men and won numerous academic awards and honors. Elizabeth excelled academically over most of her fellow male students, but was unable to attended Union College where they went to college; it was a male-only school. This was her first direct encounter with gender discrimination. Instead, she attended Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York, where she honed speech writing and oratory skills.
Following seminary, she went into political activism with her cousin, Gerrit Smith, and her future husband, Henry Brewster Stanton. He was a journalist and antislavery orator, and he eventually became an attorney. They moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to practice law and be in the middle of the abolitionist movement with Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Louisa May Alcott, Robert Lowell, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1840, the Stantons went to England to attend the 1840 AntiSlavery Convention in London. There she met and became allies with Lucretia Mott, the Quaker minister, feminist, and abolitionist.
In 1848, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Mott, and three other womenheld the first women’s rights convention. There, as the youngest member, she firmly committed to the fledgling women’s rights movement. Stanton drafted the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled after the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming voting rights for women. Frederick Douglass informally attended and spoke at the convention.
Stanton spoke at the second women’s rights convention, solidifying her role as activist, reformer, and the women’s rights movement leader. She was leading a group against cultural norms when women were not leaders of their own home and had no rights. In 1851, she met Susan B. Anthony. They became lifelong friends, together leading the fight for women’s suffrage and women’s rights. From 1851 to 1865, Stanton was the brains and the “text” of the women’s rights movement. Anthony was the speaker, reading the speeches and letters that Elizabeth wrote. As Stanton put it, “I forged the thunderbolts; she (Anthony) fired them.”[11]
Stanton was not what we envision as a leader of the women’s rights movement today. She was a devoted mother, dedicated to birthing and raising her seven children, and to managing her household. She was in charge of the shopping, cooking, preserving, sewing, schooling, and healing. However, she was grounded in what she believed were women’s rights. For more than fifty years, she believed women had the right to property, divorce, and the privilege to vote, and she used her maternal role to legitimize her public activities and her position.
In 1865, Stanton finally stepped onto center stage in the women’s rights movement. She and Anthony delivered speeches together, but Stanton proved to be the better orator and held a stronger appeal for the crowd than Anthony. She was engaging; her voice was low and soothing, her manner was gracious and feminine, yet she was still powerful and uplifting. Later in life, the San Francisco Chronicle compared her to Queen Victoria or George Washington’s mother, perceived as maternal and dignified.
Stanton and Anthony founded the National Woman’s Suffrage Association (NWSA) in May 1869, which was one of many women’s organizations formed at that time in the nation. Eventually, against Stanton’s desires, the NWSA merged with another women’s organization, creating the International Council of Women, electing Stanton as its first president. She died on October 26, 1902.
Stanton led when the American culture did not allow women to lead. She accepted leadership as her duty, and it seemed to come naturally for her. She led for others, not for herself. She was persistent, patient, and calculated in her actions so that for more than fifty years, she remained focused, unwavering in her position of what women deserved—the right to own property, have a divorce, and vote. She left a legacy for others to carry on. Her early life experiences forged her passion for women’s rights and became the cornerstone of the first feminist movement in the United States and abroad. Elizabeth Cady Stanton influenced a nation and the world, when almost eighteen years after her death, the Nineteenth Amendment was passed, granting women the right to vote in the United States.
Booker T. Washington
Born into slavery in Franklin County, Virginia, on April 5, 1856, to a white father and an African American slave mother, Booker T. Washington would rise to be the leader of the last generation of African Americans born into slavery and the first free leader of African American citizens. After the abolishment of slavery, Booker’s mother married and the family moved to Malden, West Virginia. When Booker was five, his stepfather put him to work in the salt furnaces, where he worked more than twelve hours a day, six days a week. However, it took coal to burn the salt furnaces, so his stepfather had him work in the coal mines. Booker, however, wanted an education more than anything else, and the coal mines took him away from his opportunity to receive that education.
While working in the coal mines, he overheard two men talking about a school in Virginia for African Americans that accepted able and willing students who would work at the school for room, board, and their education. Booker decided he would go to the school, somehow. It consumed his thoughts all day, every day.
Viola Ruffner, the wife of the owner of the coal mine, always kept a houseboy. None of the boys in the village met her expectations, and they did not like the way she treated them, so they quit. Booker asked his mother if she would apply for him; she agreed, and he was hired. He worked hard for Mrs. Ruffner for more than eighteen months. With the money he made from this job, he was able to pay a tutor for a few hours a day. Mrs. Ruffner also allowed him go to school when the teacher was in town.
In 1872, when Booker was thirteen, he set out on a 500-mile journey to Hampton, West Virginia, with little money and no directions. Within two weeks, he arrived at the Hampton Institute. He had not bathed in two weeks, and his clothes were filthy, but he applied for enrollment with the teacher. She told him to sit and wait as she enrolled person after person and finally told Booker to clean the classroom. He cleaned the floors and chalkboards and dusted everything three times, just as he did in Mrs. Ruffner’s home in Malden. The teacher was pleased with his work and hired him for a janitor position. Eventually, he enrolled as a student.
After he graduated, General Armstrong invited him to return to the Hampton Institute to teach. While Booker taught at the school, General Armstrong, the principal, gave him a monumental task—teach seventy-five Native Americans the same curriculum he received. Booker knew he had to convince them that they were worthy of learning and that he was worthy of teaching. Booker successfully made his first real mark as a teacher and a visionary of change.
In 1881, a group of influential citizens of Alabama contacted General Armstrong, asking him if he knew of anyone who could start and lead a school for the local African American population in Tuskegee, Alabama. General Armstrong recommended a 25-year-old energetic visionary, Booker T. Washington. They accepted General Armstrong’s recommendation and asked Booker to proceed immediately to Tuskegee. When he arrived in Tuskegee, he was disappointed to learn the money the state gave the school was only for teacher and staff salaries and not for structures and land. This news did not discourage him; he found a vacant Methodist church in town to start the Tuskegee Normal School and Industrials.
Booker envisioned duplicating the school in Hampton. At Hampton, the first objective was to teach all students basic personal hygiene, followed by table manners and how to care for their personal belongings, such as their clothes and living space. At Hampton, they had daily room inspections to teach the discipline needed to study and apply what they learned.
He intended for the school to be self-sustaining. With some help, the school purchased an old plantation on the outskirts of town for $500.00. There, he taught the students building repair and land clearing. At first, many of his students did not want to do the physical labor because they thought their education made them above that kind of work. However, Booker wanted to teach the students that nothing comes without hard work, and he was always first to grab an ax and start clearing a field, setting the example for them to follow.
Booker wanted to build a kiln as a teaching tool, to make bricks for the buildings they constructed on campus and to provide financial support for the school. When they failed three times and ran out of money, Booker went to Montgomery, Alabama, and pawned his pocket watch for $15.00 to fund the project. They were eventually successful at brick making, using them to build their school, and selling them for profit. The bricks were some of the best bricks made in the South.
He knew he had to educate the surrounding populace, which consisted of poor whites as well as educated whites. He had to show them that African-Americans could become educated, productive members of society. He also knew that he had to show his own people that they had to get an education to be a contributing part of society. He had a vision of what they could be and he led them through tough and uncertain times to help them get started. He led by example with confidence in those he taught and touched. He gave them hope when there was very little hope. He believed in them.
On June 24, 1896, Booker was awarded an honorary degree from Harvard University. Booker’s vision of education helped him generate moral and financial support from several of the wealthiest people in the United States, and with their assistance, he was able to influence and stimulate local communities’ contributions to build and operate more than 5,000 schools.
Later the NAACP criticized Booker T. Washington, labeling him “the great accommodator” because he would not stand a harder line for civil rights to include protests. Booker understood that before African Americans were going to win the civil rights fight, they would have to earn the powerful tool of an education. His forward thinking painted a picture, a vision, for the future of the black people. He stated in his book, Up from Slavery, “even then I had a strong feeling that what our people most needed was to get a foundation in education, industry, and property, and for this I felt that they could better afford to strive than for political preferment.” On the Booker T. Washington monument, dedicated in 1922 at the Tuskegee University it is written, “He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to progress through education and industry.”
Booker T. Washington led his people by example from the bottom of society to a place of opportunity. He came from slavery, found a way to educate himself, and sought for ways to educate others. He did not do these things for personal gain, but for others and for a whole group of people. His visionary thinking and tireless efforts inspired many to follow him and continue in his footsteps today. He left a legacy. He added value, making a difference that continues today.
Ernest Shackleton
On August 1, 1914, the eve of World War I, the Endurance Expedition led by Sir Ernest Shackleton departed London for their attempt to cross Antarctica from the Weddell Sea south of the Atlantic to the Ross Sea south of the Pacific. They reached the Weddell Sea on January 10, 1915. On February 22, the ice trapped the Endurance and her crew, just as they expected. They figured that during spring in the southern hemisphere, the ice would break up, permitting them to carry on with their mission.
During their entrapment in the ice, Ernest Shackleton kept the crew busy in true military fashion. Each day every man had a new duty. One day a man counted beans, another day he caught seals, scraped the fat off the seal skin to burn as fuel, melted water for drinking, lured and caught penguins, ran the dogs, dredged for scientific specimens, or cared for the Endurance. Throughout theirtime on the ice, they continued to celebrate national holidays and play sports and have sled races.
Unfortunately, instead of melting and breaking apart, the ice flow drifted the ship around the ocean hundreds of miles while continuing to exert pressure on the hull. From August through September, the pressure of the ice started crushing it. On October 27, 1915, they abandoned ship, and by midnight on October 29, the Endurance was broken into pieces by the ice.
After the loss of the Endurance, the crew moved all the salvaged goods to several different camps up to twelve miles apart. It was exhausting and stressful. They were always searching for cracks and breaks in the ice as they planned their escape from the ice flow. Their plan was to try to reach a stretch of islands eighty miles away, named Clarence, Elephant, and Deception Island, or to try to reach Prince George Island more than 150 miles away.
On April 9, 1916, they finally escaped the ice and made for land. Over the next treacherous five days at sea, the fear of capsizing in the freezing water and lack of fresh water or ability to make salt water fresh made the journey dreadful, but they had no choice. The twenty-eight man crew rowed and sailed three small boats to Elephant Island, and they made land on April 14.
On Elephant Island, the daily life began all over again, where they added condors and condor eggs to their diet. Immediately, Sir Ernest Shackleton started planning the next phase of the rescue, his second and most dangerous journey, with the odds against him. He understood that if they did nothing and stayed there, they would ultimately die and if he tried to sail to South George Island he could possibly die, but he would die trying. Because he felt taking action was better than doing nothing, he chose action.
On the evening of April 24, 1916, Shackleton and five other men dared an 800-mile journey over the treacherous Weddell Sea in a small rowboat, using makeshift sails and oars. Their journey took sixteen days, and on May 10, 1916, they reached King Haakon Bay on the south side of South Georgia Island. However, this was the wrong side and they were unable to row around to the whaling station in Stromness Bay due to the currents and their own exhaustion.
Shackleton and one companion scaled the 4,000–foot mountain range to arrive at the whaling station in Stromness Bay. The next day a ship went to King Haakon Bay to pick up those who could not climb over the mountain. On August 30, 1916, Shackleton and the rescue ship arrived at Elephant Island rescuing the remaining twenty-two crewmembers.
Ernest Shackleton’s leadership, preparation, and knowledge of the hardships of the Antarctic environment allowed him to bring his entire Endurance crew home. During the months of boredom, Shackleton had them work, play, and explore. His strengths were his demeanor, creativeness, courage, and determination even with overwhelming odds against survival. He put his crew before himself when he made the dangerous and possibly deadly 800-mile journey in sixteen days. Shackleton gave many things to his crew over those eighteen months, but the most important thing was the hope and courage to carry on to another ice flow, to another island, to another day. Hope is the most important thing a leader can give his team when it seems all else failed. His expedition was unsuccessful, but his story has become legendary and inspiring.
Rick R. Rescorla
Cyril “Rick” R. Rescorla was born in 1939 in the British town of Hayle, Cornwall. In 1943, he watched in awe as the U.S. Army’s 29th Infantry Division prepared for the Normandy invasion. The soldiers made such an impression on his young mind that in 1957, at the age of 18, he enlisted in the British Army as a paratrooper. Following his enlistment, he served as a paramilitary police inspector for the northern Rhodesia police and as a metropolitan police officer in London. However, police work bored him. In 1963, he and a friend joined the U.S. Army. He attended the Infantry Officer Candidate School and Airborne School and with immediate assignment to B Company, 2nd Battalion, 2-7 Cavalry (Cav), 1st Cavalry Regiment as an infantry platoon leader.
In the fall of 1965, the 1st Cavalry Regiment deployed to the Republic of Vietnam. Their first serious combat action came on the morning of November 14, in the Ia Drang Valley. Rescorla’s company was attached to Colonel Hal Moore’s battalion, 1/7 Cav for an operation that started at approximately 1030 hours shortly after the cavalry landed on Landing Zone (LZ) X-Ray. They did not know it when they landed, but they were in for the fight of their lives. They almost landed on top of a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) Infantry Regiment that was three times their size.
On November 15, just before dark his platoon moved into in a key position on the battlefield after more than thirty hours of hard fighting. C Company had held that position since the battalion had been on LZ X-Ray and had almost been wiped out. He placed each man himself, putting them in three-man fighting positions rather than the standard two-man positions. The third man was to clean, clear, and load weapons for the other two who were shooting. Throughout the night, he checked and rechecked their positions. During the stressful night of sporadic machine gun fire and enemy probing, Lieutenant Rescorla allowed his men to talk between their positions to ease the tension. When it got tough, he sang “Wild Colonial Boy” and “Going up Camborne Hill.” The men would occasionally answer him by shouting, “Hard corps,” (Rescorla’s nickname) and “Garry Owens,” the unit motto—all sounds of confirmation.
Around 0430 hours, the NVA made their first attack speared at Rescorla’s platoon, which was ready and waiting. The ferocious attack continued, on and off until 1030. Throughout the battle, Rescorla was leading, coaching, and comforting them. Due to Lieutenant Rescorla’s leadership, his platoon survived at LZ X-Ray. However, two days later his platoon would be sent to LZ Albany to rescue the unit that had replaced them at LZ X-Ray, a mere two miles from LZ X-Ray. Colonel Hal Moore, Lieutenant Rescorla’s commander at LZ X-Ray, retired as a lieutenant general and wrote the book We Were Soldiers Once, and Young, in which he said Rick Rescorla was the best platoon leader he ever saw.
Colonel Hal Moore also said, “...Rick Rescorla was destined tobecome a battlefield legend in the 7th Calvary in this battle—as much for his style as for his fearless leadership under fire.”[12]
Rick Rescorla retired as a colonel from the U.S. Army Reserve in 1990. In 1985, he had become the security officer for Dean Witter in Tower II of the World Trade Center, and in 1992 in a security briefing, he told the Port Authority of a potential security risk in the parking garage of the World Trade Center, but the warning fell on deaf ears. The risk became reality in 1993 when a rental truck full of explosives detonated in the garage of the first tower of the World Trade Center. He also warned them of a possible attack by hijacked airliners against the World Trade Center, but was ignored again.
On September 11, 2001, after the attack on Tower 1, Rick Rescorla ignored the Port Authority’s orders to stay in place and started evacuating Morgan Stanley’s 2,800 employees from Tower 2, and 1,000 in World Trade Center 5. As they were evacuating, he was encouraging them, reminding them to be proud to be an American. He sang “God Bless America” over the bullhorn and added his old Cornish tunes to help the evacuees to stay calm, just as he did thirty-six years earlier on LZ X-Ray. By the time United Airlines Flight 175 hit the second tower, only 15 minutes after the attack on the first tower, Rescorla had most of Morgan Stanley’s employees evacuated. His job was done when the second aircraft struck, and he was told to evacuate the building, too. He replied, “As soon as I make sure everyone else is out.”[13] He was not just concerned about Morgan Stanley employees, but everyone.
Rick Rescorla could have slipped into an easy job, but he did not. It was not in him to sit back on his laurels and smile. He was a warrior, leader, and comforter, and at sixty-two years old, he died making a difference in people’s lives and saving lives. Unlike so many people, Rick Rescorla lived until he died.
Influence
In these stories, there were two soldiers, two social reformers, an athlete, and a ship’s captain. They were all great leaders in their own right. Two were inspiring. Two were visionaries, one was acomforter, four of them gave hope, and all of them influenced a group of people to come together to overcome sometimes overwhelming odds. All of them influenced others with their character.
Captain Patriquin’s first tool to influence was his example from the courage he demonstrated in Afghanistan to the time he gave to the tribal leaders in Iraq. His most important strength was his willingness to build relationships and willingness to learn. He was inspiring to everyone he touched from his subordinates, peers, and superiors. He could not have succeeded at OCS, in Afghanistan, or especially in Iraq if he did not give his time to build relationships with all those who needed his leadership and his influence.