Leadership.

(To the people who told me they liked reading my blog because I didn't write ridiculously long posts: I'm sorry. I won't be offended if you skim.)

I've been thinking a lot about leadership recently because I've been watching Band of Brothers, had a leadership position, applied for IV leadership, and have had friends talk about disappointment in leaders over them. So, I thought I might as well blog about it.

I've been exposed to leadership in many different contexts and I think they've all got something to teach us about how to lead well.

In high school I took JROTC which largely taught about how to be a good leader, and that's where I'm going to start. JROTC teaches that leadership is "the art of influencing others to get the job done." They propose three ways to complete this: The directing leader who gives clear instructions, the participating leader who involves subordinates in the decision making process, and the delegating leader who gives decision making authority to subordinates. Each has an appropriate time. The directing leader is essential when subordinates don't know what to do or there is little time. The delegating leader is good for situations where the subordinates have experience and know what to do. Finally, the participating leader is good for most other situations. Those are good general statements about leading, but they don't tell you very practically what to do.

Next up is Band of Brothers. There are two episodes where leadership and the lack of it are the focus of the episode.

Firstly, there's one about Major Richard Winters. From the first episode, you know he's the kind of leader you want to follow. He respects his troops but knows where to draw the line. He's decisive and confident. But, there's one episode that exemplifies how he was a great leader. He and his company were trapped in enemy territory and had been for a day or two. He constructed a plan to get him and his men out of there by taking out the nearby outpost. He did this by first getting into position and then running out in front while his men gave covering fire. After a  minute, he had them follow behind. Let me make that clear: he ran directly at an enemy camp, depending on his men to cover him. He didn't look back to see if they were following, but trusted them to do what they needed to. So here's my first two leadership points:

1) Lead by example. If you ask people to do something, do it yourself first. If you're asking men to risk their lives running towards the enemy, you better be doing the exact same things.

2) Trust those you lead. Trusting others is one of the quickest ways to earn their trust. Same goes for respect.

Secondly, there are two other people from Band of Brothers I want to focus on: Captain Ronald Speirs and First Lieutenant Norman Dike. Lt. Dike was leading the company's assault on a city but didn't know what he was doing at all. He ordered his men to stop in the middle of an open field because he was confused and many of them got shot because of it. Once near the city, he couldn't make a decision on how to continue the assault. After a long time, he ordered one platoon to circle around and attack from the other side while the second platoon attacked from their current position. Due to their already lowered numbers, that was a horrible call. Major Winters, now the battalion commander, ordered Speirs to relieve Dike. Speirs, once at the front of the attack, reorganized the attack. Only the other platoon was already around back and there was no way to relay the command. So, Speirs got up and ran through the city to relay the command verbally. That city full of German soldiers trying to kill them. Not only that, but once he relayed the command, he ran back to through the city to his platoon to lead the charge into the city. Which brings me to my next few points:

3) Be decisive. No one likes a leader who just deliberates on what to do for hours. People like a leader that leads and gets stuff done. That takes decisions.

4) Show that you can be trusted. Trust is essential to any relationship, including leader-follower, so it gets two points.

I have a few more points that I don't have Band of Brothers examples for:

5) Make sure you have open communication with the group you're leading. If they aren't comfortable with or if they don't have a platform to propose ideas and offer critiques, then they will start to resent you when things go differently than they wanted, and you won't have any clue.

6) Know your own strength and weaknesses, and take those into account. For me, I'm very prideful. I tend to think that whatever way I do something will be the best. So, If I'm leading a group, and I don't take that weakness into consideration, I likely will end up leading more dictatorially, and that's not good. I'm not the best at everything, and I need to consciously account for that and make sure I'm not leading like I am.

7) Know the strengths and weaknesses of your group. Don't have people do things they aren't good at - that's asking for failure.

I have one more point about leadership.

8) Lead with humility.

As a Christian, I should ultimately look to God as my example of what a leader looks like and that is best seen in Jesus' life on earth. Jesus was extremely humble. Not only did he not brag about himself and how awesome he was, but he took one of the lowliest of tasks and washed his followers feet. We should follow suit.

I'm sure there have been hundreds or thousands of books written on leadership, so I doubt that my ten paragraph or so blog post is all you need to know to be a great leader, but hopefully it helps. Feel free to add on with your own points about leadership too.