Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy
I learned of this book, Generally Speaking published in 2001, from a veterans group on Facebook. The banter going back and forth centered more on General Kennedy’s comments about her commander and others in a unit in Augsburg, Germany during the 80s. I was there at the same time and knew of (then) Lieutenant Colonel Kennedy, so I decided to get the Kindle edition and read it for myself.
What I found was the story of a woman who started a military career in the Women’s Army Corps during the Vietnam Conflict and went on to retire 32 years later as a Lieutenant General – the first woman to achieve that rank in the Army. It is a very interesting book about how her life in many ways matched the societal changes going on both in military and civilian life. If you’re interested in history centered on women in the military and in business, you will certainly want to read this one.
Interspersed throughout the book, too, are some great leadership nuggets which I want to highlight here. They apply just as much to business leadership as to military leadership. For instance:
Regarding Mentoring
The most fortunate path for any aspiring leader to follow is to be consistently mentored by the junior and senior leaders in her or his organization … . For the process to work, of course, the person being mentored has to set aside arrogance, be willing to learn, and be receptive, especially when it involves people who are junior in rank. It is essential for leaders to realize that they are always works in progress … even as they reach senior positions. Once a person decides she is complete, she is announcing her growth is ended and her potential is fulfilled. This signals to everyone the end of her progress in that field.
The need to learn is constant and continuous. The need to mentor and be mentored really never ends because so long as one is active in the world (or in business or whatever) the need to learn never ceases.
Mentoring, however, should never be used as a crutch or to get by through the “Old Boy Network,” rather it is a teaching and training tool. Each person needs to be responsible for his or her own career:
No one should depend on [anyone else] to reach down and pull them up the career ladder. Army officers or civilian executives must achieve power on their own merit, seeking the requisite professional training that entails, and undertaking the assignments that provide the best experience to accumulate leadership skills.
You need to take responsibility for yourself
Regarding Learning From Those “Lower” in Position
When faced with tough problems, young executives in the civilian workplace with degrees from prestigious business schools might do well to forget about their MBAs and seek advice among their organization’s equivalents of Betty Benson, whom they can find on the shop floor or among the anonymous line engineers’ cubicles.
You can always learn something from people with more experience. It does well for leaders to remember they don’t learn everything in school – some knowledge just comes with experience. In other words: don’t be like Lieutenant Jones and take too long to learn this lesson, there are some very experienced people you can learn from and you might be surprised who they are.
When faced with coming into a new situation, one thing I was taught which served me well was never to change anything for the first several weeks of taking on a new leadership position. A wiser move was to observe and learn how things are done, and them make changes as necessary. The old saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” applies. Many times, though, people feel a need to make their mark early and make sweeping changes right away. This often turns out to be a disservice to themselves and the people they are leading.
Meeting with my company commanders and their first sergeants, and the battalion staff, [note: and later with the people doing the actual work] I posed three basic questions: What were we doing well? What were we doing badly? What did they want me, the new commander, to not screw up by changing?
There’s a great lesson here.
Regarding Servant Leadership
From this and other effective units the panel visited, four characteristics necessary for the exercise of good leadership emerged:
- Good leaders set standards for the members of their organizations.
- Good leaders exemplified through their personal conduct adherence to those standards.
- Good leaders enforced and maintained those standards for the other members of the organization.
- Good leaders demonstrated genuine care for the concerns of their solders, no matter their rank, race or gender.
These four elements pretty much comprise the idea of the Servant Leader, something which I’ve written about numerous times in this space.
You might find it surprising that military leaders learn from many different places, not just from other military sources. For example, under Army Chief of Staff General Dennis Reimer:
… he told us to study the leadership ideas of … Coach Lou Holtz, who believed there are three critical questions any two people ask in a relationship … :
Can I trust you?
Do you care about me?
Are you committed to excellence?With an effective leader or coach, the answer was demonstrably “yes.”
I recently wrote about leaders who felt they were “entitled” to special privileges (also linked above). The servant leader does not go this route:
Maintaining the trust and respect of those who serve with you is a dynamic and often difficult process. Some people actually believe becoming a leader entitles you to work less and instead draw upon the energy and production of the people assigned to your organization. In fact, the reverse is true.
Leaders need to understand this quote or their efforts will be mediocre leaders at best.
Again, students of military history, especially that which relates to women in the service or Military Intelligence will find this book very interesting. Those looking for good leadership lessons should also read it.
Finally, I think Lieutenant General Kennedy would agree with me that military intelligence vets would make excellent web marketers – or excellent team members in general.
Generally Speaking: A Memoir by the First Woman Promoted to Three-Star General in the United States Army by Claudia J. Kennedy
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