HOW TO LEAD LIKE A FOUR STAR ARMY GENERAL

A sergeant is a second-lowest grade in the chain or command. Whilst deployed in Iraq they are asked each day to risk their life for their country and the mission set by a Four Star General. The General is rarely on the ground and when orders come down the chain of command it would be easy for them to be dismissed with — they don’t know. But when faced with a challenge to his strategy his reaction was nothing but first class.

Leadership is hard to establish when you are not there. I have spoken before about the difficulty of a father to develop a relationship with his daughter whilst he was tethered to his desk. What are missing are the simple exchanges between a sergeant and general or a father and child that release oxytocin.

The cost of leadership is self-interest. The strength of the bond between a leader and their tribe is developed by the little hits of oxytocin that are experienced by both individuals every time the leader gives their time and expects nothing in return.

You can’t buy it through a gift. We put a premium on people who give their time and energy, as time is something that we all have even amounts of and can never get back.

Retired four-star General Stanley A McChrystal understood this while leading the US deployment of troops in Iraq. General McChrystal was once described by Secretary of Defence Robert Gates as “one of America’s greatest warriors”.

Not too many sergeants write emails to Four-Star Generals. Even fewer write emails telling them “I don’t think you understand this war”.

General McChrystal took notice of the potential breakdown in the relationship between the top tiers of command and the sergeant on the ground. The very next day he got in a helicopter and joined the sergeant on patrol.

The sergeant was right, what they encountered was a challenge that they have never experienced before. The sergeant was leading his patrol in the Iraqi wine region. There is very little wood in Iraq, so vines are grown over six-foot high mud walls creating square miles of a rat like a maze.

On each patrol, they faced incredible danger because you were stuck going inside these ridges and the Taliban could put mines and also just turn a corner at the end and there is nowhere to go.

General McChrystal spent the entire day on a combat mission with them. At the end of the day they sat and they talked about the higher-level objectives of the war. McChrystal shared his perspective and the sergeant and his patrol explained it from their perspective, allowing McChrystal to gain a better understanding of what they encounter each day.

The following day McChrystal went back to his command post and about 3 weeks later he received an email from the same sergeant. The sergeant shared that 5 members of the team that General McChrystal had gone on patrol with had been killed in the vineyards.

The next day McChrystal took the same helicopter and went right back down again to go on patrol with that team.

“I wasn’t going to make their combat patrol easier. I wasn’t going to add to the combat mission effectiveness, but I think it was important for them to know that I cared enough. It is important periodically to share the hardships and sometimes the danger because you both need to display the empathy, but you also need to understand, you need to walk a mile in their shoes to understand what it’s like. You can’t make it easier for them, but you can certainly convince them that what they are doing matters and that you are willing to take the time to do that with them.”