Great leaders are those who are able to look reality in the face, however painful it may be, and deal with it.
That's why the army sends all its future generals to what we call "charm school." As soon as you are a general, people think that you know everything. You think yourself that you have become omniscient and omnipotent. Be careful, because people want to do everything they can to please the general, and you need to guard against this.
You have to comply, you have to obey - or you'd better resign and leave. But that is also the mark of a great leader - somebody who, in the presence of inner conflict, will do the right thing.
If everybody trusts one another, then the person who didn't prevail will faithfully execute the decision as if it was their idea.
Almost invariably, whoever doesn't win the argument is going to be unhappy.
Decision-making is lonely.
Being in charge sometimes means making people mad. Some days you have to overrule even the best advice, because you think it is not right.
Everybody makes bad decisions. I am sure I have made my share of them over 40 years of service. Or I have made good decisions and have been overruled. The real challenge, when you are overruled, is to remember who the boss is and don't take it personally.
I regret that the presentation I made at the UN turned out to be wrong. It was wrong on the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but pretty much right on intentions and capabilities.
Another rule I have is: Don't let your ego get tied up in a policy dispute. Otherwise, if things don't go your way, you can end up breaking a relationship with somebody with whom you can't afford to break.
There is no question about the fact that we had very serious disagreements with my German, French, and Russian colleagues over the Iraq war. But I never stopped talking.
How can we be enemies when there is so much that pulls us together? But in general I found that I had to work with each one of my foreign colleagues in a way that was consistent with their system. Some are democracies, some are not.
I worked with the Nato Military Committee. The Head of the Luxembourg Armed Forces had equal standing with me, and I had to respect that. He was the leader of the armed forces of a sovereign country. I had to make sure he never thought that I was looking down on them, merely because they had less power than we did. With that kind of approach you can develop bonds of trust. I tried to do the same thing with my colleagues when I was Secretary of State.
I think you can improve on that natural ability with training and exposure to great leaders of the past and to management theories.
I went to graduate school as a lieutenant colonel after I had been in the army for 12 or 13 years. I learned so much from all the great management theorists. It gave me a greater understanding of my army experience and showed me the gaps in my knowledge.
Some people naturally have a sense of empathy and an understanding of how to bring their followers to do things. They become great politicians.
In my 35 years in the army I was in school for 6 years. I think corporations should take a look at whether they are investing enough in the development of their human capital.
I think leadership is both a trained thing and a natural gift.
One thing the military does far better than business is train its own leaders. I can't go to IBM and hire a battalion commander. They don't have any.
How often have we seen politicians take a principle position only to give it up three days later? That is what makes democracy so fascinating.
I think that military, corporate, and non-political organizations are pretty much similar.
Politics is different, because the mission is always to get the necessary votes. A good politician goes through everything in terms of mission and vision, and resourcing, but at the end of the day politicians have to make compromises in order to achieve consensus.
We are not sure to what extent Saddam's [Hussein ] own people were conveying an incorrect picture to him. But this body of evidence was believed not only by President George W. Bush. President Bill Clinton used that same body of intelligence before bombing Iraq in 1998.
The information that the intelligence people used was a combination of satellite information, signals intelligence, and human intelligence. We are not sure to what extent Saddam [Hussein] was trying to convey an incorrect picture to us.
Our failure was that our intelligence community thought [Saddam Hussein ] had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. That was a mistake. There is fallibility in human intelligence and in human decisions.
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