A lesson in leadership

I wanted to end the week with something completely different.

General Mark Welsh is the head of the United States Air Force in Europe. A few weeks ago he gave a speech at the United States Air Force Academy, which is quite honestly one of the best bits of public speaking I’ve ever seen.

Welsh, who is addressing a room full of students, isn’t inspiring in the bluster and fireworks sense, but instead takes a quiet, steady tone to make a series of brilliant points.

He starts with a frank assessment about the brutality of war (“It’s an ugly job. But you better be good at it”) but quickly moves on to a series of stories about how everyone from the air force’s communications people through to the financial controllers play an important role in the success of the overall team.

Perhaps the most touching story is that of a young ground crew worker in Korea, who was dragged before Welsh by his supervisor. The ground crew worker had a problem – his former wife was about to go to jail, but the judge wouldn’t grant him custody of their six-year-old daughter unless he was back in the United States. Welsh was able to organise a transfer back to the US, but the episode left him with a question: Why hadn’t he known about the ground crew worker’s daughter?

“I never asked him. I almost cost him her daughter. I almost cost her a family,” Welsh says.

“Every airman has story. Everybody in this room has a story. If you don’t know the story, you can’t lead the airmen. Please learn the story.”

Two other brilliant quotes stood out for me:

• “You better be willing to make decisions. Because you are going to need to make them without all the information you’d like. And you’re going to have to make them when people’s lives are at stake. And you’re not always going to have time to ask for help. Get ready.”
• “Leadership is a gift. It’s given by the people who follow. But you have to be worthy of it.”

The video goes for 50 minutes, but it is time very well spent. Click here.

Thanks to Eric Beecher, chairman of SmartCompany’s owner Private Media, for passing this on from a Harvard Business Review blog earlier this week.