Recap
So far we have seen how we struggle to grow up, saddled with varying levels of testosterone / hormone-driven sexuality, our four fundamental drivers profoundly influenced by this and by anxieties we may have experienced in particular as young children at home or at school. At no point, as far as I can see, does anyone explain the process to us. We are not helped to understand how prone we are to cover-up, to turning a blind eye or just muddling through life rather unhappily, focussed inwards on our own sad souls. No one shows us how the very act of study and learning can create a counter-productive myopia. No school or university course I know focuses on how we can learn to listen actively to understand others, nor how to use words and our bodies to express ourselves, so that other people can understand us. There may be courses available to students on building empathy, but I´ve not heard of them. Certainly, until recently, Business Schools spent exhaustive time on trying to make sophisticated the otherwise simple themes of strategy, accounting, finance and marketing, and overlooked the far more important world of helping people to understand themselves and each other.
I hope, by now, our eyes are looking down a new road lit by a new sun, to a fresh understanding, not only of how and why we are like we are, but of what we can do to help ourselves and each other. The next chapters turn to two other major areas ¯ leadership and followership.
On a warm summer´s day in the early 1960s, Field Marshall Montgomery visited my school, Cheltenham College, and told us that "three things" had dominated the whole of his life: "Moral Courage, Personal Integrity and Ceaseless Hard Work".
Warm day though it was, and hero though he be of mine, I´ve always thought this just a little too spartan. I´d like to suggest instead my six, slightly more long-winded "things" that shape successful leaders:
- An ability to shape a clear and unshakeable vision of what is worth doing;
- The skill to communicate beliefs and orders clearly, eloquently and in a way that grabs the imagination and inspires;
- The determination to confront reality, to take responsibility, to innovate, to dismiss bullshit, red tape and un-thinking.;
- An eagerness to be visible, to demonstrate support and enthusiasm for your people, to be there for them;
- An eagerness to listen, enquire, to find out and understand the truth, to take trouble and embrace change;
- A willingness to create and maintain a core team of unconditional friends and critics, where nothing is undiscussable, and where the leader can relax.
With these six themes in mind, the next section starts by focussing on Clemenceau, the prime minister who led France to victory at the end of World War I in 1918. It will then contrast him with another Frenchman, General Maurice Gamelin, Chief of the General Staff and supreme commander of France´s forces in 1940. Along the way, we will look briefly at some of the distinguishing characteristics of Montgomery and Percival: The first, like Clemenceau, a strong, radical thinker and winner; the second responsible for the capitulation of the British at Singapore, just as Gamelin presided over France´s collapse in 1940.