A story today around one of my favourite leadership phrases:
A leader is someone other choose to follow
The picture above is of quite the unattractive muddy pond, huh?
Now imagine you are a squad of young soldiers on army training. It is cold, wet, you’ve been out in the field for days. You are exhausted, tired, hungry. All you want to do is get back to base, shower, get into dry clothes, eat and get warm.
You and the other squads in the company have been marching back to base when you are brought to this place with a series of ponds, one for each squad.
The 20-year-old officer cadet in charge of your squad has just been told that, before you get to go home, a surprise. The squad must complete what is typically called a “command task”, to get each of them across the pond, using what seems like far too little equipment (a few planks, a little rope, some empty barrels).
He explains it to the group, and clearly, nobody has the first idea about how to cross the pond, The officer cadet is very “green”, he also has no idea what to do, but the key thing he observes is a bunch of unmotivated men who are simply thinking “I don’t want to fall into that muddy pond and get cold and wet”.
He could work out what to do himself and then give orders to complete the task, yet with the exhaustion and demotivation he sees, he immediately and instinctively an opportunity for leadership rather than management.
What does he do?
To the shock of his squad, he confidently wades into the middle of the pond, waist deep into the cold, muddy water. As he stands there, he tells the team that they’ve worked together for days and conquered every challenge given to them, now it is time to rise once more and complete this one, then all of you can go home, get warm, get fed, rest.
All the other squads turn and watch this crazy young officer cadet standing in the muddy, cold water addressing his squad. Some laugh, some shake their head. The officer cadets of the other squads are wondering why he did that.
As for his squad, as they see their young leader spontaneously facing their fear around this task, the squad gets a burst of energy and they complete the command task faster than any other group.
The only person wet and cold at the end of the exercise is the officer cadet, as the squad meticulously and energetically completed the task with very little input from the officer cadet.
As they completed it and were released to go to base, the second in command rallied them and they all shared dry clothes with the officer cadet and they marched back to base, spirits high.
Where do I get that vividly described story from? It is viscerally embedded in me. To this day I can remember just how cold, how muddy it felt to be in that pond addressing the squad. You see, I was that officer cadet.
Again and again, I write articles on this site with famous examples of leadership. This one is not so famous, in fact, I’ve never shared it before. It is part of my story and perhaps goes some way to explaining why I am so purposeful around supporting leaders and their impact on the world.
You see, the absolute highlight of that experience was not the hot shower afterwards or even our squad completing the task first. No, it was seeing my action of going into the water galvanise the squad into believing in themselves and their potential to complete the task, as a team.
I love to see potential in people and be part of them believing in themselves to release that potential. Thank you for reading my story ??