Posts Tagged ‘lieutenants’
Under no circumstances should you...
Chap 1 - Getting Started - Monday, August 17, 2009 8:38 - Comments
…Not Understand What Type Of Leader You Are
Do you know what kind of leader you are? Are you sure you want to answer that question? For all my conflicts with him as a CEO, I did learn a pretty succinct way of categorizing managers from Doug Erwin during his time at the helm of RLX. According to him, there are “generals,” who lead from the front, and there are “sergeants,” who have to push from the rear to get people to go where they need to go.
The “sergeant,” as used by Doug, was meant as a derisive epithet. He was talking about me. In his world, the sergeant is the guy who is responsible for taking a hill, and will do so no matter what the cost. In this way, he will not engender positive will with his team, and many of them will in fact have a negative set of feelings associated with their sergeant. As such, according to Doug, the sergeant is in the rear, quite literally pushing his men up the hill because they don’t want to follow him. He was letting me know he didn’t think too much of me as a leader. I disagree (of course), but debasing this claim is not the point of this essay. Illustrating that leadership persona is, and sergeants have their place inside of companies.
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