The Leadership Moment

Just checked out my old book, the Leadership Moment. You can check it out here. The book highlights nine different episodes where Leadership made a difference in life threatening or significant events, then analyzes the leaedership lessons learned.

The two that are especially interesting to me are the stories of Colonel Joshua Lawrence, the Union Commander on Little Round Top at Gettysburg and the story of the Mann Gulch Fire.

Colonel Lawrence was the commander of a regiment of Union volunteers from Maine that held a crucial hill at Gettysburg. In a dramatic moment, when ammo was almost gone, the men of the 20th Maine fixed bayonets and charged down the hill, saving the Union line.

A remarkable addendum is that the 20th Maine was supplemented by a number of men from another Maine regiment that had refused to fight. Colonel Lawrence, through his leadership, was able to convince the men to join him and fight bravely.

The Mann Gulch fire, on the other hand, was the worst loss of life in a fire the forest service had experienced. It happened in 1949 and 16 fire jumpers, including their leader Wagner Dodge, jumped into this rugged area in Montana. Only 3 of them returned alive.

When the raging flames began to overtake the men, Dodge lit a backfire and burnt out a small area that he took refuge in. The other jumpers, not knowing Dodge or understanding what he was doing, rushed past him in a panic and were overcome by the blaze. Because the men did not really know Dodge and certainly did not trust him, his great ideas were of no help to them at all.

The takeaway: If your followers know and trust you, they will follow you into the teeth of a horde of charging Grey coats and they will win. If your followers don't know and trust you, they will run past you and ignore you in times of stress, even if your ideas will save their life.