Lead Yourself First by Michael S. Erwin & Raymond M. Kethledge

Author:Michael S. Erwin & Raymond M. Kethledge [Erwin, Michael S.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-06-12T14:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Catharsis

Ulysses S. Grant, 1864

“The leader who is placid inside is much more formidable in battle.”

—GENERAL JAMES MATTIS

Cleaning up the wreckage after a storm is one thing; living through the storm as it happens, with its fury still a living force and its damage still uncertain, is another. Leadership during a crisis presents different challenges than leadership after its consequences have already arrived. During a crisis, a leader faces not distress about what has already happened, but fear about what might. Much of that fear will be his own, but even more will be around him, in his subordinates, some of whom might urge the leader to be more fearful than he already is. The leader will also feel the shocks and jolts of the crisis itself as it unfolds; and as he navigates his way through it, the weight of his responsibility will feel heavier than at any other time.

Moments like these are among the loneliest for a leader. Yet they are also the most difficult in which to find solitude. When a gale strikes, a leader’s place is not belowdecks, but at the helm. He should strive to maintain a measure of detachment, both from the emotion of others around him and from the crisis itself, observing it clinically, dispassionately. And he must focus his thinking strictly on the decisions he needs to make, rather than on the consequences that might follow if his decisions are wrong. This detachment and focus will afford him as much isolation as circumstances allow, and they will make him resistant to the emotional tumult around him. From there, the leader must draw upon his inner strength.

Every crisis must eventually come to an end. And even a leader who maintains her emotional balance throughout a crisis is likely to pay a price for doing so. Where previously she had reserves of strength, now she has a mass of unresolved tension built up during the course of the crisis. Left unresolved, the tension will make her first priority simply to avoid going through anything like that again. That sentiment is healthy to the extent the crisis should have been avoided in the first place. But crises are a part of leadership, and a leader who seeks always to avoid them will distort her judgment in doing so. Hence the leader must release the tension; and that means she must find solitude.

Grant used solitude this way in May 1864, during the Battle of the Wilderness, when for the first time he led the Army of the Potomac against the forces of General Robert E. Lee. In many respects Grant’s troops fared no better than Hooker’s had the year before. But where Hooker sought emotional release through histrionics, Grant found his in solitude. And thus in the end, Grant emerged with his emotional balance intact.

Even a stoic has his emotional limits. By all accounts, Ulysses S. Grant—who became general-in-chief of the United States Army in March 1864—was an undemonstrative leader. One observer wrote that Grant “confines himself to saying and doing as little as possible before his men.

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