Radical Inclusion by Martin Dempsey & Ori Brafman

Author:Martin Dempsey & Ori Brafman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Missionday
Published: 2017-03-12T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7: CONNECT EFFORT WITH MEANING

Leadership Principle #2: Make It Matter

The movie Saving Private Ryan takes place during the initial days of the Normandy invasion in June 1944. It is a tale of unimaginable courage and leadership under the harshest of conditions.

A schoolteacher before being drafted, Captain John Miller and nine of his men survive the horrors of the landing on Omaha Beach and are sent to find Private Ryan, a soldier who has landed behind enemy lines with the 101st Air Assault Division and the sole surviving son of a mother who has just lost her other three sons in combat within days of each other. Captain Miller’s men are perplexed, and a few are angry that they must risk their lives for this anonymous soldier, but under his leadership they successfully find Private Ryan and bring him to safety—at great cost.

There is a powerful scene at the end of Saving Private Ryan in which Captain John Miller, dying of his wounds and having lost eight of his nine men on the mission to find Private Ryan, whispers to Private Ryan, “Earn this!” Captain Miller is telling Private Ryan to make their sacrifices matter.

We all want to believe that what we do matters. That’s true whether we’re reflecting on our personal life or on our life in the workplace.

One of a leader’s responsibilities is to make sense of things for their followers. As “sense makers,” leaders help those around them understand how their contributions fit into the organization’s accomplishments. They help them appreciate how they matter. The best leaders do this deliberately and the very best do it often.

It’s worth noting that the responsibility to “make it matter” is shared by leader and follower. Each of us should recognize that our life can and should matter. Each of us should embrace the fact that we can make a difference—sometimes in big ways, more often in small ways, so that the aggregate of our lives ultimately matters.

However, like most things in leadership, making it matter is an unequal responsibility. Most of the responsibility is on the leader: to explain, to encourage, and to inspire.

If you are a leader, make it matter. For yourself, for those who follow you, and for your team.

• • •

General Dempsey had 32,000 soldiers with him in Baghdad in 2003 and 2004. Their job was to provide a safe environment in which Iraq’s political leaders could restore confidence in their government and reestablish basic services like sewage, water, electricity, and trash collection. As that proved more and more difficult, an insurgency emerged, and Dempsey and his soldiers were among its targets.

They began to take casualties in August of 2003, and as they did, they tried to remember their losses in two ways. It was their practice to begin each day with a morning briefing, and at the start of it they would display the fallen soldiers’ names on the large screen at the front of the briefing room and pause for a moment of silence. As

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