We Are All Leaders
All We Have to Do is Learn How and Lead!
This weekend I watched The Last Full Measure, the movie about the efforts, over 30 years, to obtain the Medal of Honor (MOH) to someone who richly deserved it. Not receiving the MOH is something that many in the unit he helped felt was an injustice. The MOH is the highest military award in the US.
The phrase, the last full measure, comes from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (there’s an excellent Civil War book by Jeff Shaara by the same name, The Last Full Measure, if you are interested).
The movie tells the story of a how a group of soldiers moved and pushed the government until someone in government cared enough to drive the process to obtain the MOH for William Pitsenbarger, an Air Force medic who saved over 60 of these men in the bloodiest battle of the Vietnam War. He died that day, after over 300 rescue missions. Somehow, his MOH nomination was downgraded to the Air Force Cross, which he received posthumously.
The many soldiers he saved, who did not know him before the battle, felt it was an injustice that he did not receive the MOH and over the following 30+ years pushed for it to be changed. They would write letters, talk to people, the government will send someone to investigate, and the results were always the same. No, can’t do.
Until Scott Huffman, a Department of the Air Force employee, got the call and became the latest person to investigate. Huffman, after some struggles on his own, obtained the necessary paperwork but, once again, the process was stopped. He then decided to risk his career and go public. The public responded and the MOH was awarded. Nothing moves like the American public when it learns of an injustice!
Enough recap. I highly recommend you watch it.
What I want to point out is that the soldiers he saved, almost all enlisted men, would not let this injustice go unanswered. They had a vision, (Personal Leadership) that Pitsenbarger would get the Medal of Honor. They built relationships (Relational Leadership) with each other as they tried to line up the support, and, after some time, with Huffman. They built a community (Contextual Leadership), the MOH for Pitsenbarger community (no, they did not name themselves). Then they enlisted others. They provided inspiration (Inspirational Leadership) to Huffman to pursue the effort. They backed him up (Supportive Leadership) so that Huffman felt it was worth it to risk his career to address this injustice. And they ensured that a deserving airman received the MOH. This is a tremendous example of Stewardship (Responsible Leadership).
No one was designated the leader of this effort. None of them were in active service. Yet, together they exhibited the behaviors and effects documented in the Six Domains of Leadership™. Huffman too demonstrated these behaviors and effects in his “unwanted” assignment. Together they accomplished their goal.
Lesson? We can all lead and accomplish results. Using a model like the Six Domains of Leadership can help us figure out how to best do it. Not that the soldiers and Huffman used it. The model came out later in 2008 and this situation took place in the late 1990s. But it can help everyone who wants to lead or finds themselves having to lead. Check it out!
I’ve written about the Six Domains of Leadership a number of times. Here’s one that talks about it and the Leadership Effects each domain’s behaviors yield: “Leadership Effects — How to Achieve the Results You Want”
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