Leadership- What West Point Didn’t Teach Me
My four years at West Point began and ended at Michie Stadium. July 1, 1985 was a beautiful sunny day filled with fear and anxiety as I said goodbye to my loving parents and hello to the not-so-loving upperclassmen.
The principles of leadership taught at West Point served me well as a young platoon leader in combat in Desert Storm, as the CEO of two different companies, as a husband and father, and now as a pastor.
Guest Blog By Fritz Hager, Jr.- Fritz has a unique leadership background that he will share periodically as a guest blogger. I have watched him lead as a cadet, as a lieutenant in combat (Silver Star), as a CEO, as a father and now as a pastor.
What They Missed
May 28, 1989 was a day of pouring rain and joy as I said goodbye to West Point and hello to life as an officer in the US Army. In between was 47 months of what I still believe is the world’s best leader development training.
West Point lists 11 Leadership Principles that they require incoming cadets to memorize and they are incorporated into most every evaluation of leadership performance. They cover what you should be, know and do as a leader and they are just as true today as they were when I learned them almost 30 years ago.
Unfortunately, there is one essential principle West Point left out. If I’d learned it then (and practiced it more consistently now) it would have saved me a lot of pain – both in my professional and personal life.
West Point takes bright, accomplished, athletic high school graduates, and tells them that they are the finest the nation has to offer. Then they put them through the same leader development process that has produced some of our nation’s finest leaders.
It is it surprising that humility is not a leadership virtue explicitly taught by West Point or espoused by many of its graduates?
Old Cadet Joke:
How many cadets does it take to change a light bulb? One. He holds the bulb and the world revolves around him.
When we think of the stereotypical attributes of leaders we think of charisma, confidence, and strength not humility, in fact what many see these attributes as opposed to humility. Ted Turner, billionaire founder of CNN, said it this way, “If I only had a little humility, I’d be perfect.”
But it’s not just military and business leaders who suffer from this. Peggy Noonan recently wrote about the national demise of humility in a great article in The Wall Street Journal entitled “The I’s Have It”.
Humility
So, what is humility and why is it important? One dictionary defines humility as “the quality or condition of being humble; modest opinion or estimate of one’s own importance, rank, etc.”
What I like about this definition is that it focuses on the issue of perceived self-importance, not capability. This means you can be strong, confident, charismatic and still be humble. The trick is not to confuse those attributes with greater personal worth, value or importance than those you live, serve and work with. It also means you put the interests of the organization and your team ahead of your won.
“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less. “
– Rick Warren
Lack of Humility- 4 Reasons It Hurts A Leader
- It builds you up at the expense of the others around you, creating distrust and sapping the confidence of your team.
- It discourages input from other team members because the arrogant leader can’t admit he or she is wrong.
- It repels other capable, confident leaders, which leads to further weakening of you team.
- Arrogance is a close cousin to selfishness driven by a sense of greater self-worth, value and importance. Selfish leaders don’t have teams that sacrifice and persevere.
Lesson Learned
Question:
So, what are some of the best examples you’ve seen of leaders who led with strength and humility?
Nice article Dave, never knew you to be such a thinker. Kidding! Hope you are well. Charlie A
Too bad this one was written by another Grad–Fritz Hager 89.
I hope you are well Charlie! I have some other articles on here that may show that I am a thinker though…
Very interesting article; never heard that joke. While I do agree that humility is a desired and necessary trait for all of us, especially those who have the opportunity to lead the Nation’s sons and daughters, I do not agree that the West Point experience lacks that component. I taught Calculus at West Point during the period you talk about and I don’t think the development curriculum ever taught cadets that they were such arrogant individuals. I was both a professor and an OR for the track team, and I never knew a cadet who didn’t exhibit the utmost humility. More to the point, I would argue during my time as a cadet, that West Point went out of its way to show us just the opposite. I would also argue that plebe tasks such as minute calling, cold beverage corporaling, newspaper delivering, and laundry delivering had as much to do with teaching us that we are here to serve with humility than anything else. I respect your opinion, but I think a closer look at your experience , including the many times that someone was the victim of being labelled a “Richard”, you would conclude that the West Point development experience didn’t lack teaching us about humility.I agree with your assessment that the leader must exhibit humility, but I humbly disagree that West Point failed to include it in the development curriculum.
Ron. I agree that there are a lot of humbling experiences at West Point meant to teach us to follow well before we lead well.
I was humbled in many many circumstances as I believe most cadets were. But I do agree with Fritz’s point that humility is not a topic I heard a single officer discuss with cadets as an important component to being a leader.
I also like what Eriksen says below…lack of humility may be the reason some people have negative impression of West Pointers.
There is no doubt that humble people graduate from West Point. But is it a specific teaching point in the leadership curricula? Should it be?
Plebe calculus taught me humility.
Great article. While I agree with Ron that all the components were there to teach humility, it didn’t always take. In fact, I think that the lack of humility is what creates in others the negative impression they often have of West Pointers. Lack of humility isn’t always expressed as braggadocio, but is more often communicated by an insinuation that a person is always right and, furthermore, can’t be questioned because of that persons’ righteousness.
Nice article. I think you hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, the military, corporate america, and politics rarely discuss the value of leadership w. humility. Thanks for posting.
Rich Bradford
G-1, 1986
Rich- You are right. This is not a West Point issue. This is a society issue. I’d like to see it addressed directly in leadership discussions at West Point.
I think humility is somewhat taught at West Point. Not outright – but any of you at any other college would be a stand-out scholar/athlete. But by being at West Point, you become just one of many fantastic kids… (At my age, I can refer to cadets as “kids”… 😉 )
We are all humbled early on by being plebes and all that entails. But it is not an overt teaching point throughout our four years.