By the end of this lecture student should be able to:   understand that effective strategic leaders are those who empower those for whom they are responsible assess the belief that training- and trust-based empowerment enhances creativity and initiative reflect on how to incorporate these ideas and practices into their own leadership

1. Professor Joel Hayward

2. At the end of this lecture student should be able to:
• understand that effective strategic leaders are those who empower
those for whom they are responsible
• assess the belief that training- and trust-based empowerment
enhances creativity and initiative
• reflect on how to incorporate these ideas and practices into their
own leadership

3. “War is too serious a matter to entrust to the generals”
— Georges Clemenceau

4. • Throughout the long expanse of history, national leaders ordinarily
commanded armies
• They had no specialist training although many did read about the
strategies of forebears or military manuals
• Battle of Solferino in 1859: the last major battle in which all the
armies were under the personal command of their monarchs

5. • Until “reason” emerged during the Enlightenment as the primary
means of explaining cause and effect:
• Success / failure in war was portrayed as God’s favour / punishment
• One’s own leaders were portrayed reverentially and uncritically as
God’s champions
• Heroism featured prominently

6. • The Industrial Revolution, the Westphalian system and the emergence of
new democracies changed both civil-military relations and military
leadership
• The “professionalization” of the military
• Legal and ethical framework
• Codes of moral conduct
• Continuous, intensive and increasingly specialized training
• Doctrine

7. • Cadet and staff colleges after 1810 (Clausewitz director of the Prussian
Kriegsakademie 1818-1830)
• History, politics, economics plus tactics, logistics, and technological study
• Staff rides (battlefield tours)
• Field exercises
• Table-top wargames

8. • Ordinarily at least:
• Commissioning course
• Trade / specialist courses
• Staff course
• Ironic:
• A military leader trains, educates and prepares to do something that he
or she may only ever do once, or not at all
• Warfare is entirely unlike anything he or she has prepared for

9. Alexander the Great
356 –323 BCE
Napoleon
Bonaparte
1769-1821
Abraham
Lincoln
1809 -1864

10. Mohandas
Gandhi
1869-1948
Martin Luther King
Jr.
1929 – 1968

12. Transactional leaders are more concerned with maintaining the normal
flow of operations. “keeping the ship afloat”
Rely on authority, order, discipline and rewards to motivate employees to
perform at their best
Transformational vs. Transactional Leadership

13. Transformational leaders focus on changing the culture and creating
a shared vision
Rely on the creation of team-building, motivation and collaboration
with employees at different levels to accomplish change for the
better

14. Transformational leaders focus on changing the culture and creating
a shared vision
Rely on the creation of team-building, motivation and collaboration
with employees at different levels to accomplish change for the
better

15. Creating a culture of Empowerment

16.  The strategic leader / leadership articulates a vision
 Communicates the strategic intentions
 Provides thorough training
 Creates a trust-based environment to engender initiative and
creativity
 Decentralizes decision-making as far downwards as is
reasonable
 Provides oversight and guidance, but also
the maximum reasonable freedom

17. “I trust my generals’
judgment about the
timing and manner of
their compliance with my
intentions.”
― Field Marshal Erwin
Rommel

18. “Never tell people how
to do things. Tell them
what to do and they
will surprise you with
their ingenuity”
― General George
Smith Patton

23. Horatio Lord Nelson and
His
“Band of Brothers”

24. Reach
win
train
then
trust
The “Nelson Touch”

25. Battle of the Nile, 1 August 1798

26. Battle of the Nile, 1 August 1798
Doctrinal expectations

27. Battle of the Nile, 1 August 1798
The “Nelson Touch”

28. Battle of the Nile, 1 August 1798

29. Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805

30. “I send you my Plan of Attack, as far as a man dare
venture to guess at the very uncertain position the
enemy may be found in. But, my dear friend, it is
designed only to place you perfectly at ease respecting
my intentions, and to give full scope to your judgment
for carrying them into effect.”
― Lord Nelson to Vice Admiral Collinwood, 9 October
1805

32. “Mission Command” as a style of Strategic
Leadership
“Leadership that seeks to convey understanding to
subordinates about the situation, the intentions of the
leader and their own place within his plan, empowering
them to carry out tasks with the maximum creativity,
delegated authority, and freedom of action.”

33. All strategic leadership communication should
contain two elements:
The Task
What is wanted
(Who? Where? When? With what?)
The Intention
Why it is wanted
(best expressed as “in order to …” or “so as to … or
“This is needed because …”
How strategic leaders communicate

34. Thank you

36. “The role of strategic leadership is not to get other people to
follow them, but to empower others to lead.”
— William W. George
Professor of Management Practice
Harvard Business School