Leadership Is Learned by Doing

As I sit in the Connecticut home of one of the best leaders I know, I keep coming back to something Rear Admiral Grace Hopper is widely quoted as saying: “You manage things; you lead people.”

I think that is one job, not two. In my experience, most people are promoted for managing the work and never taught how to lead the people doing it. The second half is the harder one.

What leading actually looks like

Some people hear “military leadership” and picture someone barking orders. Sometimes a direct order is exactly right, and Veterans know when. But that is the smallest part of the job. The rest happens before and after: high expectations, and then an active role in helping people meet them.

A leader's job is to inspire and enable. You inspire people by knowing them. You enable them with the time, teammates, training, and resources to do the work, and an eye on how each of them grows over time. Demanding and caring are not opposites. The best leaders are both.

Where it is learned

Books and seminars give you the vocabulary. A seminar can teach you what leadership is. Only the people you lead can teach you whether you are any good at it. Most of leadership is learned by doing, up close to the people and the work. It carries consequences, because when the people you lead struggle, you don't only see it, you feel it.

I learned what that looks like from Lieutenant General (Retired) Jim Dubik, when I was his aide-de-camp in Bosnia. We would fly to remote locations in the middle of the night to spend time with troops doing tough, not always glamorous work. He would sit with them for ten or fifteen minutes and get to know them: their jobs, their lives, the mission we were all part of. It was not a grip and grin. It was a genuine, human connection, and it mattered to him, to the person he was talking to, and frankly to everyone who saw or heard it.

Leaders who get this right know what is going on in their people's lives, the good and the hard, not in a prying way, but in a way that shows they see people as human beings. They know where each person is strong and where each wants to grow, so they can be the catalyst for that growth. And they set the example, because people watch what you do before they listen to what you say.

I am in the home of one of those leaders today.

The military gives people that practice early. A Servicemember can be responsible for people and equipment, with real consequences, long before most civilian careers offer anything similar. Many Veterans have the education and formal leadership training too. What the work adds is the practice, every day.

A résumé can list a title and a headcount. It cannot show whether people were better for having worked for you.

What it does to a team

You invest time and energy in your people because it is the right thing to do, not to get something back. But it does come back, and more importantly, it spreads. People who feel known and valued start doing the same for each other. That is how a culture changes, not through a poster or a program, but through one person treating people as people and everyone else taking the cue. Teams led this way commit instead of comply.

Why Always Forward VTA

Recognizing it takes someone who has done it. I grew up in a military family, led troops as an Army Officer, and spent 26 years in corporate leadership. The best leaders I met in both worlds worked the same way: they knew their people.

That is what I listen for. When I sit down with a Servicemember or Veteran, I am not looking for a title. I am looking for what they have led, who they made better, and what they want to learn next. Titles and tenure tell me little. How someone treats the people around them tells me a great deal. I won't tell anyone who they should be as a leader. I will be a thought partner in seeing what they have already built.

My mission is to pair great Veterans with great companies, and it is good for both the Veteran and the company. Veterans get to put everything they learned to work in an environment that appreciates it and benefits from it. Companies gain leaders who raise the bar and make the people around them better. The result is Veterans who stay and climb, and teams that are stronger for it.

Next, I'll write about how to spot it: the two ways leaders go wrong, and what to ask in an interview to find out.

Always Forward.