The United States Army is the largest training organization in the world. And among the subjects it teaches is leadership. The Army teaches leadership at all levels from the squad leader with only a few subordinates to generals with hundreds of thousands. With many years of studying leadership, the Army program nets down to the three words in the title of the book:
Be - To be an effective leader you have to be the kind of person people want to follow. This comes down to almost the Golden rule, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Other words would be loyalty, integrity, personal courage; a good set of personal qualities that make a good person.
Know - You have to know what you are asking subordinates to do. It's hard to lead people into doing things that you can't do yourself.
Do - The old adage, Follow Me, summarizes the leaders point of view. You have to do, you have to show the way.
This book is different from many that are available on bookstore shelves. Most books are written by consultants or trainers that have developed their own programs. This book takes as its foundatation what the Army has developed over meany, many years, practiced, and observed the result. The study of the results of leadership training in the Army is based on combat where the losers die, not just watching the sales charts.
This book is different, but directly applicable to the business, research, academic world.
