No doubt, you would agree with me that exemplary leaders should be VISIBLE, VISIONARY, VALIANT, VERSATILE, VIGILANT, VIRTUOUS, VALUABLE, VIBRANT, and VOCAL. But you might not believe they should be VULNERABLE. Finally, I’m sure you don’t believe they should be VERBOSE, VINDICTIVE, VIOLENT, VITRIOLIC, OR VOLCANIC. (Yet, when I consider the Final Five, one particular leader comes to mind.)
On the subject of an exemplary leader being VULNERABLE, near the end of The American Revolution documentary directed by Ken Burns and others, the narrator describes a meeting on March 15, 1783, at which George Washington addresses Continental Army officers on the verge of mutinying over the lack of pay. “At a key moment in the speech, Washington reached into his pocket and revealed for the first time that he had begun wearing glasses, saying: ‘Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for, I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country.’ Many soldiers were moved to tears.” Washington’s show of VULNERABILITY stopped the mutiny in its tracks.
Although being VULNERABLE is a useful attribute, it isn’t my winning V-word. Neither are being VALIANT, VERSATILE, VIGILANT, VIRTUOUS, VALUABLE, and VIBRANT. The winning V-word finalists are VISIBLE, VISIONARY, and VOCAL. As occurred for all but one letter of the alphabet to this point, there are no entries for either finalist.
Among VISIBLE, VISIONARY, and VOCAL, which do you want your leader to possess? Before I became chancellor of the University of Arkansas, I would have chosen VISIONARY. In it, I said, “The importance of vision for an organization has been known for millennia as indicated by Proverbs 29:18, ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’ Salacuse notes in Leading Leaders, ‘The creation of an effective strategy begins first with providing the company with a strategic vision, and the source of that vision is inevitably top management, if not the CEO alone.’
“Collins and Porras note, ‘To pursue the vision means to create organizational and strategic alignment to preserve the core ideology and stimulate progress toward the envisioned future. Alignment brings the vision to life, translating it from good intentions to concrete reality.’
“In a speech he delivered in Moscow in the USSR in 1988, President Reagan said, ‘To grasp and hold a vision, that is the very essence of successful leadership.’ In many ways, a leader having imagination is more important than the leader being a visionary. Leaders need to be able to imagine how things will work out if personnel, organizational, budgetary, and a host of other changes occur. If a leader cannot imagine a better future for the organization, there is little hope for success.
“President George H. W. Bush admitted he was not a visionary. His ‘the vision thing’ quote is associated with him even more often than ‘read my lips.’ Many claim Bush was not an effective leader. Is being visionary a necessary condition for being effective? No! Effective leaders create a common vision for an organization by engaging members of the organization. Indeed, if the resulting vision is the product of a team effort, rather than solely one person’s vision, it’s more likely to gain support and traction within the organization.
“George H. W. Bush didn’t have grand plans for the nation, but he accomplished much. Just as Truman followed Roosevelt, Bush followed Reagan. In both cases, the styles and personalities of the successor and predecessor differed significantly. No doubt, history will judge Bush’s presidency more positively than his contemporaries did during and immediately following his presidency.”
I concluded that being visionary wasn’t a necessary attribute for an exemplary leader. But knowing that a vision needs to be developed and articulated is. Letting the team create the vision establishes “buy in” and energizes the team to achieve it. That’s what we did at the University of Arkansas. As I described in Why It Matters, the vision statement came from a two-day retreat of the leadership team: “A nationally competitive student-centered research university serving Arkansas and the world.”
To make the case for VISIBLE and VOCAL being a V-word finalist, imagine being led by someone who is INVISIBLE and isn’t vocal. The Wizard of Oz was invisible until Dorothy’s dog, Todo, pulled back the curtain and exposed him as an ordinary person. Leadership is not only a team sport, it’s a contact sport and the team needs for its leader to be visible and vocal. King Henry V demonstrated the importance of both attributes.
In Shakespeare’s play, Henry V proves his mettle and provides several leadership lessons before and during the battle at Agincourt with the French. Concerned with the morale of his troops and sensing they don’t have confidence in his ability to lead, the evening before the battle, in disguise, using the name Harry le Roy, he practices MBWA (managing by walking around) by walking among the troops, talking with them, gauging their readiness, and encouraging them. He realizes they don’t know why they are fighting. Their leaders haven’t addressed the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) factor. Also, they don’t know much about their king. In speaking with John Bates, Harry le Roy says, “I think the king is but a man, as I am; the violet smells to him as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doeth to me; all his senses have but human conditions: his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing. Therefore when he sees reason of fears, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are: yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his army.”
While his leadership team awaits Henry V’s arrival, the Earl of Westmoreland points out the French have 60,000 fighting men, to which the Duke of Exeter adds “There’s five to one; besides, they all are fresh.” Anticipating they’ll die in the coming battle, the Earl of Salisbury, after saying, “God’s arm strike us! ’Tis a fearful odds,” wishes the best for each of his comrades, and bids them “adieu!”
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[i] https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/george-washington-newburgh-address-1783 [ii] John A. White, Why It Matters: Reflections on Practical Leadership, Greenleaf Book Group Press, Austin, TX, pp. 135-136. [iii] Ibid, p. 75. [iv] William Shakespeare, The Life of Henry the Fifth, Act 4, Scene 1. Lines 93-101. [v] Ibid, Act 4, Scene, 3, Line 10. [vi] Ibid, Act 4, Scene 3, Lines 79-82.