HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
2010
ISBN 978-1-55468-493-9
515 Pages
Hardcover
$32.99
11 May 2011
Leadership is the second volume of the two volume autobiography of former Chief of Defense Staff General Rick Hillier. His first volume, entitled A Soldier First, was a conventional autobiography that was reviewed in these pages previously. This volume, Leadership, is a summary of the lessons learned as one of Canada’s foremost practitioners of the art. Almost half of Hillier’s thirty-five year career was spent in high command or staff positions, and much of that was during in the so-called “black decade” of the Canadian Forces, 1994 to 2004.
Leadership is a well-written, easy read organized into fifty chapters, each of which relates a lesson learned, or a “point of wisdom”. Collectively, these ‘points of wisdom’ are practical examples of a few principles of leadership, such as being seen by one’s followers, having a vision of the future, selling the vision through enthusiasm, the classification of followers and how to deal with members of the different categories, the provision of an example and maintaining a brave exterior in the face of adversity. One can hear Hillier’s voice and good humour in the prose.
One of the crucial lessons of the book is the sharp distinction between leaders, and managers in leadership positions. The latter are indistinguishable from the staff intended to support them.
Fifty is a rounder number than 43 or 37 are, and some of the later points of wisdom are short and repetitious of earlier points, and seem to be there to round the total up to fifty. Nevertheless, despite the minor contrivance, it is a book that ought to be read by every member of the Canadian Forces as part of their schooling in leadership.
The modern era of leadership training in the Canadian Forces began in 1964. A study of the leadership training program then in existence concluded in 1965 that there were weaknesses in the teaching and practice of the art, and the Directorate of Training, assisted by the Directorate of Personnel Selection, produced publication CFP 131, Leadership, since revised and updated. The theory of leadership as now taught in the Canadian Forces is as current and modern and scientifically grounded as any similar program in the world, and the Canadian Forces has produced its share of real military leaders even in peacetime: General J.A. Dextraze, Major General Lewis Mackenzie, and General Rick Hillier himself come immediately to mind. Hillier is a graduate of that modern school of instruction.
But as Yogi Berra once said, “In theory, theory and practice ought to be the same; but in practice, they’re not.” This is a way of saying that it is one thing to teach a sound theory of leadership, but it is quite another to practice leadership well in the real world. In Hillier’s experience a good leader is always learning and developing, and happy to get it 70 % right.
Long time readers of Esprit de Corps, and Scott Taylor’s books Tarnished Brass and Tested Mettle know that for a prolonged period leadership as actually practiced in the Canadian Forces at the highest levels was bad. It produced a military that was risk averse, mistake prone and nearly bereft of purpose save the following of routine. And bad leadership tended to become self-perpetuating because good leaders left the Canadian Forces rather than endure the abuse, hypocrisy, and self-defeatism that bad leadership is the source of. Those who learned to play the game or, Hillier’s case, were rarely subjected to it, tended to remain. One class of these officers who remained Hillier referred to as the “iron majors.”
This is not to say that all those who rose to high rank in the Canadian Forces in the 1990s were bad leaders, but enough were. Hillier does not name names in Leadership except in a good way.
The worst source of bad leadership in the CF was the highest military leadership in the land: the government. The Liberal government of Jean Chretien was simply uncomfortable with possessing an instrument for war. It was expensive to maintain and the government faced a budget crisis. Not knowing what to do with it, and finding peacekeeping to be politically popular, the Liberal government cut funding to the CF at the same time as adding numerous overseas deployments to its taskings. This was the beginning of the black decade that began with Somalia. The squeeze of lower funding, lower troop levels, and higher commitments overseas was awful in a military not willing or able to play the political game as the United States military is.
Hillier relates how his brigade’s handling of the Winnipeg flood in 1997 and the Quebec Ice Storm, changed the public’s perception of the CF after Somalia into a force for good. But it was only after Bill Graham took over as Minister of National Defense and Paul Martin took over as Prime Minister that things began to change in a real way for the better. Hillier accepted the appointment of Chief of Defense Staff by Paul Martin on the condition that a lot more money would be forthcoming to the CF.
From the bad consequences of poor leadership seen throughout his career come many of the lessons of Hillier’s book. Other lessons come from the good results of the corrections Hillier made in the CF while CDS. For those who lived through the period, Hillier’s stories of leadership in the CF are satisfying for their admissions. Those whom you thought at the time were pompous, inflated assholes, Hillier admits really were!
Though Leadership ought to be read by every member of the CF, past and present, it is intended for a wider audience. Leadership is not peculiar to a military, but to any organization. Without leadership there is no hierarchy, no corporation, no government, no society, no family. Since leadership is necessary to the existence of organized human life, good leadership is a condition of a good corporation, a good government, a good society, and a good family. These fifty ‘points of wisdom’ are intended to convey in a practical, understandable, and homey way the basic skill of good leadership.
In purpose, effective or successful leadership is morally ambivalent. Street gangs, for instance, are the product of effective leadership put to bad uses. Hitler, Mao, Lenin, and Stalin rose to the top political positions of their countries and remained there by means of the leadership they exerted. Napoleon Bonaparte is universally regarded as a great leader whether or not you regard the glory of France through military conquest and the benefits of the French revolution as objects worthy of pursuit.
Hillier implicitly assumes that leadership is only used for good purposes. His target audience, those who would take positions of leadership in Canadian corporations, as well as informal groups, are people he assumes to be well-motivated and -disposed towards the success of these corporations and informal groups. This is a reasonable assumption to make, though the success of the Toronto-Dominion Bank may not occur to a socialist as a good thing, nor the success of the Toronto Maple Leafs to a fan of the Montreal Canadiens.
Successful leadership that is not aimed at the good of the corporation would be classed as bad leadership by Hillier. This is not an inconsistency, but is inherent in the different senses of the word “good.” Hillier’s assumption of good is in the absolute sense, not the relative sense.
The success of the Canadian Forces ought to be regarded as a good by all Canadians, both absolutely and relatively to us. This is another aim of Leadership: to confirm the gains made by the CF under Hiller’s leadership in the hearts and minds of the country and the government.
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