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Inspirational Leadership Is Learned When It's Lived

Guest post by: Michael Hume

Article Overview: I learned one of my life's most powerful lessons in inspirational leadership when I was almost 19, serving as the newspaper editor for the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division. If any of my old buddies are out there, they might confirm this anecdote with a comment or two.

Inspirational Leadership Is Learned When It's Lived

Get In The Mud With The Troops I learned one of my life's most powerful lessons in inspirational leadership when I was almost 19, serving as the newspaper editor for the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division. If any of my old buddies are out there, they might confirm this anecdote with a comment or two.

Newspaper guys or not, our office-unit had to participate in field exercises every now and then. In fact, as paratroopers, we got many more chances to find ourselves out in the boonies, playing soldier, than did office guys in other military units. I will never forget a particular exercise that required us to leave our nice off-post houses to go live in tents and eat C-rations from our backpacks for a week or so... under adverse weather conditions the entire time.

Yes, it was the North Carolina piney woods in the fall, and it was raining. Always raining.

My buddies and I arrived at our assigned spot in the woods, riding in the back of a "deuce-and-a-half," a big 2.5-ton truck. My friend Marcus was driving, so he was the only one who arrived at the campsite dry. We all jumped out of the truck, grabbed our packs, and immediately went to work with our little Army shovels trying to dig shallow holes in the mud in which we could erect our standard-issue two-man tents (in that rain, shelter was our first priority).

Looking back, it was pretty comical, what we were doing. We're basically shoveling-out these shallow, rectangular holes, and it's pouring rain, and we're probably spending more time bailing water out of our holes than actually moving any mud. However, funny as this might seem with the comfort of many years' hindsight, it was amusing none of us at the time. We were some grumpy, wet, tired troops who all wished we could be back in our nice dry houses.

I think it was just about an hour into this fun process, maybe a minute or two before we might have erupted into rebellion, when our boss showed up.

Major Roger Smith rolled up in his open-top Army jeep, both he and his driver dressed just like we were in field fatigues, olive-drab poncho, steel-pot helmet, and soaking wet from the ride (by now, Marcus was also drenched). We stopped digging and bailing long enough to come to attention and snap off a sloppy-wet salute.

Another small truck pulled in behind Major Smith's jeep, and two relatively-dry guys from headquarters jumped out of the cab and started to unload. Major Smith approached them, and when he got close enough for them to see the rank insignia on his helmet, the dry guys stopped to salute as well.

I wasn't close enough to hear all of the conversation, but Major Smith was basically learning that the truck contained the field comforts appropriate to his rank: a large green tent, camouflage netting, an oversized cot with a mattress, a field table with a couple chairs, some lanterns, a field-heater, and a generator. He talked briefly with the sergeant from the truck, and all I heard him say was "thanks all the same," and I think he even apologized that those guys had to make the trek out to the woods.

The dry guys re-loaded the couple of items they'd taken from the truck, climbed in, and drove away both the truck they'd brought and our deuce-and-a-half. They left us the jeep, per standard operating procedure.

Major Smith grabbed his backpack, got out his entrenching tool (which is the Army term for the little shovel), and started digging a shallow tent-hole in the mud.

We all went back to digging and bailing, with the difference that now, without exception, there was no grumbling. Not a peep. In fact, I think Major Smith actually broke the silence with some dumb joke about the process, and we all laughed, and the sky seemed to lighten almost immediately. In fact, eventually the rain did let up enough to permit us all to finish our holes and get our tents up and lined with ponchos top-and-bottom.

Major Smith slept in the same type of two-man tent we had, in that mud, for the duration of the exercise.

About a year later, during another exercise in Florida, he accepted the big tent set-up, but insisted that enough cots be brought into the tent to permit him to share it - with every single one of us.

We would have run through walls for that guy. I think I speak for all of us. We were blessed to do our service in peacetime, but with a leader like Major Smith, I could imagine having gone to war and lived to tell about it.

It was a few months after the Florida gig that I went running with Major Smith (running, in the 82nd Airborne, is never less than about six miles). We were able to do eight or ten miles that morning, at a decent Airborne pace, when the major told me he had to stop, that his chest hurt a little, and he wanted to go to sick-call and get it checked out.

It was lung cancer.

For the next six months, my buddies and I tried to get over to Major Smith's house outside Fort Bragg whenever we could. We did chores, helped out his lovely wife Connie (after whom I later named my firstborn), and played with his daughters Carolyn and Juliet. And we had to get a few more hard lessons in inspirational leadership, as we watched the major slowly waste away under the "care" of government-run medical treatment - without a word of complaint. His spirit never waned, and my memory of him will always be one of the inspirational servant-leader, not too proud to sleep in a tent in the mud with his guys, and with an undefeated joy for life that never dimmed, even to his sad and far-too-early death.

To this day, I try to live those lessons from my early adulthood. I try to inspire people around me, and whenever there's a chance to put up a tent in the mud with the troops, in a metaphoric sense, I try to summon the humility and courage to do it. I would like to inspire my adult kids to be healthy - so I think about that whenver I make choices about what I eat or drink, and when it's time to roll out of bed and work out. I'd like them to become financially independent and follow their own entrepreneurial dreams, so I try to let them catch me working hard at my own ventures. And I would like to help inspire them to become more inspirational themselves, in their businesses, and in their homes... so the next generation can get the blessing of the sort of example I was able to learn from Major Roger Smith.

All The Way, Sir!

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Article Tags: behavior modeling, inspirational leadership, personal responsibility, role modeling



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