Rick Hillier - Leadership: 50 Points of Wisdom for Todays Leaders

This book is dedicated to those thousands of leaders whom I got to appreciate each dayto those from the most junior to the most senior in the CF, to their families, across the departments of government in Ottawa and to those leaders in the civilian community who continue to be such incredible supporters of the men and women in the CF. I particularly pay tribute to those who get that leadership is all about people and that remembering that fact means you wont go far wrong.

I was in downtown Toronto in the early afternoon of 20 January 2009, walking among the towers that are the headquarters of our major businesses and corporations, while in Washington, DC, President Barack Obama was being inaugurated. I found it most interesting to watch people in their cubicles and offices in those towers, glued to TV or computer screens, watching the inauguration as though hypnotized. And, somewhat unexpectedly given our perception of how many Canadians view the United States, they all seemed to be watching with what I believed to be envy. They wanted Canada to share the vision, clear thinking and strategic approach that Obama was articulating for our great southern neighbour. They wanted visible leadership.

Later that afternoon I contrasted the scene from Washingtonone of hope, excitement, vision and daringto the kind of junior kindergarten antics that we see each afternoon during Question Period in the House of Commons in Ottawa. I know that Canadians want something better than that dismal display. They want true leadership.

People want to be able to be a part of something greater than themselves. Nobody wants to live and die alone. They want to improve the society they live in. They want their communities to be better, so they join chambers of commerce, Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, hockey associations, artistic groups and volunteer fire brigades. Most people understand intuitively that working together gives them enormous potential and allows them to accomplish more than working separately. And they look for leadership to help those individuals achieve more together as a group than they could alone. That is to say, we actively seek people who can bring the leadership necessary to help us become more, and achieve more.

Within those communities, clubs, associations, hobby groups, churches and schools, individuals quite naturally gravitate to those who can bring people with different backgrounds, beliefs and characters together and start them working toward one goal. These leaders are visible in communities across the country. They provide the unifying force, the leadership, to help individuals come together with a common purpose and do more. Thats incredibly positive for the communities where we live, for our country and, indeed, for the entire world.

People will move from one leader to another to satisfy their desire to contribute or to make a greater impactto be part of something powerful. People will change churches, schools, club associations and even their careers to find what they seek. Even informal leaders have to work hard, and deliver, in order to keep people following them. Since in most cases those informal leaders are also trying to do more, to make a greater impact by leading than by acting alone, they have a vested interest in being effective as a leader, to get more done.

Someone steps forward with a vision, however simple, with a plan to do something or with an idea that inspires all the rest to follow. The result is that kids become more responsible, and eventually become better Canadians as adults, and we are rewarded with safer communities, less crime, reduced poverty and much, much more. None of it is possible without leadership.

But that is in good times. In tough times, people seek leadership for entirely different reasons, and that is when leadership matters even more. When something goes wronga natural disaster, a company closing its doors and doing away with jobs that are a communitys lifebloodpeople get scared. And when they are scared, they look for comfort from one another, seek psychological security and hope and, most important, reach for answers to find a way out of the chaos and insecurity that surrounds them. They first seek guidance within their circles of friends and colleagues, those they know or at least know of. They are looking for a leader to step forward. They want someone who understands their fear, can see through the fog to what the future can bring, can articulate the best way to proceed (even if he or she doesnt always have the perfect solution), understands the risks, and, with personal courage and by leading through example, can motivate frightened people. In tough times, people search for that lead dog to take the pack on the journey.

There is perhaps no better example of a leader in recent history than that of Winston Churchill during the Second World War. In the darkest days of the British Empire, when the future of that great democracy was at stake, this incredible man stepped forward. With a stubbornness that resonated with the British and the other free peoples of the world, a blunt pragmatism that came across as the truth no matter how unpalatable, and an ability to understand his peoples overwhelming fear during those difficult days and address that fear directly through his words and actions, Churchill changed history. With his famous words, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat, he appealed to those spilling their blood in the air, working against all odds to stem the vicious Nazi tide, shedding tears for lost loved ones and sweating profusely during the bitter fighting in the North African desert. His defiant stance in itself mobilized the free world to resist in a way that few leaders, if any, have ever done. He inspired, as the formal leader, in this time of grave danger, and people followed. In the end, after the danger was over but before the end of the war, the British people kicked him out of office, although he was later, in peacetime, re-elected as prime minister. Leaders have to continue to work hard to bring what people who are following them want, or else those followers will find a leader who can.

Closer to home, in April and May 1997, the Red River Flood, quickly dubbed the flood of the century by media and government, inundated large parts of southern Manitoba and the city of Winnipeg, threatening those who lived within the flood plain. Record snowfalls the winter before, combined with exceptionally rapid spring thaws and heavy rains, turned the normally placid, forty-metre-wide Red River into a raging torrent forty kilometres wide. Homes were flooded, farms were isolated, bridges were destroyed and government structures were pushed beyond their capability. The Canadian Forces, in the largest deployment to a natural disaster to that date, were called on to help out.

My brigade out of Petawawa, Ontario, was en route at exactly that moment to the Maritimes for a spring training exercise. We rapidly reversed course and headed west. Within forty-eight hours, a train of hundreds of earth-moving, tracked vehicles, along with four thousand soldiers and my team of senior officers and non-commissioned officers, made their way to Winnipeg. It immediately became evident to us, first and foremost, that the civilian organizations already in place were not prepared to cope with disaster of any scale, but especially not with something this big. All those federal, provincial and municipal governments and agencies were well prepared for good times, but not for bad. No one was in obvious command; committees of dozens were the norm, and decisions, if made at all, were unclear and often revoked as quickly as they were communicated. At first, the Canadian Forces was not particularly welcome. We were seen as just one more organization thrust into a situation that already had more than enoughuntil one civil engineer read out the latest reports that a wall of water, estimated at thirty metres high, was moving into Manitoba from the south. That amount of water blew away everyones most dire predictions. The engineer quietly and calmly told the civic and provincial officials in the room that none of their hydrographic tables could offer any indication of what would occur next.