21 Great Leaders: Learn Their Lessons, Improve Your Influence (31 page)

The Sixth Side of Leadership is essential to every leader. Leadership must be bold and courageous. “Timid leadership” is a contradiction in terms.

Courage, of course, is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of fear. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.” To lead others, you must face your fears, conquer them, and lead confidently and boldly. By doing so, you will embolden the hearts of your followers.

Here are some leadership lessons from the example of Rosa Parks:

1.
Draw inspiration and confidence from your faith
. From her earliest years, Rosa Parks was devoted to her Christian faith. The Psalms gave her comfort and a sense of God’s protection in the presence of her enemies. The Old Testament story of the children of Israel and their struggle for liberation from Egypt gave her a biblical prototype for civil disobedience.

Throughout her childhood, Rosa Parks faced threats and insults no child should ever have to deal with. Her faith gave her a sense of dignity and self-worth that racist threats could never take away. Prayer and the comfort of scripture gave her the strength to boldly confront the system of segregation.

2.
Draw inspiration from role models of boldness
. As a child, Rosa Parks was influenced by the example of her grandfather. She never forgot how he sat in his living room, shotgun in hand, ready for trouble. She learned from his example that a bold leader doesn’t go looking for trouble but remains vigilant and prepared in case trouble comes.

Mrs. Parks was prepared that day in December 1955, and her refusal to stand was a bold act of righteous defiance and nonviolent resistance to injustice. She always remembered that her grandfather was never afraid—and she refused to be afraid as well.

3.
Don’t give in to hate
. Rosa Parks refused to judge the entire white race by the actions of some. She treated people as individuals, not as members of a homogenized group. In this way, she managed to defeat her segregationist enemies without becoming like them.

4.
Rely on friends and supporters to embolden you in a crisis
. On the day Mrs. Parks refused to stand, she knew she was not alone. For years she had been involved with the civil rights movement. She had many friends in the movement, and as soon as she was arrested, word spread quickly throughout the Montgomery civil rights community. Knowing she was not alone made it easier for her to hold firm in the face of arrest.

5.
Use the past as a springboard for future action
. Rosa Parks’s combative spirit was emboldened when she saw that the driver of the bus was James F. Blake. He had treated her abusively before, and she had spent twelve years avoiding him. But this time she wasn’t going anywhere. Blake represented everything that was evil about the system of segregation, and this time she confronted him head-on.

Let past wrongs inspire present action. Don’t be ruled by anger or resentment, but channel your righteous indignation into effective action.

6.
Accept the consequences of bold leadership
. Don’t expect your bold decisions always to bring victory. Before Rosa Parks experienced victory, she had to go through the humiliation of an arrest, jail, an unjust conviction, and sentencing. The boycott took more than a year to bring results. Mrs. Parks and the African-American community had to endure the wrath of an unjust system in order to overturn it.

Don’t waste time complaining about the unfairness of the system. Confront the system and take the risks that come with leadership. In the process, you may just change the world.

How far will your boldness take you?

H
ARRY
S. T
RUMAN

The Buck Stops Here

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better
.

H
ARRY
S. T
RUMAN

I
n the early 1990s, when I broadcast my radio show live from a restaurant in Orlando, I had Colonel Paul W. Tibbets Jr. as my guest. During World War II, he flew the mission that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It was sobering to hear him describe the fateful mission that ended the war.

I asked if he could feel any effects from the bomb as he flew away from Hiroshima. He said that when the bomb exploded, he felt a tingling in the fillings of his teeth. As he banked the B-29 Superfortress, the
Enola Gay
, and turned toward home, he looked out the side window and saw the towering mushroom cloud and realized that an entire city had disappeared. Still, he was relieved that the bomb would end the war, and millions of Americans and Japanese would live out their lives instead of dying in an invasion of the Japanese mainland.

Then I asked if he had ever met Harry Truman. “Once,” he said. “After the war, President Truman invited me to the White House for a short visit. He thanked me for completing my mission; then he said, ‘Don’t lose any sleep over it. You did what you had to do. The decision to send you was mine.’ ”

That decision could not have been easy for President Truman. It was a bold decision, a decision that is still controversial today. But Harry Truman understood that wartime leaders must make bold, courageous decisions. They must accept the consequences of those decisions, including criticism and condemnation.

President Harry Truman demonstrated an abundance of the Sixth Side of Leadership. But if you look at his life story, you see that his early years hardly suggest the makings of one of the most bold, decisive leaders of the twentieth century. Harry Truman’s life followed a meandering path that somehow led him into the most momentous pages of the history books.

His story is encouraging to us all. If a nearsighted, piano-playing haberdasher from Missouri can become one of the greatest presidents of all time, there’s hope for you and me.

Harry S. Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, on May 8, 1884. His middle initial S doesn’t stand for anything—Harry S. Truman is his full legal name. His parents were John Anderson Truman, a farmer and livestock dealer, and Martha Ellen Young Truman.

As a boy, young Harry was very close to his mother, who encouraged his interests in reading (especially history) and music. Harry took twice-weekly piano lessons, getting up at five every morning to practice for two hours. He was partial to classical composers—Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy—but he also enjoyed the jazz-inspired compositions of Gershwin. During his presidency, while playing the piano for a women’s group, he winked at the ladies and said, “When I played this, Stalin signed the Potsdam Agreement.”
¹

When Truman was six, his parents moved to Independence, Missouri. He graduated from Independence High School in 1901, hoping to obtain an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. He was barred from West Point, however, by poor eyesight. So he swallowed his disappointment and went to work as a timekeeper on the Santa Fe Railroad. Living on his own, he often slept in hobo camps near the rail yards.

In 1905, Truman joined the Missouri Army National Guard. Though his uncorrected vision was 20/50 in his right eye and 20/400 in his left (considered legally blind), he passed his vision examination by memorizing the eye chart. He served in the Guard until 1911.

David Gergen, who served as an adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton, noted that President Harry S. Truman “never thought of himself as a leader, nor did anyone else…. [Due to his poor eyesight,] Truman couldn’t try out for school sports and mostly stayed at home, working the farm, reading, or playing the piano…. [He was] the only president of the twentieth century who never went to college.”
²

When the United States became involved in World War I, Truman rejoined the Guard, where he was commissioned a captain and placed in charge of an artillery battery. Before deploying to France, the army sent Truman to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for training. There he became acquainted with Lieutenant James M. Pendergast, nephew of notorious Missouri political boss Tom Pendergast.

Captain Truman shipped out to France as the commander of an artillery battery that was infamous for disciplinary problems—D Battery, 129th Field Artillery, 60th Brigade, 35th Infantry Division. “When I first took command of the battery,” he later remembered, “I called all the sergeants and corporals together. I told them I knew they had been making trouble for the previous commanders. I said, ‘I didn’t come over here to get along with you. You’ve got to get along with me. And if there are any of you who can’t, speak up right now and I’ll bust you right back now!’…We got along.”

Truman drilled his men and whipped them into shape. Soon, D Battery was the fastest-loading, best-disciplined unit in the 129th Field Artillery. But the biggest test of Harry Truman’s leadership ability came in the heat of battle in France.

On the evening of August 29, 1918, Truman’s unit took up a position on the slopes of the Vosges Mountains in eastern France, near the border with Germany. Just after dark, the soldiers pulled the horses back from the artillery, and D Battery unleashed a barrage of poison gas shells—about five hundred rounds.

The plan was for the men to bring the horses back as soon as the final round was fired. The horses would be hitched to the artillery pieces and the guns moved out of range of the German artillery. Truman and his artillerymen waited half an hour, but the soldiers didn’t return with the horses. An infuriated Truman ordered his artillerymen to lug the artillery pieces out.

Truman climbed up onto his horse, intending to ride to the rear and bring back the horses—but his horse stumbled in a shell hole and went down. Captain Truman was trapped under his horse when he heard German artillery shells exploding along the mountainside. The Germans were firing high explosives and poison gas.

With impending death for added motivation, Truman clawed his way out from under his horse. He heard his sergeant call out, “Run, boys! They’ve got a bracket on us!”

Truman leaped to his feet and yelled at his men. “I got up and called them everything I knew,” he said later. “Pretty soon they came sneaking back.”

The men pulled the artillery out of harm’s way, camouflaging the guns with branches. Truman would later cite his men (with the exception of the sergeant) for “cool courage” under fire—though the truth is that they feared Truman more than they feared German poison gas.
³

Where did Harry Truman learn the art of bold decision making? How did he acquire the Sixth Side of Leadership? David Gergen believes Truman’s trial by fire in the Vosges Mountains refined him as a bold leader. “For the first time in his life he was forced to lead men through moments of mortal danger,” Gergen observed.

Truman ultimately got his men through the war unscathed. Throughout his command of D Battery, not a single man was lost. For the rest of their lives, said Gergen, those men “were loyal to Harry Truman, their leader who refused to back down…. Truman discovered two vitally important things about himself that night. First, that he had plain physical courage; and second, that he was good at leading people.”

Gergen also quotes historian David McCullough, who wrote that Truman learned through that experience that “courage is contagious. If the leader shows courage, others get the idea.”
⁴
Truman’s experience under fire in World War I undoubtedly prepared him for leadership as president in World War II. He had gone into the war having never tested the limits of his courage and leadership skills. He emerged from the war a proven leader.

Harry S. Truman won the respect of his superiors and subordinates—and his war record served him well when he ran for public office.

After the war, Truman returned home to Independence, Missouri, where he went into business with a longtime friend, Edward Jacobson. Truman and Jacobson opened a men’s clothing store in downtown Kansas. On June 28, 1919, Truman married Bess Wallace. Harry and Bess had one daughter, Mary Margaret, born in 1924.

Truman’s retail venture with Edward Jacobson flourished for two years but went bankrupt during the recession of 1921. Truman would spend more than a decade paying off his debts from his business failure. The friendship between Truman and Jacobson survived the bankruptcy, and Jacobson became a trusted adviser to Truman. During and after World War II, Jacobson advised Truman on matters relating to the Holocaust, Zionism, and the establishment of the nation of Israel.