David Hutton made an excellent presentation to my Vistage CEO group last week; it’s titled “Leadership at 12 O’clock High.”More than 250 Vistage groups have seen it. David uses cuts from the 1949 movie of the same name to examine the leadership styles of two of the film’s leading characters. One is Colonel Keith Davenport; the other is Brig. General Frank Savage, who replaces Col. Davenport as the commander of the 918th Bomb Group. Hutton’s presentation compares and contrasts the leadership styles of the two men and Col. Davenport, who is based on a real 8th Air Force officer and real events that occurred in England in 1942, comes up short. As a leader, Col. Davenport is guilty of getting too close to his men. This has three negative consequences:
1.    He’s unable to hold officers under his command accountable when they under perform.
2.    He institutionalizes underperformance in his command by failing to replace the men who prove to be less than competent.
3.    When he’s relieved of his command, he fails to learn from his mistakes or take responsibility for them.

David’s presentation made me very uncomfortable; I saw too much of myself in the character of Col. Davenport when I lead a company. The good news for me is that years ago, I took an honest, critical look at my performance and learned from it. And, I continue to learn, asking myself what I would do differently and examining why I performed as I did. As a result, I continue to learn from those long ago mistakes. Though I will never get another opportunity to lead a business other than my one-man consultancy, I won’t let my Vistage members or my coaching clients repeat my mistakes.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 at 8:23 am and is filed under Mike's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.