Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
It's not mutually exclusive at all, in fact it's reinforcing each other.

Someone (I think he was registered here) once helped me to understand how unusual the famous 1930's Truppenführung (TF) field manual actually was when he pointed out that it's unusual for a field manual to spend 28 pages on a "leadership" chapter (as 2nd chapter, directly behind a quick overview of the macro organisation of the army).

That chapter wasn't about the kind of leadership that I meant, though. It was rather about the tasks and principles of a leader and about techniques of leadership.

I meant that leaders are responsible for steering the ship into the right direction, and must not allow that drifting becomes the primary method of movement.

A bureaucracy builds a self-licking ice cone in which the majority of personnel becomes "excellent" or "outstanding"? That is what I meant with "drifting".
I have the translation of that book. That section you talk of is translated as 'Command' and does cover command aspects.

Indeed command is not leadership just as neither are 'management'.

Just look up leadership definitions and see how the academics can screw things up.

Leadership is not a function of one's position but rather the intangible ability to induce others to voluntarily submit to leadership.

Watch kids in a playground - applies to all ages - there you will see at play the natural leaders doing what comes naturally.

'All Leadership is influence' - John C. Maxwell

‘Sound leadership - like true love, to which I suspect it is closely related - is all powerful. It can overcome the seemingly impossible and its effect on both leader and led is profound and lasting’. - Sydney Jary MC 18 Platoon.
Any bureaucracy (including the military) needs to be purged periodically... preferably in the style of Stalin.