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When Robert Gates retires at the end of June, he will be remembered as arguably the best Secretary of Defense since George Marshall. That's partly because both men cared about many of the same values—responsibility, integrity and leadership. Gates has repeatedly spoken out about the importance of strong, effective leaders in civilian and military life. His commencement address at the Naval Academy on May 27, his last at an academy, captures many of his thoughts. I believe that two points are particularly worth noting—his argument that an emphasis upon team-building is overdone in leadership teaching (ultimately, he says, leadership depends upon the quality of an individual) and his argument that rising leaders must take adversity in stride (see his story about Admiral Mullen). No one in public life today walks the talk on leadership better than Bob Gates.
—David Gergen
Here's an excerpt from Secretary Gates's address to this year's graduating class of the U.S. Naval Academy...
Forty-six years ago this month I graduated from college also having committed to public service. In the decades since—in the Air Force, at CIA, in the White House, and now at the Pentagon—I served under eight presidents and had the opportunity to observe many other great leaders along the way. From this experience I have learned that real leadership is a rare and precious commodity, and requires qualities that many people might possess piecemeal to varying degrees, but few exhibit in total.
As you start your careers as leaders today, I would like to offer some brief thoughts on those qualities. For starters, great leaders must have vision—the ability to get your eyes off your shoelaces at every level of rank and responsibility, and see beyond the day-to-day tasks and problems. To be able to look beyond tomorrow and discern a world of possibilities and potential. How do you take any outfit to a higher level of excellence? You must see what others do not or cannot, and then be prepared to act on your vision.
An additional quality necessary for leadership is deep conviction. True leadership is a fire in the mind that transforms all who feel its warmth, that transfixes all who see its shining light in the eyes of a man or woman. It is a strength of purpose and belief in a cause that reaches out to others, touches their hearts, and makes them eager to follow.
Self-confidence is still another quality of leadership. Not the chest-thumping, strutting egotism we see and read about all the time. Rather, it is the quiet self-assurance that allows a leader to give others both real responsibility and real credit for success. The ability to stand in the shadow and let others receive attention and accolades. A leader is able to make decisions but then delegate and trust others to make things happen. This doesn’t mean turning your back after making a decision and hoping for the best. It does mean trusting in people at the same time you hold them accountable. The bottom line: a self-confident leader doesn’t cast such a large shadow that no one else can grow.
A further quality of leadership is courage: not just the physical courage of the seas, of the skies and of the trenches, but moral courage. The courage to chart a new course; the courage to do what is right and not just what is popular; the courage to stand alone; the courage to act; the courage as a military officer to "speak truth to power."
In most academic curricula today, and in most business, government, and military training programs, there is great emphasis on team-building, on working together, on building consensus, on group dynamics. You have learned a lot about that. But, for everyone who would become a leader, the time will inevitably come when you must stand alone. When alone you must say, "This is wrong" or "I disagree with all of you and, because I have the responsibility, this is what we will do." Don't kid yourself—that takes real courage.
Another essential quality of leadership is integrity. Without this, real leadership is not possible. Nowadays, it seems like integrity—or honor or character—is kind of quaint, a curious, old-fashioned notion. We read of too many successful and intelligent people in and out of government who succumb to the easy wrong rather than the hard right—whether from inattention or a sense of entitlement, the notion that rules are not for them. But for a real leader, personal virtues—self-reliance, self control, honor, truthfulness, morality—are absolute. These are the building blocks of character, of integrity—and only on that foundation can real leadership be built.
A final quality of real leadership, I believe, is simply common decency: treating those around you—and, above all, your subordinates—with fairness and respect. An acid test of leadership is how you treat those you outrank, or as President Truman once said, "how you treat those who can't talk back."
Whatever your military specialty might be, use your authority over others for constructive purposes, to help them—to watch out and care for them and their families, to help them improve their skills and advance, to ease their hardships whenever possible. All of this can be done without compromising discipline or mission or authority. Common decency builds respect and, in a democratic society, respect is what prompts people to give their all for a leader, even at great personal sacrifice.
I hope you will keep these thoughts with you as you advance in your careers. Above all, remember that the true measure of leadership is not how you react in times of peace or times without peril. The true measure of leadership is how you react when the wind leaves your sails, when the tide turns against you.
Just to get accepted to the Naval Academy, most of you have probably succeeded—in many cases brilliantly—at pretty much everything you've done—in the classroom, on the playing field, or in other activities. I know this institution has challenged you in new ways. But from here on out it just gets harder. The risk of failure or setbacks will only grow as your responsibilities grow, and with them the consequences of your decisions.
So know this. At some point along your path, you will surely encounter failure or disappointment of one kind or another. Nearly all of us have. If at those times you hold true to your standards, then you will always succeed, if only in knowing you stayed true and honorable. In the final analysis, what really matters are not the failures and disappointments themselves, but how you respond. About 40 years ago, a young ensign ran his gasoline tanker into a buoy, fouling the propeller in the process—typically a career killer. I work with that same naval officer every day. He is now the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen.
To be able to respond to setbacks with perseverance and determination should apply as well to the military institutions you lead. I will never forget the night of April 24th, 1980. I was executive assistant to the CIA director at the time, and was in the White House during the secret mission to rescue American hostages in Iran. I had been in on the planning from the beginning and, while the operation was clearly risky, I honestly believed it would work. It did not. Soon, images of burnt helicopters and the charred remains of U.S. servicemen splashed around the world. It was truly a low ebb for our nation and for a military that was still recovering from Vietnam.
But then the special operations community, and the U.S. military as a whole, pulled itself together, reformed the way it was trained and organized, took on the corrosive service parochialism that had hobbled our military institutionally and operationally.
And so, just under a month ago, I once again spent a nerve-wracking afternoon in the White House as a risky special operations mission was underway. When word of a downed helicopter came back my heart sank, remembering that awful night thirty years ago. But this time, of course, there was a very different result:
- A mass murderer was brought to a fitting end;
- A world in awe of America's military prowess;
- A country relieved that justice was done and, frankly, that their government could do something hard and do it right; and
- A powerful blow struck on behalf of democratic civilization against its most lethal and determined enemies.
I want each of you to take that lesson of adaptability, of responding to setbacks by improving yourself and your institution, and that example of success, with you as you go forward into the Navy and the Marine Corps you will someday lead.
The qualities of leadership I have described this morning do not suddenly emerge fully developed overnight or as a revelation after you have assumed important responsibilities. These qualities have their roots in the small decisions you have made here at the Academy and will make early in your career and must be strengthened all along the way to allow you to resist the temptation of self before service.
As I mentioned earlier, this is my last address to America's service academies, my last opportunity to engage the future leaders of our military as your defense secretary. As I look out upon you this morning, I am reminded of what so struck and moved me when I went from being a university president to U.S. Secretary of Defense in a time of war. At Texas A&M I would walk the campus, and I would see thousands of students aged 18-25, typically wearing t-shirts and shorts and backpacks. The day after I became Secretary of Defense, in December 2006, I made my first visit to the war theater. And there I encountered other young men and women also 18 to 25. Except they were wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles, putting their lives at risk for all Americans. And I knew that some of them would not make it home whole, and that some would not make it home at all.
I knew then that soon all those in harm's way would be there because I sent them. Ever since, I have come to work every day, with a sense of personal responsibility for each and every young American in uniform—as if you were my own sons and daughters. My only prayer is that you serve with honor and come home safely. I personally thank you from the bottom of my heart for your service. Serving and leading you has been the greatest honor of my life.
May you have fair winds and following seas. Congratulations.
Secretary Gates's entire speech is available on the U.S. Department of Defense website.