I very much like this piece, which I used as a handout on a leaders safety course I ran for years. It is quote (Canadianized and first sentenced added cause it was a safety course!) taken from a Harold Coyle book.
THE CHALLENGE OF LEADERSHIP
Complacency and monotony inevitably lead to inattentiveness. Inattentiveness inevitably leads to mistakes. And mistakes in combat create what After Action reports sometimes wistfully refer to as "situations".
Being a leader does not make one immune to the stress or anxiety an incident can generate. If anything, the rank and position a leader holds tends to magnify such feelings. Unlike a rifleman, a leader is expected by those who follow him to lead them through each and every incident safely. In and of itself, this is an awesome responsibility, one that few people care to take on, and even fewer are truly prepared for. Yet this is not the only burden that a leader must carry with him. By virtue of his appointment, a leader is also saddled with the responsibility of accomplishing tasks handed down to him by higher authority. All too often these goals are in conflict. For instance, each soldier has simple choices to make, and then only in response to orders. In a crisis, each soldier, regardless of how professional or well trained he is, always has an option. Either he follows the orders that have been handed down to him and sallies forth, or he opts to place self-preservation over duty, honour and country. Like the simple computer binary coding, this equation is little more than a yes or no proposition. What drives a man to risk life and limb is frequently determined by the trust that he has in the leader who is there, with him, issuing the order and sharing the risks.
Leaders, on the other hand, are not only charged with doing the telling, they must generate the conditions that will motivate a soldier to execute that order. It has always been that way, and so long as nations place the flower of their youth in harm's way, it always will be. Leaders will have to initiate action by issuing sound, coherent orders. They will need to motivate their soldiers to carry out those actions by using a combination of encouragement, threats and personal example. Finally, the leader, be he officer, WO, or NCO, or simply the first guy to stand up and start something, will have to oversee the actions he put into motion. And, since action can, and usually does, lead to a new, and sometimes unpredictable response by the opposition, the leader is faced with having to make new decisions, often before his previous one is carried through to completion. Thus, even the simple, rather straightforward situation, is able to generate a level of stress that would unnerve an average person. Yet leaders are expected to deal with these sorts of situations again and again. Day in and day out, they are required to push aside whatever personal fears they harbor or self-doubts that burden them, and lead. Needless to say, they must find a way of dealing with the stress and strains their decisions leave in their wake.
As quoted in God's Children
by Harold Coyle
