Post Scripts: Colin Powell has got it right

Colin Powell is a busy man. Once the secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he is today more than busy with a variety of business interests involving charitable work, public speaking and anything else that sparks his interest. He has been a favorite of mine for quite a while because of his struggle to become so productive and so enthusiastic in whatever task is assigned him.

In his book he describes himself "as a black kid of no early promise from an immigrant family of limited means." Those folks who pay a handsome sum to hear Powell speak these days have no doubt in their mind that a man who rose from such unpromising beginnings, to become one of the most admired public figures in the world, must have solved the secrets of command and leadership early on.

He grabbed and clung to them dearly in his interesting life as he became the youngest general in the Army, then found himself on the way to the seventh floor of the State Department. Always modest to the extreme, Powell says: "When I am asked to go out and speak I don’t talk about the chairmanship and all that stuff. I talk about being black and a young second lieutenant at Fort Benning, Georgia. Most of what I learned about leadership I learned in my first two months there.

Close to Fort Benning is an inspiring bronze statue of an infantry soldier entitled "Follow Me." The classwork, weapons training and field course at Benning were all designed to turn out disciplined, diligent infantrymen. For Powell though, Benning was his road to Damascus. Leadership, Powell discovered, was all about choosing a mission. The infantry’s mission was to destroy the enemy. Powell discovered that the principles of leadership could be applied to just about everything.

Thus it happened. Powell had such a brilliant Army career that in hindsight his 35 years seemed to roll into one gold-plated adventure. But as a young platoon leader in Germany he admits to a major screw-up; he lost his service revolver. His captain didn’t ream him out. The gun was recovered (in his own tent) and his commanding officer returned it to him with a reprimand and stern words of caution.

This, Powell saw, was another kind of leadership. "You’ve got to trust people … you’ve got to expect mistakes and not ground them off about it." He says he sees great leaders everywhere. "When they fall down, pick ’em up, dust ’em off, pat ’em on the back and move ’em on. I see great leaders everywhere I go."

I’d vote for this guy for president.