Chris Brady: Leadership Is A Journey; Strategies That Win

Leadership Principals And Strategies That Win

WWII Truck

Best selling author, Chris Brady recently observed to an enthusiastic crowd of thousands, “Every time I think I know what a leader is I haven’t quite captured it yet. Like I get close and I think I’ve got it figured out and there’s always something more.

"Every time I think I’ve captured what a leader is, there’s just a little bit more about what I think, oh, there’s so much more to learn... The more I learn the more I find out I don’t know..."

Chris Brady leadership's ripple effect excerpt. Click the audio link.

"And then you get some of our leaders on this team. I mean, they read and study and mentor. I mean, they are smart individuals and they’ll tell you, you know I don’t know that much.

"At first you think its false humility and then you find out no, the more you learn the more you realize how big the gap is having knowledge captured. It’s like trying to run down a three-legged turkey. "So, leadership is quite a topic because it’s like chasing one of those turkeys. You’re never really going to catch the whole thing. It’s why I love this topic. It’s why it never bores me. That’s why we can write a 288 page book about it and not even scratch the surface of what is involved in the concept. There’s so much to study. And then the ripple effects of the effects of leadership.

“Even if you’re an imperfect leader because you’ll always be one ‘because none of us can be perfect. But we can try to push for excellence and we can grow and improve and change and go in that direction. That’s why I love the topic. That’s why I believe it deserves a weekend of your life to study it and learn about it because the effect it can have in your life and the ramifications of those effects on those people you associate with on a regular basis. It’s an un-told measurement of effect.
“I read a lot of history and I use a lot of history stories to kind of relate some of these concepts. It’s true, the only history we don’t know is the history we’re doomed to keep repeating because we didn’t know the history. As you live each day and go through different things you find out this is all the same stuff that already happened with a different flavor. If we could learn from the past the principles that are timeless then we’d know how to handle the future.

Chris Brady's Leadership Lesson: Admiral Nelson Won Battles By Building People

"Lord Admiral Nelson in the Age of Fighting Sail, and I’ve talked about him before. He was the dominate sea captain in the early 1800’s for the British Trifalgar square

navy. They were the dominate power on the face of the earth because they ruled the waves. There was this country France, who was their great nemesis they’d been fighting for hundreds of years. In a couple of big, huge battles Nelson basically annihilated their entire navy. You don’t hear about that much any more. You don’t read in the paper, “Oh look at this. One country wiped out the entire navy of another country. What a great week.”

"This is a big scale deal when you wipe out an entire navy. Actually, Nelson was involved in wiping out three complete navies of other countries. Almost four if you count Spain in there, but their navy wasn’t that good. "I read a whole thing on the difference; Yes, Nelson was a great leader. Yes he was a great commander. He kept his cool under fire, and all these things you can say about him.

And the French, you know, I’m half French after all. I can’t put them down too far. The French had some great captains, some great stuff. They actually made better ships than the English did. So the English would capture the French ships and re-aim them. That was real handy.

Napoleon Lost The Battle Because of Bureaucracy, Says Chris Brady

"One of the other things going on was the French at this time were ruled by Napoleon
"The English had a whole other way of looking at things compared to the French. The English sea captains felt pretty confident making decisions and choices because they had been taught the principles that their leaders, especially Nelson, had taught them. He would teach them the principles. He would teach them the methodologies and the mind-sets and the perspectives. Then, he would turn them loose in a pell-mell battle. He violated all the rules of engagement and the English admiral code at the time on how to fight a whole other fleet. He just basically threw the whole book out and came up with his own way. He said, “No, no, forget all that. That’s designed for a bunch of captains who can’t think.

"I’m going to treat my captains as individuals. I’m going to teach them how I think. His philosophy was this: Hey, if it gets too confusing when the battle comes along, none of you can do too badly by sailing your ship up next to an enemy and shooting the heck out of them. Just do what comes best. Just find a ship and batter it.

"That was basically his philosophy. You can think on your own. You’ve gotta a bunch of experience. You command a ship. You can make your own decisions. Just kill the enemy. And communicate. So, he had this philosophy that people could think on their own. He’d train them on the principles and turn them loose.

"But the French, they had Napoleon. And, if you crossed Napoleon, He’d kill you! So they were frozen. They couldn’t make decisions because they were in an autocratic regime and any time they did something wrong they’d get executed. So, when you bring two navies together to fight, and one of them can think on their own and take responsibility for their decisions. And they’re mobile and agile and individual and independent and decentralized and you bring them up against a centralized autocratic fear based regime, there’s no way the French captains could win.

"So twice, Nelson destroyed the navy of the French. Because his captains could run around as leaders and do what leaders do.

Chris Brady: American GI’s Models Of Independent Leadership

Brady continues, "Former Congressman Bob McEwen did a talk about the American G.I. in WWII. He talks about the fact on D-Day, the paratroopers were dropped in behind the lines to come up behind the lines and come up from the rear and cause havoc from the rear. What happened was communications weren’t that good, navigation wasn’t all that great. All these people got spread out all over the place. They were independent operators. All by themselves. They cut themselves out of their parachutes, were in enemy territory, miles from the front. No supplies. No back-up. No communications. Just themselves and their training. And their ability to think on their feet as a leader.
"McEwen goes through a whole series of people who have written about and testified to the fact that it was very difficult to win that war against the American and Allied forces because of the American G.I and his ability to think on his feet. To decide for himself; you know, that gut turret over there needs to go. I’ll take it out all by myself. I don’t have to wait for instructions or directions. Its just the right thing to do, and I’m going to go do it.” (Click listen to the rest of Independent Leadership story from Chris Brady)

Independent leadership of the American GI

About Authors Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward

Chris Brady, along with Orrin Woodward, is a New York Times best selling author of Launching A Leadership Revolution. Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward have worked together for over a decade building a multimillion-dollar business focusing on leadership development as related to Internet electronic commerce. Their organization has consistently been recognized as being among the fastest growing in their industry.

Brady and Woodward are making a donation equal to 100 percent of all the advances and royalties they receive for this edition to All Grace Outreach in Flint, Michigan.

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