Leadership Maxims

12 Timeless Leadership Truths and Real-Life Examples of How They Can Drive Success

Woody Hester

• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781636305929
• eBook ISBN: 9781636305943
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Become a better leader, right where you are, right now.

In Leadership Maxims, Woody Hester shares twelve timeless leadership truths in the context of compelling, real world stories about success and failure that prove these truths to be powerful catalysts for organizational and personal success.

In 1970, at the age of twenty-four, U.S. Army Captain Woody Hester returned from a tour of duty in Vietnam. He was assigned to a staff position at the U.S. Army Air Defense Board at Fort Bliss Texas. He was grateful. A break from the rigors of field duty and the stress of living in a combat environment were welcome, but it was his first staff job as an Army officer. It would be the first time in his professional life that he would manage the administrative side of project work and lead a diverse group of uniformed staff and Department of the Army Civilians. Projects came with tight schedules and hard deadlines. Millions of dollars were at stake. Failure would cost him, and those who relied on him, greatly.

He was scared. He didn't have time to digest, process, and learn to apply complicated leadership theory. He needed practical wisdom he could apply immediately.

NO MATTER WHAT YOU'VE ACCOMPLISHED, SOMEBODY HELPED YOU.

That was the first of a handful of his favorite leadership quotes and ideas (timeless truths) he tacked to a bulletin board over his newly assigned desk. He cut them out of trade magazines and articles he read.

What he didn't know at the time is that this particular timeless truth, the bulletin board itself, and later additions of other timeless truths would provide the practical wisdom he needed; that they would have a profoundly positive impact on his work at the Air Defense Board, and would continue to mean the difference between success and failure throughout his four-decade career in corporate and professional life.

Leadership Maxims can be read alone, and also lends itself well to group reading and discussion among leadership learning groups.

Emerging, and even seasoned leaders, stand to benefit immensely from the twelve powerful truths presented in this book.

Like the practical wisdom Woody needed at the age of twenty-four, readers can quickly internalize and apply these twelve leadership maxims, immediately becoming a better leader.

Maxim 1: No matter what you’ve accomplished, somebody helped you.

No matter what you’ve accomplished, somebody helped you.

—Althea Gibson

Shortly after my arrival at the Air Defense Board, my team received its first assignment under my leadership. We were to evaluate three competing prototype aerial target systems developed by different manufacturers and select the manufacturer that would be awarded the production contract. Other than the standard testing guidelines provided to me, I barely knew how to start.

I had spent the first several days getting to know my team, and with one exception, they all seemed like competent and helpful people. One of them, however, was a crusty old senior warrant officer who made it clear to me that he had little use for young test officers like me. I was afraid he wasn’t going to be much help, and his role, and that of his team’s, was critical to the work.

As I sat at my desk pondering this challenge, my eyes fell across that bulletin board and that single random quote, “No matter what you’ve accomplished, somebody helped you,” and it all became clear to me. If this project would be a success, it would be because those on my team, with knowledge and experience, would make it a success. Our ultimate success didn’t depend on me as much as it depended on them. They needed to want it to be successful, they needed to own it, and for that matter, they needed to want me to be successful too. I had leadership responsibility for the project. I was the one that was accountable to the division chief, but I couldn’t do a thing by myself. I really needed their help, and that included the help of the crusty senior warrant officer.

By this time, a test officer on another team, whom I often ate lunch with, had added some more quotes from a leadership journal to the bulletin board. One of them was “If you can manage relationships, you can manage anything.” As I considered that one, it clearly applied to my circumstance too. While I had gotten to know the members of my team, we were really just acquainted. I knew I needed to know them better. They needed to know me too, and in a professionally appropriate way, we needed to care about each other and what we were doing together. So I rolled up my sleeves and set about the important task of building relationships. I focused on the tough warrant officer a lot because I knew he’d be the hardest to reach and he held a key position. I also spent a lot of one-on-one time with each of the others. I asked questions about their professional past, their experiences, and I asked them for advice. Most important, I asked them for their help. I didn’t try to hide the fact that I was inexperienced and needed their help. I was honest and open about that. When I asked the crusty old warrant officer for his help, he laughed and said, “No test officer has ever asked me for help before.” Then after an awkward pause, he said, “Will you listen to me and let me do things my way?”

To that I said, “I have to lead this project, and I’m accountable to the division chief, but if you mean will I allow you to lead all of us in those things that are the responsibility of your position on the team, and will I value your guidance about aspects of our work not in my experience, the answer is yes. I just ask that you teach us along the way and that you keep me informed.”

He sat back in his chair and said, “Okay, Captain, let’s give it a try.”

In that moment, I knew it was going to work. I shook his hand and said, “Thank you!”

The end of the US Army Air Defense Board story is that the project was a raving success. The crusty senior warrant officer and I became good friends, our team wound up improving the end product, and the US Army used the selected aerial target system for many years. The big lesson for me was that my team did it; I didn’t. All I did was build relationships and credibility with very capable members of the team. Not credibility for what I knew so much as credibility that came from sharing freely what I didn’t know. I asked them for their help, and I led with humility. Together, we created the winning chemistry that drove our team’s success. My name was on the final report, but everyone on my team, including that crusty old senior warrant officer, helped me. It was really the team that deserved the credit, not me. I made sure they knew that I knew that, and I celebrated their accomplishment, not mine.

When I left the Air Defense Board because I was being discharged from the army, that crusty old senior warrant officer came to my send-off reception. Our team’s long-tenured administrative assistant told me he’d never come to one of those before. For me, that was almost as gratifying as our project’s success.

As I left the US Army Air Defense Board and the army, I cleared my desk and collected my personal belongings. I looked over my bulletin board and reflected on the importance it had played. I was so grateful for that water stain. In that moment, I promised myself that I would never forget the things on the board that had helped me. I knew their importance wasn’t limited to my experience at the US Army Air Defense Board. I knew they would continue to be important in every future circumstance involving people. I needed to carry them with me forever. Unwilling to rely on my memory, I carefully removed all of the quotes and ideas from the board and put them in a large envelope. They would eventually be placed on other boards, in other offices, wherever I worked with people. Other bits of wisdom would be added along the way, and for the rest of my professional life, the bulletin board and its contents continued to be my most important leadership tool. I read and reread the things on it over and over again. They became part of me. Whenever I was faced with a circumstance or an event one of them applied to, it jumped into my head and provided me with priceless, practical guidance. They became a sort of instruction manual that was unique to me, my life, my work, and the people I worked with.

For the five years that followed my discharge, thanks to the GI Bill and my wonderful wife, Lou, who assumed responsibility for running our household and taking care of our children, I became a civilian again and immersed myself in full-time formal education and part-time work. I had no office and no bulletin board, but I didn’t forget the dozen or so things that were now in the envelope. On occasion, I would get them out and reread them. I began to think of them as leadership and life “maxims.” A maxim is defined as “a short statement expressing a general truth or rule of conduct.” I applied them in every aspect of my life, whether I was on the job or at school, and more bits of wisdom got added along the way.

In 1976, having completed my undergraduate education, I landed my first full-time civilian job working as a hospital pharmacist at a large teaching hospital. Two years later, when I became evening supervisor, I shared a desk with the supervisor on the day shift. One of my first orders of business was to get a bulletin board and mount it over the desk. My quotes and bits of wisdom, carefully stored in that envelope, went back on the wall, and I continued to add others. I established criteria for those I would add. In order to make it to the board, the quote, phrase, or idea had to be something that spoke to me with great power. Something that was profoundly applicable to working successfully with others. The kinds of things that make you sit straight up in bed when you read them, or the kinds of things that send you scrambling for a pen and paper when you hear them or even think them in the middle of the night. Many were products of reflection on powerful leadership lessons from my personal experiences and others from what had become voracious reading about great leaders of the past as I completed my graduate education at night and also completed a postgraduate fellowship.

Maxim 2: A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

—John le Carré

In 1969, I was a twenty-three-year-old first lieutenant in the US Army. I was serving as the ammunition officer of a field artillery service battery in Vietnam. I was assigned to a remote outpost called Bu Dop in an area known as the “Dog’s Head” on the Cambodian Border. Our world included a dirt airstrip for fixed-wing aircraft, a perimeter of concertina wire, daily mortar attacks, and the continuous threat of nighttime ground assaults. Our days were long and hard. We received ammunition, food, and other supplies via fixed-wing aircraft and loaded that into CH-47 Chinook helicopter slings for distribution to firing batteries along the Cambodian border. Our battalion base camp was about eighty kilometers away. We were cut off from the outside world, and we never saw our battalion commander because he stayed in the relative safety and comfort of our base camp, often at his desk. Most people don’t think of a desk when they think of Vietnam, but they were there. When our battalion commander completed his tour, a change of command ceremony took place at our base camp, but my guys and I weren’t even there. My new battalion commander assumed command, and I didn’t even know his name. For us, it would make no difference. He would remain back at base camp, and we would be in the field. Or so we thought.

As a first lieutenant, I was the highest-ranking officer assigned to Bu Dop at the time. At that point, I was pretty full of myself, and I was a “take charge” kind of guy. One day, I was standing inside a CH-47 Chinook helicopter giving instructions to the crew chief. It was hot, the rotors were turning, and the air was filled with noise and the interminable red dust that was Vietnam in the dry season. I had my back to the ramp of the aircraft, and as the crew chief and I were shouting at each other to be heard, someone behind me was trying to get my attention. I turned and shouted, “Can’t you see I’m busy right now? If you’ll wait at the back of the aircraft, I’ll get to you in a minute!” He immediately turned and did as I had told him.

When I turned back to the crew chief, he had a funny look on his face. He shouted at me, “That was a lieutenant colonel!”

Well, I was surprised and embarrassed. I’d never seen an officer of that rank at Bu Dop, and I had just insulted a field grade officer. I turned on my heel, went to the rear of the aircraft, rendered a full salute, and said, “My apologies, sir, how can I help you?”

To my amazement, with a big smile, he stuck out his hand and said, “Hi, Lieutenant Hester, I’m Frank Cartright, your new battalion commander. I’ve heard a lot about the work you guys are doing out here, and I wanted to come out and say hello… and I brought you some ice water.” For the sec...

Table of contents

• Maxim 1: No matter what you’ve accomplished, somebody helped you.
• Maxim 2: A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.
• Maxim 3: Eat in the cafeteria.
• Maxim 4: Don’t accept unacceptable behavior.
• Maxim 5: When you communicate well, you succeed. When you fail to communicate, you fail.
• Maxim 6: Every problem is an opportunity in disguise.
• Maxim 7: Before you can manage others, you must first manage yourself.
• Maxim 8: The next great leader may not be obvious.
• Maxim 9: It’s not about you.
• Maxim 10: Anger is a bad counselor.
• Maxim 11: Every day is a second chance.
• Maxim 12: Successful human capital management is the driving force behind sustained competitiveness.