Leadership

Go to any bookstore and one will find a plethora of books dealing with the subject of leadership. Their methodology is strikingly similar--take a significant historical event, be it in business, sports, religion, or military endeavors, find the person most responsible for the favorable outcome and retroactively derive the individual's guiding principles. The vast majority tell compelling stories of past heroic acts while attempting to formulate strategies, lessons, laws, tenets, secrets, rules and tools, or principles of leadership. However, very few, if any, works pull together the leadership lessons learned and provide a framework that 1) can be used as an educational tool to a military, sports, business, governmental, or religious audience; 2) provides focus to a strategic end in an ever changing environment; and 3) delineates between the art and science of leadership, to include the importance of the questions what and how the art and science are to be executed. This paper attempts to provide a prescriptive framework which is malleable to the vast majority of these works, and augments AFDD 1-1, Leadership and Force Development, AU-2, Guidelines for Command, and AU-24, Concepts for Air Force Leadership. The paper will examine both the art and science of leadership and provide a framework to enable leaders in any field of endeavor to improve their leadership skills.