Three Universal Lessons in Leadership

As I was reading my copy of the Harvard Business School Bulletin, I came across a very interesting article featuring Donovan Cambpell, Harvard MBA (2007) and Marine Corps officer in Iraq in 2004, who uses both experiences to distill three universal lessons in leadership.

Lesson #1: "Time is a precious gift (...) when every decision involves life and death, you develop greater patience with small inconveniences, an understanding of what really matters, and perspective on what truly constitutes a crisis".

Lesson #2: "Failure is an inevitable and necessary part of life (...) Once you've accepted this difficult truth, it liberates you as a leader to shoulder blame rather than search for excuses. Everything that happens is ultimately the leader's responsibility anyway, and promptly taking ownership of a difficult situation means that you can lead your team out of it that much sooner."

Lesson #3: "Servant leadership is the only leadership model that works over the long run. Simply put, servant leadership demands that a leader place the mission's goals and values first, the team and its individuals second, and the leader's own welfare a distant third."

Looking back at my own experiences, in the corporate world, as a free-lance consultant, as a professor and even as a mother, I find myself in total agreement. And although it may not be possible to learn these lessons without direct personal experience, perhaps if someone had pointed them out to me earlier on I would have avoided many mistakes (though, to paraphrase Donovan, mistakes are an inherent part of life).