Leadership

With this body of experience, what sort of training and education would you like future soldiers to have that they may not have had when you were coming up the ranks?

I don't know the answer to that question. I will tell you that as an aviator I was taught to be fiercely independent, but understanding that, I'm a member of a team and I can't do it alone. I was also taught that at some point you've got to let somebody else fly the airplane, and that's particularly true when you're in a single-seat, single-engine airplane. I mean, you teach them what you can and then you let them do it. And you try to let people make their mistakes and have them learn from those mistakes. That's what I learned. It taught me to say no when I had to say no. It taught me how to deal with presidents. I mean, I was dealing with Tudjman, Milosevic, Izetbegovic. I was one of the few people that could call up and say "I want to talk to you," and I got an appointment. That kind of training, just understanding what leadership is all about, empowering your subordinates, centralized planning, decentralized execution. I would say that learning to deal with people is probably the most important thing that I learned in the military. And I don't know how else to put it, Harry.

Well that's pretty good. Thank you very much for this quite fascinating tour of your duties and the Bosnia experience especially. And Professor Barnes, thank you for joining us. And thank you for joining us for this "Conversation with History."

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