Pulling some strings

This is the leadership post I'd promised to several folks. It's been knocking around my head for some time, and consists mostly of remembered discussions from military school leadership classes, lessons in boy scouts, life lessons, and even online gaming. There have been many jokes/stories related to the difference between leadership and management. I think it is best summed up by the quote below:

"Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all."
-- Dwight Eisenhower

An example similar to this was the most memorable of all from Sergeant First Class Couture. He was our main instructor for ROTC, as well as my rifle team coach and mentor. Strict but fair, he had many life, leadership, and shooting lessons to offer. Many of the students there hated him because he demanded results, attention, and respect. I found those to be his better qualities, and the things that made him an effective leader. (Most of those students that disliked him, also disliked learning and school in general, so I chalk it up to that.) He actually gave us string and had us try the exercise of pushing and pulling the string (we didn't know that day's lesson was on leadership, he hadn't told us what it was on. Some guys had even guessed it was for map reading or orientation *grin*), and then asking us to talk about it. When he related it to leading men, everything sort of clicked. He had built us up in weeks of classes for this simple, but undeniably effective lesson. The best results from people are gleaned from pulling them out and along with you.


Another quote that goes to this:

You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people.
-- Grace Murray Hooper

Although this is essentially a paraphrasing, it emphasizes a reminder to treat followers/subordinates as people not things. Another key lesson. It leads to the joke/statement about corporate workplaces today. Managers push people, leaders pull them. I think that's mainly too many people seeing subordinates as things (or in corporate speak "resources") and not people.


This monologue culminates in my own coalesced version of leaders and leadership. I see strong/effective (i.e., many people act on the leader's requests/orders to achieve large results) leaders in basically these two categories. But they run a close parallel to other titles, at least in ~my~ mind.

Pullers: These are the good leaders, sharing vision and purpose with their followers. They use concepts of love and/or respect in their leadership. Meaning their followers respect their leader and follow because they CHOOSE to.
Examples: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Eisenhower (it is his quote after all), Lincoln

Pushers: These are effective leaders in that they can get large groups to comply, however they use the flip sides to the feelings used by pullers. Love's dark twin Hatred and instead of respect they use fear and intimidation. These are the "bully" types. Large groups follow, but more out of fear of being the target, or they follow and feel camaraderie based on mutual hatred (usually directed by the leader).
Examples: Hitler, Mussolini, Hussein, Stalin

While both groups can be said to be effective leaders (based on being able to move/motivate large groups of people), there are certainly leaders you would choose to follow and those you would not. Those that follow by choice, will always outperform those that do not. Both styles of leadership can be used for good or ill, it is much harder to lead as a puller to a dark goal.


I've followed leaders of both kinds and for different reasons along the path of my life, and I tell you this - given the chance I will always go for the pullers. I can only hope the times I am placed in leadership positions that I take the same road the pullers do, because it takes an awful lot of energy to push a string up a hill.