Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way: Where This Blog Got Its Name

One of the first cadre members I met when I was in ROTC was a captain who had led a company of tanks on the charge north into Baghdad in 2003. He was unassuming and quiet, the kind of guy you wouldn't pick out of a room as someone who had been in real combat. He would turn out to be one of the most influential leaders in my life.

I came into ROTC full of piss and vinegar. I threw myself at every piece of work they would give me, volunteered for things nobody else wanted, and generally tried to prove I belonged. After a particularly grueling semester I mentioned to him how much I had taken on, and that it didn't seem to be letting up. He looked at me and said, "What do you expect? A workhorse gets ridden."

It wasn't meant as an insult, and I didn't take it as one. I took it as a compliment. I was working hard, the unit knew I would, and so they kept leaning on me. That was the moment I understood why he was such a capable leader. Sure, he had an impressive background. But what made him good wasn't Baghdad. It was that he never let himself get comfortable. He kept driving himself to improve the organization he was part of. He was never content to say "this is good enough," for himself or for the people around him.

He also understood something else well, a quote that was painted on the wall of our field house: "Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way." It's attributed to General Patton (though it’s orgins are suspected to go back even further). I have loved that quote since the day I first read it. When I went looking for a name for this blog, it was the obvious place to start.

You'll notice the name only carries two of the three. Lead and get out of the way made the cut. Follow didn't. That wasn't an accident, and it wasn't because I think following matters less. It's actually the opposite. Lead and get out of the way are the public facing, visible parts of leadership. People see you do them. Following is quieter. Nobody throws a parade for someone who followed well. But following is what makes you trustworthy enough to lead in the first place, and it deserves its own conversation, which is exactly what the next few posts on this blog are going to be.

For now, let's break down all three, in reverse order, because I think the hardest one belongs last.

Get Out of the Way

On the surface this sounds like the easiest of the three. If you don't want to be part of something, step aside. In practice it's harder than it sounds, because stepping aside means admitting something out loud, even if only to yourself.

I once left a job because the leadership above me wasn't leadership I believed in, and I wasn't willing to spend my time following people I didn't trust to take care of the people under them. That wasn't quitting. It was a decision about what I valued and what I was willing to lend my effort to. Staying would have been easier in the short term. Leaving said something about where my line was.

That's the part people miss about getting out of the way. It looks passive from the outside. It isn't. It's a choice, and making it on purpose takes more courage than just sticking around and complaining.

Follow

Deceptively simple, and genuinely hard, especially once you have experience. The more you know, the harder it is to sit back and let someone else call the shots, even when they're right to be the one calling them. You start thinking "I'd do it differently," or "I could do this faster." You second guess out loud. You undermine without meaning to.

I got lucky early. I started my career enlisted before becoming an officer, so by the time I showed up at the 82nd Airborne Division as a young paratrooper, I already understood something a lot of brand new officers don't figure out fast enough. When Sergeant Barna, who had been in the Army since I was in grade school, told us we were going to do something a specific way, we did it that way. Not because rank demanded it. Because he had earned it, and I was smart enough to know the difference between confidence and competence.

The officers who struggled were the ones who thought the bar on their collar meant they already knew more than the sergeants who had been doing the job for twenty years. They didn't. Following well, in that case, meant shutting up and learning.

Lead

This is the one with countless books, podcasts, and hot takes written about it, because it's the hardest and the most consequential. Good leadership can build a team. Bad leadership can sink a company that looked unstoppable on paper.

I'll give you one small example. When I was a company commander in Afghanistan, we were on a larger base where we used small ATVs, gators, to get around. Helmets were required any time you rode one, no exceptions, for safety. One evening I brought my leadership team in for a meeting, and one of my young lieutenants showed up wearing his helmet the entire meeting. The meeting wasn't on a gator. It wasn't required.

Afterward I asked him what he was doing. He told me that earlier in the day he'd forgotten to put his helmet on for a short ride, and one of his own soldiers had called him out on it in front of others. He owned it completely. As a way of holding himself accountable, and to show his platoon he wasn't above the standard he expected from them, he made himself wear that helmet everywhere for three straight days, meetings included.

That's leadership. Not the speech, not the title. The decision to hold yourself to the standard first, especially when nobody's making you.