Retired military chief offers ‘pearls’ on leadership
Is there a difference in the leadership styles of men and women?
“Yes and no,” says retired Brig. Gen. Becky Halstead. While men and women may be different ”“ men may lead a little more with their heads (generally) and women (generally) with their hearts ”“ neither gender has a monopoly on character and competence, she says.
Halstead knows a lot about these two key ingredients to leadership. She was the first female graduate of West Point (Class of 1981) to be promoted to General Officer and as the senior Commanding General for logistics in Iraq, the first female in U.S. history to command in combat at the strategic level. Her STEADFAST Leadership company was the subject of a 2011 Harvard Business School Leadership Case Study. And she”™s the author of the new “24/7: The First Person You Must Lead Is YOU.”
So when she delivered the keynote speech for the inaugural “Pearls of Wisdom” event of the United Way Women”™s Leadership Council, some 200 women and men leaned in. Over a lunch of filet mignon and mashed potatoes at Trump National Golf Club Dec. 5, Halstead delivered heartier fare. She told the audience members that they must lead by serving others.
“The greatest joy of leading is seeing joy on the faces of those you lead,” she said.
She exhorted the crowd, which she praised for its combination of talent and passion, to adopt the servant leadership model of the Gospel of St. Matthew: “To whom much is given, much will be required.”
Clearly, those in attendance were on the same page. The council”™s “Teach Me to Fish” job-training program and its “Smart Start” program for at-risk elementary schoolchildren are designed to combat a sobering statistic ”“ 44.8 percent of single mothers with children under age 5 in Westchester County are living below the national poverty line of $23,000 for a family of four.
Halstead described herself as a “very ordinary girl” who grew up in the kind of small upstate New York town that had no traffic lights. She was in the top 15 in her class, she joked, because there were few more than 18 students. Her dream was to go to Ithaca College and become a physical education teacher until she heard that West Point was accepting women. Going there, she realized, would mean she was not only representing herself; she was representing her family and town as well.
It”™s a sense of responsibility that has carried her through numerous assignments and postings, including leading more than 200 multidisciplinary units (20,000 soldiers and 5,000 civilians) as they provided supply, maintenance, transportation and distribution support to more than 250,000 personnel serving in Iraq. In 2006, Halstead became the first female Chief of Ordnance and Commanding General of the Army”™s Ordnance Center and Schools (the military equivalent of a university presidency). She was honorably retired as a General Officer in 2008.
Today, Halstead sees a great lack of leadership in the world, in part due to a strange sense of accountability.
“When there are no consequences,” she said, “that”™s not accountability.”