Leaders of Principle

If leaders of principle is becoming a cliché’ phrase to you and isn’t it to everyone these days then what does it really mean. Has it lost its meaning? Can only politications make the claim to that phrase or are they the one’s who are guilty of making it an ubiquitous cliché? In the article below see how Robert Freer re-defines this phrase in terms of the vigorous routine that the Citadel’s students must endure. What is really encouraging is that the Citadel is not just a local incident of this enlightenment; the student population of the Citadel consists of youngsters from 40 states and 10 foreign countries. Read Leaders of Principle now.

Robert E. Freer, Jr., President of The Free Enterprise Foundation

What is a leader of principle? I have done a recent Google search and found its use ubiquitous to the point of becoming a cliché. It is used mostly in the political context but for everyone from George Washington to Cho En Lei and for all of our national candidates at one point or another. It makes you wonder.

At The Citadel, producing leaders of principle for a global community is not a cliché. It is the goal to which we aspire for our students and for ourselves. I have been teaching Law and Ethics for Business Executives at The Citadel for the past three years, and the course has evolved beyond mere identification of legal rules and court decisions for the wary business executive. We do plenty of that, but increasingly as I have understood the essence of what makes a Citadel education unique, the course has become Law and Ethics for Leaders of Principle. In that regard some of our distinguished business and legal community leaders have helped in that transformation by their guest lectures and by the model of their purpose filled lives in our community.

While typically an entering class has students from 40 states and 10 foreign countries, you can assume that wherever they hail from, they are typical of youngsters anywhere. They are bright-eyed and full of dreams. They undertake the challenge of The Citadel for a complex assortment of reasons but with hope we will show them the way to success in life.

No matter what they have heard, knob summer is no picnic. Life for the next four years will be lived on a 24 hour clock, and the summer “Hell Week” is a shock to youngsters inexperienced in its rigors. Like recruits facing basic training in any military organization, they are stripped of their individual identity and forged into a unit. The Corps is not for everyone, but for those who endure, they emerge as knob privates on their way to becoming the Phoenix of legend. They are tougher, more resilient and with core values that will, with three years of polish, equip them to lead the Corps in their fourth year and assume their role as Leaders of Principle upon graduation.

To endure, a knob has learned that he is fallible and not the center of the known universe. He has learned that others depend on him or her and that his or her success is dependent on adapting to the group’s ethic. The knob also learns that the essence of leadership is service to that society of common values of which he or she is a vital part. Looking right on the parade ground on Friday afternoon is but a metaphor for the interconnectedness and the application of core values consistently applied.

At the center of this ethic are hard work, honesty, trustworthiness and loyalty. The cadet begins to understand “accountability” in a larger context of their responsibility to the Corps and enjoy the pride in themselves that comes from being true to that responsibility.

Ok, so far we have identified values that include a rigorous honesty, recognition of responsibility to something bigger than your own immediate wants, hard work, and acceptance of fallibility but ability to come back from failure better for the failure, tougher, wiser and more resilient. We also have defined leadership in the context of service to a community of common values. The constant repetition of the stress to achieve these traits builds a way of living that endures well beyond a cadet’s time at The Citadel.

The elusive impact of four years in this family of sufferers does not normally strike the uninitiated observer, but I have heard it said that former cadets can recognize the “initiated” who have endured either a Citadel education or that at one of the service academies. I have also heard it said that The Citadel is a place you are delighted to see in your rear mirror when you are done but also one that you ache to see out your front windshield after experiencing life post-graduation

I am fond of quoting John Adams on our Constitution being for “a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” He better than most of our Country’s fathers spoke to the nature of the world into which, both then and now, we are putting our young men and women when they graduate.

Ralph Parlette notes in his School of Hard Knocks, “Strength and Struggle travel together; the supreme reward for struggle is strength. Life is a battle, and the greatest joy is to overcome. The pursuit of the easy makes men weak.” That is hardly uplifting but accurate as to the unknowable road ahead. If we can prepare the next generation for that world and equip them with the ability to obtain satisfaction from surmounting whatever challenges they have ahead, both they and the society into which they enter as servant/leaders will be the better for it.

As they approach graduation, and have my course, what I am trying to do is to have them reflect on the behavior pattern that has been thrust on them while at The Citadel and leave the school with more awareness of the context in which they have been challenged. Hopefully they will come to accept their new behavior pattern with full knowledge of what they are doing and not mere habit.

This is not just a paean to The Citadel experience. It really is not for everyone, but I expect that The Citadel will expand at a modest rate consistent with its elevated academic standards and facilities to the point that it will be the largest military academy other than our national service academies. The point I ask you to think about is the state of education generally. What kind of society are we creating with young adults who think in the half hour cycle of a sitcom and feel entitled to their comfort? How are we to navigate the dangerous period into which we have sailed? I will be frank that it scares me, and it should scare you too.

Copyright © 2007 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of The Free Enterprise Foundation. He is a Visiting Professor, at The Citadel and elected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, He can be reached by E-mail at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.

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