The concept of adaptiveness allows leaders the ability to quickly alter a plan if certain assumptions are proved false and to use the existing conditions to their own advantage. A few examples that showed how the Lieutenant adapted on the ground include the use of “conspicuous bluff trenches to cause the enemy to waste much ammunition, and draw fire away from the actual defences,” abandoning the hill which was first considered key terrain but did not contribute to the overall effectiveness of the defence, as well as generally learning the enemy’s SOPs to better counter their attack. To summarize, the author stated the lesson “To test the concealment or otherwise of your position, look at it from the enemy's point of view. In order to provide
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The three qualities that leaders have to prescribe to are that they must be personable, competent, and resilient. The Lieutenant in the book understands the importance of being proactive, resilient, adaptive, and innovative when it comes to either life or death in that scenario. He shows that he is personable by acknowledging that you must engage with civilians as well as your own soldiers. He also shows competence and resilience by encapsulating all previous dreams and lessons he learned to finally be able to hold off the Boer attack until reinforcements come to his aid. The ability to not give up but rather learn from his mistakes is crucial in the development of leaders. Although the author may have some outdated lessons, the general leadership tenets can be applied in both the tactical and technical domains regardless of time or branch. Leaders must prepare themselves both in the self-development domain and the institutional domain in order to be successful in the operational domain where soldiers’ lives are at risk. Dedicated preparation then allows for further development through the experience gained in the operational domain which could otherwise not be trained or taught. Like in the ending of the book, even with extensive preparation the probability of losses is still apparent; however, with the given training it can further mitigate any extensive losses to a certain degree. The inculcation of these tenets allow a junior or even a senior leader to have the foundation necessary to continually improve
The three qualities that leaders have to prescribe to are that they must be personable, competent, and resilient. The Lieutenant in the book understands the importance of being proactive, resilient, adaptive, and innovative when it comes to either life or death in that scenario. He shows that he is personable by acknowledging that you must engage with civilians as well as your own soldiers. He also shows competence and resilience by encapsulating all previous dreams and lessons he learned to finally be able to hold off the Boer attack until reinforcements come to his aid. The ability to not give up but rather learn from his mistakes is crucial in the development of leaders. Although the author may have some outdated lessons, the general leadership tenets can be applied in both the tactical and technical domains regardless of time or branch. Leaders must prepare themselves both in the self-development domain and the institutional domain in order to be successful in the operational domain where soldiers’ lives are at risk. Dedicated preparation then allows for further development through the experience gained in the operational domain which could otherwise not be trained or taught. Like in the ending of the book, even with extensive preparation the probability of losses is still apparent; however, with the given training it can further mitigate any extensive losses to a certain degree. The inculcation of these tenets allow a junior or even a senior leader to have the foundation necessary to continually improve