Powell shared his insights into effective leadership and spoke candidly about the war in Iraq to hundreds of students, faculty and staff who packed Whitley Auditorium Tuesday. Details...
A.P. Carlton Jr., a member of the Elon University School of Law Board of Advisors and former president of the American Bar Association, moderated the question-and-answer session.
When asked by Carlton (at right) whether leaders are born or made, Powell said it is a little of both. The most effective leaders he said he has known have “had a gift of dealing with people” and “could motivate and inspire others to be more than they thought they were capable of being.” Strong leaders, he added, also study good leadership techniques, welcome constructive criticism by those around them and are willing to improve. The qualities they all share are character, integrity, courage and vision. Powell said his mentors and leadership models “were people who passed through my life and touched me in significant ways, and I didn’t even know it. You will be a product of everyone who intersected your life.”
Powell called the late Caspar Weinberger, former secretary of defense under President Reagan, “a man of great leadership.” Weinberger, Powell noted, chose to enlist in the Army after graduating from Harvard Law School because it was the most difficult path to take in the military and he felt he owed his country his service. Powell spoke at Weinberger’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery before arriving at Elon.
Good leaders must also be good followers, said Powell, who received his first lessons on leadership during infantry training at Fort Benning, Ga. “You have to be a good follower so you can understand those who you are to lead,” he said. Effective leaders must support their bosses, even when they disagree with their decisions. Without that, an organization becomes weak, Powell said. “The essence of leadership is trust. Can I trust you? Is your word your bond?”
Leaders also play vital roles in the community, according to Powell. “Everyone should feel an obligation to serve their communities in some way. You have to give back. You’re being trained and educated here to lead in your community.” He also urged students to choose a career that they enjoy. “Money and promotion will come, but what won’t come to you unless you choose it is the opportunity to do what you want.”
Powell also fielded questions from students on the war in Iraq, including whether the United States had enough troops when it went to war with Iraq and a plan for removing soldiers. “I don’t think we had enough troops,” Powell said, adding that there was never a doubt American forces would defeat the Iraqi army. “My concern was when the Iraqi forces were broken, there would be no Iraqi regime and once we take out the regime, we would be the government, the proud owners of 25 million people. I think we would have been better served to have a large force. That didn’t happen, and instead we saw an insurgency begin and we didn’t smash it, and now the insurgency has grown. We have our work cut out for us.”
Powell also disagreed with the decision to disband the Iraqi army. “We didn’t need to do it at that point,” he said. “We might have been able to bring them back in some form. As a result, we had several hundred thousand unemployed people.”
The growing insurgency and other problems in Iraq have many Americans wondering when the war will end, Powell noted. Initial optimism, he said, has been replaced by a feeling of, “Boy, we’ve got problems, and we don’t know where this is headed.” Powell said Iraq needs a stable government and military with mutual trust before the U.S. can consider removing troops.
In response to a question about integrity, Powell mentioned his testimony before the United Nations Security Council in 2003 in which he said Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of biological weapons, which turned out to be false. “I didn’t make it up or shape anything from the intelligence community,” he said. “Nobody told me what to say. The fact of the matter is, we were wrong. The intelligence was wrong, but it was something we believed.”
“I have always been able to speak to my bosses and tell them what I thought,” he added. “I had hoped to avoid war. I don’t like war. I was looking for a diplomatic solution.”
Following the session, Powell met with Elon ROTC students for a photograph on the south steps of Alamance building. As a student at the City College of New York, Powell was an ROTC member.