A Sun On The Way To West
Find the decisive ways in order to ensure your excellence, by forcing the limits of your leadership for the sake of a higher calling.
Captain Rhodes tells the commando team, led by Lieutenant Waters:
- Gentlemen, I know you ere confrinted with alot, But we have to send you back. You have to fulfill a very important mission. The main objective is to find and recover Dr. Lena Fior Kendricks of the International Red Cross. The secondary objective is to recover two nuns and a priest who have a shelter near Yolingo, Nigeria. After you recover the targets, go to the Alpha retreat area. Good luck.
Lieutenant Waters and his commando team arrive in the small village where the three were, but, at the doctor's instance, which got affectionate with the population of the area, agreed to take several locals with them. The two nuns and the priest refuse to leave, because the people of the area needed their help.
After nearly two days of travel through mountains, they reach the Alpha retreat area. Then, Lieutenant Waters abandons the locals, takes the doctor to the helicopter and they abandon the area, without caring the fate of poor people who remained alone in the mountains, exposed to danger. He had no choice, he had to fulfill his mission, not undermine it, because the soldiers of General Mustafa Yakibu were following them and were about to kill them with no mercy.
Do you depend on the existence of a "soul" concept from a psychological perspective on the power you have, with deeper meanings than the wrong choice of the moment can give them?
At some point, the helicopter the lieutenant and the doctor were in, passes over the small village they were in two days before. The view was terrifying. The village was burning in flames, dozens of bodies were randomly lying on the field. The stench of death was floating in the air.
The doctor was scared and seized by black thoughts. She was deeply affected by what happened and she feared that the people who had been abandoned will share the same fate. Weeping overcame her, as if her heart had been forever broken.
Anger and anxiety could be read in the eyes of Lieutenant Waters. The view of those terrifying images slipped revolt into his soul. He remained a moment merged in thoughts. He looked the doctor like in an endless prayer, unable to utter a single word. The shock caused by viewing those dead people was too much for him. That inhuman cruelty disgusted him. He was suddenly seized by remorse for having abandoned those locals on the field.
He couldn't remain indifferent, he wasn't able to commit such an infamy. "Ï couldn't abandon them", he said to himself. Then, finally, he uttered that secret word, the one of his humanity, which came from deep inside his soul. "Detour the helicopter ! "
Leadership means staying true to moral principles even when you are trapped in the trap of a sacrifice that you do not really want to make for someone else.
If you watched the movie "Tears in the Sun (2003)", you remember that, instead of safely leading his commando team and Doctor Kendricks "Home", thus fulfilling his mission, Lieutenant Waters decided to return to the Alpha retreat area, where he abandoned the locals, and guide them on foot, through the mountains, to Cameroon, where they would have been saved.
He failed to obey the clear orders he had received, putting his entire team, as well as the doctor, in constant danger. For once he gave the order to return, the real ordeal began. His career was in decline.
The mission was accomplished, but not entirely. Only four members of the commando team were still alive but they were seriously injured, including Waters, but most of the locals survived. The doctor managed to escape with light injuries. However, one can say the mission was a certain success because, in exchange of a few lives, many human lives have been saved.
Leadership: What restricts you to be human? You watching empathy as a precondition of prejudice, or as a substitute for it?
How many unpleasant surprises can hide the life of a leader. The decision taken by Lieutenant Waters was a huge test of his strength of character, it demonstrated his noble feelings, those of a man who takes risks and pushes his limits for the sake of a higher calling.
Leaders like Waters are consumed by a strong sense of justice and humanity. They don't emanate an attitude like "Come what may", but an attitude based on altruism: "I'll help you. If nodoby does anything for you, I'm going to do something." Inside their being lies a bit of humility. They are concerned with people's well-being; they manage to build a strong bong with them.
Your action always have consequences. There is always place for new maneuvers in leadership, especially if you are forced by circumstances to apply them, but if you move away from the purpose, be it because of feelings, then you may fail.
A man is truly magnificent when the nobility of his feelings gives meaning to a life experienced with a woken consciousness.
Conclusion: In the life of every leader, there may be landmarks, when he is forced to depart from the path of attaining the originally proposed aim, because motivations that impose it appear. The decision made in these decisive moments are crucial for the leader. If the result of these decisions is beneficial and leads to citory, the leader becomes a hero, and if not, the leader becomes "A sun on the way to west".
Can you combine the firmness with the emotional approach?
Find the decisive ways in order to ensure your excellence, by forcing the limits of your leadership for the sake of a higher calling.
