The New Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff On "Getting to the Truth"

Martin Dempsey is the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the U.S. military.  I first meet General Dempsey when we co-taught a course on global leadership at Duke, I have since interviewed him a couple of times.  To get to the pinnacle of the U.S. military you must prove yourself a leader at each promotion along the way.  This is a leader very much worth listening to.  In this excerpt of an hour long interview, the General reflects on how an executive keeps in touch with reality when there are so many layers between you and the pointy end of the organization.

KM - Between the front line troop and yourself, there's many levels of filters.  How do you sniff out reality with all those filters getting between you and truth?

GMD - Man - boy - that's really hard.  When I pinned on my fourth star in December of 08, I had a four-star coming through the receiving line to congratulate me and he leaned over and he whispered, "You realize that, from this point forward, no one will ever tell you the truth again." You know, he said it tongue in cheek, but I took the caution to heart.  You know, people generally want to tell you what's going well in their lives - and, by the way, looking back, you often wish you hadn't . If you're lucky, you might see the Chief of Staff of the army or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs once in your life. - When you see that person, you don't want to unload your rucksack of problems; generally speaking, you want to tell them what seems to be going well with the odd, "I can use some help in this regard." . - When you are only seeing people once it's really hard, I mean, really hard, to figure out what's going on at the lowest tactical edge; where that young soldier's at - there, by himself, on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan...

- Article by Karl Moore

Read full article: Forbes, October 20, 2011