Lt. Withers was the leader of an all-black supply convoy in WWII. He was faced with a dilemma between following the rules and doing the right thing as a human. He found out that his men had taken in and were hiding some young survivors from the Dachau concentration camp. When he found out, he planned to have the strangers removed but changed his mind when he actually saw them. He broke the Army’s orders to allow the two Jewish survivors to stay and they ended up hiding among the blacks from segregated America for more than a year while they regained their health. Lt. Withers was an educated man and dreamed of using the GI Bill to earn his PhD after the war so he potentially risked his whole future in violating the Army’s rules as it was especially important for blacks to follow orders in the segregated Army or risk a dishonorable discharge. The lesson here is that as leaders we are all, sooner or later, confronted with a tough decision of following rules and orders or doing what is right as a human being. Sometimes humanity has to come before the team. Hopefully, we can all be strong enough and wise enough to make the right decision when that time comes.

Col. Joe Dowdy was the leader of 6,000 Marines racing to Baghdad in the Iraq War. During the war he was stripped of his command, essentially ending his 24-year Marine career. His removal was very strange because he had not committed any of the acts that are usually associated with dismissal: failing to complete a mission, disobeying a direct order, or breaking the rules of war. A spokesman for the Marines said that “It was a decision based on operating tempo” and would not elaborate further. It came out later that a probable reason for the dismissal was tension between mission and men. Col. Dowdy leaned to the “men” side and his commander, Gen. Mattis, favored “mission”. Mattis wanted speed on the push to Baghdad and Dowdy saw sacrificing everything for speed to imperil the welfare of his men and was delayed by intense fighting in Nasiriyah. His evaluation said he was “overly concerned with the welfare of his men.” The lesson here is one about competing interests between team members and mission. Mission has to be ultimate priority but sometimes the rules have to be broken and the members have to be elevated above the mission; the hard part is discerning when it is one of those times and making the right decision. Hopefully most times we are confronted with this situation we can find an answer that is a balance between team-mission and the choice will not have to be either-or. Being concerned with the welfare of the team is important for a leader but how much is too much? We all have to be humans first and team members and employees and bosses second.