Two Schools of Leadership
In my final duty assignment in the U.S. Army, I served as the Brigade Adjutant (S-1) of the 94th Air Defense Brigade while stationed in Kaiserslautern, Germany. In that role, I was responsible for personnel and human resources matters across the brigade, which at the time consisted of roughly 1,500 soldiers spread across two core battalions and a few separate units.
The Adjutant’s role provided a perspective that few positions do. I worked closely with each battalion commander and their staffs, saw how decisions at the top echoed through their respective organizations, and observed how leadership styles shaped units over time—not just during major training events and exercises, but in the daily, unglamorous work of sustaining readiness and morale.
From that vantage point, I began to notice a pattern. The commanders I observed differed in temperament, background, and ability, but their approaches to leadership often fell into one of two distinct schools. These differences were not immediately obvious in performance metrics. In fact, some of the most striking contrasts only became clear when looking beyond awards, competitions, or short-term outcomes.
Over time, as I gained experience in the business world and local government, I came to believe that these two schools of leadership exist not only in the military, but across public life more broadly. They are not defined by competence or intent, and certainly not by whether leaders care about winning. They are defined by something more fundamental: how leaders understand power, how they use it, and what they believe it costs.
The Leadership of Extraction
The first kind of leader views people as finite resources. In this view, every individual has a relatively fixed ceiling of performance, and the leader’s job is to push subordinates as close to that ceiling as possible—by motivation if possible, by pressure if necessary.
Winning matters. Metrics matter. Evaluations, inspections, and awards matter. These leaders are often very good at producing visible success (real or manufactured), and as a result they are frequently rewarded by higher command.
But there is a cost.
In these organizations, people are implicitly treated as commodities. Attrition is assumed. Rotation, replacement, or burnout are not failures of leadership; they are simply part of the system. Morale in these units can be paradoxical. On the surface, morale may appear high—units perform well, standards are enforced, and accomplishments are real. But beneath that surface there is often a culture of fear.
Soldiers in these organizations will go far for their commander, but not primarily out of loyalty. They do so because the consequences of failure are clear and often personal. Initiative narrows. Risk-taking becomes dangerous. Problems are hidden rather than surfaced. The saving grace, for many, is that the assignment is finite. If one keeps their head down long enough, the tour will end.
From the outside, these units often look excellent. From the inside, they feel brittle.
Over time, I came to believe that this style of leadership has a ceiling. It can drive performance up quickly, but it cannot sustain growth indefinitely. It extracts effort, but it does not compound it.
The Leadership of Cultivation
The second kind of leader sees people not as finite resources, but as human beings with unknown potential. In this view, performance is not capped in advance. Individuals may perform below expectations—or far beyond them—depending on the environment in which they are placed.
These leaders are relational. Fairness matters deeply to them. Empathy is not weakness; it is a tool for understanding what people need in order to do their best work. Accountability still exists, often strongly so, but it is perceived as legitimate.
In these units, progress is often slower at first. They may not win every competition. They may place second or third where other units place first. To an impatient observer, they can look merely “good” rather than exceptional.
But over time, something different emerges.
People in these organizations take ownership. They speak honestly upward. They protect the leader’s intent, not just his or her orders. They do things they did not believe they were capable of doing. Loyalty is not extracted; it is given freely, rooted in mutual respect.
What struck me most was the depth of these organizations. They had a steadiness that did not depend on constant pressure from above. I found myself thinking that their potential was not merely higher, but fundamentally less bounded. Where fear-based units had a ceiling, these units felt capable of compounding strength over time.
Power, Capital, and the Limits of Force
I still think about those two battalion commanders and what distinguished them. Both were effective in their own way. Both met expectations. But only one led in a way that felt sustainable—capable of enduring stress, uncertainty, and time.
The difference was not ambition or discipline. It was how power was understood.
Recently, a senior political figure stated that the “iron rules of the world” are that the “real world” is governed by strength, force, and power. There is a certain blunt clarity to this view, and it resonates because power does matter. Leaders who deny that reality are often unprepared for the world as it is.
But this view is incomplete.
What it misses is that power is not a self-renewing resource. It is more like capital. Every time it is exercised, something is spent.
In the military, this is understood intuitively, even if it is not always stated explicitly. Authority can compel compliance, but each use of coercion draws down reserves of trust, initiative, and legitimacy. Orders may be followed, but over time people stop thinking, stop volunteering information, and stop taking responsibility beyond what is strictly required. Performance becomes narrower and more fragile.
This distinction is not confined to battalions or bases. It appears repeatedly across history—in governments that rule by force until legitimacy collapses, in corporations where fear produces short-term results and long-term dysfunction, and in organizations crippled by micromanagement masquerading as control. The settings differ, but the pattern is consistent.
Leaders who see power as self-justifying tend to escalate. Each use of force consumes the very conditions that made authority possible in the first place. Over time, they narrow their own options, harden the systems they lead, and create an ever-growing dependence on coercion. What begins as strength can quietly become fragility.
Leaders who understand power as capital behave differently. They are selective rather than impulsive, patient rather than performative, and oriented toward the long horizon rather than the next demonstration of strength. They ask not only whether power can be used, but what its use will cost—tomorrow, next year, and after they are gone.
This is the part missing from strength-only theories of leadership. If the world were governed only by force, then the constant exercise of power would be sufficient. But in reality, constant force requires constant replenishment of political, institutional, or moral capital. Leaders who rely on power alone must continually accumulate more of it just to maintain their position. The appetite becomes unending.
In government, as in the military, this dynamic has consequences. Frequent elections, short-term incentives, and public displays of dominance encourage leaders to spend capital aggressively for immediate results. The bill comes later—often paid by institutions, norms, and people who had no hand in the original decisions.
The irony is that the leaders who speak most insistently about strength often create the most fragile systems. By contrast, leaders who understand power as something to be husbanded, not flaunted, tend to build organizations—and societies—that can absorb shock, adapt, and endure.
Power is real. Strength matters. But experience suggests a harder truth than the “iron laws” allow: leadership that treats power as inexhaustible eventually exhausts the environment that sustains it.
