Dwight D. Eisenhower had unarguably one of the longest and most taxing leadership roles in American history. For two decades, the lives of thousands, sometimes millions, of people and the fate of great nations hung on his decisions.

As Supreme Allied Commander during World War II, Eisenhower oversaw the greatest amphibious assault in history, organizing the largest air and sea armadas ever assembled and commanding 160,000 men in the momentous Operation Overlord.

After the success of that mission helped bring the war to a close, Eisenhower dreamed of going home to a happy and peaceful retirement. Instead, he went on to serve in five more globally pivotal positions: Head of the American Occupation Zone in Germany, Chief of Staff, president of Columbia University, Supreme Commander of NATO, and President of the United States of America.

In each position, Eisenhower achieved great successes and also made mistakes. But whether he was navigating setbacks or achieving triumphs, he led. A self-described “simple Kansas farm boy,” his humor and congeniality—along with that famous lopsided grin—hid a keen and curious mind, an unyielding work ethic, and an ironclad sense of self-confidence. That confidence allowed him to stand tall with the weight of the world on his shoulders and boldly make critical decisions. The word his associates most often used to describe him was trust; people trusted Ike to make the right choices and shoot straight with them. His dedication to principle and his bounding vitality could inspire people to lofty visions, while his aw-shucks humility created a feeling of friendship and intimacy even with those he had never met. These qualities and more won him the affection, loyalty, and admiration of those who served both under him and over him.

“Morale is born of loyalty, patriotism, discipline, and efficiency, all of which breed confidence in self and in comrades…Morale is at one and the same time the strongest, and the most delicate of growths. It withstands shocks, even disasters of the battlefield, but can be destroyed utterly by favoritism, neglect, or injustice.” -DE

Truly, there is much to be learned from the life of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and so every other week for the next couple months, we’ll be taking an in-depth look at the many rock-solid leadership lessons that can be gleaned from his life, particularly his time in the military. While the rest of the articles in the series will be shorter, today we begin with a lengthier exploration of what was perhaps the cornerstone of Eisenhower’s success as a leader: his ability to build and sustain the morale of those under his command. Eisenhower worked his men hard each day, taught them not to cut corners, and pushed them to always do their best. At the same time, he listened to them, inspired them with his own example, and cared for them like a father.

Whether you’re a student body president, a corporate manager, or a coach, these principles will hopefully help you better inspire and bring out the best in those for whom you are responsible.

See and Care for Your Men as Individuals

“You must know every single one of your men. It is not enough that you are the best soldier in that unit, that you are the strongest, the toughest, the most durable, the best equipped, technically—you must be their leader, their father, their mentor, even if you’re half their age. You must understand their problems. You must keep them out of trouble; if they get in trouble, you must be the one who goes to their rescue. That cultivation of human understanding between you and your men is the one part that you must yet master, and you must master it quickly.” –Eisenhower in a speech to the graduating cadets at the Royal British Military Academy, 1944

Eisenhower loved life and he loved people. He believed in the latter’s strengths and was very sympathetic to their failings. Whether he was training a small unit or commanding thousands, he never saw the men as numbers, as push-pins to be moved across a map; rather, he always remembered that each man was an individual with hopes and aspirations of his own, with a family back home that loved him more than anything else in the world.

“I adopted a policy of circulating through the whole force to the full limit imposed by my physical considerations. I did my best to meet everyone from the general to private with a smile, a pat on the back and definite interest in his problems.”

In order to keep this remembrance at the forefront of his mind, whenever he could Ike would slip away from his desk and the big shots who paraded through his office and make his way out to the front lines to meet with the men on the ground. He had a highly developed listening ability, and wherever he went he asked questions. He welcomed complaints, and if it was in his power, he worked to improve the situation. The men enjoyed meeting with the general, and Eisenhower always found himself rejuvenated by these conversations. “I belonged with the troops, he said. “With them I was always happy.”

In the months before D-Day, Eisenhower made these visits to the troops an even higher priority. He understood that once he issued the order for Operation Overlord to begin, he himself would become powerless; the success of the mission rested with the men who were storming the beaches of Normandy. If they bravely struggled through the Germans’ withering fire, the Allies’ aims would be achieved; if they cowered in the sand, the enemy would triumph. The level of the troops’ motivation could turn the tide.

And so, as June 6 approached, Eisenhower went out to meet as many of his men as possible, visiting 26 divisions, 24 airfields, 5 ships, and a dozen other military installations. He wanted as many of his sailors, airmen, and soldiers to see the man who would be sending them into battle as possible, and to personally speak with as many of his men as he could. When he arrived at a camp or airfield, he’d ask the men to break rank and circle around him. Then he’d offer some encouraging words, shake their hands, and talk to the men one-on-one. Eisenhower did not ask them just about their weapons or training as most generals did, but instead where they were from, what they hoped to do when they got home, and what life was like back in their home states.

Because Eisenhower was unwilling to let himself slip into seeing the men under his command as a faceless mass, their deaths pained him greatly. Some experts had estimated that the causalities of Operation Overlord could reach as high as 70%, and he could envision the news of those casualties reaching each man’s mother, father, wife. In the hours before D-Day was to begin, he was busy doing the job he thought most important to Overlord’s success: once again meeting with his men. He talked with and shook the hands of the paratroopers of the 101^st Airborne, and then stood on the roof of the nearby headquarters to salute each plane as it took off en route to France. As the planes soared into the night sky, he thought of the dangers these brave men would soon be facing, and tears filled his eyes

The genuine tenderness Eisenhower felt for his men, and his acknowledgement of the very real, individual repercussions his decisions would cause, greatly increased his anxiety and the burden of his responsibilities. But while it wearied him, it also fueled the excellence of his leadership and the success of his command. Ike was the kind of commander both the men themselves, and their families, hoped they’d serve under. They knew that Eisenhower would not make a decision to send his men into battle if he had not thought long and hard about it and believed the action was absolutely necessary—that he would not play fast and loose with their lives, deciding their fate from inside an ivory tower.

A Leader Must Always Be Optimistic

Eisenhower was not only wearied by having to make decisions that would affect the lives of thousands of men—not to mention the fate of great nations—but also by the many logistical and political problems he had to grapple with every day in running a war. For a decade he worked 12-14 hour days, 7 days a week, keeping himself going with 4 packs of cigarettes and cup after cup of coffee each day. Very soon into that grinding schedule, Eisenhower “realized how inexorably and inescapably strain and tension wear away at the leader’s endurance, his judgment and his own confidence.” “The pressure becomes more acute,” he added, “because of the duty of a staff to present to the commander the worst side of an eventuality.”

But Eisenhower was committed to never revealing the strain he felt to others. Instead, he firmly believed it was necessary for a commander to “preserve optimism in himself and in his command.” “Without confidence, enthusiasm, and optimism in the command,” Eisenhower argued, “victory would scarcely be obtainable.”

“I have developed almost an obsession as to the certainty with which you can judge a division, or any large unit, merely by knowing its commander intimately. Of course, we have had pounded into us all through our school courses that the exact level of a commander’s personality and ability is always reflected in his unit—but I did not realize, until opportunity came for comparisons on a rather large scale, how infallibly the commander and unit are almost one and the same thing.“

Eisenhower saw two powerful benefits to being a consistently optimistic leader. First, he was a big believer in the “act-to-become” principle; by acting hopeful around others, the “habit tends to minimize potentialities within the individual himself to become demoralized.” Second, it “has an extraordinary effect upon all with whom he comes in contact.” Reflecting on these benefits brought Eisenhower to a “clear realization:”

“I firmly determined that my mannerisms and speech in public would always reflect the cheerful certainty of victory—that any pessimism and discouragement I might ever feel would be reserved for my pillow.”

Never Esteem or Place Yourself Too Highly Above Your Men—on Whom You Rely

“In a war such as this, when high command invariably involves a president, a prime minister, six chiefs of staff, and a horde of lesser ‘planners,’ there has got to be a lot of patience—no one person can be a Napoleon or a Caesar.”

While Eisenhower was the one man during the war who might have been tempted to put on Napoleon-esque airs, that was far from his style. He saw the whole undertaking as a team effort in which each person, from the lowly private to the Prime Minister, had a vital and indispensable role to play. His job was simply to fit the many disparate parts into one effective whole. It was a heavy job, but he did not feel it made him special. Eisenhower was a man of modesty and humility who hated being singled out for praise and loved to sincerely put the credit on others. It was “GI Joe,” who won the war, he said, not him.

Eisenhower believed that one of the things that destroyed morale was complaints of unfairness or injustice among the men—feelings that could be engendered by seeing that their leader did not give them enough credit and took too many privileges for himself.

“Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in blood of his followers and sacrifices of his friends.”

When Eisenhower was stationed in Italy, he took a cruise around the Isle of Capri with some colleagues. When they passed a large villa, he inquired as to whose it was. “Yours, sir,” someone answered. “And that?” Eisenhower asked, pointing to another stately villa. “That one belongs to General Spaatz,” was the answer. Eisenhower exploded: “Damn it, that’s not my villa! And that’s not General Spaatz’s villa! None of those will belong to any general as long as I’m Boss around here. This is supposed to be a rest center—for combat men—not a playground for the Brass!”

These kinds of stories always got back to the troops, and helped win Eisenhower their affection and loyalty.

Keep Your Men Up and Doing

In 1918, during WWI, Eisenhower was assigned to run Camp Colt in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with orders to “take in volunteers, equip, organize, and instruct them and have them ready for overseas shipment when called upon.” Because the men would go directly from the camp to a port to be shipped to the trenches of Europe, Eisenhower was “warned that no excuses for deficiencies in their records or equipment would be accepted;” when they left camp, the men had to be ready for battle.

The men were to be part of the newly-formed Tank Corps, and Eisenhower thought he’d get one group ready for a month, they’d ship out, and then a new group would arrive. But when the government put a temporary halt on shipping out any units except for infantry and machine gun battalions, none of the men at Camp Colt were called up, while new volunteers kept coming in. The number of men at the camp soon swelled to over 10,000, and Eisenhower worried about what all the waiting around would do to the men:

“Once they were competent in basic drill, they would have little to do. With time hanging heavy on the recruits’ hands we could be sure of one thing: morale would deteriorate quickly. I began to look around for a way to instruct the men in skills that would be valuable in combat and prevent the dry rot of tedious idleness.”

So without any orders from Washington, Eisenhower set up a telegraphy and motor school and obtained small caliber cannons on which to train his soldiers. He also got ahold of some machine guns and made the men get so familiar with them they could fire the guns from the back of a moving vehicle and could take the weapon apart and put it back together while blindfolded.

Later, although the brass had told him that the Tank Corps in Europe would have no need for men with training in telegraphy, the War Department requested 64 men with that skill; Eisenhower was ready to furnish them.

Give Your Men the Why Behind What You Ask Them to Do

Because Eisenhower made such frequent trips to the battlefront, he knew the challenging conditions his men were living and fighting under. And he knew that while duty and discipline were essential in keeping the men going, such things alone were insufficient in maintaining morale. There must also be a “deep-seated conviction in every individual’s mind that he is fighting for a cause worthy of any sacrifice he may make,” Eisenhower argued. In other words, the men needed to know the why behind their orders.

“You do not lead by hitting people over the head—that’s assault, not leadership.”

Eisenhower strongly believed that “In this war, more than any other in history, I think that we find the forces of evil arranged against those of decency and respect for human kind…We are on the side of decency, and democracy, and liberty.” And he asked his commanders to express this conviction to their men, to impress upon each individual soldier the idea that:

“The privileged life he has led is under direct threat. His right to speak his own mind, to engage in any profession of his own choosing, to belong to any religious denomination, to live in any locality where he can support himself and his family, and to be sure of fair treatment when he might be accused of any crime—all these would disappear if the forces opposed to us should, through carelessness or overconfidence on our part, succeed in winning this war.”

You can see Eisenhower’s desire to only give his men orders, but the why behind their duty in the opening paragraph for his Order of the Day for June 6, 1944:

__________

Sources:

Eisenhower: Soldier and President by Stephen E. Ambrose

At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends by Dwight D. Eisenhower

Related posts:

1. Leadership Lessons from Ernest Shackleton
2. Lessons in Manliness: Chuck Yeager
3. 16 Manly Last Words
4. Five Traits of True Leadership
5. Leadership: The Importance of Knowing How to Delegate

Since starting The Art of Manliness nearly five years ago, I’ve interacted with thousands of men from all over the world. One thing that I’ve learned over the years is that many grown men out there simply don’t feel like men. I’m not talking about “feeling like a man” in the cartoonish, hyper-masculine sense. Rather, I’m talking about “feeling like a man” in the sense of that quiet confidence that comes from moving from boyhood into mature masculinity.

Many of the guys I’ve talked to (particularly the ones in their 20s and 30s) have confessed to me that they still feel like a teenage boy walking around in a grown man’s body. Because they don’t feel like mature men, many of these young men are putting off adult responsibilities like careers, families, and civic involvement until they can look at themselves in the mirror and say: “I’m a man.”  In the meantime, these young men drift insecurely through life, wondering when they’ll finally start feeling like grown men.

We’ve talked a lot on the site about why young men today are struggling with the transition from boyhood to mature masculinity–lack of a rite of passage and positive male mentors, a faulty definition of manhood, and sociological and economical shifts are just a few of the reasons we’ve discussed.

While all those things have certainly contributed to the enervated state of modern masculinity, I think an underlying problem is that young men today are simply following modern, conventional wisdom on how a person “becomes” who they want to be.

I’ll Do It When I Feel Like It

Conventional wisdom tells us that before we do something, we first need to feel like doing it or feel like the kind of person who would do that sort of thing. And in order to feel like doing something, the thinking goes, you need to get in the right mindset, “find yourself,” or discover your “deep inner truth.”

So young men following conventional wisdom drift through life waiting until they feel like a man before they take their place in the circle of men. They believe that at some magical moment in the future, they’ll feel like a grown man, and once that happens they’ll finally have the motivation to start doing manly things. Or they read books, meditate about masculinity, and attend weekend men’s retreats, hoping that they’ll start to feel like a man through pondering manhood. But they don’t seem to make much progress. Sure, they have their moments of inspiration, but when the retreat is over or the book is finished, they’re back to feeling insecure about their status as men.

But the problem with conventional wisdom on how a person “becomes” is that it doesn’t work. At least not very well. Nine times out of ten you won’t magically start feeling like a man by simply thinking about becoming a man. So how can you start feeling like the man you’ve always wanted to be? By following the advice given by both ancient philosophers and modern psychologists: to feel like a man, you have to act like a man.

Ancient and Modern Wisdom on Becoming

Several ancient cultures and religions taught the way to belief and personal identity was not through contemplation, but rather though action. They understood the power that our outward actions have on our inner psyche.

According to the Torah, when Moses stood atop Mount Sinai and presented his people the stone tablets with the Law of Jehovah inscribed upon them, the Hebrews spoke in unison “na’aseh v’nishma,” which means “We will do and we will understand.” Basically the Hebrews covenanted that they would live the Law first, in the hope that through living the law they would eventually come to understand it.  Today, this statement represents a Jewish person’s commitment to live all the Law of Moses even if they don’t fully understand the reasons behind each commandment. Modern rabbis teach that na’aseh v’nishma is how one comes to understand God and His laws for man. By living the outward ordinances, a change happens within.

Esquire editor and self-proclaimed “Jew in the same sense that the Olive Garden is Italian food,”  A.J. Jacobs put the principle of na’aseh v’nishma to the test in his hilarious memoir, A Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. Jacobs didn’t just try to live the Ten Commandments perfectly for a year, but also the over 600 obscure laws found throughout the Bible, like not shaving the corners of your beard, blowing a shofar before prayer, and not sitting where a menstruating woman has sat (that one got him in trouble with his wife).

Coming from a scientific and agnostic family, Jacobs saw many of the rituals and laws of his cultural heritage as strange and irrational. But after a year of trying to live according to the Bible, Jacobs felt his attitude shift about religious rituals and even the divine. While he didn’t convert from being a secular Jew into a full-on theist, Mr. Jacobs now considers himself a “reverent agnostic,” who believes “that whether or not there’s a God, there is such a thing as sacredness. Life is sacred.” Jacobs credits his attitude shift to living Biblical principles even when he wasn’t sure of the reason behind them; he acted first without understanding to become a more reverent person.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle taught something similar to na’aseh v’nishma in his Nicomachean Ethics. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle lays out his idea of the “Good Life” and how to obtain it.  For Aristotle the Good Life meant living a life of virtue. Unlike some Greek philosophers who believed that virtuous living came only from pondering upon the virtues, Aristotle believed that understanding wasn’t enough. To become virtuous, you had to act virtuous.

But the virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g., men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Virtues don’t come through simply thinking about them. You have to “exercise them.” Aristotle’s promise is this: if you want a virtue, act as if you already have it and then it will be yours. Change comes through action. Act first, then become.

The Patron Saint of Manliness, Teddy Roosevelt, also lived by this principle of acting in order to become. He said:

There were all kinds of things I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to “mean” horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.

Teddy wanted to be fearless even though he wasn’t. Instead of sitting around and thinking his way into courage, TR put himself into dangerous and uncomfortable situations and acted courageously. Eventually he became the man who led the charge up San Juan Hill and journeyed down an unexplored river in the Amazon. He took action in order to become the man he wanted to be.

Modern psychologists have a theory on why acting-to-become is such an effective way of changing who you are and how you feel about yourself: cognitive dissonance. When there’s a conflict between your self-perception and how you’re actually behaving, you experience dissonance or tension, and your brain moves to close the gap by shifting how you feel about yourself to match how you’re acting.

In her book, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now, adult developmental psychologist Meg Jay recounts an exchange she had with a 27 year old male client named Sam who had been drifting along for most of his adult life while living in his parents’ basement:

“It’s weird,” Sam said. “The older I get, the less I feel like a man.”

“I’m not sure you’re giving yourself much to feel like a man about,” I offered.

…

Sam had it all backward. The way he saw it, he couldn’t join the world until he felt like a man, but he wasn’t going to feel like a man until he joined the world.

Dr. Jay goes on to share how Sam’s attitude about himself started to change once he began doing grown man things like starting a career, establishing a committed romantic relationship, and moving out of his parents’ basement and into his own place. Sam started to act like a man and consequently he began to feel like one. He gave himself something to feel like a man about.

Here’s the bottom line: If you don’t feel like a man, you simply need to start behaving like the man you want to become and eventually you’ll start feeling like you’re that man. Act as if. Fake it until you make it.  Your brain will eventually align your attitude/belief about yourself with your new behavior.

Your Act Like a Man to Feel Like a Man Roadmap

If you’re ready to start feeling like the man you’ve always wanted to be, today’s the day you begin that journey. Like any journey, it’s nice to have a map:

1. Figure out what sort of man you want to be.  Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that contemplating manliness is a waste of time. Far from it. As we argued in Manliness Doesn’t Just Happen, contemplating masculinity and manliness is an essential step in becoming an honorable man. It’s not enough to know you need to act, you also need to know what actions to take. What should we start doing? Where do we hope our actions will lead us? So begin at the end. What sort of man do you want to become? Maybe you have a personal hero or a grandfather or a mentor who personifies your ideal version of manhood. Once you know what kind of man you want to be, study and contemplate how that sort of man would live his life. What would he do when facing adversity?  What would his daily routine be like? How would he dress? How does he treat his significant other? Form a Cabinet of Invisible Counselors to guide you on your journey.

2. Start doing the things that sort of man would do. Even if you don’t feel like it. Once you know what sort of things your ideal man would do, start doing them, and here’s the most important part, do them even if you don’t feel like it. Some of the stuff you’ll have to do will be hard, some it may make you feel uncomfortable, and some of it will make you feel like a phony. Ignore those feelings. That’s just the Resistance, as Steven Pressfield would say. Know that with time, your new manful actions will transform the way you feel about yourself. You will begin to see yourself as a man.

3. Virile agitur for the rest of your life. Even when you go through a rite of passage that really transforms you and puts you on the right path, you can’t rest on your laurels. Becoming a man is not a one time decision or event: it’s something you have to choose every day. It’s like shaving; just because you do it once doesn’t mean you’re done; you still have to wake up and do it again in the morning. Virile agitur is a Latin phrase which means, “The manly thing is being done.” Is being done. Always and forever ongoing. Take that as your motto for manhood.

Related posts:

1. Man to Man Episode #4: How to Feel Like a Man When I Look Like a Boy
2. 7 Exercises to Make You Look and Feel Like a Man

An old sentimental poem in honor of Mother’s Day.

Somebody’s Mother
By Mary D. Brine

The woman was old and ragged and gray,
And bent with the chill of a winter’s day;
The streets were white with a recent snow,
And the woman’s feet with age were slow.

At the crowded crossing she waited long,
Jostled aside by the careless throng
Of human beings who passed her by.
Unheeding the glance of her anxious eye.

Down the street with laughter and shout.
Glad in the freedom of  “school let out,”
Come happy boys, like a flock of sheep,
Hailing the snow piled white and deep;
Past the woman, so old and gray.
Hastened the children on their way.

None offered a helping hand to her,
So weak and timid, afraid to stir,
Lest the carriage wheels or the horses’ feet
Should trample her down in the slippery street.

At last came out of the merry troop
The gayest boy of all the group;
He paused beside her and whispered low,
“I’ll help you across, if you wish to go.”

Her aged hand on his strong young arm
She placed, and so without hurt or harm
He guided the trembling feet along,
Proud that his own were young and strong;
Then back again to his friends he went,
His young heart happy and well content

“She’s somebody’s mother, boys, you know,
For all she’s aged, and poor and slow;
And some one, some time, may lend a hand
To help my mother—you understand?—
If ever she’s old and poor and gray,
And her own dear boy so far away.”

“Somebody’s mother” bowed low her head
In her home that night, and the prayer she said
Was: “God be kind to that noble boy,
Who is somebody’s son and pride and joy.”

Related posts:

1. Blow Up Your Relationship with Your Mother-And Get One Step Closer to Being the Man You Want to Be
2. Manvotional: The Bridge Builder
3. Manvotional: “Advice to My Son” by J. Peter Meinke
4. Manvotional: Albert Jeremiah Beveridge’s The Young Man and the World
5. Manvotional: Boys Wanted