Humble Leadership

FIVE

Humble Leadership in the US Military

Some form of hierarchy, a layering of formal ranks or implicit status levels, is intrinsic to all human systems. Hierarchy is a structural characteristic of organizational life, but what actually goes on between someone higher and someone lower is not automatically prescribed. We have hierarchies of administrators and professors in universities, senior partners and junior partners in professional service firms, committee chairs and levels of seniority in legislative bodies, differing levels of authority in large research projects, and, of course, clear levels of authority and rank in the health care system in which the operating room personnel function as a team with as many as four such layers.

The type ...