The Practice of Adaptive Leadership

PART FOUR

SEE YOURSELFAS A SYSTEM

AS AN OFFICER in the U.S. Army stationed in Iraq, Ray took over a unit charged with eliciting intelligence from Iraqi citizens who might know something about the insurgency seeking to undermine U.S.-led efforts to create a stable, secular, and democratic government. When Ray took command of the unit, he quickly saw that his soldiers often treated villagers roughly to extract information from them, behavior that alienated Iraqis who did not support the insurgency. Ray knew that gaining the Iraqi people’s trust and friendship was a high military and political priority. Yet he found himself tolerating his soldiers’ harsh treatment of Iraqi civilians, which undermined that aspiration. At the time, he could not ...