The Management Lesson Of Dwight Eisenhower

Is a good leader necessarily a good manipulator?

The late President of the United States gave a somewhat provocative definition of leadership: “Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”

Dwight Eisenhower – (CC) White House

This definition seems to imply that a leader is a vile manipulator.

But I think this is just the opposite. The leader who inspires their employees to want to do their best work has two essential qualities:

• empathy: They focus on the individual reasons that motivate each team member;
• strength of conviction: They do not coerce their employees into doing their job but convince them to do so.

This is another demonstration that the motivation of a team always depends on the ability of its leader to show psychological insight, incidentally one of the great qualities attributed to Eisenhower.