Patton the Leader George S.

Patton the Leader

George S. Patton was an enigma, not only in the realm of military history, but also in terms of leadership style. This unique way of working with others, delegating tasks, and maintaining order was as much due to his sense of duty as it was to his personality and the enormity of the responsibility that he held, much like the business leaders of today. In this paper, several areas of Patton's style and practices will be presented, as well as some personal observations in an effort to better understand this unique leader and his leadership style.

Patton's Style of Working with Others

From an organizational management perspective, Patton's style of working with other could be loosely termed as top-down (Pierce, 2000), but at the top of his organizational chart is where the organizational structure seemed to end. True, Patton needed others in order to execute his strategies and to guide the efforts of thousands of common soldiers, but these subordinates seem to have had little or no autonomy in terms of being allowed to deviate from Patton's explicit orders or to think independently. In working with others, Patton was looking for robots in a sense; these robots would of course follow his orders exactly, not question them, and not use their own deductive reasoning skills to consider alternate courses of action. For Patton, changing orders was simply unacceptable.

The Role Patton's Personality Played in His Emergence and Subsequent Behavior as a Public Leader

Patton's personality played a major role in his emergence and subsequent behavior as a public leader, this personality having come from being raised in a family of strong military tradition and wealth; it has been said that a member of the Patton family had, as of World War II, fought in every war that the United States ever fought (Sobel, 1997), creating a sort of aggressive breeding. This pedigree and sense of entitlement gave Patton an air of invincibility that shaped his leadership and organizational management styles. He preferred to act as an autocrat, placing everyone else in an inferior role to him and had a "take no prisoners" style when it came to making decisions and trying to advance himself. This boldness, combined with fearlessness, undoubtedly gave him the unique ability to aspire to leadership without even giving a thought to how it affected others, for better or worse. In its intended form, the U.S. Army style of leadership (defined channels of authority, defined tasks, processes in place, etc.) is a style that is being adopted by the business world at the current time (Ryan, 2004). However, Patton's style should in truth be used as an example of the types of organizational management to avoid.

Kinds of Issues that Patton Dealt with (either positively or negatively)

Militarily, Patton overall had a highly positive track record of dealing with the tasks required of him in fighting World War II. Admittedly, these decisions were often times not easy, knowing that they would cost many lives in the achievement of military objectives. Within these issues, however, there exist cases where Patton overwhelmingly dealt with issues in a negative fashion. One glaring example of this, now immortalized in the pages of history, had to due with Patton's slapping and verbal abuse of a subordinate who was hospitalized with battle fatigue, but whom Patton deemed cowardly (Sobel, 1997). Likewise, Patton had other examples of negatively handling the management of his "organization." Ironically, while Patton would never tolerate any questioning of his decisions and mandates, he was notorious for following the orders given to him in a fashion that suited him, rather than fulfilling the orders to the letter and the intention with which they were issued. This surely held him back in many respects.

As a public figure and leader, there also exists many examples of Patton's negative handling of this role overall; his use of profanity, abrasive language, and threatening dialogue when speaking to the public or the media was legendary.

Issues/Situations That Caused Disagreement with Patton

Patton attracted a great deal of disagreement from his superiors in the areas of issues and situations; overall, his modus operandi of routinely interpreting orders liberally to fit his own idea of what the orders meant, and his tendency to manage by intimidation more so than by the virtue of his given authority led those in charge of him to clash with him on a regular basis. Likewise, there is evidence to suggest that Patton's disconnect with his organizational leaders was the very thing that ultimately led to him being relegated to a mostly administrative capacity, effectively putting him out to pasture as far as authority and responsibility are concerned.

Did I Ever Question the Motives of Patton

Frankly, the motives of Patton are something that I questioned, but upon fully considering the situation, I reached the conclusion that Patton's motives are worthy of questioning, but ultimately, are not completely questionable. Agreed, Patton did tend to be extreme in his methods and thinking from an organizational management perspective, but in fairness, his motives were far from being totally self-centered. Given the fact that Patton was an egomaniac to put it mildly, his ultimate motive, at least in his military career, aside from the obvious self advancement angle, was quite literally to save the world from tyranny, and as such, his motives were far from undesirable as a whole.

Did I Ever Ignore Certain Kinds of Information in a Systematic Fashion?

To say that I never ignored certain kinds of information in a systematic fashion would be highly inaccurate; what would be accurate would be to say that there are certain kinds of information that I ignore in a systematic fashion with alarming regularity. For instance, information that comes from someone who delivers it in an aggressive or threatening fashion is ignored by me universally, which in fact drives to the heart of this paper; from an organizational standpoint, the very kinds of information that I tend to ignore are in fact the kinds of information for which Patton was notorious. Needless to say, under his command, I would not have fared very well.

Was I Ever Critical of What Patton Did?

From a personal standpoint, I was critical of what Patton did in terms of his heavy handed treatment of subordinates, his tendency to be somewhat of a bully, and his organizational management style, which could best be described as leadership by intimidation. While no one can fully comprehend the responsibilities and challenges that Patton faced in his leadership role, there are others who have been in similar situation and led with a more palatable leadership style.

What I Would Have Done Differently?