The Leadership purpose, General George S. Patton, takes account of a several activities, and the most important among them is making a decision what staffing requirements one have and whether to use autonomous contractors or take into service personnel to meet these needs. It includes choosing and training the most excellent military personnel, making sure that they are better performers, handling performance related problems, and ensuring that the human resources and administrational practices do the accepted thing to various set of laws.
General George S. Patton fitted these norms perfectly. He was a huge influence over the 3rd Army during World War II and relate actions took to the values of leadership which are: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless-service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. He was highly instrumental during the Normandy D-day landing and carried out operational executions with success for the rest of the War making the 3rd Army a significant force. In his own words to his solders, “You have liberated or conquered more than 82,000 square miles of territory, including 1,500 cities and towns, and some 12,000 inhabited places. Prior to the termination of active hostilities, you had captured in battle 956,000 enemy soldiers and killed or wounded at least 500,000 others France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia bear witness to your exploits.” (Province, 1).
Leadership of multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary-armed force under the aspects of military principals can be defined as the art of creating personnel relations of any kind, between people engaged in war or peace situation. These relations can be defined as relation between superior and subordinates, relation between equal ranked personnel, relation between military intelligence and armed forces etc, in order to maintain true cooperation of all concerned along with motivating the entire deal into a positive favor.
Efficiency of the Leadership of multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary team of professionals lies in not only making the personnel to work, but to make them work willingly, sincerely and consciously, by employing new knowledge, new methods, new designs, new machines and novel techniques of production and by allaying mistrust and antagonism.
It can be stated about his leadership policies and ideals that they had to undergo constant changes due to influence of some basic factors such as domestic and overseas combat situations, changes in the arm structure and developments in technology etc. In his own words, “There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change; it is, ‘To use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time.’ “(Province, 1).
However, the increasing significance of competitive advantage and of the growing presence of weapon technology has resulted in noticeable changes in sector of Patton’s leadership of multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary team of military ideologies. These conditions also affect leadership strategy and policies up to a great extent and the aspects of leadership of multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary team of personnel as a whole.
Such an environment gives rise to rank conflicts. Such as conflict of power verses moral values, which include raising standards of production along with humanizing the frontiers, official prerogatives with military policies such as system, reliability, hierarchy, uniformity etc conflict with sensitivity, responsiveness, interactive ness, novelty and sub optimization. Patton remarked, “It’s the unconquerable soul of man, and not the nature of the weapon he uses, that insures victory.” (Province, 1). This was his philosophy as a leader. He truly was a leader of men.
It is very obvious to mention that there are huge amount of pressure on the leaders like Patton and it is still obvious the true leader is the one who is able to successfully negotiate this pressure. There are several outlets of this pressure and some of them can be related to personal psychology too. With success or constant failure, a leader may tend to be more arrogant, over strict, ruthless task master and rigid.
All these are personal problems but when put into the parameters of a combat situation these elements become very hard to digest and thus become detrimental for the nation. However, it should be taken into consideration from the management point of view of the company and proper measures be taken. One good move is to incorporate a refreshed educative move. Patton did falter at times. (Kar, 311).
Nevertheless, no man in the world is said to be the all rounder. All rounder is a man who can perform any kind of task or work, which is assigned to him. It is an almost impossible thing but one must need someone else for his/her help. This will be easier for him to perform and the task will be done more perfectly. If one performs some task while working together, then it is called teamwork. In teamwork different responsibilities are divided among those members of the team, which are, consider more eligible for that specific responsibility.
This may increase the perfection of the task. Building a house is a good example of team work in which every expert in his field perform his task, like carpenter does the wood work, welder does the task related to iron and like this other members do their respective tasks, in the end a beautiful house appears. The most important personality in any team is the team leader. He is responsible for all the tasks being done by his team. He keeps eye on every member and if someone feels some problem of any kind, he helps him by offering some advice. Patton was successful in this context. (Kar, 306).
However, leader is chosen for any team not only on the basis of his experience but also because of some other qualities which are known as born leader qualities. As there are many benefits while working as a team but there are, also some problems occur while working as a team. The main problem arises in the form of conflicts between the team members and the head. It is a natural thing that when some people get together or work together, all of them cannot be agreed on one point.
Every one will have its own opinion and it generates the conflict but mostly this is taken in constructive manners. Conflicts are either constructive or destructive. The main responsibility is on the team leader to resolve these conflicts in such manners that it should not affect the real aim of that team. Making effective decisions at the right time is the most important in any kind of project. The main achievement for any team is to resolve its conflicts and achieve its goals. Though Patton usually reached his goal with the 3rd Army he did falter in consolidating these problems. It is reported that there were constant arguments among his deputies but Patton never took interest in resolving these issues. (Kar, 342).
As a leader, it is also expected that a leader should be colorblind. Patton was not. There are several remarks that prove him to be racially biased. He was practically skeptical about using black personnel in war or direct combat. He once remarked, “They gave a good first impression, but I have no faith in the inherent fighting ability of the race.” (Chatmon, 1) On another incident, this time in his book, Patton was found remarking about black soldiers, “Individually they were good soldiers, but I expressed my belief at the time, and have never found the necessity of changing it, that a colored soldier cannot think fast enough to fight in armor”. (Patton, 160) Such biased view point is never expected from a leader of Patton’s stature.
However, the greatest criticism about this great leader is his inclination towards autonomy and he expected his personnel to be blindly faithful to him. Patton demanded complete loyalty from his personnel. Patton remarked, “There’s a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and is much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates.” (Province, 1). This out of question loyalty of the subordinates and the arrogance of the leader resulted in stoppage of the 3rd Army near the Moselle River in August 31, 1944 as Patton refused to refuel on a hurry to capture the river route and there was no one in the army to question his decision or authority. (Lamb, 226).
In conclusion, it should be stated that General George S. Patton was a great leader despite his vices. It is a critical frame of reference, which does not easily bring itself together with military units or social positions, which are distinctively more politically influenced. Instead of all drawbacks in leadership ideologies of Patton, it has numerous facilities.
Works Cited
Province, Charles M; The Third Army in World War II; The Patton Society Research Library ; 2008; Web.
Chatmon, Pete; The Story of Black Panther Tank Battalion; Maroma Production; 2007; Web.
Patton, George S. War As I Knew It. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947. p160.
Kar, P; History of WWII; Kolkata: Dasgupta & Chatterjee; 2005.
Lamb, Davis; Cult to Culture: The Development of Civilization; Wellington: National Book Trust; 2004.