Here is a story from the US Marine Corps, told by Simon Sinek. Simon had the opportunity to visit the OCS (Officers Candidates School) in Quantico, Virginia and the commanding officer of the training school, a colonel, was supposed to give him a briefing on what they do there and how they train their officers, etc. and he arrived late. Anyone who knows the Marines knows that the Marines are never late, so when he entered the room and apologized and said: "I'm sorry, we had an incident at the base", Simon, who was curious to understand what happened, asked: "What happened?" , so the colonel said it was serious enough that they were considering throwing one of their Marines out of the OCS.
Simon thought to himself: "What horrible crime could this person have committed???" And the commander answered: "He fell asleep on guard". Simon was amazed: "He fell asleep on guard duty, in the middle of a forest in the USA, and for that you are going to throw him out of the corps? Isn't it a little harsh?" And the commander answered: "No, you don't understand. When we asked him about it he denied it. When we asked him about it again, he denied it again, and only when we showed him irrefutable proof, he said: (quote) I want to take responsibility for my actions."
The colonel added: "You don't take responsibility for your actions at the time you are caught. You have to take responsibility while you are carrying out your actions," he continued: "We have another soldier who fell asleep, but he admitted it himself. We punished him, but we don't have a problem with him." Then the colonel continued and explained: "You have to understand, if I put this soldier in a position of command, during a battle and his soldiers might think, even for a moment, that he is trying to defend himself at the expense of others, or he's just trying to advance his career, we'll lose lives because they won't trust him at the moment of truth."
We don't have to like our leaders and we don't even have to agree with them, but we do have to trust them.
I think that in such situations (military or life and death situations) it is very obvious, but what happens is that in civilian life (business and politics), we confuse the two a bit, that we trust leaders only when we like them and if we don't like them then we don't trust on them.
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