Idea 87: Constructive appraisal in action
Love, in the sense of seeking the good of the other person as well as the common good, stands here at the core of good communication.
Henry Ward Beecher, American clergyman and abolitionist
Field Marshal Lord Montgomery was not only a great trainer of soldiers, he gave his generals some on-the-job training as well. In A Full Life (1956), General Sir Brian Horrocks recalled one such incident. It reveals Montgomery’s ability to develop the individual, even at the higher levels of leadership.
Case study: Field Marshal Lord Montgomery
On the day after the battle [Alam Haifa] I was sitting in my headquarters purring with satisfaction. The battle had been won and I had not been mauled in the process. What could be better? Then in came a liaison officer from Eighth Army headquarters bringing me a letter in Monty’s even hand. This is what he said:
Dear Horrocks,
Well done – but you must remember that you are now a corps commander and not a divisional commander …
He went on to list four or five things which I had done wrong, mainly because I had interfered too much with the tasks of my subordinate commanders. The purring stopped abruptly.
Perhaps I wasn’t quite such a heaven-sent general after all. But the more I thought over the battle, the more I realized that Monty was right. So I rang him up and said, ‘Thank you very much.’
I mention this because Montgomery was one of the few commanders who tried to train the people who worked under him. Who else, on the day after his first major victory, which had altered the whole complexion of the war in the Middle East, would have taken the trouble to write a letter like this in his own hand to one of his subordinate commanders?