The Officer's Pistol
A military leader doesn’t carry the biggest gun — they carry the responsibility of leading the team.
In this episode of Morning Motivation, we explore how your greatest power as a leader isn’t in the tasks you complete, but in your ability to guide, coordinate, and deploy your team effectively. Whether you're leading a business, a nonprofit, or a movement, your job is to see the full battlefield — not just the target in front of you.
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Transcript
In the military, they have all kinds of powerful weapons, machine guns, and rocket launchers and all kinds of stuff. But the guy who leads the team, you know what he carries? Does he get the big machine gun? Does he get the the anti-aircraft rocket? No. He has a little pistol, which he's not really supposed to pull out.
You know why? Because his power. Isn't in one weapon or taking out one target. His power is in leading his entire team. And if he's focused down the barrel of a gun shooting at one guy or trying to take out one target, he's forgetting about what's going on on the right and what's going on on the left.
And what's going on behind the leader needs all around vision. The leader needs to be aware of what's happening everywhere in the team, on every front with every member. So you've got your team members who have the rocket launcher or the machine gun, or the laser rifle or whatever it might be. I don't know.
I don't know what the military has today, but you've got the team members who have those cool weapons. But the leader, what the leader has their weapon. Is the team. The team is their weapon. It is the leader's job to deploy the team most effectively to achieve the mission. Now, maybe you're not a military leader, maybe you're a business leader or community leader, non-profit leader, but it's the same way for you.
If you're down in the weeds, if you're sighting down the barrel of the gun, if you're writing all the content or posting all the things, or building all the tech or doing whatever, then you're not thinking about the big picture, and that's what a leader needs to do. So are you carrying the big gun or do you just have that officer's pistol on your belt?
Because you know the greatest power a leader has is the power to effectively deploy their team.
