Это в корне изменило представление Аманды о том, что настоящее искусство лидерства и умение брать на себя большую ответственность - удел сильных и харизматичных людей.

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Amanda Morris

In the summer of 1995, I was selected to serve as an exchange officer with the British Royal Navy. Thus far, my experiences in the U.S. Navy had been interesting, exciting, and amazingly fun: flying in helicopters, firing machine guns, diving to twelve thousand feet in a submarine, etc. I was now assigned to a British destroyer in the North Atlantic, participating in the most intensive assessment program known to the Royal Navy. It included onboard facilitators simulating the most realistic, warlike conditions.

When "war" broke out, explosions went off, power went out, passageways filled with smoke, and casualties lay screaming. I was a fire­fighter on the damage control team, dispatched to fight a fire in the engine room.

I watched three of my men leap down a hatch, and then heard a facilitator yell, "In ten seconds, that fire will spread to the entire ship! What are you going to do?" After a gut-wrenching pause, I ran to the hatch, closed it, and tightened it down.




I forced myself to remember that this was only a drill. It was a defining moment. I had just made a decision that cost the lives of three men. In reality, would I have been able to justify my actions, knowing I had done the right thing and served the greater good? Could I have looked the families of those men in the eye and told them that I had no choice?

This event illustrated to me that the greatest challenge of leadership is making impossibly tough decisions when a decision must be made.

I learned that after all the soul-searching, you must stand by your decision and move on. I also now see what is meant when people refer to the loneliness of command, the loneliness of leadership.

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