Analyze the following case study on "Leadership Mettle Forged in Battle". Then, write an essay to answer the following questions: What is your original definition of leadership? What kind of leader are you.
In 2008, facing a serious shortage of leadership ready employees at the store management level, Walmart decided to recruit from the U.S. military, the company sent recruit-en to military job fairs and hired 150 junior military offi-cers, pairing them with store mentors to learn on the job. The result: Walmart claims that it's been able to bring in world-class leaders who were ready to take over once they had learned the retail business that Walmart could easily teach them. Other organizations that have heavily recruited from the military in recent years include GE, Home Depot, Lowe's, State Farm Insurance, Merck, and Bank of America. It's not really surprising to see companies turn to the military for leadership potential. A long tradition of books and seminars advises leaden to think like military leaders, ranging from Sun Tzu to Norman Schwarzkopf. And military veterans do have a variety of valuable skills learned through experience. General David Petraeus notes, "Tell me anywhere in the business world where a 22- or 23-year-old is responsible for 35 or 40 other indi-viduals on missions that involve life and death. They're under enormous scrutiny, on top of everything else. These are pretty formative experiences. It's a bit of a crucible-like experience that they go through." Military leaden are also accustomed to having to make do in less than optimal conditions, negotiate across cultures, be highly account-able, and operate under extreme stress. However, veterans do have to relearn some lessons from the service. Some may not be used to leading someone like an eccentric computer programmer who works strange hours and dresses like a slob, but brings more to the com-pany's bottom line than a conventional employee. Indeed, in some companies, such as Google, there is nothing like the chain of command military leaden are used to. Still, there is an ample supply of battle-tested military leaden ready to report for corporate duty, and many companies are eager to have them.