My Share of the Task Quotes

“Success is rarely the work of a single leader; leaders work best in partnership with other leaders.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“You can’t roll up your sleeves while you’re wringing your hands,”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“In a leader I see it as doing those things that should be done, even when they are unpleasant, inconvenient, or dangerous; and refraining from those that shouldn’t, even when they are pleasant, easy, or safe.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“All leaders are human. They get tired, angry, and jealous and carry the same range of emotions and frailties common to mankind.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“The teacher who awakens and encourages in students a sense of possibility and responsibility is, to me, the ultimate leader.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“As the demands of the positions differed, and as I grew in age and experience, I found that I had changed as a leader. I learned to ask myself two questions: First, what must the organization I command do and be? And second, how can I best command to achieve that?”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“People are born; leaders are made.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“Leaders are empathetic. The best leaders I’ve seen have an uncanny ability to understand, empathize, and communicate with those they lead.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“Effective leaders stir an intangible but very real desire inside people. That drive can be reflected in extraordinary courage, selfless sacrifice, and commitment.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“It had been in 1985, through the headsets of a helicopter being flown by a veteran Night Stalker named Steel. Being called a customer put me off. It felt too much like business, too transactional—not how warriors should think of their comrades. I soon came to see that the Night Stalkers’ constant use of the term was a skillful way of reminding themselves that they existed to support and enable the forces—the customers—whom they flew. The culture that formed around this word was one of the Night Stalkers’ great strengths.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“It was tradition, albeit a bad one, in mechanized units, to steal and hoard spare parts. It was certainly tempting. Possessing extra parts gave a driver or unit the ability to repair a vehicle rapidly, without going through the Army Repair Parts system with its paperwork and time lag for delivery. For a commander, fixing a vehicle rapidly meant better vehicle readiness reporting - a positive metric of performance. For a solider, fixing a vehicle rapidly meant finishing work earlier and having more time off. In countless movies over the years, Hollywood glamorized the "scrounger" who could come up with scarce parts quickly. But Graney knew it killed the system we ultimately depended on, and he taught us why. Besides the obvious theft involved, stealing or hoarding parts meant vehicles were fixed without forcing the repair system to work. The more we went around it, the less responsible it was. It was basic, but getting the basics right was Graney's brilliance.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“it appeared insurgents had turned toward targeting civilians in order to defeat our attempt to protect them.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“We do not like the Taliban, but Adbul Rahman Jan and his police gangs are intolerable. They steal from us and rape our children.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“the Taliban had arrested him for carrying cassette tapes.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“Taliban rule, financed largely with drug cultivation, was not popular.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“After Iraq, “nation building” was an unpopular term.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“It also revealed the systematic indoctrination of countless Iraqis who’d arrived into the system with little ideological fervor,”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“Still, against the cacophony of withering criticism they regularly received, I’d point out that the Afghan National Police were dying in far greater numbers fighting the insurgency than any other force.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“By nature, police are far harder to build than armies. Their decentralized employment disperses them in small elements that are vulnerable to improper pressure and corruption.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“Minister Atmar drove the point home with quiet, haunting power. “If the elections fail,” he said in his characteristically soft voice, “I would recommend that the international community not waste any more blood or treasure here.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“Gentlemen,” he said, “soon you will begin to wear the class shirt. You’ll wear it every day of the academic year and, per uniform regulation, you will secure your collar with the collar stays that have been issued to you. “It may seem insignificant to you now,” he continued, “but you’re here learning attention to detail.” For the next few minutes the combat-seasoned colonel compared neglecting to wear collar stays with forgetting ammunition for our soldiers in combat. Focusing on even the small things, he reasoned, develops a leader who never neglects the critical ones.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“Journey to the Plain July 1972–June 1976 I was raised to respect soldiers, leaders, and heroes. They were who I wanted to be. They were why I was there. And in the unblinking sunlight of an August morning at the United States Military Academy in 1972, the colonel in front of me looked like the embodiment of all I admired. Hanging on his spare frame, his pine green uniform was covered with patches, badges, and campaign ribbons. Even the weathered lines of his face seemed to reflect all he’d done and all he was. It was the look I’d seen in my father’s face. For a moment I could envision my father in combat in Korea, or as the lean warrior embracing my mother as he came home from Vietnam. He was my lifelong hero. From my earlier memories I’d wanted to be like him. I’d always wanted to be a soldier. Yet the colonel’s words were not what I wanted and expected to hear. As he stood in front of me and my fellow new cadets, he talked about collar stays, the twenty-five-cent pieces of wire cadets used to secure the collars of the blue gray shirts we would wear to class during the academic year. As he spoke, we tried not to squirm under the sun. Our backs were arched, arms flat to our sides, elbows slightly bent, fingers curled into tight palms, chests out, chins forward, eyes ahead. Mouths shut. I was five weeks into my education at West Point. We were still in Beast Barracks, or simply Beast, the initial eight-week indoctrination and basic-training phase during the summer before the fall term of our freshman year—plebe year, in West Point’s timeworn terminology. There were not many full colonels at West Point, so it was rare for cadets, particularly new cadets like us, to interact with them. It seemed like an extraordinary opportunity to hear from a man who’d done so much. But he wasn’t discussing his experiences and the truths they had yielded; he was talking about collar stays.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“I learned to ask myself two questions: First, what must the organization I command do and be? And second, how can I best command to achieve that?”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“These and similar moments from our military’s past were on my mind as the enemy in Iraq appeared ever more sinister. I sought to emphasize in my force, and in myself, the necessary discipline to fight enemies whose very tactic was to instill terror and incite indignation. Maintaining our force’s moral compass was not a difficult concept to understand. Armies without discipline are mobs; killing”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“In no class of warfare,” C. E. Callwell had written a hundred years earlier, about the “small wars” of the nineteenth century, “is a well organized and well served intelligence department more essential than in that against guerrillas.” The same qualities that made intelligence so important when countering guerrillas then—the difficulty of finding the enemy, of striking him, and of predicting his next move and defending against it—were increased a hundredfold when trying to counter terrorists in the age of electronic communication and car bombs.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir

“From the first, I realized that being organized was the key to real compassion. There was a natural tendency for Annie, me, and other key leaders to flock to the bedsides of injured paratroopers or spend time with grieving, frightened family members. But organizing and focusing the paratroopers and spouses of the battalion allowed us to have a greater impact.”
― Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir