ALL THESE STARS by Jim Collins

“We have a mutual friend and somebody who I admire greatly, General Lloyd Austin, and—who was actually at the West Point event—and he asked if I would come down and do a session with Frances at West Point—and of course, I mean, I would,—it was a great opportunity, they were heading back off to another deployment to Iraq, not at West Point, I'm sorry—at Fort Bragg, and you know what? I have this image. We're in this situation room. We've got the maps on the wall; it's not a particularly large room. In this room are a whole lot of stars. There's three-stars, there's two stars, there's one star—there's a bunch of starred people in this room. And these are people who've been in real, on-the-ground situations. I mean, they have had tremendous real responsibility—real soldiers in real situations where real things can happen. And they sat there absolutely riveted, learning about leadership from Frances. And I wrote this in the forward of her autobiography because the image I had was Yoda with the Jedi knights and the Jedi council. This was exactly the way I pictured it, and they were, I mean these are—I mean, this isn't a group of young college students. These are battle-hardened general officers in the 82nd Airborne. And at the end of her session, you have this group in this situation room at Fort Bragg with all these paratrooper types, all coming out at the end of Frances's session spontaneously, ‘HooAh.’ Okay, there's not a whole lot of people that get HooAh from a whole bunch of starred generals. And it was because, and I found myself watching that thinking, ‘what's it that they're taking from her? What are they gaining from her?’ Because she hasn't led a battalion into a place where people are shooting at you. And part of it is the positive valence, just the ‘we're not going to let the negative overwhelm us.’ And then part of it were just the really practical aspects of leadership that apply in any situation. And she was just sharing the stories, talking about her own experiences, and drew these generals in. It was just delightful to watch.”