cheney in an undisclosed location in a bunker somewhere. i don't know where. c-span: now this will be an easy one for you not to spin. of all the conservatives who sit across the table from you, which one's the -- your favorite? >> guest: oh. i have to spin that. i... c-span: and we're going to listen very carefully to what you say. >> guest: the -- i will -- i enjoy taking them all on. i have to tell you, i think pat buchanan is the best debater, bar none, that i've ever been up against. but bob novak is close behind. john sununu, very smart. mary matalin, very sharp, and tucker carlson, as good as all the rest. c-span: who do you have the best chemistry with, sitting right there on the set -- forget the -- the content -- where just the show flows easier? >> guest: may -- maybe over the

years, mary matalin. but -- but no problem with any of them. i mean, i do really like them. i like working with them. i like them personally and we're good friends. c-span: before we run out of time... >> guest: yeah. c-span: ... you met your wife where? >> guest: i met carol in san francisco in 1968 working for eugene mccarthy. c-span: you have children? >> guest: mark and david, two sons. c-span: li... >> guest: mark lives in hood river, oregon. he's a -- a nurse, a nurse practitioner, works at la clinica in hood river, oregon. and david is in graduate school at the university of davis and works at the point reyes national seashore in point reyes, california. c-span: bill press, we're out of time. this is what the cover of the book looks like. it's called "spin this!" bill press of "crossfire," cnn, thank you for joining us. >> guest: great to be here, brian. thank you. .. website to

complete the survey for the session and the festival and please everyone turn off your cell phones at this time. it's an extreme honor for me to introduce a "new york times"

produce a "new york times" best selling author and one of america's true heroes. general anthony is any. general zinni served in the core in vietnam where he was severely wounded as well as operations and philippines, turkey, somalia, kenya, iraq and the persian gulf. he has received 23 military service awards including the defense distinguished service medal with zero cleaves cluster. he's also participated in numerous presidential diplomatic missions. his latest book, "leading the charge leadership lessons from battlefield to the board room" includes an approach from leadership to challenges of the 21st century. this is a book about future leaders must know and they must know how to be effective in our dynamic in a rapidly changing environment so please welcome general anthony zinni.

[applause] >> thank you. first let me say it is an honor to be here and i really want to commend tuscon and the daily star and the university for this event. i spent all day that have come up, the interesting reading and literature and it just warms my heart and it's great to see the younger people especially. i know many of us who are senior would come, but to see so many young people interested in books and reading and authors and lectures i think says something. this book, "leading the charge" almost came about and intentionally. several years ago i wrote a book called "the battle for peace," and was a book about how the world was a fur changing since the collapse of the soviet union, sort of a confluence of things, a perfect storm. the soviet union collapsing,

changing the power structure, the rise of globalization, the information age, mass migration of people seeking greater opportunity and a whole set of things that i watch for my last ten years in the military and 10-years-old in the business world in academia and it struck me when i wrote that book that we were not getting it, the world is changing so drastically in such major ways becoming much more complex, complicated that we are missing this and we are still operating under the old ways and systems and organizations. in the course of going around on the book tour for that book with audiences like yours and in the q&a period i would get questions and comments about leadership and is struck me because of the number and the frequency of those kind of comments and questions and the gist of what people were saying is it's not just a matter of the world changing and our environment

changing, our leaders are failing us. they don't get. and i walked away from the weeks of that book tour saying this has been impressive by the nature and the consistency of those comments that i wanted to see if that was more just than the anecdotal information i was picking up. do people really feel that way? is there a since there is a crisis and leadership? so like a good writer you'd research everything. i went online to a number of organizations that do leadership surveys and have for years, harvard university and others that take the pulse of people not only in the united states but globally about their views and feelings on leadership in every aspect of society and frankly i was shocked at what i found and this was late 2008 but from 2008 back to the beginning of the century, continuously there has been a rise in the percentage of people that feel we have a crisis of leadership.

in 2008, 80% of americans polled said we have a crisis in leadership and not just in political leadership or where you might expect events might drive that sort of opinion, but across the board as i delved further into the and to all down into the research when they were asked about different aspects of society the clergy, business leaders and military leaders and all others in 2008, not one group achieved higher than 50% approval rating and the particularly struck me personally because i was the first year military leaders dropped below the percentage. so i went to look at how globally people thought about leadership. is this just the united states american phenomenon or the way people feel around the world in several surveys i found i found not one political head of state had achieved about 50% approval rating by his word constituents,

their people. so to me there was a clear indication that there is a sense if not factual realization that leaders are feeling us. why? i wanted to understand what is happening. we've created such phenomenal leaders of a little in our own nation in the past and almost every field. so why is this sense out there and not everybody could be failing. obviously there are leaders speaking it and i particularly wanted to look in areas where the vast majority of leadership was treated very low. why do you have the one standout that seems to go against the tide and people feel are strong leaders? what makes them different? so the gist of the book was about my knee view or observations as to what makes good leaders today and why other leaders are feeling and i broken down into about 11 areas. my partner on the book, tony,

about halfway through says for half a century you have been a supposedly eckert. why don't you through your views in here, too so i took him up on it and i salted it with my personal views or experiences on leadership, good and bad, trial and error over half a century. that particular part of it made me think about leadership in another way at the same time all of this was going on i was asked to teach a course at duke university at the samford leadership senter sali was preparing for the course and i decided to look at how i was trained if you will or educated to be a leader not just the experiences but my surface, the military to train and prepare me, did it work or didn't it, what did i find out and it caused me to look at leadership development programs in business. i am the chairman of the board of a major company and we have a leadership program and i've been involved in several others and how do we develop leaders now?

and the other aspect i want to look at is something very strange that struck me because of something i read, the history of leadership. something we don't think about what we really decided we needed to create leaders from the masses about the beginning of the last century. if you think about history that's about time monarchies and dictators and other things were beginning to fade from most of the world certainly not everywhere but about the beginning of the 20th century we realize if you are democratic and have representative government if everybody will be given a fair chance and you can rise in the ranks and obviously you have to figure out a way to train and. it's not bloodline, it's not a class of eletes so what did we do about that? clearly you could look at business and industry, you could look at military and other large institutions and their approach and the approach was interesting. in the beginning of the century, we felt if you build a good character to build a good leader. if you look at the treating early on you would see that it

was character building to build leaders. was the boy scouts, queen and obedient. i remember when i first joined the military i got a card the title of the traits of a good leader. i had to memorize the streets and carry it around with me and there is a platoon sergeant that will make sure you memorize all of that or else but this idea of building good character was the first approach to leadership and there was nothing wrong with that. we'd want good people to be leaders and we found out about several decades into the century there's more to it. we began to educate leaders and we found out toward the end of the century there is a third component and maybe the most important and that is giving potential leaders experience. you look at the military and those of you the served in the military you know that every couple of years we have to pack up and moved. you have a different experience, different assignment. if you are promoted you will go to a different position and the purpose of all of that is to give you a variety and breathitt

experience to develop you for the few we are going to keep in to the senior leadership mode. business does that now to tell you in my company we have an extensive leadership program burled progressively from the leaders to the mid level leaders to the senior leaders and we rotate them around. we have rotational positions in marketing and finance where we try to give them that white bread that experience. one of the things we don't want to see is what we call tall thin people that is an anatomical criticism. it's people that come and do well and won every like an engineer and you see potential in that person that he or she could be a leader of the top level. but the state because they like what they do in one area they are so narrow leedy felt they don't get that from experience the you want across the board. so the latter part of the last century we began to emphasize this idea of experience with the rate the first problem you will

run into is how much experience can you give people? how many different jobs and moving them around and disruptive nature of doing that sort of thing we learn how to divide curiously certainly in the military we did. certainly if you haven't been in the military field exercises, computer simulations, tabletop games and actually other fields have gone into this. how can i create training environments that are not real, they are temporary but i can expose you to a variety of positions. all of this came into looking at leaders today and what i found by going to go through the things i felt were most significant about success and failure of leadership today but what i found basically is some of the streets he would think leaders should have and certainly have demonstrated in the past due to rio for today but some of them should be emphasized for me to be emphasized more and there are

certain other kinds of trades or characteristics or applications to leadership that are unique to this new century and let me talk about some of this. first i want to talk about the leader himself or herself. we've invested a lot lately in almost every field on building leaders. in the past we kind of said good people will talk to the top. there's something natural in a leader, some sort of board and to lead, get enough experiences or give him enough different positions and you will see it come to the top and it's the realization it's become more complicated and the breadth of knowledge and experience as i mentioned this is a retreat requires more than that. so you see now more investment in what's been termed leader development and almost every field and the fields are the places you don't see that to read you tend to see some of the problems. obviously the leader development

programs are done in a way to explain potential leaders to several things they might not otherwise get. one of it is mentoring. it's sort of that access to senior leaders who should have succeeded but offer their time and relationship to a young leader that helps that leader develop that is a sounding board that offers advice to provide critique if you look in the business now when we look at the young leader that mabey has something he or she needs to work on we assign a coach. there are people that have consulting agencies that do coaching and we very specifically select coaches for certain areas we want the leaders to improve on and to work on. i have a friend of mine who recently retired as the ceo, chief operating officer of the bank of new york. and i asked him 40 years in the bank business i said what is the biggest time you've seen from the time you came in until now. he said the biggest difference

is the amount of mentoring and coaching that i had to do as a senior leader and we demanded that our senior leaders and our young up-and-coming leaders wanted or needed so that is one aspect of the development program and others with mengin chongging within that program where you spot a young leader with a lot of potential to give the variy of experiences. the third part may be the most important part is to provide the means for that leader to reflect on who he or she is. when i taught my class at duke and when i have done leadership coaching and counseling i have a little drill i put my students through. i give them a piece of paper and i make them believe i'm going to collect the piece of paper. i have a place at the top that says name and i said to be sure you print your name very clearly so i can read it. i have a line through the center and i said there will be two questions i'm going to ask that you are going to answer. one on the top and one on the bottom.

the first question you have 15 minutes to answer it, who are you and of course students will get you like another weird professor in the room, who are you, how am i going to answer and i don't take any questions, tell me who you are and of course they right away and diligently tried to write and they are. at the end of that i stopped and i said okay before we get into the second question i want to tell you i am not going to collect the papers. i'm not going to call on you to get up and see what your interest. that question of who you are could have been answered in many different ways. there is no right or wrong we will talk about that. now he will answer the second question that the law bottom half of the paper, we my and your answer to this question to yourself and the diligently right and at the end on ask them to think about what they wrote on the top of that paper when they thought i was going to collect and what they wrote in the bottom of their honest to themselves as to who they were and we get into discussing in the class the ways you could answer. you could describe yourself by

your profession, set of values, family, interests in many ways but what does it say about you and is there a difference in the top when you may be selling yourself? is that your reza may? and what was at the bottom of your being honest about yourself. but these are the sorts of things that allow individuals to understand themselves better. certainly many in the military and certainly in businesses and other areas we get personality tests. myers briggs and others predict the purpose is for the individual to understand who they are. what our limitations, what are my strengths? how do i act in given circumstances? how do i think, what are my values? and i think that you see in a successful leaders today a much greater sense of reflection and appreciation and a way of constantly improving themselves that they seek continued education. the ability to modify and improve and develop their

leadership style. in the military we have all of our young leaders officers and ceos right a philosophy of command and now in businesses and schools where we teach leadership we have the right a philosophy of leadership and we encourage them to develop their own philosophy. this is a sort of rubber stamp or template everybody gets but what is it that you want to become? what are the leadership traits, the values how do you want to run an organization? how do you want people to feel about you? and when you write that as i used to tell young officers and those i've worked with at universities when you write that go back and look at at least once a year or more. have you lived up to it? could you have done better? and get feedback. again, part of the leader development programs as feedback. feedback is tough because when it is critical it is tough to take the in the mentoring comes in. you have to have a sort of safe way to receive that criticism.

someone you trust, someone that mrs. alisa is this isn't fourscore were greeted this is for you and where that person feels comfortable in expressing i haven't done this that will i need to improve in this area. the first thing i would mention are the traits of the leaders succeeding and maybe the need for those that are not is this sense of concentrating on being a better leader and proving to yourself and being part of a sort of development program that continues our education and development. the second thing is the realization, the chapter i have in the book called who do we leave. very few leadership books about those we need and all are leading people. an organization made up of people. today that's much more difficult for a number of reasons the land are much more diverse and different. there is obviously diversity that we understand what i call orders of the diversity,

ethnicity, race, place abortion, sexual orientation, you take it there's a whole bunch of things that you can see that make us different and more and more a different group of the lead are entering every field of endeavor and so that leader now has to be sure they can connect and communicate to each person the lead who may come from a remarkably different background. besides that horizontal diversity there is what i call a vertical diversity. i'm still in the work force. i'm 66-years-old, going on 67 which tells you something because i always thought you retired at 65. but you don't anymore. we are healthier, better, poor, as we have to work longer and if you work longer the number of generations in a given organization is greater. i'm from the silent generation, pre-baby boomer.

we were born before the baby boomers. then you have the baby boomers and generation x. -- generation y., the millennials generation and another generation about the new silent generation about to enter the workforce or organizations so we have about six generations in the workforce. they were named because they were exceptionally different. you come from my generation and you are the son or daughter of the pressure their parents and they taught you about security, financial security, job security if you are a young person today maybe not so much, you are willing to take risks or moved and this manifests itself in many different ways and i mentioned in the book an incident of some 1i know who works for a major major fund company and she was tasked with coming up with the awards and incentives program for the company. so he decided he would pull all of the employees to say what do you want? if you do a good job and we are going to recognize you in this company what is it you want?

what he found is the older generation said put it in my paycheck and the younger generation's i want a picture with a boss, certificate shaking hands, i want recognition which was even more important. where you could count on those of our employees settled and were not ready to move, wanted the job security and believe me i know this from being in the business world the last ten years you are liable to find some young person come in and say i'm out of here. i'm not moving. what did we do wrong? we didn't do anything wrong. i think i'm going to try the west coast or the east coast. we would have never heard that from older employees who sought security so the approaches are different. so you lookit this diversity out there that comes in different forms and shapes and now a leader has to touch every of those people. has to communicate with them in a way that is different. this first struck me in a job i got right after retirement and i looked all side of my hallway at all the people in the different

cubicles and offices and i will tell you it looked like the united nations or the scene from star wars, it was so different out there and it struck me you have to be there, the person for all seasons have to be there and touch of these people. the third thing i think is important today and 1i think it will resonate with you is the importance of the values, ethics, character, moral behavior. there have been so many failures in this area probably a lot of reasons. one is one of the much greater scrutiny. right now the media, inspectors, the ability to see everything that goes on to get into the walls of an organization, there is much more scrutiny. there may be more to it than that. i would hope we are not losing our sense of values and ethics. what i find now is companies are beginning to realize organizations, institutions that a good ethical behavior comes from a code of conduct, good

sense of doing things not just legally, that's the minimum but ethically and morally was good business and the demand and the anchor from the customers and the people that want this and are appalled by what they see now are making this important. i sit on a number of boards of directors and i have since i retired each board of directors of a governance committee, ethics committee that is responsible for insuring this happens and this has become important to be a success in business. there are only three ways people get canned with their leaders. one is they are incompetent, they can't get the job done. the other is the misbehave personally and fifth third is somehow they don't treat their people well. if you think about it, everybody we have fired or has had to quit under pressure or is gone is because they couldn't get the job done, they lacked the sense

of personal behavior and accountability that was expected of them or in some way they mistreated the people that they are responsible for. those are the three reasons why people fail in a leadership position of responsibility. i notice in the new leaders today they think differently. they now have to deal -- as i said the beginning of the stock -- was complicated and complex issues and problems. the world exploded around them. you get a problem or an issue every five seconds it's delivered to your doorstep. and by the time the problems, to the top they are not easy because they are solved by the leaders below you. how're you dissect an issue or a problem. now in our universities and in the military we are actually teaching how to think. we break it down into three areas, critical thinking which is the ability to analyze a problem, of breaking down into its parts. and then put it back together, synthesize it in a way that is

useful that allows you to approach it. systems thinking which allows you to look at the issue or the problem and how it fits over all and everything else that's going on in a very complex system more systems and then finally, creative thinking. how to think creatively about solutions for resolutions to the problems. i was in iraq november a year ago and i was there at the request of general odierno and ambassador crocker. we were doing an assessment, objective acidifies on their plans for how they were going to operate in the turnover. while i was calling about to the different cities and towns and military organizations and other government organizations, iraqi ministries i can across something that struck me more than anything else as i was sitting in general odierno's headquarters i told him i can close my eyes and listen to these briefs and i wouldn't know i was in the military headquarters. i said to monitor the policy and open up the recreational

swimming pools. you have these groups that connect to the tribes to hear their issues and concerns to work with resolving their disputes. there were very few military things they had down pat. it was all of these things dealing with the economy and the social structure and the political structure in iraq, any kind of smile is a general petraeus start of all that. dave petraeus would say if we could do the military security peace if nobody else is improving a lot of the iraqi people if we are not turn this around or demonstrating how and then he took it upon himself to do that. creatively getting into things that i believe along with a surge of the troops that get all the attention may be more importantly began to turn things around. that ability to see outside your normal paradigm or box that you operate in and that kind of creative thinking and open mindedness i think is extremely valuable e where you see the exception to the rule today.

especially in industries and places where the enormous failure or mediocrity. the other part is how decisions are made. you know, we now oregon training leaders how to make decisions, how to cut analytical process and work it into the ability to arrive at the right decision. to find the problem and get it done. there are three kinds of decision makers in my view. the first -- these are good decisionmakers -- the first is the analytical decision maker who needs time, works hard at breaking the system, analyzing the parts and putting them back together leading to the right decision. the second is the recognition decision maker. that leader has been around long enough, has had a lot of success and experience it can be seen begin to see patterns to read the third one is the intuitive decision maker that is developed and seems to have almost a sixth sense that can make these calls right off the bat. when i talk to my students about

this i talk in terms of quarterbacks in the nfl. the rookie who just drafted that's got a clipboard and headphones, that is the analytical decision maker. he's learning how to analyze. he's listening to the assistant coaches and plotting a free play and the quarterback listens to the discussion with the coach. the starting quarterback is a recognition decision maker. he has been around. he's now a starter. he can walk out on the field every day begins with a very quickly. he can sense the momentum in the game. he does things because he sees patterns and then third, joe montana, dan marino, a couple of the italian kids from pennsylvania. they are the hall of famers, the intuitive decision makers. they've developed that skill was this something in that they possess they can see it and sends it in a way that no one else can and maybe they can't quite be coached to that level would bring it about. another important factor is a lost trade for art.

the guilty to think strategically. one of the greatest crisis on here is where are the marcion's tv commercials, george marshall. you think about the end of the cold war -- i mean the end of world war ii, the beginning of the cold war, harry truman, george marshall, arthur vandenberg, republicans and democrats, different views of things decided we are entering a new phase. we've just come from this huge success. we were the victors of a major superpower if not the only one at that time and yet they foresaw the future of a different world and in need to operate differently. they did things that in our history up to that point and since then were truly remarkable. first of all, republican congress, democratic administration working together which is phenomenal if we think about it today. secondly, they've reorganized government. 1947 national security act, the last time we had a major reorganization of government they joined nato, created it. george washington, thomas jefferson had to be rolling

over. we joined the entangling alliance in europe that created the world bank's, the national security council, structures and organizations facing the new world along with kennon and others, they created a strategic view of how we had to deal with threats that would come out from communism and elsewhere committee chairman sam containment. that doesn't happen anymore. we don't have this future orientation. if you want to make a lot of money go into the business of being a strategic consultant helping companies, organizations to fund their strategies. this art is lost. i have a personal pherae why because if you look at the young people who see they are doing two things, communicating in receiving information. there is no processing that goes on. they are constantly on their cell phone, blackberrys, at the computer and constantly receiving a flood of information and communicating with their pals. is any processing going on? the mentality now seeping

through the generations and there is so much information to be processed, so much communication that goes on. how are you going to take the time to stop and think and say where and why? where am i headed? where do i want to be in ten years and how am i going to get their? it is amazing how many organizations and businesses just operating today. and they don't have the future orientation the eastern half. another part of successful leadership is mastering the organizations. the old bureaucratic organization that has survived to this day particularly in government is so outdated, so bureaucratic, so bloated they could be left in the dust. when you look at an organization that is a block to a diagram, blocked the top of the boss, two blocks of the bottom, sub boss and a christmas tree. and the organization doesn't work anymore. if you see successful companies,

flat income stream winds, the web organizations, networks, they are structured much differently. the of multiple lines of authority and communication and de murf and change when the environment and set. good to the generations like mine we don't like change. we don't know who the boss is comically in line of command. just doesn't happen anywhere anymore. in the course of writing this book i ran into an individual that was on the board of a software company up-and-coming doing very successful run by a very -- bunch of young people. he said their organization was in a large factory, an old warehouse. no partitions, no walls. all of their furniture was on wheels. the desks, the filing cabinets and everyday the kim gandy decided how they should structure for the current contract, the current mission, what ever and they loved it. the move command and adjusted and turned things into reporting structures that were different from the day before the week

before. you do that to my generation and we kind of have sparks coming out of four years. we don't like that kind of change but look at our own government, this bloated bureaucracies it is an arcane piece of structure that is probably a century of the to be put to deal with problems and the speed and necessity for getting things done to adjust in an environment we have out there. it is the speed and this is brought by technology. you know all of us now have to carry around something like this. i've got to have them. i don't ever use them. my company gives them to me and then they get pissed off because of answer which checks back. i fly out here and i go to the gate and give your body is banging away on some piece of electronic hardware were talking into it and the people that scare me in the beginning realize this thing in the re-ride felt there were 90

people. when they get on their plan to give you the instructions or they have a piece in the magazine you're supposed to go on and which mode i don't know better than when the plan to the plans everybody copps these things out and talks. more people know we landed in the new pearl harbor was attacked. laughter, and i've got to admit i take my not to pretend like i am talking to somebody. somebody cares about me land in tuscon, too. [laughter] but the u.s. today these are people that operate with this stuff. it doesn't matter whether it is good or bad, it is reality. i left command, u.s. central command ten years ago i had forces in hawaii the west coast of the united states, east coast of the united states all the way over to the persian gulf in pakistan. when i had to communicate to them we go on these video teleconferencing and you lost

that sort of personal touch i don't know which time soon have the people were in or if they were awake and we are trying to run a large military organization over that span of time and space. and all of the electronic assistance and aid to do that which make everything moved faster. we are fighting a bunch of guys that live in caves that have throwaway cell phones and operate off the internet and can maximize their use of these things. the speed is demanded to make the decisions, and less problems is greater. the environment we are in as i said at the beginning has changed and has grown. i was talking to a group of people there were food distributed from the midwest and united states and i talked about how the environment has changed to read every book is well as expanding. you don't do anything now whether it is your private life or business or occupation in a small contained piece of

geography. and after i had described all this i had an individual come up to me who had in inherited the food distribution company from the father who had inherited from their father. he said you know, when i first took over this company you could draw a circle around parts of three states in the middle of the united states that was my world, my business world, my suppliers and the streeters, customers, all right there. he said today i get food supplied from all over the world. i have customers all over the world. he said if you go on-line to place an order with my company, i have an outfit that is in bangalore india the processes that sort of thing. all of a sudden hismelt makes them wary about a drought in the world, the political secretion in the world, that the economy somewhere in the world, vast communications system. he exploded like we all are, globalization, the borders are coming down, tom friedman says louis flout, the planet is

shrinking. it is a complicated world out there. very complicated. nothing like it used to be. some small thing that happens in the middle of a remote part of the world that we never even heard of impacts us directly. somebody burns down the rainforest, somebody gross leaves or poppies, institutions fail and they become an institution for extremists, somebody decides i can't begin here i've hecky my back and coming to your neighborhood whether you like it or not. everything in the world is important. you can't isolate yourself and if you don't understand the world you live and you have a big problem. the successful leaders today are also great communicators. remember when robert perrin's and those real leaders face as you might see in the newspaper or a picture of them you didn't see them every day up front they stayed in some office behind the scenes. now who do you see coming to see the ceo of to leota coming across the pond to sit in front

of the congress you see the automobile makers in the united states our life to sit in front of our congress. you see when something goes wrong always seven it is the seal chairman of the board. you are communicating. you want to see the leadership out there it's not only external communication is internal communication. you have to be the face of the organization, the personality of the organization. leaders today cannot isolate themselves, they can't leave from behind. it has to be up front leadership. and you have to be able now and skilled enough to communicate with the organization is, what it intends to do, who you are and that has to work inside and outside. and finally every organization in this very complicated world, very complex world will face a crisis and or change and i put them together because changes

like crisis and you have to be able to feed through crisis. need through change where leaders fail as the commission's rate with their own employees, they feel sorry for themselves or they try to cover it up for the delay getting all of the information. i can give you a list of things they will do wrong when they get smacked with a crisis or need to change drastically they will tell them what is wrong, give them the list and they will still do it that way. they still don't learn. when crisis hits that's probably the most significant time a leader will manifest his or her ability to truly lead. how do we get through this? this is when everybody is looking at you. i have one question that i ask anybody i'm talking about leadership, students or young officers, but better. what is the one most important leadership characteristics or treat them you want your leader

and this is an interesting question because if the company or the organization or the unit is doing well the answer is that come back are from students that haven't had a lot of experience and organizations and leadership. it will come back i want a leader that cares about its people, i want a leader that is charismatic and approachable and those are all well and good. it's strange, the first time i ask that question of a bunch of corporals and sergeants coming out of the vietnam and i said what did you want from your lieutenant officer was the single most important trait and those young marine said to me i want them to know his stuff and they didn't say stuff, marines don't say that i use it here. i want them to know his stuff. almost every one of them in the end it is competency. i want you to be a good person and have values and treat people well. but the heart and soul of leadership as you are competent, you know your stuff. i can get you through this

crisis. i can lead this company or unit to success and accomplish the mission. i can bring you back home and make this successful, and we have too many leaders that we either select or arrive at a position that don't possess that competence and that confidence today regardless of whatever field you are in is extremely difficult to achieve because virtually every organization, institution, every aspect of our society has become much more complicated, complex, difficult to leave and we can invest in leaders without the experience, knowledge, the mystery of performance to be able to come in and take the organization, that part of the society we count on to where we want to be. thank you for your attention and i would be glad to take any questions and answers. and again, thank you for coming. [applause]

>> general zinni, a vietnam veteran. i am a catastrophic priority one total permanent disabled vietnam veteran former marine, personal bodyguard for lyndon johnson. the issue i have that i wish to bring forward in this moment to you that i find to be the greatest challenge at the moral issue in our country is that for over two years the average of 20 veterans from this war commit suicide because they cannot take the degradation of what happens to them when they go there and come home and see that this connect -- disconnect so the question i posed to you is what level of leadership would you oppose in this country that could assist these people because suicide in my understanding is just about one of the greatest things that a person can ever commit.

>> thank you. this has become an alarming problem and it's growing and frankly the service is in the military that have invested a lot in trying to understand and prevent are not as successful as they would like to be. the numbers have not gone down in the way we would like. i think there are several reasons why that has happened. one of the reasons is they are just now beginning within the last maybe decade or so to acknowledge these problems and if you remember back into the war to area world war i year of my father was a world war i veteran and cousins in the world war ii, this was battle shock or something either temporary or looked at as some flogged in the human being to get it wasn't looked at as a medical issue or problem. only until recently did we acknowledge that the strain, the

mental strain that combat puts on individuals is so great that they could cause problems that need treatment and attention just as physical injury does. that is the first problem to read the second problem i think this has continued to grow and media really we began to see at and a major way in vietnam and others as we have different kind of war today. this is not the good war. this is not the greatest generation's war where we were attacked and was clearly as i know from arizona and then here pearl harbor, it was the unconditional surrender, everything went exactly like it was supposed to go in our image of how we take up arms and defend ourselves and then in the and reached down to the defeated and the germans and the japanese and rebuild a society probably where it's never been. anything about that was novlene good and turned out in a way obviously there may have been

parts not down on the ground in a general sense it did. and ever since then we are trying to repeat that and the kind of conflicts we find ourselves and whether it is a phenom, i spent two tours there as bruce mengin, whether it is afghanistan, somalia, the son of the same kind of conflicts. in the war in vietnam war soldiers did not come home to gross appreciate of them and gave up their seats on airplanes. we couldn't wear our uniforms by the way as those of you their fee on veterans' that might remember. we learned a lesson not to term and high war or antiparticular war to and how military that happened once to our shame i think in culture and we go out of our way not to let that happen but we have to remember the kind of conflicts today put a greater strain. i sat at a table at and east and next to a man that had received

the medal of honor and world war ii and the extraordinary horrors this individual demonstrated as a young officer was beyond belief. and in the course of the disruption, the speakers, they were talking about somalia, the imam and these other wars that came in his time. he said i couldn't do that to really couldn't do what you did, meaning the young people out there in the audience. i said you've got to be kidding me, metal donner recipient, you are legendary. he said you know i know the enemy was and where the front lines were, i knew when we were going to fight and stop and he said to know that you don't know the individual was the enemy and you don't know if there was a rear area or frontline you have that continuous pressure on you 24/7 of not knowing you have that unbelievable feeling when you try to do something good and noble when it backfires and when

someone doesn't appreciate what your intentions are. when somebody close themselves off, when you take a young person that is 17, 18, 19-years-old in any war and expose them to the carnage and fertility some of us in this room have seen, that goes against everything that a young mind is experienced and the difference between right and wrong and what should or shouldn't be what is morally correct and incorrect all begins to blur and to piece together an understanding and i think only now are we beginning to recognize this and we're just at the embryonic stages of understanding how to treat and prevent its. we put our young soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines under tremendous pressure and expose them to things that are unbelievable, things that they could never imagine in their young lives they would see and it to try to take them from that environment within hours fly them right back and put them back into civilization come into

a family coming into the, quote, normal life, that is tough for an 18, 19, 20-years-old to put all together on some cases. i think we are beginning to make the right approach is an understanding and appreciating first of all these issues need to be dealt with in the chain of command, the leadership. this is not as a doctor psychiatrist problem. this is a beavers problem. they have to see these leaders understand. the leaders want them to do well. the leaders appreciate what you're going for because in the past it would admit to something like this was on soldierly. we've at least to get that down now maybe not all cases but we have recognized this is as much of a problem as if you have a physical injury but we have a long way to go.

>> you posed one question of what is the individual act that may be the most important in management and toward success of an organization. i've heard in my entire life practically i came up with the idea that there is one overwhelming item and interestingly enough i have not heard that word from you and this word is stress unless the people working for you can trust you you will not be able to get through even if you have great ideas. if the people working, you don't trust each other, the organizations won't work. and if your boss doesn't trust you if you are doomed in that organization. so i think the trust is probably the most important. i would like to hear your views

on that. >> thank you. that is an excellent point. my question what the hell do you build trust? competence, proper behavior and the right way to treat your people. that builds trust and i think i said those were the three things people failing in the leadership. if you accomplish them but it begins with competence. i'm not going to trust somebody who is not competent. that person may be the nicest person in the world, maybe the most honorable person in the world. but you know the old singing, good old dog but can't hunt so number 1i want that person to know what he or she is still doing because the success of an organization, my personal success, the accomplishment of the mission is going to be based on that person's confidence and competence. trust is given if you permit and i should have used the word, i take your point but i think the things i hope the things i would mention, competence, moral and

ethical behavior, doing the right thing and treating your people well are the three ways to earn that trust. >> general zinni, speaking to your point of organization adapting to the present reality perhaps terrorist itself owns, whatever but in terms of roman history where the roman army switched from conventional army, fighting army and conventional battle to doing border war type of controls and change its capabilities do you perceive a danger of if the u.s. army for example reorganizes to optimize their structure towards terrorists that we would lose the ability to fight a

conventional war with tanks and bombers. >> and what you are hitting on some of the most significant problems that the military faces because of the budget constraints and where you invest in issues of how you get resources. what kind of military should we have now. one of the things i've always said is you never fight the war that you prepare for. you know why because you are prepared to fight because nobody wants to take you on so always -- the corollary to that is always prepare for the war you don't want to fight. when we didn't want to fight the soviets in the folded gap and exchange nuclear weapons we prepared ourselves, we made statements of policies like first use, we created a tremendous arsenal all of which is my god what's happening but it featured the bad guy. the purpose was deterrence and containment so no one wanted to get into that.

we have now in the military is they are facing a decision and you use the term optimizing. you are going to optimize at one end and you are going to hedge at the other end. so where do you optimize where you hedge. if you optimize and invest in the conventional because you want to ensure you don't have to fight it or of the capability to defer an adventure by potential enemies it is going to leave you not as prepared at the other end and so you are going to be doomed to fight those kind of war. if you go back to the cold war the way our enemies communists wanted to engage us was through surrogates come through insurgencies and so they wanted to make sure those never blossomed into a confrontation that could lead to something bigger between china, the soviet union and us in the west so we fought them in vietnam and latin and south america and other places and we fought them through surrogates and on our own. so the enemies we face today are

going to look at where we are best or least prepared and so that becomes a tough decision. you will not invest tremendous amounts of resources in something that may be less an existential threat to your very existence. so, i would predict that you will probably see some major programs cut. we've just seen the f-22 was cut, or any future commission was cut but we will have enough advantage in these areas to make sure no one gets to adventuresome. we have to be careful of the risk because if you cut your head bandaged to closely there could be a surprise in the enemy that jumps a generation to the head and we will handle these other kind of conflicts, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism as best we can within the context of that kind of military. that isn't to say we won't to train organized and equipped to

meet that but the priorities will be to the larger and more dangerous potential the existential threats i think in the long run. but what you have hit on is exactly what the secretary defense, the chairman of the joint chiefs, service chiefs of the combatant commanders have to face. where do you optimize and where do you hedge? there's not enough in terms of resources we know to be all things to all people on both areas. >> i wanted to ask a question based on your experience to rise to high command in the military and boards of directors for ten years about the crisis in american business leadership. we have the example of ceos paid 20 times what people on the floor are paid due to compensation committees and boards of directors. we have the in rahm case, the smartest men in the room like a

large company write off a cliff, and of course we have our current banking crisis where the same thing happened. did you learn anything in the military that would help american business? >> certainly and i can speak for the companies i've been responsible for. the first thing, let me take as individually. leadership compensation. i don't think that anybody should be especially when it comes to the area of bonuses and other things that go on top of a salary of those things should not be given unless not only are they personally earned but the organization and the company has met its goals. in other words you could say here is tony zinni, the president of xyz company. we are we to give him and 80% bonus to this amount. when the company hasn't met its members it hasn't met its top line or bottomline. the leader should not be

compensated in a different proportion to the success of the organization. to me that is a definition of leadership and a lot of the excuses that you hear now are that while he did a great job, the company didn't do so well because of other factors. it doesn't matter because again going to your point the person on the floor is going to fail. there will be layoffs, salary cuts, maybe not bonus is paid or raises so the top and the bottom by the boards of directors, by the stockholders have to be held accountable in the same proportion and i agree with you the extraordinary amount of salaries and bonuses and other awards not rated based on the performance of the companies have gotten out of sight. the second thing which is a reality we have to face is necessary is we need more regulation. we need more inspection, we need more regulatory organizations. we need securities exchange