Loved the blog post Erin. A very good conversation around this topic of leadership and "miles logged at the helm". I'm with Wally in some respect of understanding the position of this particular Green Beret...which is nothing to say of agreeing with his perspective.

I have found that often times people who have gone through a myriad of challenges in their development to becoming a leader, it can be common to react towards those who may not have had to make a journey of equal or similar difficulty with a bit of contempt. It's almost as if someone who hasn't been through the fire, as it were, isn't able to make the grade. There can be a sense of the difficult journey being somehow diluted or unnecessary. Because one person learned lessons from those challenges doesn't mean that is the only way to learn certain lessons...it just happened to be their journey.

I would venture to say that some of this contempt comes from a perspective that everyone's journey has to look the same to arrive in the same destination...many roads lead to Rome.

There are CEOs who have an MBA and there are CEOs who have little to no college and are "self made", so to speak. Each are equally effective in what they do. I think this to be a slippery slope...one in which we can begin to draw lines that limit emerging leaders and make leadership an elitist club. That's been done already and I personally am not interested in seeing it return.

Cheers,
William