| SAS Experience |
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At Hierarchy of Needs Workshop, we examine the values discussed in Good to Great Leaders article to allow a leader to develop the attributes at level 5. We do this by looking back as well as looking forward. We find that King Arthur, among other legends, was a Level 5 leader and so has inspired a millennia and a half and his bequest is even found in the badge of the now famous Australian Special Air Service Regiment (SAS). John Guy (the main facilitator) served in the SAS as a forward scout in Vietnam and he shares his inspiration below. The SAS Spells a Creed for the Business Leader as a Peaceful Warrior At the centre is a Roman sword. In this case, it is the Sword Excalibur made famous in the legends of King Arthur and the knights of the Round table. King Arthur was a Roman Briton who, with his companions, faced the start of the ‘Dark Ages’ when the Roman Empire collapsed. Their answer to the predicament was to found the concept of chivalry as a cornerstone of being a ‘peaceful warrior’. With the chivalric concepts of courage and honour demonstrated and proven in one’s life, one could be dubbed a ‘gentleman’ or ‘gentle woman’. “Gentle’ in old English means to ennoble and thus to serve. As a person of courage and honour, a warrior becomes free (the wings) to dare to win John Guy Speaks on What He Learned from the Australian SAS “At 18 years of age, I had come from a back ground where a number of negative beliefs had been reinforced. For example, a head master at my school had told me that I would never go to university as I was not ‘sharp enough’. However, two years later at the age of 20, during war service as a forward scout with the SAS in Vietnam, the training and experiential exercises allowed me to be mentally and emotionally available to be selected for officer training and then to be commissioned a year later. As a result, I graduated with the Sword of Honour for exemplary conduct and outstanding performance of duty, the New Zealand Army Board Leadership Prize, the Officer Cadet School Leadership Prize, and a prestigious posting order to serve in Papua New Guinea with the Pacific Islands Regiment. Two years later I was selected to represent Australia on an officer exchange with the British Gurkhas in UK, Hong Kong, Cyprus and Nepal. Following this, I was given a scholarship by the Army to the Adelaide University where I majored in Psychology and Philosophy. So much for ‘expert’ opinions! My true teachers had been fear, rejection, and despondency. The reason that I could listen to these teachers is because of the role models and true warriors whom I met along the way. Thus the peaceful warrior is borne from the crucible of life as a result of a decision to identify meaning and or purpose, and to pursue that with courage, honour, and service. People between the age of 30 and 50 are being questioned by life daily and hourly – ‘are you ready to be a victor or are you simply going to be on an ego trip on the way to victim hood and despair?’ It is the ancient call to real Arthurian style knighthood. Today many people at all levels, for lack of direction, ignore the call and become ‘silly old fools’ or bitter old fools’. These people do not serve a company or business or family well at all.”
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