General Peter Cosgrove reflects on ethical leadership

General Cosgrove spoke at the annual Edmund Rice Business Ethics Initiative Breakfast at Lidcombe. Before a capacity audience, General Cosgrove, ex-chief of the Australian Defence Forces and leader of the INTERFET which helped East Timor begin its climb into independence, began his reflections by remarking that for him, ethics is not a debating point, some hypothetical considerations but an every day practical matter. While many leaders must focus on achieving their mission every day, they must also do the right thing. The pressures of producing results can be so great that a leader is constantly tempted to cut corners. While all people fail to resist these temptations in large ways and small, no-one can hold themselves up as a paragon of virtue, the important decision is never to give-up on the challenge of doing the right thing, of responding to the demands of ethics.

After a long career in the Armed Forces, General Cosgrove values very highly the trust of those men and women he has served with and commanded. People in any organisation are interested in what sort of person their leaders are, and they watch them carefully and very often are shrewd judges of character. After all, so much is “on the line” for them, and they want to have confidence that when their leader asks them to do some difficult job, asks some sacrifice of them, that the request is made responsibly. For a leader, this means that not only do decisions have to made with integrity but they need to made knowing that others are looking for models for their own sense of doing their jobs with integrity.

Integrity

Integrity is concerned with one's own code of behaviour and while is may be elastic in size it is immutable in essence; it is what makes someone trustworthy to others. In 1969/70, when General Cosgrove was a mere lieutenant on a tour of duty in Vietnam, he and all those carrying loaded weapons knew very well that they could only be used in a very deliberate way according to the rules of engagement, and never accidentally, negligently or frivolously. Improper use was severely fined. At one point in the tour, apart from the corporal and the machine-gunner, the remainder of the platoon were very young and inexperienced. Nevertheless, the platoon needed a scout, which was dangerous job, being most likely the person any enemy might see. Lieutenant Cosgrove decided he should to the job, despite the protests of the corporal. After some time, he grew tired and seeing a rustle in the brush nearby he fired his weapon and killed a bush turkey that he thought might have been an enemy soldier. He judged it to by unauthorised fire, despite the objections of the men, and paid the fine. For Peter Cosgrove it was a matter of integrity: a rule of the organisation has to be a rule for all within it.

Courage

There are many difficult calls and to fail to make one because it is difficult is an ethical failure. Those who go after the bigger jobs are ambitious, they see themselves as world-beaters and they really need to think like that. But often there comes a point where, in one's opinion, a given person cannot do the next bigger job. In this situation, Gen. Cosgrove thinks that it is important ethically to say “I don't think you can do this job.” Some managers do not, however, preferring the silent message to be sent by the fact that promotion does not come their way any more. Both approaches have negative consequences. Putting the negative judgement on the table represents a serious blow to the person's self-esteem, causes very significant distress to that person and his or her family, but the silent approach, that so easily leaves a person in a stagnant world of never really knowing and continuing to hope for something that probably will never happen. This can be so much more damaging in the long term. Making the right decision requires courage in this sense: it requires facing the distress that such a decision can cause with them and not avoiding it for you own sake.

Responsibility

Bearing responsibility is both dreadful and delicious. Delicious because it is so much about being alive but one becomes aware of the whole complexity of responsibility, not just the fame and glory. It is also ephemeral: the day comes when one is no longer responsible but one continues to feel for those people. In 1970, the then Lieutenant Cosgrove, his tour of duty completed, handed over his platoon to another officer, a young fresh officer who was boisterous and confident. The Lieutenant, by contrast, felt old: watching someone else shoulder the responsibility, feeling the delicious sense that he had done it well, but also the worry about whether all of them would be alright.

Paradoxically, responsibility is also never-ending. Gen. Cosgrove remembers vividly 13^th October, 2003 when the news of the Bali bombing arrived. The bombing was an attack against tourism in Bali which included Australians and therefore part of his responsibility. The ADF needed to respond ethically and quickly to offer relief to the victims' distress and help with the investigation. There was no question about knock-off time, that one's job finishes at 5:00pm and after that it is no longer one's problem.

Responsibility is boundless. When that Sea King helicopter crashed, Gen. Cosgrove was very aware that he had ordered that mission. He did not even think to ask, “By the way, are all those helicopters in good shape?” as the wisdom of hindsight might suggest.

In situations like this, it makes considerable demands on one's integrity. Gen. Cosgrove's son Phillip is an officer in the Infantry and went to Iraq in due course. He was injured in a bomb blast in Baghdad. Although Gen. Cosgrove felt the anguish of any parent in that situation, the nature of his responsibility meant that he could not draw a boundary around his son to protect him.

Abu Ghraid, the infamous prison in Baghdad, is an extreme example. Although no Australian was involved in mistreating any prisoner, it became clear that the US and by association, Australia “dropped the ball” here by not being sufficiently vigilant to these sorts of abuses simply because they were not expecting it. It took too long to respond and that gave grounds for the perception that they did not care. That was not the case, rather it was a problem of being unwitting, which ethically has much wider implications: prevention is better than cure.

During the 173 day INTERFET mission in East Timor, the central goal of the mission was to create a safe and secure country day in, day out. It was, as Gen. Cosgrove describes it, an attempt to create the East Timorese “ground-hog day”: constantly reproducing the conditions for safety and security. He recounted that one day after lunch, in Dili, he walked out of the building and saw an INTERFET truck with the tarpaulin tightly lashed down, obscuring the view of what it contained. When the driver approached, the General, as they so often do, poke his nose in to find out what was under the tarp. The driver, red-faced, revealed a large stack of rations. “Was this black-marketeering?” The driver immediately began to explain that these were left-over rations, that they were being thrown out. It still would have been black-marketeering. “It is going to the sisters' orphanage on the outskirts of town.”, explained the driver. “Don't let me keep you.”, replied the General. Sometimes it can be ethically wrong not to take the responsibility for bending the rules.

Inner reserves

Gen. Cosgrove reflected that the issue of ethics is not about being perfect. Everyone fails. The important thing is to recover and to return to strive to act well. When he was named Defence Chief, it was a moment of great pride for him, a boy from Paddo. But he was also convinced that he had what it took, even though the prospect was very tricky with all the sequels from September 11. He was very aware of his own inner core of strength that had grown from experience of responding to challenges, from the support and love of family and friends, from having continued to strive to live by the ethos of his profession and from his faith. All this had communicated to him a lively sense of the greatness and smallness of the human condition. His awareness of the omnipotence of a higher being has helped him tap into something truly great that has become a very significant support for him.

Question time

The conversation after the presentation was particularly lively. There were questions about the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam; about the ethics of Tony Blair, (who announced his retirement date in the previous 24 hours); about company Boards which seem to be concerned less and less with questions of fairness and justice and more and more solely concerned about profits; about war as a sustainable response to problems in a globalised world; about the hardest decisions and the nature of serving on company Boards.

When Gen. Cosgrove was chief of the Australian Defence Forces, he was very conscious that he was Army and knew relatively little about maritime or air forces. He could not be an expert in everything and needs considerable help from others in order to do his job well. When he started serving on boards in the business sector, it certainly represented a steep learning curve for him: just getting his head around balance sheets! But he really appreciates how well complex teams can work together with complex tasks in ways that require appreciation for each member of the group and the trust necessary to achieve the mission.

Often enough, there is little regard for the responsibility and care behind the scenes especially in the way that some sectors of the press can produced shallof frivolous reports. The recent criticism of way that the QANTAS board has handled the takeover bid is such an example.

The most important consideration for Gen. Cosgrove was never to ask anyone to make a sacrifice of any type that he had not honestly thought about and considered worth it. It would not be ethical to ask people to make significant, sometimes great sacrifices frivolously.

A report of the talk given by Gen. Cosgrove in the Edmund Rice Business Ethics Initiative in the City was reported in the Catholic Weekly.