BATTLE CREEK, Mich. –
Editor's Note: March is National Reading Month. Everyday reading increases knowledge and develops personal and professional skills. Throughout the month, the DLA Disposition Services Pathways to Career Excellence program participants are sharing insights from books* they recently finished.
*No official Department of Defense endorsement implied
Set against the backdrop of New Orleans from the late 1950s, to as recently as 2010, Marc Morial’s “The Gumbo Coalition: Ten Leadership Lessons to Help You Inspire, Unite, and Achieve” weaves in stories from Morial’s life to give readers a glimpse into how he became a successful leader.
Morial, whose extensive resume includes serving as a lawyer, Louisiana State Senator, mayor of New Orleans, and president of the National Urban League, adopted the term “gumbo coalition” to describe how diverse teams work together better.
Using gumbo as a metaphor, Morial describes how each distinct part of a team work together to make the product the best it can be, like the roux, brown base, onions, celery, and other ingredients make gumbo the iconic dish that people know.
His 10 leadership lessons include some fantastic advice for current and aspiring leaders. For instance, the lesson, “With one canoe, we can avoid the waterfall,” means buildling consensus, or working together in one canoe, can help the entire group reach their goals.
In this lesson, Morial gave the example of New Orleans businesses placing capital bond issues on the ballot to be voted on. Each business would compete to have their request for city funds be selected above others, resulting in small businesses being left behind. Morial, in his role as mayor, helped create a large bond that combined all of their interests together that would benefit the city as a whole, which received nearly unanimous support and affirmative votes from the community.
Building consensus within a team is one of the most important aspects a leader can focus, as anyone who has worked on a team that each have their own interests in mind knows. When the group as a whole succeeds, every individual within it succeeds.
My personal favorite lesson was understanding that leaders need to maintain a certain balance between strength and compassion within their leadership in order to be effective.
According to Morial, “A leader who operates out of strength, but lacks compassion, becomes a dictator…Compassionate leaders who lack the strength to get things done…[and] make difficult decisions stay stuck in their feelings, never moving forward.”
Morial discusses what was lacking in the response to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. After the end of his term as mayor, he was serving as the president of the National Urban League and criticized the lack of leadership action, which left many stranded survivors without food or water for days in the emergency location in the city. I believe that the importance of this lesson speaks for itself, especially given the struggles of the past few years.
“The Gumbo Coalition” is such a relevant book to today’s leader, with so much recent historical context brought into it, and is written by a known effective leader. His 10 leadership lessons are all explained thoroughly with mutiple examples from Morial’s own life and major events in the history of the United States. I would definitely recommend “The Gumbo Coalition” for great leadership advice and for the entertaining stories.
This book is available through LMS/Skillsoft for DLA associates.