Thursday, July 09, 2009

Career Advice from Colin Powell

Fortune magazine current issue has a feature in which a number of prominent people share the best advice they have ever received. General Colin Powell offers this bit of wisdom pertaining to your career:

“You won’t become a general unless you become a good first lieutenant.”

– Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general, in the Best Advice issue of Fortune, now on newsstands. This “barracks wisdom,” Powell says, was passed down from the old reserve captains to the young infantry officers at Fort Benning in the form of a fable: A young officer asked a general what it took to earn that rank. The general told him he’d have to have moral and physical courage, never show fatigue or fear, and always be the leader. The young officer thanked him and said, “So, is this how I become a general?” The captain answered, “No, that’s how you become a first lieutenant, and then you keep doing it over and over and over.”

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