Honor and leadership.

“But if it be a sin to covet honor,
I am the most offending soul alive.”
William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 4, Scene III

Honor is a puzzling word.  It is perplexing in part because it can be used as both a noun and a verb.  It can have a range of different meanings.  For example in the courtroom scene from the 1992 movie “A Few Good Men,” the judge directs Marine Colonel Nathan Jessup to call him “Your Honor” because he has earned the distinction.  The lawyer LT Daniel Caffey tells Private Harold Dawson in the same courtroom a short while later, “You don’t need a patch on your shoulder to have honor.”  Honor is first used as a noun to describe the title of a person held formally in esteem by virtue of his position and rank. It is also used to describe the accumulation of sufficient virtue so that a person engenders esteem.  It is no wonder that the word often gets relegated to general nonspecific usage; vague references that find their way onto monuments or into political speeches.

Honor is the act of being held in esteem by others, the process of becoming worthy to be held in esteem, and the resulting esteem itself.

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word “kabad” is translated “honor” but literally means to make heavy, hard, to make of substance, to be abundant or significant.  The word can be used in a negative sense when describing someone who is dull, heavy or slow.  But even in the negative sense, there is a notion that the person has substance; that the person has significance and is willing to make a hard or stubborn stand.  It implies someone who is substantial and of significance.

Many of us have spent time in the Middle East.  It is a world where things blow away.  There were wind storms where the sand on the ground and the sand in the air seemed to be a continuum.  We carried goggles to keep the grit out of our eyes.  Desert nomads like the ancient Hebrews battled the same conditions without the goggles.  As wanderers, they also had to carry everything they owned with them wherever they went.  Their clothing had to be light to keep them cool, but broad enough to shield them from the sun and sand. The skin and fabric walls of the tents they carried probably howled at times with the hot desert wind.  In general and I expect by necessity, little in their lives was weighty or of substance.

In the movie Chariots of Fire, just before Eric Liddell competed in his last race, the movie writer depicted the American track star Jackson Scholz handing Liddell a note with a verse from the Bible’s Old Testament.  The note read, “Those who honor me I will honor.” The second part of the same verse from the Bible reads, “And those who despise me will be lightly esteemed.” (1 Samuel 2:30.)  The word for honor (“kabad”  weighty, of substance) used in the first part of the passage is contrasted with its opposite in the second part: “qalal” to be slight, be swift, be trifling, be of little account, be light, like the desert world easily blown away.

There is a tension between the weighty substance of honor (the act of being held in esteem by others and the resulting esteem itself) and the personal pursuit of honor for its own sake (the process of attempting to be worthy to be held in esteem.)  The tension seems to hinge on whether we pursue honor for the purpose of social recognition or for the personal and social benefit it brings to relationships and leadership.

Honor recognized by others has substance, while the self-centered personal pursuit of honor may ultimately diminish it.  This tension is captured by Shakespeare’s play “Henry V”.  Before the Battle of Agincourt (October 25, 1415) King Henry offers to send the cowardly home to England, arguing that “the fewer men the greater share of honor,” He also says “if it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul alive” (Henry V 4.3.)  Was Henry seeking the recognition that results from honor (in this case bravery in battle) or the personal and social benefits of honor (the ability to inspire others to bravery and greatness?)

Henry’s friend Falstaff recognized the vanity in the pursuit of honor and recognition.  He mocked the lust for honor before battle in Shakespeare’s earlier play (Henry IV Part I. Act 5 Scene I,) “Well, ’tis no matter; honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on?  How then?  Can honor set-to a leg?  No. Or an arm?  No.  Or take away the grief of a wound?  No.  Honor hath no skill in surgery, then?  No.  What is honor?  A word.  What is in that word “honor”?  What is that “honor”?  Air.  A trim reckoning!  Who hath it?  He that died o’ Wednesday.  Doth he feel it?  No.  Doth he hear it?  No.  ’Tis insensible then?  Yea, to the dead.  But will it not live with the living?  No.  Why?  Detraction will not suffer it.  Therefore I’ll none of it.  Honor is a mere scutcheon.  And so ends my catechism.”

Honor pursued for personal benefit is as worthless as a scutcheon, a dusty coat of arms hanging on a wall with an obscure Latin phrase below it that often says no more of the character of a man or of the family than the frame surrounding it.

George Patton, arguably America’s most famous warrior probably knew this.  For all his accomplishments, his fame, his celebrity status, the honor he received throughout World War II as America’s “winningest” general, in true irony he died of complications from a car crash near the end of the war.  Most Americans who know of General Patton today probably remember the 1970 movie about him starring George C. Scott.

In the last scene of the movie, you hear Scott’s voiceover, “For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him.  And a slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.”

“Sic Transit Gloria.”  All glory is fleeting.  It blows away.

The personal pursuit of honor too easily becomes the pursuit of glory.  In seeking glory, we seek to be known, to be recognized, to be set apart, to be remembered.  We pad our resumes and curriculum vitae with things we have done. We covet the lime light, look for promotion, long for praise.  Honor pursued for glory is fleeting.

In the extreme, and perhaps in a uniquely Western way, honor pursued for its own sake becomes something that I seek to obtain and then defend to its absurd conclusion: with the slap of a glove across the face and pistols at sunrise. “How dare you insult my honor?”  A woman’s honor can refer to her sexual chastity, also possessed and usually seen as a shared possession by the men who “own” her: her father, brothers, uncles, and husband.  In Eastern traditions perhaps, honor is less readily owned by an individual but still remains very much the possession of the family or clan.

Honor is the act of being held in esteem by others, the process of becoming worthy to be held in esteem, and the resulting esteem itself.  Honor is fleeting and we stumble when we make our goal personal esteem or glory and skip past the process and most importantly, the impact of the process and the resulting honor on the acts and attitudes of others.  The process is all we can control.  Honor finds those to whom it is due.  It is better bestowed than pursued.

As leaders we must devote ourselves to the process.  When by attitude and action, we place others as more important than ourselves and we devote ourselves as leaders to service and the welfare of those whom we lead, we cultivate honor.

By our actions we sow the seeds of honor.  Honor is best reaped by focusing on the sowing rather than the harvest.  In the building of others we construct a greater monument to our own character and become more effective leaders than we could ever accomplish by attempting to build a monument for ourselves.

Years ago, a young professional in training left this note for his leader: “Your conduct and counsel were guiding lights – beacons of sensibility.  Your intensely bright spirit illuminated the unkempt areas of my life so that I might tidy them.  Your leadership has served as the highest standard by which I strive to achieve.  Your friendship has been a gift forever to be coveted.  To be sure, I am better now for having known you.”

Honor is the legacy we lead to those whom we have led.
There is no greater glory.

Chuck Callahan  Henry V 4.3 – Lead from the Front  https://henryv43.wordpress.com/