My Favorite Leadership Lesson From Captain Kirk

I remember when my favorite line from 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan clicked into place. Twenty-four years ago, a young Captain sitting in my office at Kunsan Air Base in Korea, I received a mildly desperate phone call from my squadron commander. He had convinced another squadron commander to provide boxed lunches for our cops during an upcoming exercise. A fresh boxed lunch beat the alternative of Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MREs) any day of the week.

As he was extracting the promise, the other commander asked for a favor: could we print a PowerPoint presentation for him in color? In the next couple of hours?

I supervised resources and training for the unit, which meant budget, supply, vehicles, weapons, ammo, all of the things needed for a few hundred defenders to secure an airbase. In those days few units had color printers, but we had one in our training section, and my boss knew this, so I told him I’d get it done. I phoned the training building, but they had gone to lunch and the deadline loomed. Under the gun, I tried a radical plan. I used the system as designed.

I drove across the base to my squadron headquarters and retrieved the vital floppy disk. Then I valiantly walked twenty whole yards, literally across a narrow street, to the audio-visual services desk at the communications squadron. “Can ya’ll print this for me?” I asked.

The airman frowned, worried that he wouldn’t provide good customer service. “You will need to fill out this form, and I won’t be able to get to it for a half hour.” Deal.

That’s when Captain Kirk’s words came back to me:

The Wrath of Khan is widely regarded as one of the best Star Trek movies, chock full of iconic scenes and lines.

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