4 - Leadership Style

Summary

Many attempts have been made to analyse Nelson's style of leadership. One iof the reasons why he has retained his fascination and popularity for almost 200 years is that each generation has been able to find different aspects of his approach to admire and emulate and, as a result, there is always something new to be said about him and his battles. Previous generations emphasised his courage and his devotion to duty: as his greatest nineteenthcentury biographer, A. T. Mahan, put it, ‘Wherever danger is to be faced or duty to be done, at cost to self, men will draw inspiration from the name and deeds of Nelson.’ Modern historians are more interested in his collegiate approach to command and have even claimed to find in his methods the origins of modern theories of war such as ‘Mission Command’ and ‘Manoeuvre Warfare’.

Nelson, of course, founded no school of tactical theory; nor did he write a strategic doctrine. This is not say he was not a thinker – on the contrary, he was gifted with a formidable intellect, which enabled him to analyse problems and swiftly to devise alternative solutions. However, he was essentially an instinctual leader; one who achieved his results through a natural tendency for good fellowship and trust, rather than by carefully calculated management strategies.

From the wide range of new material now available, some examples have been assembled in this section that throw light on his instinctual method. First, there are letters that demonstrate how he used simple friendliness and good fellowship to bind men to him. As noted in the Introduction (p. xiv), this book contains important new collections of letters to two of Nelson's little-known seconds. The sequence of personal notes to his immediate subordinate in the Baltic in 1801, Rear Admiral Sir Thomas Graves (65–68), provide a delightful glimpse of him at work.