24 JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES, Volume 7, Number 3, 2013 ©2013 University of Phoenix View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com • DOI:10.1002/jls.21293 this string analogy, Eisenhower sought to teach his staf about leadership, a concept that he, and nearly all other senior military ofcers past and present, have closely associated with operational success. Whether the anecdote is true or not, the narrative refects a basic reality that has characterized the ensuing 7 decades of leadership research: Leadership often seems easier to In an oft-cited anecdote, General Dwight D. Eisenhower—in some accounts on the eve of D-Day— placed a string on a table and instructed each of his senior staf members to push the string across the table. When his staf was unable to do so, he grabbed one end of the string and pulled it smoothly across the table (Taylor & Rosenbach, 1984, p. xiii). By using LEADERSHIP AS AN IDEOGRAPH: A Rhetorical Analysis of Military Leadership Training Material PHILLIP J. HUTCHISON The current rhetorical study used McGee’s theory of ideographs to identify how cultural politics influence efforts to portray “leadership” in a military setting. Such an approach seeks to better address some of the enigmas that have complicated the understanding of military leadership—and leadership in general—for decades. McGee’s theory emphasizes that language reflects political as well as referential qualities and, in some instances, these attributes come into conflict. Acknowledging this reality in an applied setting can help address ambiguous issues that escape the net of prevailing social-science approaches to leadership inquiry. The rhetorical analysis, which examines U.S. Air Force leadership training material, documents the manner in which ideographic portrayals of leadership were pervasive in each training program, and it considers practical implications of such a situation. Most notably, the analysis provides an explanation of how ideographic portrayals of leadership implicitly emphasize cultural indoctrination over promoting social influence skills. Such an orientation fortifies the military hierarchy and perpetuates romantic views of the military profession, but it also blurs key distinctions between social control and social influence. It is suggested that because ideographs reflect vital cultural motives, associated problems are inherently difficult to remedy.