I recently came across the following quote in a fairly significant leadership book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Rashow, and Marty Linsky.
"The word leader comes from the Indo-European root word leit, the name
for the person who carried the flag in front of army going into battle
and usually died in the first enemy attack. His sacrifice would alert
the rest of the army to the location of the danger ahead." Page 26 of The Practice of Adaptive Leadership
The problem is that I'm having difficulty finding any source that confirms that 'leit' referred to the flag bearer in a battle. I've found that it means "to leave" and "to die", but I'm not finding where the flag bearer concept came from, and they don't cite a source.
So I have two questions: Did 'leit' refer to the person carrying the flag going into battle? If not, what is a fuller meaning of the word as it was originally used?
Thank you so much. Miguel
Best Answer
It could be Indo-European the origin of the word leader. It could be related with a manifestation of bravura in battle. I have strong doubts if it is only related with "flag" such bravura. Flag as we understand it today is definitely VERY different from what Indo-European had. Regarding the source I would suggest for you to check in the references mentioned in the book. By the way I found exactly what you wrote [The word leader comes from the Indo- European root word leit, the name for the person who carried the flag in front of an army going into battle and usually died in the first enemy attack. His sacrifice would alert the rest of the army to the location of the danger ahead (p.26)] here https://keithdwalker.ca/wp-content/summaries/m-p/Practice%20of%20Adaptive%20Leadership.Heifetz%20et%20al.EBS.pdf