Grand Adventure

Recently I’ve found out the results for my promotion board  will be released next Wednesday.  Let’s hope for the best.  I also just finished up my requirements to achieve Fellow status with the American College of Healthcare Executives.  That’s been a goal for me, as it is an outward demonstration of the hard work I’ve done over the years.

These two events got me to thinking…how did I get to this point in my military career and life?  Certainly, God’s grace and Shelley’s support are the two top reasons.  But there are others.  My post today is a rehash of an article I wrote for my previous blog on the Radioland weblog site, before blogging was cool and ubitiquous.  It’s some of my musings about leadership, with a few updated comments.  You will learn a lot about who I am by reading them.

Intro: At a certain level of leadership you stop primarily being a doer of things, into an architect of sorts.  What got you to that point was expert execution of your job, in the individual sense.  But now what will save the day is not your execution but those around and working for you.  Simply stated, you cannot do everything yourself and you must trust your subordinates to pull things off.   In many cases you will be more qualified or have advanced skills than the subordinates you trust with that mission, but you must resist the urge to tackle it yourself.   (The old adage “You are only qualified for the job you just left” is true, so don’t fall back into doing that job because it is more comfortable)

*Ensure your folks know and have internalized the mission, vision, and scope of the organization.  In this respect I’ve spent much more time talking about what we were *about* than how we accomplished things.  This is critical because the tendency is to slip back into the ‘how’ because that is what you know personally.  Forget about being the star player and even forsake coaching over pure cheerleading if you don’t have time or the skills.  Coaching is harder than you think, but cheerleading we all can do.

*Make sure your folks have the following two things: 1) A sure sense of ownership of the mission with the responsibility AND authority to pull it off, and 2) The resources to pull off that mission.  Too many times we expect people to somehow absorb ownership of the mission because you gave them the task to accomplish.  Think about the successful projects you’ve been on, and I bet you weren’t motivated by ‘this is something being forced on me’ but because you decided it must be done…and so you did it.  That’s owership + responsibility + authority in action.  Don’t buy into the buzzphrase “do more with less”.  Or as I’ve recently heard “design to failure”.  You must resource the mission/project so it will succeed, and the prime resource I think being your personal attention.  Don’t forget that much of the costs/time/resources will be expended upfront before the mission even launches. 

*Don’t be afraid to push people to achieve tough goals…but make sure you are with them the entire way.  I have had a reputation of asking the moon from my teams, but I can tell you I wasn’t pushing them any harder than I expected of myself.  And that showed to my people.  Amazing things come out of the push to excel.  1) People stretch their personal understanding of what their limits are and gain confidence.  2) Most people *want* to be stretched.  I’ve not met a Soldier who went to field training exercises or the combat zone who enjoyed sitting around all day or playing cards most of the time.  Good units and Soldiers train hard, back off for a bit, then ramp back up to a newer high peak of performance.  And they understand this cycle, embrace it.  3) The byproduct of this sort of ‘adversity’ is often some wonderful moments of teamwork, stories to brag about to their fellows, and an extreme sense of accomplishment. 

*Leaders must be adept at finding good junior leaders, giving those leaders more responsibility, and spend their time mentoring and nurturing these folks.  This is vital for several reasons.  1) You ain’t Da Man anymore, remember?  Your job is more looking into the future, visioning where your organization should go and a little bit of how to get there.  You can’t do that slugging it out in the trenches.  2) You have a responsibility to train up the next generation of leaders to fill your shoes.  3) They will feel empowered, because they are, and carry the torch for the organization. 

*Look for opportunities outside your normal mission boundaries.  When you merge this with an organization used to making miracles happen, taking on missions outside of your normal scope is healthy.  Important to develop a more comprehensive portfolio of what your organization can accomplish.  It also improves the sense of pride as they now know they can take on things outside their comfort zone.

*Make time to get together outside the work environment.  I’ve said to my folks that a good shop seems to enjoy getting together outside the workplace.  It’s a byproduct of the challenging environment you work in, to where you will naturally want to extend that team feeling into a social setting.  This becomes a synergistic loop, because what you do outside the environment spills back into the workplace.  Great units I’ve been in don’t mind working hard, so long as they can do it together.  And you will get no better feedback from your folks than when you are in an informal/social setting.

*Don’t take yourself too seriously.  You should give due credit for your success, and if you followed the above you know that somebody *else* made things happen for you.  Not you.  I also think a great sense of humor can go a long ways to ease tension, bring off-track conversations back to the task at hand, and make for a more fun workplace.  One of my techniques is having fun nicknames for people.  This can backfire (don’t go the route of Michael Scott in the Office!) if not done right.  But if the timing is good, and the nickname funny enough it has often stuck or been a way to have a lighthearted conversation when that’s needed.  The important thing is that people feel comfortable enough around you to laugh at absurdity, or even poke fun at you.  This is especially fun for them, and you should go along unless it gets mean-spirited or downright disrespectful.  If your subordinates feel comfortable enough to laugh at/with you when you are around you are probably in a healthy organization.  If they do it behind your back then something is dysfunctional.  There is a great article in the Harvard Business Review about humor in the workplace written by Fabio Sala.  Do a search to find it.

*Reflect often on how you are doing as a leader.  One of my orientations is to be the type of boss I’d want to work for myself.  Be a reflective-practitioner of leadership, and know that you will never “arrive” as a leader.  I don’t see this as second guessing myself at all, nor do I lack confidence to lead in tough situations.  I just want to keep improving, and I fully acknowledge I have blind spots in my leadership approaches.  Some I know about I never intend to fix because I mitigate them in other ways.  But mostly I try to look at myself as raw as I can stand in order to improve.

*People sense a phony, and respect genuineness.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve validated this with my subordinates or with my superiors.  I’ve been fortunate enough to work for people who’ve appreciated my candor.  I believe an authentic person engenders trust, and that trust is more important especially with bad news or a negative situation.  I’ve had to tell people some quite difficult things but by speaking in a frank and honest way with them they have appreciated it more.  It doesn’t make the bad news better, but it does build a strong tie between you and your subordinate.  Even when disciplining them I’ve had subordinates provide feedback that their appreciated knowing how things stood rather than me shirking away from telling the hard things. 

*You can say *no* with as much force and strength with a quiet voice and politely.  Some people are grossly mistaken about my beliefs at times, because they mix up me smiling as I say clearly “NO” to something.  As if I am a pushover because my tone is polite and maybe even quiet.  In fact, I take particular joy in quietly standing my ground.  And I’m not the type to passive-aggressively implement office politics.  Not me…I’m not going to stab you in the back, I will do it in your belly while I look at the surprise on your face.  Much more rewarding that way   This leads me to my final point about confrontation…

*Conflict is natural, but can and should be set aside in the interest of accomplishing the mission.  I could share hours about this topic, because conflict and conflict resolution is a key element of life.  Look at music, movies, theater, and even the visual arts and at the center is conflict and conflict resolution.  Confrontation-avoidance bosses can be deadly.  Obviously in a literal sense for the military.  But things just don’t operate in a world where “Why can’t we all get along??” is a reality.  I believe personalities have only a small place in the office, and even then should not get in the way of getting the mission done.  Don’t fall for the visceral/it-feels-good mode of crushing idiots around you if it will damage your reputation or hinder getting things done.  Those good feelings are like a sugar-high you get on, only to be dropped hard later.  Focus on the mission and your people, and let the knuckleheads around you figure out their own approaches.