Author Archives

The Military Leader

When you act on your priority, you’ll automatically go out of balance, giving more time to one thing over another. The challenge then doesn’t become one of not going out of balance, for in fact you must. The challenge becomes how long you stay on your priority. To be able to address your priorities outside of work, be clear about your most important work priority so you can get it done. Then go home and be clear about your priorities there so you can get back to work.

Purpose has the power to shape our lives only in direct proportion to the power of the priority we connect it to. Purpose without priority is powerless.

Gary Keller
Jay Papasan
The ONE Thing (Bard Press, 2013), 82, 147
Posted on

Making Destructive Comments (Habit Series #4)

Think back on your recent interactions. If I asked you how many times you made destructive comments towards the people you work with, how would you answer? “Destructive? No way. I’m a nice person. And when I do give feedback, it’s never destructive.” What about if I asked you how many times you talked negatively about someone when he or she wasn’t present? “Well sure, but everyone does that. It’s part of our culture.”

The topic we are approaching here is a silent leadership killer. Whose leadership, you ask? Yours, your boss’s, your subordinates’. Destructive comments slip into an organization, infect the culture, manifest as other problems, and kill the trust that leaders worked so hard to build.

Today, you’ll be guilty of making comments that can destroy your organization, and you likely don’t even know it.

destructive

Command Sgt. Maj. Alan D. Bjerke, command sergeant major of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, speaks to Canadian Soldiers during practice for a live fire event during Cooperative Spirit 2008 at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center near Hohenfels, Germany. Link to photo.
Posted on

14 Simple Ways to Connect with Your People

Leaders who find ways to connect with their people are the ones who build great teams, inspire the best performance, and rise to positions of influence when others wane. If you look back on your career, you’ll likely observe that the most impactful leaders were the ones who made a personal connection with you.

Maybe it was keen professional mentorship, or timely advice during adversity, or a personality trait that invited trust. Sometimes there’s no pinpointing it…just an intangible feeling that makes it easy to follow a person.

In the culture of busyness that we face today, it’s distressingly easy to ignore the personal side of leadership. But trust will never develop without a personal connection between leader and follower. And without trust, an organization will be confined to a transactional environment of mediocre results and melancholy people.

Connect

Sgt. Donald M. Khun, San Gabriel Valley Recruiting Company, right, presents Brooke Willis, spouse of the new company commander Capt. William G. Willis, with yellow roses to signify a bright new beginning at the change of command ceremony Mar. 15. Capt. William G. Willis, the new company commander is sitting to the left of Mrs. Willis, and their son Blake is sitting to her right.
Photo by Mr. Fernando Sanjurjo, U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion Los Angeles.
Posted on

I Admit It…I Forgot How to Workout

If you look at the picture below and can’t remember the last time you felt like that…this post is for you. The picture is a scene of pure exhaustion, of being tested well beyond your comfort zone, of giving more than you thought was possible. It’s discipline, passion, commitment, and courage, all in one moment.

(I hope) we have all been there before, maybe in Basic Training, or on a unit obstacle course, or during a short-lived flirt with CrossFit ten years ago. Combat arms schools test their students with exhaustive rites of passage to see if, somewhere down inside, they will have what it takes to survive the battlefield.

Leaders go through these trials, then as we become more senior we have the flexibility to avoid them. There are fewer and fewer people in a position to challenge us. The responsibility for pushing the limits shifts to the individual and what happens?…capability typically diminishes. We don’t continue the test and we get soft.

This is what happened to me.

workout

CORONADO, Calif. (April 11, 2011) – Students from Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/s) Class 288 participate in log physical training (log PT) during the First Phase of training at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado. Log PT is one of many physically demanding evolutions and has remained a part of BUD/s throughout the history of SEAL training.
(U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kyle D. Gahlau/Released)
Posted on

The Post-Active Duty Leadership Environment – Part 3 (Developing Leaders)

My goal is to contrast leadership development in my current environment with my experience on active duty in the U.S. Air Force’s Air Mobility Command (AMC). The thing is, I didn’t really experience much formal leadership development during those 12 years on active duty. So what do I want to share?

I’ve settled on this: The active duty Air Force is purging leaders that were developed the hard way over a decade of constant war and other contingency operations, while nearly exclusively retaining candidates who developed their careers and resumes according to official timelines and benchmarks. There is a need for both types of leaders and I want to close this series by advocating for a compromise. Strong leaders, in any stage of their careers, should be considered for positions that have come to be reserved for career development.

leaders

U.S. Air Force Capt. Chance Hansen, a C-130 Hercules aircraft pilot with the 36th Airlift Squadron, visually locates another C-130 over Japan Oct. 22, 2013, during a large-formation flight. (DoD photo by Yasuo Osakabe, U.S. Air Force/Released)
Posted on

Achieving Effects with Your Boss, pt. 2: Intentional Engagement

Spotlight Ranger. That’s the label service members use to characterize people who put in average performance day to day, then put on a show whenever the boss is around. Soldiers see right through them and they earn little respect in the unit.

While you must at all costs avoid becoming a spotlight ranger (i.e. dedicate yourself to superb performance regardless of the audience), you don’t want to miss an opportunity to showcase your unit’s good work to your boss. The first post in this series focused on how to start off on the right foot with a new boss. Today’s post looks at how to engage during three types of opportunities you will encounter during your tenure as leader.

boss

Brig. Gen. Robert B. Abrams, National Training Center commanding general, briefs Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, TRADOC commanding general, during Dempsey’s visit to Fort Irwin, Cali., Sep. 23, 2009. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Angelica G. Golindano.)
Posted on

Achieving Effects with Your Boss, pt. 1: First Impressions

On the list of items that leaders should care about, there are few higher than achieving effects with your boss.* The purpose is clear enough, to ensure alignment while creating opportunities for your own team. But leaders often place too much emphasis inward and downward during their key leadership time, and neglect to satisfy higher headquarter’s goals.

What’s more, achieving effects with your boss is a tough balancing act. Too assertive and you come off as pushy while alienating yourself from your peers. Too passive and you won’t gain the influence necessary to achieve your goals as a leader.

This series will provide you with the why, when, and how to engage your boss in ways that support their goals while achieving effects for your team. This post, First Impressions, is all about starting off on the right foot. And not to put undue pressure on you, but the process of gaining influence with your boss starts before you even arrive at the unit.

*Above it one might list achieving the mission and building trust with your subordinates.

boss

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey meets with Commander of the NATO Training Mission–Afghanistan Lt. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger in Kabul, Afghanistan, Apr. 23, 2012. DoD photo by D. Myles Cullen.
Posted on

“Sir, you humiliated us.” – A Commander’s Lesson in Leadership

Guest author Captain Joel Martinez shares his story of humility in command

Reading a post on The Military Leader one day, a question reminded me of a critical leadership lesson I learned from my time in command. It read, “When was the last time you heard a unit commander ask for feedback, consider the input, publicly admit he’s wrong, and change his opinion?”

Given that I have a vivid example of being humbled while in command, I felt compelled to share my story.

Leadership

The 1st Cavalry Division Soldiers trying out for the 2nd Battalion, 38th Cavalry Regiment, Long range Surveillance, Airborne unit here at Fort Hood, Texas gut out the last mile of a two and a half mile buddy run, July 27.
U.S. Army photo by Spc. Adam Turner, 1st Cav. Div. Public Affairs.
This is a guest post by Army Military Intelligence Officer, Captain Joel Martinez. He commanded the 66th Military Intelligence Company of the 3d Cavalry Regiment and now passes on his lessons as an Observer/Coach Trainer at the National Training Center.