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.

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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.)

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.

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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.

“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.

The Secret to a Blister-free Foot March

It's the opposite of what you've been told

The Fort Benning summer heat baked around us as a crusty Sergeant First Class shared sage advice from his long career in the Infantry. He was the senior trainer at the Infantry Officer Basic Course, tasked with imparting leadership and combat wisdom upon the Army’s freshest crop of Lieutenants. We, being that group of new Lieutenants, knew almost nothing about life in the Army and hung on his every word.

The experienced trainer talked about foot marching, “Listen, men…you’re gonna walk a lot of miles during your career as a grunt. And it’s time to start toughening up your feet.” He relayed his methods for ensuring his feet could take him as far as he needed to go:

“Wear your boots as often as possible…hell, I wear my combat boots out to dinner with my wife. You can put on foot powder before a march, if you want. I don’t. And I don’t wear socks because I want those calluses to stay tough, like leather.”

We followed his advice…and we all got blisters.

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Noncommissioned officers conduct a ruck march during an NCO Development Program event at
Smith Lake Recreation Area, Fort Bragg, N.C. May 11, 2012. Link to photo.

How to Write Your Own User Manual

by Jim Perkins

One of the constants of military life is the cyclic change of scenery and organizations. While this iterative churning serves many purposes, it has a clear drawback in that with each new assignment, leaders and subordinates must learn to work with each other. What should be a simple task, managing group dynamics distracts from more pressing issues at hand and is often in conflict with other priorities.

Perhaps it is precisely because of these other demands that what I’m about to propose is not widely used in most organizations. What if it were possible to bridge that psychological gap more quickly and reduce the friction between leaders and their teams? Can we accelerate Tuckman’s Form-Storm-Norm-Perform cycle of organizational development? We can.

User manual

U.S. Army Second Lt. Mark Lucas, a platoon leader with the 82nd Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, briefs his soldiers before a logistics resupply mission July 8, 2012, at Forward Operating Base Arian, Ghazni Province, Afghanistan.
U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod, Task Force 1-82 PAO.

Systems that Strangle

What my car-buying experience revealed about organizational adaptiveness

Last week, my wife and I invested many hours in the process of researching and purchasing a used car. The fun phase of test driving and haggling now over, we moved into the not-so-fun phase…paperwork. The sales agent, who had come in on his day off to sell us this car, was eager to get us out the door and hurried to assemble papers for our signature.

“Here is your purchase order…here is the total…this is the warranty brochure.” All the standard forms. Then he highlighted, “And here is a disclosure so we can call you in the future.” Wait a minute, we thought as we read through the form in detail. “It says that your dealership can contact us about special offers, too. We’d prefer not to get those.”

“Oh, no” he said. “This just lets me do a follow-up call in 6 months to make sure you’re happy with the purchase. We won’t bombard you with any offers.”

My response stymied him for a moment, “Yeah, that’s ok. Believe me, I’ll call you if there’s anything wrong. I’d rather not sign it.” Not only had he not needed a signed disclosure to call me during the buying process we’d just navigated for the last week, but this car wasn’t even his dealership’s make. It was a trade-in that didn’t matter to his company. There was no need to follow up.

“Well, it’s really no big deal. Everyone signs this form. It’s part of the packet.”

“Is it required to buy the car?” I asked. He responded in the negative.

“Good,” I affirmed, “Then I’m more comfortable not signing it.” 

Interestingly, twenty minutes later we sat down with a very nice lady from the finance department who presented the same form for our signature. It was evident that not signing this disclosure statement was a throwing them a curve ball. What do you mean they don’t want to sign the form??? They have to…it’s part of the process.

In the end, we stuck to our guns and avoided a year’s worth of phone calls about special offers. But I also walked away with a lesson about processes, systems, and inflexibility.

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Army 1st Lt. Christopher Robertello coordinates grid points with a Finnish soldier during Exercise Ryske 22 at Rovajarvi Training Area, Finland, July 28, 2022. The training exercise, involving the U.S., Finland and Norway, aims to strengthen relations and help build interoperability. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Marcus J. Quarterman)

Passing Judgment (Habit Series #3)

Marshall Goldsmith’s What Got You Here Won’t Get You There is packed with useful insight. If you are a leader looking to improve the quality of your interactions and the influence you have on your team, his book is a must. #3 of “Twenty Habits That Hold You Back from the Top” is Passing Judgment.

Now, why would the effects of passing judgment concern a military leader whose granted authority clearly allows, almost encourages him to judge the quality of his organization and its members’ activities? Isn’t it monumentally important for leaders to scrutinize teams in training so that they are better prepared for war? And when in war, is there not an argument that there is no room for error, necessitating judgment at every turn?

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A Navy SEAL instructor watches as BUD/S students participate in surf drill training at the Naval Special Warfare Center in Coronado, Calif. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Eric S. Logsdon.

Purpose, Freedom, and the Superman – An Officer Looks Back

by David Dixon

Ever since I left the Army, I have felt a sense of something I struggle to even find the words for. It was not a sense of loss, because loss is related to something tangible, something one can clearly say was here at one point and gone at another. It was like nostalgia, the feeling or desire for a place or time previously or things as they once were. But I am not naive enough to mistake this for true nostalgia, because I knew what I felt I longed for had not even really been there to begin with.

Can someone have nostalgia for a time that never was? The closest word for what I felt is probably sehnsucht, a German compound word that mixes together concepts of loss and addiction with the idea of the unattainable or unknowable. In a sense, it is that nostalgia for a place that never–or may never have–existed.

Freedom

The sun sets behind U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Jamie R. Johnson, a platoon sergeant from Bayonet Company, 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, Task Force No Slack, in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province March 17. Photo by U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Mark Burrell, 210th MPAD.