Failure is an important part of any career…but only if you learn from it. I’ll admit that I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by fantastic leaders throughout my career. But no amount peripheral talent can eliminate the bumpy learning curve that accompanies a life of military service. As such, I have found failure despite their best efforts. This post is but a snippet of those failures.
Bayonets, Forward! With this command Union Army Colonel Joshua L. Chamberlain ordered the 20th Maine Regiment to execute a daring counterattack against the 15th Alabama Regiment of the Confederate Army on July 2nd 1863 during the Battle of Gettysburg. At the extreme left flank of the Union Army, the 20th Maine fought off repeated assaults for the past several hours against the determined Confederate Soldiers.
Outnumbered and low on ammunition, Chamberlain’s bold decision and courageous leadership led his men of Maine down the slopes of Little Round Top at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and stopped the Confederate assault against the Union Army’s left flank.
This iconic scene immortalized in Jeff Shaara’s Killer Angels, the movie Gettysburg, and Army Doctrine publications as the epitome of leadership in action, is just a snapshot in the portfolio of Chamberlain’s remarkable and unparalleled career.
Take a look at your unit calendar. Scan the clutter of appointments, meetings, formations, training events, ceremonies, and administrative commitments. Do you see any events dedicated to improving the quality of your people’s leadership? If not…if leadership development isn’t a separate line of effort…then how are you developing leaders?
Every year, new command teams spend thoughtful hours crafting the words that will precisely convey their version of unit success. This intent typically reaches the service members in the form of an organizational mission statement or “Unit Vision.” And if your experience is anything like mine, leader development takes center stage. When those command teams brief their vision to the unit, the slides inevitably include phrases like these:
“Developing leaders is our #1 priority.”
“Leader Development is in everything we do.”
“The heart of this unit is its leaders.”
“Good leadership is our most important asset.”
Sound about right?
But when was the last time you participated in a unit leader development event that was focused on the practice of leadership? Not doctrine, not staff processes, not command supply discipline…leadership! It’s probably been a while.
It’s been a while because collectively we have compartmentalized the study of leadership to the schoolhouse. We’ve also adopted the belief that training events fulfill the requirement to develop leaders. When “Leader Development is in everything we do,” going to the range is leader development; so is doing PT and inspecting vehicles. Leader development has evolved to encompass everything except the very activity its name implies – teaching our people how to be good leaders.
Allow me to explain why this has occurred and what you can do about it.
Stanley McChrystal (retired General and Managing Partner at McChrystal Group) recently posted a LinkedIn article, How I Keep Up with an Unrelenting Work Pace. The article was published February 1, 2016 and is receiving excessive praise from many. It is also receiving criticism from those who note the inherent risks of applying strategic level leadership experiences without thought or reflection. Here are some things you should pay attention to when reading McChrystal’s article.
This weekend I was happy to discover that I had received my copy of What to Do When it’s Your Turn (and it’s Always Your Turn)
What’s impressive, too, is Seth’s understanding of the human psyche as it relates to interacting with the congested world of today. He sorts through the noise to deliver both the motivation and the reality needed for success. Here are a few Godin quotes worth writing down:
“If failure is not an option, then neither is success.”
“Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.”
“If you can’t state your position in eight words, you don’t have a position.”
“If you’re brilliant and undiscovered and underappreciated
then you’re being too generous about your definition of brilliant.”
“I can tell you this: Leaders have nothing in common.”
And in his new book, this passage hit home with me…
Sebastian Junger speaks Infantry. He’s an American journalist with no military service, but that doesn’t matter. He speaks our language. The sound of a bullet, the constant fear, the instinctual drive to save a buddy laying in the open. He knows the combat experience because he chose to live it in the treacherous terrain of the Korengal Valley in Kunar, Afghanistan.
“I want to claw my way up to brigade staff!” No little kid ever grew up wanting to be the best at briefing slides, brewing coffee, or writing operations orders. There’s a reason war movies don’t portray the struggles of warriors whose meritorious planning performance led to the creation of the perfect brief. Slideology 101 isn’t a required course at West Point.
Time spent on staff, where officers spend the majority of their career, is thankless, laborious work that is too often viewed as a block check between command positions. Much of the Army’s educational emphasis is on success as the man in front of the formation, but the officer’s plight is that he will spend much more time rowing the ship than steering it.
