Tag Archives: Positive Leadership

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12 Things Good Bosses Believe (#11)

Simplicity resonates from #11 of Robert Sutton’s “12 Things Good Bosses Believe.” This belief is so basic that it is often overlooked and rarely discussed, but might very well be the belief that distinguishes great leaders from the rest.

Sutton’s #11 belief of good bosses is:

How I do things is as important as what I do.

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Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, center left, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaks with Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, commander of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, at Besmaya Range Complex in Iraq, April 21, 2016. DoD photo by Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Dominique A. Pineiro.
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Leadership Lessons from an Airborne Commander

Revisiting the book Military Leadership:  In Pursuit of Excellence led me to an article by General Matthew Ridgway that appeared in the October 1966 edition of Military Review. Entitled “Leadership,” it is a strikingly poignant and upfront summation of basic elements of good leadership, in and out of combat. I recommend that everyone read the entire article, but here are some points to consider.

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Generals and Grenades: Said General Ridgway, “some people thought I wore the grenades as a gesture of showmanship. This was not correct. They were purely utilitarian. Many a time, in Europe and in Korea, men in tight spots blasted their way out with grenades”.
(Ridgway Photograph Collection) Photo Credit: USAMHI
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A Simple Observation About Great Leaders

The other day I was having a conversation with a good friend and I realized that almost every time we talk, we end up talking about some professional development topic, usually leadership.

I made a quick mental comparison with the other colleagues I have worked with over the years and came to the conclusion that my friend is a superbly talented leader, which brought an obvious insight into focus:

Great leaders regularly talk about leadership.
Leadership, for them, is at the very least a dedicated hobby but more often, it is a passion.

Start Here

Sergeant 1st Class Shvoda Gregory, motor sergeant for the 557th Engineer Company, 864th Engineer Battalion, shows a group of specialists and new sergeants how to properly inspect a squad of Soldiers in formation. Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.
Photo Credit: Sgt. Christopher M. Gaylord
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12 Things Good Bosses Believe (#10)

Bad is stronger than good. It is more important to
eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive.

In my first few weeks as a company commander, I noticed that directly across the hall worked a consistently loud mid-level leader. He made a point to interrupt and talk over everyone around him who was either junior in rank or wasn’t annoyed enough to walk away.

As his leader, though, what concerned me was that his talk was also constantly negative. He seemed to be incapable of agreeing with or encouraging a positive thought by those around him. It was an emotional drain to listen to and I’m sure it was exasperating for the Soldiers working for him.

#10 on Robert Sutton’s “12 Things Good Bosses Believe” zeros-in on negative interactions and caustic team members because they can quickly overwrite the positive that exists within an organization. Being a nice leader and encouraging others is not enough, Sutton explains in his Harvard Business Review blog post on the topic:

Eliminating the negative, as any skilled leader can tell you, is not just the flipside of accentuating the positive. It’s a whole different set of activities. For someone with people to manage, accentuating the positive means recognizing productive and constructive effort, for example, and helping people discover and build on their strengths. Eliminating the negative, for the same boss, might mean tearing down maddening obstacles and shielding people from abuse.

Some might say that the climate of authority and bravado in military units makes positivity “uncool.” Success in the military, like anything else, “rises and falls on leadership” (John Maxwell). Sutton’s point is that actively developing a positive climate is less important than removing the negative people and interactions. Sutton draws an analogy to marriage:

Negative information, experiences, and people have far deeper impacts than positive ones. In the context of romantic relationships and marriages, for example, the truth is stark:  unless positive interactions outnumber negative interactions by five to one, odds are that the relationship will fail.

In the instance of my former subordinate, it was clear to me that his corrosive attitude was exactly opposite of the command climate my First Sergeant and I were trying to build. One day after a particularly cynical monologue, I engaged him with an ultimatum…cut out the negativity or I’d pull him out of the position, period. He adjusted his attitude.

Here are a few tips for action:

  • Lead with positivity and publicly reward such behavior in your team.
  • Words matter. Pay close attention to how you discuss problems and difficult people. Your attitude will propagate through the organization.
  • Frame conflict in the context of growth, always placing the outcome and the learning process higher than the friction that caused it.
  • Establish no tolerance for caustic, negative people (Robert Sutton’s book on this topic is called The No Asshole Rule)
  • Go on the hunt for negative people. Roam around the building, get conversational with people, and investigate rumors of negative behavior.
  • Use Baird CEO Paul Purcell’s approach to clarify your stance on negativity:  “If I discover that you’re an asshole, I’m going to fire you.”

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TED Video: “Lead Like the Great Conductors”

With humor and poignancy, this TED Video could be a leader development session by itself. Conductor and business consultant Itay Talgam shares the varying styles of great symphony conductors, revealing lessons on organizational behavior, emotional intelligence, leadership styles, and many others.

Watch this video with your team and keep the following questions in mind for discussion:

  • What do Talgam’s points have to do with the conduct of military mission command?
  • How do the conductors set boundaries and conditions for the orchestra?
  • What role does emotional intelligence have in leadership?
  • How do great leaders respond to change? What about setbacks or failure?
  • What inspiration should the leader provide for the team? Does it depend on the type and talent of the team?

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7 “Weak” Traits Military Leaders Should Cultivate

This article from the Huffington Post discusses seven traits that history and society has typically labeled as weak but that followers genuinely appreciate in a leader. Consider a few connections to military leadership:size0-army.mil-2008-03-10-120956

  • Empathy. Yes, having empathy is powerful when trying to connect with your team or a partner, but consider that empathy can also help you understand the enemy. What motivates him? What are his concerns? What are his vulnerabilities? “If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles.” – Sun Tzu
  • Optimism. The military doesn’t rely on hope, but optimism isn’t about being hopeful. It’s about having “confidence in a successful outcome.” Who wants to follow a leader who doesn’t have a positive expectation about the mission, the team, or even his own leadership abilities?
  • Altruism. Phrased a different way, this trait is the #2 priority in the military – “Mission first, people always.” The volunteer military has clearly recognized that ensuring the welfare of its members has a direct, explicit link to mission performance. Leaders who do not take care of their people do not survive in the military.
  • Discernment. This is a crucial, if not decisive trait for military leaders. Discernment, the ability to accurately assess and judge a situation, forms the basis of our decision-making methodology (“See First, Understand First”; “Understand, Visualize, Describe”; Situational Awareness, Situational Understanding; Design). We must be able to assess conditions based on relevant factors and be able to discard extraneous information. This trait applies both in combat and in the day to day leadership process.

Read the rest of the article here.

Questions for Leaders:

  • What approach have you taken to assess the effectiveness of your own leadership traits?
  • What traits do you encourage in your subordinate leaders? Do they know what they are?
  • What other traits are important but rarely get talked about?

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Marshall on the Combat Leader

You’ll need to read this General George C. Marshall quote several times to absorb all the lessons hidden within it.

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When you are commanding, leading [soldiers] under conditions where physical exhaustion and privations must be ignored, where the lives of [soldiers] may be sacrificed, then, the efficiency of your leadership will depend only to a minor degree on your tactical ability.  It will primarily be determined by your character, your reputation, not much for courage—which will be accepted as a matter of course—but by the previous reputation you have established for fairness, for that high-minded patriotic purpose, that quality of unswerving determination to carry through any military task assigned to you.

General George C. Marshall, Speaking to officer candidates in September 1941

Here are a few of the takeaways:

  • The “starting line” for leadership in combat is that one must accept, ignore, and discard the physical hardship that accompanies it. Exhaustion is the innate price of participation. Thus, leaders should maintain a physical fitness level that allows them to fulfill their command duties despite fatigue.
  • Tactical ability in combat is not as important as character. This is a tough concept to grasp, but it helps to ask, “Which is more dangerous in combat – a lack of tactical ability? or a lack of character?” Marshall seems to indicate that inexperienced commanders can still succeed in combat by making common sense, informed decisions – and that an organization can absorb a leader’s lack of tactical ability. However, a commander lacking character will have more destructive and permanent effects on an organization.
  • Courage is the default for a combat leader. Similar to endurance under privation, Marshall says that courage in combat is a given, and expected by Soldiers. Is this concept in line with our view of courage in combat today?
  • What does create success for a commander in combat? Marshall says plainly that character is decisive above all else. Character accompanied with perseverance under any conditions, fairness in decision making, and a clear attitude of service to the Nation.

Questions for Leaders

  • Does your organization know what traits are assumed and expected of them?
  • How prepared is your team to face the physically and mentally exhaustive realities of combat? Have you replicated them in training?
  • How does a leader measure/assess the qualities of perseverance, courage, and character that are necessary in combat?

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TED Talk: “Why good leaders make you feel safe”

“In the military, they give medals to people who sacrifice themselves so that others may gain…and in business, we give bonuses to people who are willing to sacrifice others so that we may gain.”

Simon Sinek gives another poignant and enlightening leadership talk at TED. In this March 2014 talk, he describes how the best leaders shape their organization’s culture to develop trust.

“If you had hard times in your family, would you ever consider laying-off one of your children? You would never do it…then why do we consider laying off people inside our organization?”

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