Leadership Development
“Gentlemen, how long does it take to develop a team leader in the Army?” I posed the questioned to 15 or so junior enlisted members of my platoon as we sat in the war room of the company CP. “6 months, a year, a year and a half” Were some of the responses. “So you cannot expect to have perfectly developed leaders who have less than 6 months on the job” (A platoon survey revealed that we had some problems with hypocritical leaders and leaders not knowing how to do their job etc… not uncommon in the Army). “Please be patient with your leadership as they develop. They have generally been patient with you in your development, it takes time to develop good leaders and it doesn’t happen over night”.
“Ready, break” this was not a long drawn out excuse for why we are not where we needed to be, just a quick sit down with the men to say the PSG and I understand your concerns and we are committed to improving things but it is going to take time before we get it right.
And so began 12 months of development where we took an infantry platoon from mediocre to pretty damn good in the course of a year of training. In that time we participated in 3x squad live fire exercises, 2x platoon live fire exercises, multiple BN and BDE field training exercises, 1x JRTC rotation, and a month long deployment to South Africa for Exercise Shared Accord. It was truly an amazing year that I will never forget.
The Tricks of the Leadership Development Trade
I am passionate about it. With 15yrs of military service (10 enlisted, 5 commissioned) and a BA in management and leadership; I have a real passion for making leaders better, faster, and stronger. It’s my wheel house. I love what I do for the Army and I love that American tax payers pay me to do it. Developing leaders is common to all branches of the military not just the Infantry. The Infantry branch deals directly with people, not systems or a piece of equipment so it is absolutely vital that leadership development be the forefront of training objectives within the branch so that infantrymen are able lead men in neutralizing the enemy in order to seize and hold terrain. But the Infantry branch does not have the market cornered on great leadership and some of the best leaders in the Military have never lead a fire team or cleared an enemy objective. We all have a part to play and I honestly feel like it is much easier to lead people that you do small unit drills and physical fitness training with every day than it is to lead subordinates who work unusual hours, have a broad array of tasks to accomplish, and are physically separated from you. It’s also very difficult to lead others who are so good that they don’t really need you around (but that is a different problem that we will reserve for another time).
The right mindset
The right mindset is the foundation for LD. It is cliche and a bit antiquated but shared values and common goals are the key to success in laying the foundation for the success of any organization. LDRSHIP: Loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. The Ranger Creed, Soldier’s Creed, NCO Creed, Warrior Ethos etc… all establish shared values within the organization. They are the foundation of the organization and when put into action daily they become more than just words on a poster in the dental clinic. Along with shared values are shared goals which can be very broad or very specific. A broad goal is generally the vision statement for the organization such as “We are a winning team; we are disciplined, fit, and motivated and we will destroy our enemies with lethal precision.” Still gets me fired up when I say it and it was vertically nested with the BN commander’s guidance of developing lethal platoons capable of conducting complex missions in any environment. Specific goals are just that; raising average PT scores by 20 points in the platoon or company in 3 months, best performance as a platoon or company during collective training events, x number of graduates for x school, soldier/ NCO of the year etc… specific goals, broad goals and shared values establish the foundation for the right mindset within the organization. This type of mindset generates the commitment and discipline that is essential for individuals to buy-in to the team and gets everyone on board for success. Naturally there will always be poor performers, those with limited talent, and failure to adapt type people in any organization who will not sign up or sign on no matter how hard you work with them (Paretto’s 80–20 Law applies to almost everything in life). I like Warren Buffet’s mentality towards these types “I’ve never fired anyone, but I have helped thousands of people find the right job for them” bottom line, 10–20 percent of the people in any organization should be moved out of the organization to a position better suited to their talents. As a young man I was fired from a good job because I was not engaged and took advantage of my employer. I was warned a couple of times and then fired. Big wake up call for me at the time and a valuable experience that helped me to grow up and develop. Gallup industries has extensive data regarding work place engagement, it is shocking to see their surveys showing that 70% of employees are not engaged in the work place. The right mindset of shared values and goals is the foundation for organizational engagement.
The right way forward
The right way forward is how LD happens. In the military we have mission essential task lists or METL. Makes developing a train schedule very easy. So how do we develop leaders while accomplishing our METL? First leaders must understand “why” we are doing x, y, or z. We’re not just in a quarry breaking a bunch of rocks right? We’re all working together so we can build a cathedral. Leaders and subordinates must understand the “why” first. Educating leaders and subordinates as to why we are doing said training event is extremely important to their understanding of the bigger picture and how vital their contribution is to mission success. “We are doing x training event so our unit can accomplish x mission and this defends America from our nation’s enemies” it sounds so simple but it is amazing how much we as the leader developers fail in our development of the leaders we are responsible simply because we don’t educate them on the reasons why we do the things that we do. And we fail because of a self serving bias which says “these guys get it, they know what I know” but guess what, most of the time they don’t get it and they don’t know what you know. They are not in the same meetings, they have not had the same training, they are not as committed most of the time, and they have not been educated on why we are doing this really shitty and arduous training event. So take some time up front and educate them on the “why” in order to support movement on the right way forward. Once they understand the why then start discussing the “what” and the “how” of the METL. The “what” is usually pretty simple and is generally based upon a long range/ short range calendar. The what is the actual events that your team will be participating in. Look at the what as opportunities to develop leaders. For example most training calendars are based on the crawl, walk, run methodology of foundational training. In order to do some really complex mission we need to be able to do x amount of individual tasks, x amount of team based tasks, and x amount of platoon/ company based tasks. We have this much time to prepare for these things and so how do we accomplish them? This brings us to the “how”. The “how” is the best opportunity as “leader developers” to develop our leaders. UThe “how” is so broad and expansive and subjective that you could fill volumes upon volumes of books on the “how” for leadership development for the right way forward in an organization. Here are a couple of techniques that have worked for me.
- Have each your leaders develop a class and then teach it to the group. Small unit drills, PMCS of equipment, combat lifesaver, marksmanship instruction, TACSOP etc.. Be careful, the classes need to be doctrinal and not subjective. Bad habits don’t improve with time. The classes need to be well planned and pitched to the PSG or SL first.
- Test your leaders on their knowledge of their job skill set.
- Give your leaders knowledge based information that has been valuable to your development like books, articles, websites, YouTube videos etc…
- Bring in someone from outside the organization to discuss lessons learned from doing hard things or similar training events.
- Develop space in the schedule for your leaders to put their leadership to the work (PT hours, certain times of the day, sergeants time etc…).
The right way forward is the beautiful symphony of individuals committed to a team who understand the “why”, the “what”, and the “how”. Leaders develop so fast in this type of environment that it is sometimes hard to keep up with the pace of their progress.
Personal Development
A committed professional does way more than punch the clock twice a day. Profession is more of a lifestyle that defines who you are based on what you do in life. A job pays the bills so a profession and a job are interrelated but the profession goes a lot deeper in that there is more commitment to a profession than a job. That is kind of the secret sauce of leadership development is in developing leaders to commit wholeheartedly to the profession and establish the discipline it takes to put in the time and effort required to be successful in the profession. Not an easy task. Self development plays a huge part in this and it all starts with resources. My path of self development started out years ago with the basics.
-The message to Garcia
-The go getter by Peter B. Kyne
-Good to great by Jim Collins
-FM 6–22 on Leadership and Be Know Do principles of military leadership
-Dale Carnegie’s teachings
-John C. Maxwell’s teachings
Then I advanced into more complex ideas about organizational leadership through things like
-Complex Army training events and advanced leadership schools
-Start with why by Simon Sinek
-Leaders eat last by Simon Sinek
-Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
-Leadership is a choice by Stanley McChrystal on YouTube. Changed the way I think about leaders being born vs being made and how it truly is a choice.
And now I have advanced into more in depth analysis through amazing people like
-Robin Sharma author of leader without a title, the monk who sold his Ferrari. The Titan summit.
-Strengthsfinder 2.0
-Eckhart Tolle
-Tony Robbins
These are just a few of the great resources that have helped me throughout the years in my personal development as a professional who is responsible for the development of other leaders. A degree in leadership and management was great for me as well.
My .02 cents on leadership development, hope it has been of value to you. Thanks for reading.
-Will