Category Archives: Personal Leadership

We have been talking about this for a decade now, at least since Colonel George Reed published his paper on toxic leadership in Military Review, an article that has fueled innumerable leadership journal clubs in and out of the military.  It happens that in the ensuing years the military has been embroiled in a series of increasingly unpopular wars that have asked much of leaders at every level.  It is very likely as General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said, that our system has favored “competence over character.”  The need for short term results (within the two years or less of a short command tour) instead of an investment in the long term – including leader development – may be an unanticipated consequence.  Regardless, senior military leaders are increasingly characterized in the press as toxic and displaying poor moral judgment.

Toxins are poisons.  Toxic leaders poison those around them, particularly subordinates.  One colleague of mine characterized a toxic leader he knew as an “equal opportunity yeller” who “used to spit and slobber” as he yelled at you.  This is not a new trend.  Fifteen years ago in his monograph on generational challenges in the officer corps, Dr. Leonard Wong referred to a common theme among young leaders, “They have lost faith with the senior leadership of the Army. They believe they [senior leaders] are either out of touch with reality or liars. We’re losing a generation of good leaders.”  That was before 9/11.

An antidote is a substance which can counteract poisoning.  The term derives from the Greek αντιδιδοναι (“antididonai,” “given against.”)    The Good Book teaches “He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much” (Luke 16:10). Phillips Brooks, a nineteenth century American clergyman said, “Character is made in the small moments of our lives.” Continue reading →

Life is a series of transitions.  Like Gandalf leading the Fellowship of the Ring through the Mines of Mordor, we arrive at a new place with a series of different options or directions, and say as he did in the movie, “I have no memory of this place.”  My family faces a transition next year after three decades of federal service.  Life will not be the same.  “I have no memory of this place.”  How do we choose the right direction?  Perhaps it begins with listening.

Our vocation is what we are passionate about.  (Vocation: a calling, from the Latin “vocatio,” or “voctus,” past participle of “vocare,” ”to call.”)  We naturally exercise those talents we enjoy. With the practice that comes from the joy of exercising these passions, we come progressively better at them.

We can often identify elements of vocation in our family life, in our work and in our leisure.  What are the things each day that get us out of bed, that we look forward to, that bring us joy and a sense of purpose?  I realize for myself that my vocation generally includes some combination of the triad: to lead, to teach, and to serve.  The common denominator of the three is people.  What drew me to clinical medicine is what draws me to leadership and academics: I like being around, learning from and perhaps even positively influencing others.  I like seeing them exercise their own talents, working toward a common purpose and finding their own vocations.  Realizing this truth about myself required me to listen carefully to my own calling, my vocation. Continue reading →

The Dreamworks movie “The Croods” is a story about a family of Neanderthals who hope to survive prehistoric life and a series of cataclysmic events with the family motto, “always be afraid.”  (They end up changing their outlook, of course, learn to take risk and innovate.)  The movie is essentially a story about overcoming “negativity bias,” the notion that “bad is stronger than good.”  This theory argues that we tend to remember negative events more clearly than positive ones, that negative episodes in a relationship have greater impact than positive ones, and that we learn more from negative things than from positive.  As we enter cataclysmic times, we may have the same tendency as the Croods to cling to fear and the familiar.  We need examples to encourage us.  We can find inspiration in the volunteers among us who give the most precious thing that they possess on behalf of others: their time.  They exemplify the Latin phrase I learned from my brother/scholar, “Signa proferre:” “Colors to the front.” Continue reading →

To be successful leaders, we have to learn to listen.  No revelation here.  Steven Covey identified this as one of his habits of highly effective people back in 1989.  But how challenging this is to do consistently in the busy leader’s life.  There are board meetings, presentations, calls from the Boss, drive-byes in the corridors.  All require “attention and intention.”  We respond to emails from subordinates, posting on the corporate Facebook page, office-calls from colleagues and direct-reports.  The necessary listening can become numbing, and that in fact is the risk.  It is worth taking a moment now and then to remember that there are at least three things we accomplish when take the time to listen.

We listen to a problem.  At the simplest level, people come to us because they hope that we will be able to solve a dilemma that they have been unable to get unraveled at a lower level.  Those conversations usually start with what their supervisors and the chain of command has been unable to do.  We listen carefully. Sometimes, because we have been doing this for a while, because we see something others might have missed, or simply because we are able to do what others haven’t, we can solve the problem (but always with a sensitivity to the chain of command.) Continue reading →

This time of year people of the Christian faith celebrate Christmas, which at its essence is a celebration of incarnation: the belief that God cared enough about the world to enter into it.  There is a powerful leadership lesson for us in this notion of incarnation.  We know that leadership the craft of leading, and that the verb “to lead” is to show the way by going there in advance. To lead is to display a pattern of behaviors that have their root in conditions of being. “What I do” is then a reflection of “who I am.”  We tend to concentrate on the “what” as leaders, when we would often do better to begin with a focus on the “who.”  There is no easy formula.  But there are at least four things that we have to be, and all have to do with incarnation; entering into the worlds of the people whom we lead.

We have to be there.  The lion tamer Gunther Gebel-Williams is said to have had this piece of advice for his son as the young man entered the lion taming business.  “When you enter the cage,” he told his son, “you have to be there.”  It was my own son who first suggested this to me during his teenage years when he recognized my habit of not really paying attention to what I was doing and who I was talking to.  (It may have been manifest by my clipping through five or six children’s names before I got to the one I wanted.)  My toddler daughters used to take my cheeks in their little hands and turn my face towards theirs so that they knew that with eye contact I was really listening.  As my son would remind me, “Dad you have to be present.”  How much grief would we save ourselves if we resolved to be “attentional” and intentional? Continue reading →

“Among all the elaborate and exhaustive discussions of philosophers on serious and important subjects it appears to me that nothing is more generally useful than the principles of duty they have given to the world.  All our affairs, public or private, civil or domestic, our personal conduct, our social transactions, inevitably fall within the province of duty.  In the observation of duty lies all that is honorable.” (Cicero, “On Moral Duties.”)

Duty is something that one is expected or required to do by moral or legal obligation.  Getting duty right is worth thinking about.  We owe it to ourselves and to those whom we lead.  We owe it to our organizations.  Science-fiction philosopher Robert Heinlein wrote: “The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to the individual” (Starship Troopers, 1959.)

Unfortunately duty is only a few simple letters away from being “to-do,” so that the things we have a true moral obligation to attend to can easily become check-boxes on the lists of life.  This is especially true for a Myers Briggs temperament ending in “J” (judging) like mine.  (“J’s make lists and use them… P’s make lists and lose them…”) The “J” temperament tends to be found disproportionately in leaders, so it is safe to say that this risk exists for many of us.

We have a duty to execute the technical aspects of our roles as leaders.  We have spoken before about “core competencies” and these include the range of abilities from managing our in-boxes and running meetings to strategic thinking.  Leadership requires us to master the basic skills of reading, writing, “rounding” (executive rounds or “management by wandering around”) and rhetoric.  Honing these skills and utilizing them to execute the mission are all reasonable entries on our lists.

But people should never be just “to-do list” entries.  Continue reading →