April 9, 2013 · 5:15 am

Ducimus: We Lead. “To Know Soul”

For the past several years I have been using a model for leadership based on the Latin word “Ducimus,” meaning “We lead, “  borrowed from the motto of the Royal Canadian Infantry.  Perhaps my own roots drew me to this phrase.  On the wall of the U.S. Army Infantry school at Ft. Benning in 1980 was slogan I have found myself returning to since I left there at the age of twenty: “Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.” (Pardon the language, but that’s what it said.) The idea captures the essence of leadership in any domain: to lead from the front and to step forward when your natural inclination is to run away.

We approach leadership opportunities with three areas of focus.  Regardless of the task, we must lead self, lead others and lead work in the unique context of the place or the mission we are responsible for. Continue reading →

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February 11, 2013 · 6:00 am

Strategic Communication: Motive, Message, Methods

These days it seems harder than ever for leaders to communicate their message.  There are a host of voices clamoring for our peoples’ attention. The phone is ringing, there are conversations around the coffee pot, and they get continuous updates on their smart phones from Facebook and text messages from friends.  On-line media provides short sound-bites that help shape their opinions on everything.

Meanwhile, we hold monthly town halls, send out newsletters or emails, hold occasional focus groups and wonder why our episodic, sporadic efforts don’t get the message across.  What is the one right method?  What should the message be?   It is true that some of our people just aren’t listening.  But the onus is on us to tell the story in a way they’d want to hear.  It is even more important in an organization or industry that is under stress. And in these tumultuous times, which industry isn’t?  Ultimately, it means we can’t just do one thing.  We have to do everything.

The motive.

Simon Sinek in his book, “Start with Why” stresses that the underlying core strength of the most successful corporations is a clear sense of “why.”  The notion of why has to be believable and must inspire action from the members of the organization.  The job of the leader is to believe, understand and communicate why.  “Energy motivates,” Sinek writes, “but charisma inspires.  Charisma…comes from clarity of WHY.  It comes from the absolute conviction of an idea bigger than oneself.”  Communicating “why” is the work of the leader.   “The CEO’s job is personify WHY.  To ooze of it.  To talk about it. To preach it. To be a symbol of what the company believes. They are the intention and WHAT the company says and does is their voice.”  The message must clearly communicate “why” to the intended audience.  President Ronald Reagan was called “the Great Communicator.”  He once said, “I am not a great communicator, I just communicate great things.”  Great communication starts with why. Continue reading →

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January 8, 2013 · 5:47 am

Listening in Leadership

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 →

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December 12, 2012 · 5:40 am

Four “Be’s”

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 →

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November 1, 2012 · 5:41 am

When Duty becomes “To-Do”

“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 →

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October 23, 2012 · 5:35 am

Leader phylogeny

“If the spirit of the student is in you, the lessons will be there.”  Sir William Osler

Phylogeny is the evolutionary, developmental history of a species.  I propose that leaders experience phylogeny: we evolve over time.  Not all of the evolution is adaptive.

I was reminded of my own phylogeny recently by a column in the Washington Post.  It was a discussion on how employees should present new ideas to their bosses.

It was the boss part that really convicted me.  The author depicted a group presenting their creative idea and “as soon as you get to the second slide, the boss immediately interrupts to explain why your ideas will not work or what you should have done instead, letting you know that he or she doesn’t understand the idea and definitely doesn’t think it will work” (Joyce E. A. Russell, Vice Dean of the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland.) Ouch.

As a young leader, I noticed that when my hospital’s CEO was being briefed she would glance at the number of slides in her copy of the handout a few minutes into the presentation and would seldom let the briefer get beyond the fourth or fifth slide without asking for the bottom line.

In an uneasy nod to my own leader phylogeny, I realized that a decade or two into my own leadership journey I had developed some of the same tendencies.  I have developed the habit of interrupting during briefs, of saying “got-it,” of skipping ahead in the discussion, of using body language to communicate my disagreement (head swinging subtly “east-west” instead of “north-south” while they are speaking) of drumming my fingers on the table or arm of the chair, of pulling at the skin on my neck or my mustache (a risk inherent to having the “F” for “feeling” in my Myers Briggs temperament) of tapping impatiently with my ever-present yellow pencil.

The risk to the organization goes beyond the personal effect this behavior might have on my leadership effectiveness.  These kinds of behaviors lead people to be less inclined to share their thoughts with me and with our leadership team. They stifle ideas that present opportunity for creativity, innovation and change in our organization that are not consistent with my already preconceived ideas of the direction I think we need to go.

The “we” is always more powerful than the “me.”

The necessary course correction starts with becoming aware and follows with an apology to my direct subordinates.  It continues with accountability; making sure that a trusted agent on the team helps me to monitor and modify these behaviors.

Leader phylogeny is inevitable.  But we will need to nudge it in the right direction now and then.

Chuck Callahan  Henry V 4.3 – Lead from the Front  http://henryv43.com/

 

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September 29, 2012 · 7:30 pm

Honor and leadership.

“But if it be a sin to covet honor,
I am the most offending soul alive.”
William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 4, Scene III

Honor is a puzzling word.  It is perplexing in part because it can be used as both a noun and a verb.  It can have a range of different meanings.  For example in the courtroom scene from the 1992 movie “A Few Good Men,” the judge directs Marine Colonel Nathan Jessup to call him “Your Honor” because he has earned the distinction.  The lawyer LT Daniel Caffey tells Private Harold Dawson in the same courtroom a short while later, “You don’t need a patch on your shoulder to have honor.”  Honor is first used as a noun to describe the title of a person held formally in esteem by virtue of his position and rank. It is also used to describe the accumulation of sufficient virtue so that a person engenders esteem.  It is no wonder that the word often gets relegated to general nonspecific usage; vague references that find their way onto monuments or into political speeches.

Honor is the act of being held in esteem by others, the process of becoming worthy to be held in esteem, and the resulting esteem itself. Continue reading →

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August 19, 2012 · 8:37 pm

Leading from the Bridge

There is no way to avoid it.  The bigger the organization, the more time you have to spend on the bridge.  I am not a nautical expert, but I have had the privilege of serving very closely with my Navy brethren for two years and I think that the idea of the ship’s bridge is a good one for helping us address the tension inherent to moving up the ladder of responsibility and leadership.

In smaller units and smaller organizations it is less challenging to be out on the floors or decks meeting with and talking with the people who actually turn the dials and move the gears of the organization’s machinery.  No matter how large the organization, a leader can never afford the luxury of completely isolating him or herself from that.  We must get out and talk with staff on a regular, predictably frequent basis.

Although we have to “lead from everywhere” (Admiral Thad Allen) we cannot be everywhere.   The ship is commanded from it’s bridge.  For most of us, the equivalent is our office.  How can demonstrate effective and compassionate leadership from the bridge, and use the “view from the bridge” to help us lead from everywhere?

Keep the inbox empty.  As we talked about a few months back, an empty inbox is an executive’s core competency.  There are very often people attached to the documents stacking on our office or computer desktops, and the people are waiting for their paperwork to return and their issues to be resolved.  Our timeliness is a reflection to them of our dedication to them as individuals.

Answer email.  A quick, “Thank you,” with your initials takes seconds but goes a long way to acknowledging the person who sent the message; a person who is too often left wondering nervously waiting to see what “the Boss” thinks of an idea or feedback.

Develop your personal COMMPLAN (Communication Plan.) Much of your organization will only know you through your messaging.  Only some will get to know you in person.  Some may never even meet you.  How will you communicate with them?  An intentional COMMPLAN will allow you to mix group email, video messages, focus groups, town halls, electronic social media feedback sessions into a strategic matrix to effectively communicate with both internal and external “customers.” Continue reading →

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July 3, 2012 · 9:18 am

Leadership Lessons from Gettysburg

Fourth of July weekend 2012 is the 149th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.  There will be a lot written about the battle in the next year by true Civil War and Gettysburg experts.  I have enjoyed walking the battlefield a number of times and am always struck by a new leadership lesson when I visit.  These are some of the lessons learned from a couple of visits to Gettysburg in the last year.  Consider making the trip yourself if you are in the area.  Read Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels or watch Turner’s “Gettysburg” movie (the script is almost exactly the same as Sharra’s book) before you visit.  Pay attention to the individual stories as well as the overall strategies.  You will see the leadership lessons as well.

1. Tactical immediacy will trump strategic primacy every time.

General Robert E Lee intended for the decisive battle not to be fought at Gettysburg but rather closer to Philadelphia, Harrisburg or Baltimore.  Brigadier General John Buford’s Union cavalry forced Confederate General Heth’s division into battle on July 1st 1863 outside of Gettysburg against the specific orders of Lee, forcing the battle earlier than Lee wanted and yielding the initiative and ultimately the high ground to the Union army.  Heth’s men were heading toward Gettysburg to look for shoes, a very tactical exercise.

2. Initiative is almost always a good idea.

Union General John Reynolds took the initiative and deployed his Corps to the high ground southwest of Gettysburg on July 1st, which turned out to be one of the key strategic decisions of the battle. Brigadier General Gouveneur Warren, an engineer staff officer probably saved the high ground from being turned when he ordered without any authority to do so, Colonel Strong Vincent’s Brigade to defend Little Round Top on the afternoon of July 2nd.  Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, part of Vincent’s brigade, repulsed the last threat to the high ground when he ordered and executed a bayonet charge against the Confederate’s flank attack late on the afternoon of July 2nd. Continue reading →

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April 21, 2012 · 6:21 pm

“3-D” Meeting Dynamics

One of my daughters asked me one day what I did at work.

“What do you think I do at work, honey?”  I replied, probably without looking up.

“You answer the phone, do emails and go to meetings.” It was insightful for an early teen.

She had it pretty close.  Those are certainly the things that consume a lot of the day. She missed on one account.  Leaders don’t just get to go to meetings. They have to run them.

One of the key jobs of the leader is to build teams while we conduct meetings.  There is an emerging body of research based on monitoring staff members using small, unobtrusive devices that detect when the person communicates in any way with peers, how often, with what tone of voice, what body language, whether they face them when they speak or are turned away.  The maps that the research group generate from this data demonstrate effective communication patterns of engagement in meetings as well as the energy generated with new ideas and concepts by teams (Pentland. The Science of Building New Teams. HBR Aril 2012.) What’s more, they have accumulated data to demonstrate that when teams have energy, engagement and when they interact with other team members outside their immediate circle (called “exploration” by the authors) they are more productive and successful.  We don’t have the luxury of these sophisticated gadgets (at least not yet.)  What can we monitor as signs of health of our team meetings? Continue reading →

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