[June 16, 2017] Good leadership means letting people make mistakes and not holding it against them. My commander once allowed me to lead a convoy of 13 armored vehicles about 50 miles over rough wilderness terrain without a physical reconnaissance of the route. Predictably, I got lost. Good leadership also means seeing things for yourself.
One of several principles of military leadership is to always make the maximum effort to see things for yourself in order to know the ground truth. Relying on others to describe a situation to you is like the age-old teacher’s game where the children turn their backs to the teacher who describes what she has drawn on the chalk board. They draw from the description and then compare their drawing to all other students in class.
The results, like real life, are staggeringly different. A leader who sees the situation has firsthand, as well as the most current knowledge and is therefore the best one to make timely and accurate decisions. In the military that is why senior leaders distant from trouble will defer their judgment to those on the ground, regardless of rank, who have current situational awareness.
In times of stress, human reactions vary greatly and the ability to recall details accurately declines sharply. The human mind is a wonderful thing but it is far from perfect. We also tend to “fill in the blanks” with assumptions and unconfirmed information all the time; that is what makes us human. Good communication skills become a necessity for leaders who understand human nature and desire to work to overcome those shortfalls.
Seeing things for yourself become particularly important in times outside the norm. And besides, that is what real leadership is about. The predictable, normal, everyday events in life can be handled by those not in leadership positions or responsibility; we call this delegation of tasks. When emergencies happen, chaos or confusion occurs, volatility-uncertainty-complexity-ambiguity comes to pass; that is the time when the qualities of leadership are needed most.
I was fortunate to get another chance to lead a Platoon of U.S. Infantry soldiers. After a good scolding and embarrassing moments, I was not relieved of my duties but given another chance to prove myself by leading the unit on a 10-mile road march. This time I drove the route in an army jeep to see it with my own eyes and found a few troublesome spots that could have taken us off course.
My lesson was learned the hard way and while this is not the ideal way to learn, it was never forgotten. I tell that story today to those I teach leadership to both inspire them to learn and to not be afraid of failure.
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