Gates on Leadership

Today, I found this text of Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ speech to the graduating class of West Point on May 24, 2009. I thought it was excellent and wanted to make excerpts from it part of my blog record. I won’t post the whole speech, but if you are interested you can find the entire speech here. This will be my longest post ever, so I apologize for deviating from my standard format.

Here are the points he makes in his speech that resonate strongly with my own philosophy of leadership:

1. Being a leader is a privilege; it does not make you privileged. Never consider yourself above those you have been given the privilege to lead or exempt from the rules they must follow.
2. Think of yourself as a resource, not the source. Always ask yourself “how can I help?”
3. Have the courage to say and do the right thing to further the shared purpose, even if no one else around you will do the same. Always see it as your responsibility to say what people need to hear, not what you think they want to hear. Fight with ever fiber of your being the insidious and pervasive phenomena of groupthink, and encourage others to do the same.
4. Be a life long learner and never consider yourself as having “arrived.” There is always something new to learn – pursue it like a dog after a bone for the purpose of improving your ability to serve those you have been given the privilege to lead.

Here is the excerpt of his speech:

"I’ve come to believe that few people are born great leaders. When all is said and done, the kind of leader you become is up to you, based on the choices you make. And in the time remaining, I’d like to talk about some of those choices, and how those choices will be shaped by the realities of this dangerous new century.

I would start with something I tell all the new generals and civilian executives that I meet with at the Pentagon. It is a leadership quality that is really basic and simple – but so basic and simple that too often it is forgotten: and that is the importance, as you lead, of doing so with common decency and respect towards your subordinates. Harry Truman had it right when he observed that one of the surest ways to judge someone is how well – or poorly – he treats those who can’t talk back.

In this country, going back to its earliest days, the American soldier has been drawn from the ranks of free citizens, which has implications for how those troops should be led and treated.

Two anecdotes from our country’s founding capture the independent thinking of the American soldier and the greatness of the Army officer who led them. During the Revolution, a man in civilian clothes rode past a redoubt being repaired. The commander was shouting orders but not helping. When the rider asked why, the supervisor of the work detail retorted, 'Sir, I am a corporal!' The stranger apologized, dismounted, and helped repair the redoubt. When he was done, he turned toward the supervisor and said, 'Mr. Corporal, next time you have a job like this and not enough men to do it, go to your Commander-in-Chief and I will come and help you again.' Too late, the corporal recognized George Washington. The power of example in leadership.

On another occasion, Washington was making his rounds and came across a Private John Brantley drinking some stolen wine. Brantley invited Washington to have a drink with him. The general declined, saying, 'My boy, you have no time for drinking wine.' Brantley responded, 'Damn your proud soul – you’re above drinking with soldiers.' Washington turned back, dismounted and said, 'Come, I will drink with you.' The jug was passed around, and as the general re-mounted, Brantley said, 'Now, I’ll be damned if I don’t spend the last drop of my heart’s blood for you.' A lesson in the independence of the American soldier and his loyalty, when treated with respect.

A second fundamental quality of leadership is doing the right thing even when it is the hard thing – in other words, integrity. Too often we read about examples in business and government of leaders who start out with the best of intentions and somehow go astray.

I’ve found that more often than not, what gets people in trouble is not the obvious case of malfeasance – taking the big bribe or cheating on the exam. Often it is the less direct, but no less damaging, temptation to look away or pretend something did not happen, or that certain things must be okay because other people are doing them; when deep down, if you look hard enough, you know that’s not true. To take that stand – to do the hard right, over the easier, more convenient, or more popular wrong – requires courage.

Courage comes in different forms. There is the physical courage of the battlefield, which this institution and this army possess beyond measure. Consider the story of Lieutenant Nicholas Eslinger, Class of 2007. He was leading his platoon through Samarra, Iraq, when an enemy fighter threw a grenade in their midst. Eslinger jumped on the grenade to shield his men. When the grenade didn’t go off, the platoon leader threw it back over the wall. And then it exploded. At the time of this incident, then-Second Lieutenant Eslinger was only 16 months out of West Point. He would later receive the Silver Star.

But, in addition to battlefield bravery, there is also moral courage, often harder to find. In business, in universities, in the military, in any big institution, there is a heavy emphasis on teamwork. And, in fact, the higher up you go, the stronger the pressure to smooth off the rough edges, paper over problems, close the proverbial ranks and stay on message.

The hardest thing you may ever be called upon to do is stand alone among your peers and superior officers. To stick your neck out after discussion becomes consensus, and consensus ossifies into groupthink.

One of my greatest heroes is George Marshall, whose portrait hangs over my desk at the Pentagon. As I said here last April, Marshall was probably the exemplar of combining unshakeable loyalty with having the courage and integrity to tell superiors things they didn’t want to hear – from 'Black Jack' Pershing to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As it turns out, Marshall’s integrity and courage were ultimately rewarded professionally. In a perfect world, that should always happen. Sadly, it does not, and I will not pretend there is not risk. But that does not make taking that stand any less necessary for the sake of our Army and our country.

The moral principles of leadership I’ve just discussed are timeless – they apply to any military leader in any generation. So do a range of other choices you will face about the leader you aspire to become. I refer to those relating to the kind of judgment, wisdom, and mental skills – the intellectual attributes, if you will – that will be most needed to be successful as an Army leader in the 21st century.

It has always been one of the hallmarks of the U.S. military to push decision making down to the lowest possible level. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we rely on our junior- and mid-level combat leaders to make judgments – tactical, strategic, cultural, ethical – of the kind that much more senior commanders would have made a generation ago.

The Army has always needed agile and adaptive leaders with a broad perspective and range of skills. Now, in an era where we face a full spectrum of conflict – where high-intensity combat, stability, train-and-equip, humanitarian, and high-end conventional operations may be occurring in rapid sequence or simultaneously – we cannot succeed without military leaders who are just as full spectrum in their thinking. We will not be able to train or educate you to have all the right answers – as one might find in a manual – but you should look for those experiences and pursuits in your career that will help you at least ask the right questions.

Maxwell Taylor – who was an Asia specialist in the 1930s before becoming the famed commander of the 101st Airborne Division and later Army chief of staff and chairman of the Joint Chiefs – once observed of his fellow academy grads that, “The ‘goats’ of my acquaintance who have leapfrogged their classmates are men who continue their intellectual growth after graduation.

To this end, in addition to the essential troop commands and staff assignments, you should consider, and in fact embrace, opportunities that in the past were considered off the beaten path, if not a career dead end. Those might include further study at graduate school, teaching at this or another first-rate educational institution, being a fellow at a think tank, advising indigenous security forces, becoming a foreign area specialist, or service in other parts of government – all being experiences that will make you a more successful military leader in the 21st century.

In 1974, when I left the CIA mother ship to take a staff job at the National Security Council, I was told by my boss at Langley that there probably would not be a job there for me when I returned. My career as a CIA officer was considered over. So you never know when taking some risk in your career will pay significant future dividends.It is important to remember that none of what I have talked about these past few minutes is alien to the best traditions of Army leadership – particularly at times of great peril for this country:

Grant and Sherman were not exactly spit and polish soldiers – and in fact left the military for a stretch before they returned to lead the Union Army to victory. George Marshall spent 15 years as a lieutenant and never commanded a division; and Eisenhower spent years toiling in obscurity as what General MacArthur later called a “clerk” in the Philippines.

Just over a half century ago, no less an Army institution than General Eisenhower said here at West Point: “Without the yeast of pioneers, the United States Army, or any other organization of men” – and today we would add women – “cannot escape degeneration into a ritualistic worship of the status quo.” Keep Ike’s admonition in mind in the years ahead – be a pioneer in the assignments you take, the learning you pursue, the assumptions you question.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, reflecting on his service as a Union soldier during the Civil War, later said that “in our youth our hearts were touched with fire.” I hope that as a result of coming to this place, in the instruction you have received, and in the friendships you have formed, that your hearts, minds, and spirits have been touched in a way that will prepare you for the trial by fire that may await you.

In closing, as I said last April, know that I think of each of you as I would my own son or daughter. I feel a personal responsibility for each of you. I have committed myself and the department I lead to see that you have everything you need to accomplish your mission and to come home safely to your families and to the honor and gratitude you will have earned. Know, also, that your countrymen are grateful for your service, and will be praying for your safety and your success.

A final thought. We all seek a world at peace. After each war, we always hope we have fought the last war, the war to end all wars. I believe that such hopes ignore all of human history. I believe that for so long as we seek to be free men and women, for so long as the bright light of liberty shines, there will be those whose sole ambition, whose sole obsession, will be to extinguish that light.

I believe that only strength, eternal vigilance, and the continuing courage and commitment of warriors like you – and your willingness to serve at all costs – will keep the sacred light of American liberty shining: A beacon to all the world.
You have taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution and we, the American people. The nation stands in awe of you. And I salute you.

Thank you."

Coping with stress

The next intentional activity from The How of Happiness is developing strategies for coping with stress. Recall from my earlier blog that it’s these intentional activities and habits that can account for as much as 40% of our happiness. The first intentional activity was expressing gratitude, the second was deliberate optimism, the third was to stop overthinking and comparing ourselves to others, the fourth was practicing acts of kindness, and the fifth was social support.

It is actually the negative response to demands at work, or distress, that we have to cope with. The positive response we can have to these same demands, or eustress, we don’t cope with but rather must learn to savor. The majority of my research has been focused on the concept of eustress.

My colleague and I use the “bathtub analogy” to illustrate how we conceptualize distress and eustress:

Two basic things are necessary to achieve a comfortable bath: the level of water
in the tub, and the temperature of that water. Two things determine the level of the water in the tub – the flow of water into the bathtub, and the flow of water down the drain over time. Similarly, both hot water and cold water flow into the bathtub simultaneously to determine the water temperature. If we compare the way stress is commonly studied to the bathtub, the current approach is like studying a bathtub with only a cold water faucet (distress). We have identified the sources of this cold water (stressors) and we can tell individuals how to either decrease the incoming flow of cold water or increase the flow of cold water out of their bathtubs (distress prevention). We also know a great deal about the physiological, behavioral, and psychological consequences of sitting in a bath of cold water for long periods of time. Herein lies the problem: a more complete model of stress should acknowledge that there are two faucets (hot and cold) and that managing both are necessary if you want to get the water level and temperature just right for a comfortable bath. Few individuals take a totally cold bath (distress) or a totally hot bath (eustress). Similarly, few, if any stressors, are appraised as purely positive or purely negative. It’s usually some combination of the two. (Nelson & Simmons, 2009).

Coping, then, deals with stock and flow of the negative things in our lives. Problem focused coping and emotion focused coping are the two most basic approaches to responding to distress. In problem focused coping, we try to manage the stressor or cause of distress. In emotion focused coping, we hope to manage our response to the stressor.

For example, I personally find it very stressful to drive on interstate highways (yes, I am odd). I don’t mind driving, and I don’t mind driving fast, but there is something about the combination of driving fast in heavy traffic that sends me out of my skin. I’m not worried about my driving – I am a great driver - it is all the other morons on the road that worry the heck out of me!

So I practice problem focused coping by avoiding driving on the interstate as much as possible. I have lived in Reno, Nevada for the past 3 years. I moved here from Fargo, North Dakota. When I moved, I had no way to avoid driving on the interstate, and I did just fine. But since I have lived here, I have only been back on the interstate to get to places in town a handful of times. Fortunately, in Reno, they have two wonderful streets called Virginia and McCarren that can get me almost anywhere in town. When I selected where I was going to buy a home in Reno, I deliberately chose an area of town where I could access my workplace without ever having to drive on the interstate.

Yet when I have to drive my daughter to California for volleyball tournaments, I cannot avoid the interstate. As a problem focused strategy, I car pool with another parent and let him do most of the driving. But when it is my turn to drive, I have to practice emotion focused coping. I realize that this anxiety is all between my ears, so I do whatever I can to take my mind off driving – e.g. engage in conversation, listen to the radio, roll down the window and feel the breeze on my face.

At work, I try to avoid the things I know from experience distress me, and when I can’t avoid them, I make the best of it and focus very hard on controlling my emotions (e.g. keep my mouth shut).

And as much as possible, I try to expose myself to the things that provide me pleasure and challenge. Back to the bathtub analogy – I prefer mine warm and invigorating.

The Road to Davy’s Bar

In an earlier blog post I shared a quote from Charles Handy about sensible organizational behavior that I just love. I promised I would share his parable of change called The Road to Davy’s Bar. It’s a long quote, but I hope you find it as useful as I do.

The Wicklow Mountains lie just outside Dublin, Ireland. It is an area of wild
beauty, a place to which, as an Irishman born there, I return as often as I can.
It is still a bare and lonely spot, with unmarked roads, and I still get lost.
Once I stopped and asked the way. “Sure, it’s easy,” a local replied, “just keep
going the way you are, straight ahead, and after a while you will cross a small
bridge with Davy’s Bar on the far side. You can’t miss it!” “Yes, I’ve got
that,” I said. “Straight on to Davy’s Bar.” “That’s right. Well, half a mile
before you get there, turn to your right up the hill.”

His directions seemed so logical that I thanked him and drove off. By the time I realized that the logic made no sense he had disappeared. As I made my way down to Davy’s Bar, wondering which of the roads to the right to take, I reflected that he had just given me a vivid example of paradox, perhaps even the paradox of our times: by the time you know where you ought to go, it’s too late to go there, or, more dramatically, if you keep on going the way you are, you will miss the road to the future.

….. The world keeps changing. It is one of the paradoxes of success that the things and the ways which got you where you are are seldom those that keep you there. If you think they are, and that you know the way to the future because it is a continuation of where you’ve come from, you may well end up in Davy’s Bar, with nothing left but a chance to drown your sorrows and reminisce about the past (pp 49-50, emphasis added).

Handy then describes a powerful concept about the basic nature of change called the Sigmoid Curve. The logic of the Sigmoid Curve is burned in my brain – stay tuned because I will share it sometime soon!

What do you profess?

Yesterday I talked about the things that I “profess” when I teach organizational behavior. These things I profess represent my core beliefs about the practice of my profession, which I see as developing future leaders and managers.

To be honest, even though I have professed these things for years, yesterday was the first time I have ever written them down in a single and concise list. Some of the beliefs I listed developed decades ago, while others really only became central to my philosophy in the last few years. I anticipate, in fact hope, that my now stated beliefs will continue to evolve as my understanding of what makes people tick at work continues to develop as well.

So what do you profess?

What are your core beliefs about how to achieve excellence in the practice of your profession? If you were given the opportunity to speak on a regular basis to people what were interested in or new to your profession, what would you tell them? Are your core beliefs consistent with and help you daily accomplish your purpose?

If you are like me, just getting this stuff on paper might be pretty tough, and getting it to a point where you are comfortable with it might take numerous iterations. Try to get your list to the point that you could share it with others with both clarity and conviction; there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind that you truly believe these things and feel very strongly about them.

What is it about what you do, how you do it, and why you do it that makes you authentic and compelling? Get to the point in your clarity and conviction that your hope would be that whoever heard you “profess” these things would remember them forever.

My bottom line

Tonight is the first meeting of another 3 week course in organizational behavior. Even though this is my bread-and-butter course, I only get to teach it in the summer because of my other teaching obligations. But I LOVE this course because students are continuously surprised about the power and relevance of the material. There are very few courses where students can walk out and apply the material in their lives today.

Early in my career I was fortunate to be in a small group meeting with the president of the Academy of Management. Someone in the group asked him his advice on how to become a better teacher. His response was simple – have something “to profess”. Belief in and care for the message matters, and people respond positively when you speak from your passion.

Here are some of the main things I “profess” when I teach organizational behavior:

· We usually only notice the behavior of other folks at work when they have done something wrong or unexpected. When that happens, we automatically search for an explanation for the behavior we just observed. Our knee-jerk reaction will be to blame the individual, but the real explanation for the behavior will always be a combination of some things about the person (e.g. personality, attitudes) and things about the system or process (e.g. training, staffing, equipment) which they do not control.

· System or process factors, more than person factors, are the strongest drivers of behavior at work. But it is easier to blame people than to fix systems. If you want to be the most effective leader you can be, stop blaming people and fix your systems.

· People are an open book. Over time, if we know what to look and listen for, people will reveal to us their personalities, attitudes, and values. But for this to have value, we have to be informed observers. If we can’t “read”, we will miss the story. We need to understand our people so that we can encourage them to partner with us to fix our systems.

· Personalities are relatively fixed and stable by the time folks get to us as adults at work. We can’t change people’s personalities, so don’t even try. But we do want to understand personalities, first our own, then the personalities of those we work with, so that we can adjust the thing we have the most control over – our own behavior.

· Attitudes, on the other hand, are not fixed and can have a strong effect on performance. We need to listen for specific attitudes (e.g. satisfaction and commitment) so that we can take specific actions to change those attitudes. The most effective ways to change employee attitudes are always found in changes to the system (e.g. job re-design, better training, and a change in rewards).

· Purpose is powerful. Make sure you and the folks you have been given the privilege to lead clearly understand why their work matters.

· Do the right thing. This is the most basic definition of leadership. Yet reasonable people can and will disagree on the right thing to do, usually because we have different missions. When this disagreement occurs, remember the purpose.

· As a leader or follower, strive to be a resource, not the source. Always be thinking in terms of “how can I help?”

· Create interdependent, not dependent relationships with people at work. Whether leader or follower, strive to be a partner and not part of a superior-subordinate relationship. Partners give 100% effort to their work, but they also see it as part of their responsibility to always be looking for ways to improve the system or process they are working on. The paradox of partnership is that even if we are not invited into partner a relationship that does not relieve of us the personal responsibility to behave as partners.

· Unless and until you we assume full responsibility for ourselves, we force others to assume responsibility for us. We can never be true partners at work until we assume full responsibility for ourselves. There is no blame.

· There is no substitute for caring. Trust is fundamental to our effectiveness as leaders. The most important thing people want to know about when they are deciding whether or not to trust us is our intentions toward them. Over time, it is pretty clear by our words and deeds what we really care most about – ourselves or the people we have been given the privilege to lead. We get a fundamentally and sometimes radically different response from people when they know we care about them. You can’t fake this either.

Wow, that was more than I thought it was going to be! But there is so much more. People do fascinating things at work, and organizational behavior helps us understand why we do the things we do.

And only with understanding do we have the opportunity to create a unique future for ourselves and those we have been given the privilege to lead.

Sensible organizational behavior

Do you highlight or underline a book when you read? I often do. I highlight things that jump out at me or for whatever reasons really make an impression on me.

I find it fascinating to look back through a book I read years ago and see what I highlighted (ok, I am a nerd). It can be easy to forget how we got where we are, how we became who we are.

I’ve been thumbing through some of the old books on my shelf recently, by gurus like W. Edwards Deming, Peter Drucker and Charles Handy. The “old” stuff they wrote 20 years ago is still contemporary today. It is a testament to how forward thinking these folks were.

I’m going to share more nuggets from their works in the future, but I have to get this quote from Handy’s The Age of Pardox in my blog now because it is so simple yet so powerful.

A common cause, the willingness to deny oneself in the interests of that common
cause, and trust that the other party will do the same – these are the
essentials of sensible organizational behavior (p. 120).

The concepts of purpose and trust resonate with me as strongly as any other at this point in my thinking about organizational behavior. "Why is this important?" and "What are your intentions toward me?" are two of the most basic questions a leader must address to those she/he has been given the privilege to lead. I’m very grateful to credit Charles Handy for helping to shape my heart and mind on these issues.

Handy tells a great parable about change called The Road to Davey’s Bar. Stay tuned for that one.

Social Support

Wow, it has been a LONG time since my last blog entry. The end of the semester is crazy busy. That’s an excuse, I know, but I’m sticking to it.

The fifth intentional activity from The How of Happiness is developing social support. Recall from my earlier blog that it’s these intentional activities and habits that can account for as much as 40% of our happiness. The first intentional activity was expressing gratitude, the second was deliberate optimism, the third was to stop overthinking and comparing ourselves to others, and the fourth was practicing acts of kindness.

Developing social support means having an adequate stock of people that you can call on to help in times of need and stress. There is a large body of research that shows it is one of the most effective coping mechanisms available. We can get social support from friends, family, colleagues, supervisors, subordinates, professionals (e.g. our doctor), or spiritual advisors (e.g. our minister).

And the relationship between friends and happiness is reciprocal. People with friends are more likely to be happy; likewise, happy people are more likely to have friends. We are most likely hard wired to seek out and maintain strong, stable, and positive interpersonal relationships.

Here are a few suggestions for developing friendships:

· Make time. Be available to others so you can offer support and encouragement if needed. Consider creating rituals (e.g. coffee breaks, lunch) where you can get together and stay in touch on a regular basis.
· Communicate. Be a good listener, but don’t neglect sharing of yourself. Be transparent with no hidden agenda and nothing to hide. If asked, be prepared to give your honest opinion.
·Watch your motives. There is no substitute for caring. We trust people that have our best intentions in mind. When we have a chance to influence others, it will always come down to a choice between favoring our self-interest or the interest of others. Over time, our words and deeds paint a very clear picture of us and people can tell if we do or do not care.

In my opinion, while it is good to be friendly with everyone at work, I think we should develop most of our closest friendships outside of work. This is especially important as we assume the privilege of leading others. The best leaders consult a wide variety of people – friends as well as foes – before making important decisions, and they do the right thing regardless of what their friends might think.

We have to be caring and authentic while remaining absolutely fair. Impressions are powerful, and even the slightest impression that we might play favorites at work can undermine our credibility.