David Piccione.com

If you take a look at my about page, you’ll see that I spent 5 years in the Canadian Army, primarily with 1PPCLI. I found the experience enjoyable for the most part, and looking back some ten years (!) later I realize that I learned a lot about myself, people in general, and the world around me.

If you’ve been exposed to military life at all, specifically the infantry, you know that there are basically two constants: things that go boom and leadership. The army lives and breathes leadership. It is constantly looking to harness the power of effective leaders, and continually examining failures with the way it approaches situations or people. To this day, I’ve yet to find an organization that is as adaptable and open about these things the way the military was.

Today, I thought I would take the time to share some of the things the army taught me about how to be a leader.

Lead By Looking Down

It’s common to see leaders in modern corporations look to advance up the ladder as fast as possible. Often, they do so with little regard for their peers and charges. Being an infantry section commander taught me that what good leaders do is concern themselves not with the opinions of their superiors, but with those of their juniors.

This constant regard, respect and sense of responsibility for those under your command translates into high performing teams, and high performing teams get noticed by themselves. Military leaders at all levels become very attached to the welfare and plight of their men. Sometimes, this attachment is so great that losing people in battle can have lasting traumatic effects on the leader.

This respect for those at the bottom of the pile makes its way into all sorts of actions that add up to form a bond between leader and team that simply isn’t seen in the corporate world. An environment that allows team members to feel that they will be put ahead of the interests of the leader is such a comfort that performance improves a great deal simply because it exists.

Your Team Will Decide Your Worth, In Fact They Already Have

Soldiers can be quite a particular bunch. They play favourites and are extremely hard to please. I suppose when you’re placing your life in the hands of a 23 year old you tend to be pretty particular. Because of this, inept leaders in infantry units are not exactly well kept secrets, at least among the men and women on the ground. Any soldier can tell you who the good leaders in their larger unit are. More than that though, most of them could tell you whom among their peers should be promoted into a leadership role.

It’s this understanding and perception of leadership among peers that ends up forgiving the mistakes of the respected, and ignoring the accomplishments of those who don’t quite cut it. I’ve seen many satisfactory would be leaders fails miserably because of the simple fact that their soldiers didn’t think them adequate to be their peer, let a lone their leader.

The lesson here is that soldiers are people, and that although not all of us will wear our dislike on our sleeves, this type of attitude can be extremely damaging to the leader and the team when it is shown. The simple way to correct for this is for the leader to earn respect. They need to know what they can do and what the have difficulty with and respect the ability and confidence of those they lead.

Earning respect takes time. It comes from building relationships and allowing yourself to be evaluated as a peer, and not just a leader.

If Nobody Died, It isn’t That Big a Deal

In other words, don’t sweat the small stuff.

A simple but true adage that affects every person on the team. The army is a stressful place. Somebody is always yelling. Situations are loud dangerous and confusing. Something always needs to be done. Everything is important to somebody important. Part of the position of the leader is to deflect and channel all of this noise into workable action items for their team. It doesn’t work to simply pass on commands from others, a leader must also filter the priority of tasks into those that are important, those that are somewhat less so, and those that the team doesn’t need to be aware of; either not at all, or simply not at the current time.

Allowing your team to manage stress by giving them less to worry about is a great way to keep them focused and performing. The key factor for success here is learning how to properly prioritize and shelter your team well. Too much information about the irrelevant is bad, but too little information (or information provided without enough time to react) is even worse.

You Might Receive a Sudden Promotion

In combat, people die. The thing is, the people shooting at you have a knack of consistently finding leaders and removing them from the equation. The only way to defeat this effect is to quite simply make everyone a leader. That means that every person needs to know the job of their senior in such a way that they will be able to take over when the time comes.

The military establishes a very clear hierarchy - even between those of the same rank - to achieve this. There were many times that we had a good chuckle about Joe Private being delegated the leader of himself when everyone else was dead and gone.

I wouldn’t think that corporate life would ever need something so detailed. After all, it’s not often that you’ll have three or four members of an eight person team suddenly cease to exist. The principle however is sound, and it provides not only a clear path of succession, but a vision and understanding of the leader’s expectations of his or her team.

This isn’t done anywhere close to enough outside of the military, in my opinion.

If You’ve Overstepped Your Authority, Someone Will Let You Know

I used to get the same general review every year: “Shows potential, should be promoted at earliest opportunity, needs to learn to use initiative more often.” Nearing the end of my stint, it was starting to get a little repetitive, so much so that I began to think that it was just what people wrote if they couldn’t think of an area that you needed to improve on. These days, I know the truth - you can never use your initiative enough.

In the army, leaders are so overwhelmed with information that the less they need to worry about details, the happier they will be. Whether in a junior leadership role, or simply a senior team member, making decisions and acting reasonably with available information was never frowned upon. Sometimes the wrong call was made. Sometimes things didn’t turn out as planned. Regardless, I can never remember a time when anyone was disciplined for taking the initiative and acting in the absence of a higher authority or existing command. I certainly wasn’t.

Make the call, make it fast and make it right. You need to be able to think on your feet, and you need to be able to make a decision and advance to your goal. If you aren’t moving, you lose momentum, and losing momentum can be the difference between success and failure.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I learned so much during my time with the military, and it formed the foundation of skills that I continue to build on. These topics I touched on here are only snippets of information, but at the same time they’re valuable to new leaders, and seldom seen - or learned - in civilian corporations.

I spent some time watching Canada’s U-20 team eliminate themselves from the world cup on the weekend, and set a record in the process. Canada is now the only host nation ever to not score a goal in the history of the tournament. We can now add this to our other distinguished record of being the only Olympic host nation never to win a gold medal - twice.

It seems there’s something in the Canadian psyche that doesn’t lend itself to being good at finishing the task at hand. While we as a nation tend to be good at consensus building, we lack that ability to seal the deal, we collectively lack the killer instinct.

As a leader, you need to be able to develop this touch in both yourself and your team in order to be successful. Those of us in sales positions see this as a given, but it’s equally important for the rest of us as well. Finishing as deliberately as we start is the way we are evaluated by our peers and ultimately, it’s the way we evaluate ourselves.

Just Say It

There is an element of reckless abandon built into those that possess the instinct to close. In some cases this comes naturally and for others it is developed, but regardless, it exists. Otherwise known as getting to the point, this skill can sometimes cross the boundary of situational manners into the land of foot firmly in mouth. Nonetheless, for every misstep there will be at least an equal number of wins.

Actually having the strength to say anything at all is a good first step, as anyone who has ever approached a complete stranger will attest to. Learning to say the right things comes with practice, and even the best sometimes get it wrong.

The art of saying what you mean is critical to providing understanding even if it ruffles a few feathers, and is a great first step to establishing a killer instinct.

Just Do It

In a similar vein to saying what you mean, doing what you mean is key. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s important to ensure that our actions are intentional; we do only what we want to do, the efforts required to bring us closer to our goal.

Often, we can begin with a clear start and end up working in a manner that is more reactionary than intentional. Once this happens, we lose the power to win. As in sport, the key to the game is forcing the opponent to play to your strengths, and not the other way around. Momentum is the way to win, and the same holds true in all tasks that we undertake.

When we control the momentum, and control our actions to ensure we do things that we’re intending to do we increase our chances of being able to finish with the results that we expect.

Just Finish It

As hard as it is to start a task, it’s even more difficult to finish it. Many times it’s hard enough just defining what “finished” is.

The art of the finish starts with well defined goals. Allowing your team to know and understand the end game enables them to continue to work towards it, and you to know when you’ve reached it. You should prioritize work and effort towards your goals, making those tasks that get you closer to the end most important. Again, obvious; but not so much.

In addition to this, to be a successful finisher you’ll need to understand some Voltaire: “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” In other words, being finished is equal to “good enough”. You’ll never be able to look at a task and say, “I have nothing left to do” so don’t equate that unreachable state with being finished.

It’s About Confidence

In the end, the killer instinct comes from confidence. The less confident you are about your teams abilities, the less likely you will be able to finish and win. The only way to build confidence is to practice. By practicing we fail, by failing we learn and by learning we build confidence.

Monitor and gauge your ability to seal the deal (both literally and figuratively) and you’ll avoid setting the records you’d rather not be remembered for.

I read a pretty good article the other day over on Steven Downes’ site. Although it was posted almost a year ago, I only came across it recently. In it, he posits the things he believes every person should take the time to learn.

One of his points - how to value yourself - got me to thinking about how value is related throughout a professional organization, and why it’s important for you as a leader to know your value, and understand where you are and where you want to be.

Value is in the Eyes of the Beholder

Our “value” to an organization can be defined in many ways. Usually though, we’re really talking about the factors that you as an individual bring to the table that benefit the organization as a whole.

Often, if we don’t consciously explore our own view of what we think our value is to the organization is, we fail to fully understand it. Being confident in what we know we can both deliver and achieve within the structure enables us to act more effectively as a leader.

The problem is, we are often over confident in our value when we relate it to tasks, but overly critical of it when we relate ourselves to others.

What’s Your Value?

This is a fully participative blog post. I want you to take out a piece of paper and write down every person in your company. If that’s too daunting a task, write down everyone you can remember off hand, but be sure to include both superiors and juniors.

Now, put that list in order from most to least valuable as far as their worth to the organization. This is completely your opinion, but be honest, and make sure no two people share a spot. Of course, make sure you include yourself!

So where did you end up? I’d imagine, somewhere near the middle, depending on your experience and the organization.

Measuring Yourself Against Your Peers

It’s time now to evaluate how your personal performance compares with how you see yourself, value wise. Take a look at the names you feel are persons that are less valuable than you to the company. What is it that you bring that makes you more important than them? Do their teams do work that the company could afford to lose before yours? What you will find by doing this are the specific strengths and key qualities that you bring to the organization. Do you embody and perform to those strengths on a daily basis?

Now take a look at the names you designated has having more value than you to the company. Why is this so? Are they more experienced? Do they process skills you do not? Are they in a better position to make decisions than you are? Looking at these names, you should find the focus you need to build yourself to the next level.

So, What’s the Point?

Most of this will give you a common sense overview of what you (should) already know. The point is that until you actually take stock of where you stand, it’s difficult to make sure that you properly value yourself within the organization. Finding ways to increase your value enables you to continue to grow.

As a leader though, knowing your value will help you allow others to discover theirs. Being able to lead a team that knows exactly where they stand and what they can do to increase their worth to you and the organization gives them clear goals and direction.

At the end of the day, we’re all rated on a scale that equates our value to the organization. The better you understand this, and how it directly impacts you, the better you will be - both on your own and as a leader.