Every
once in a while, I feel myself becoming a little frustrated with my assignments
simply because I have a hard time relating to them. This is one of those times.
It isn’t that what I am learning doesn’t apply to me. It is just that the Army
is such a unique environment when it comes to leadership. Unlike a traditional
organization, we are not producing a product or a service that adds value. We
also have a unique approach to leadership that is deeply rooted in traditional
hierarchies and, though society is changing, we can’t really change that
approach because of the need for positive control in the battlespace. That
means that we often have a very direct style of leadership where followership
is not optional but rather mandatory. In other words, it doesn’t matter how
crummy a boss may be. So long as they are not doing anything that is morally or
ethically unacceptable, their leadership must be followed.
Even
though I often face this frustration with relating my position to the
assignments, I usually am still able to find some kind of a connection. The
only thing that seems to keep me going is the understanding that I am laying
the knowledge foundation for my future. This particular blog put me in one of
those frustrated moods and it seemed to take all evening for me to figure out
how to really connect it to my current position…but then it clicked.
Boyatzis
(2006) conducted a study of 32 outstanding performers and a random sampling from
800 average performers in a firm to identify a “tipping point” in their
competencies that moved them from average to outstanding. I won’t list all of
the competencies here but will hit on the highlights. There were four
“clusters” of competencies that, when displayed on a regular basis, were
indicators of highly successful leaders. They were:
1.
Self-motivation
cluster (planning, achievement orientation, self-confidence)
2.
Self-regulation
cluster (taking a risky stand, self-control, adaptability, conscientiousness, values
learning)
3.
People-management
cluster (networking, leadership, coaching, empathy, facilities learning)
4.
Cognitive
cluster (systems thinking)
Basically,
these competencies were rated by how often they were demonstrated and seen by
others. Each competency had a unique tipping point but, for the sake of
brevity, I’ll just say that they competencies were all demonstrated more than
“occasionally” and leaned to the “frequently” category.
I
have been asked to share examples from my own career of tipping points. As
previously noted, this is where a little bit of frustration seeped in because we
are taught to lead in a completely different way than those in other
organizations. However, as I thought about it more, I realized that yes, it is
true that my previous positions were a little less applicable but with my
current position, it is more important than ever. As a Station Commander for an
Army recruiting center, we work remote from all other support and services. My
job is essentially to evaluate the data support systems and ensure that I am
placing my team in the right place at the right time with the right message to
achieve our mission objectives. However, this means that I pretty much push my
team out the door at about 10:30 or 11:00 every morning and send them off to
work independently for the next six hours or so. That means that I absolutely
must trust them to do what is necessary to be done to accomplish the mission. If
I expect them to get out there and do the job instead of just taking off and
going to take a nap for a couple of hours, I absolutely must hit a tipping
point where I move from an average leader to an outstanding leader than can
inspire commitment, trust, passion, and action.
I
think there are two areas where I have really hit a tipping point recently were
I went from being average to really setting myself apart which, in turn, set my
team up for success. My first example comes from the self-motivation cluster,
specifically focusing on the planning and achievement orientation competencies.
Every morning, I have a meeting with my team which is called an In-Progress
Review (IPR). I always say that this is a little like performing maintenance on
a car in motion. We don’t stop anything to have the meeting but rather just
huddle quickly and go over a few planning issues. Every day, though, I print a
sheet that shows exactly where we are with mission accomplishment and then I
direct the actions that I expect to happen during the week to close us out.
There is always a plan. I will confide this in you, though – I don’t always
know how or if a plan will work but I never tell my team that. I always just
tell them exactly what I expect of them and how that will accomplish our
mission. I have found that when you give a task and show them how the result affects
the team, the members of the team do what needs to be done to make it happen. This
IPR isn’t something that I do sometimes. It is something that I do every day.
(It is mandatory but I know that many of my peers don’t do it as required.)
However,
as great as that may seem, there is another area where I know that I really hit
a tipping point on a routine basis and it is what is setting me up for success
in the future. When it comes to people-management, my specialty is networking.
I actually keep a rolodex of business cards that I go over once a week. I am
one of those guys that sends Christmas cards to people that I encounter. This
has resulted in friendships and partnerships with people, some very powerful,
from all walks of life. A few examples - there is a man named Justin
Constantine who was a Marine officer injured in combat. He is now a highly
influential motivational speaker with several TED Talks. He just left my
apartment a couple of hours after having dinner and playing cards for a while.
Then, last night, I had drinks and a cigar with Rick Calero, the CEO of TIAA
Direct. I also am connected with celebrities such as Geraldo Rivera and Gilbert
Gottfried. How is it that I, a lowly Sergeant First Class in the U.S. Army, am
in the inner circle with people such as this? It isn’t that I am better than
anybody else. It isn’t that I am smarter, funnier, or more talented. It is only
because I understand that when we connect with others, we share in the reach of
their influence. I know that there is very little I can actually accomplish
professionally or personally but I know how to connect the people that can.
Just the other week, one of my friends reached out to me because he was hosting
a Veterans’ benefit that included a Gold Star family but they were unavailable.
Within an hour and a half, I had another family lined up for him and, in
return, I had tickets to a hockey game.
Tipping
points – moving from average to outstanding – is more than just about the
competencies that we have, though. It is also about the vision that we have of
ourselves and, more important, the vision that we have of our organization
(Boyatzis, Rochford, & Taylor, 2015). There really are two ways that we can
see ourselves. We can see our ideal self or we can see our ought self. Our
ideal self is our personal image of a desired future fueled by hope that
reflects our core identity. This is how we know we can be if we hit all of our
tipping points and drive ourselves and our teams to the full potential. On the
other hand, our ought self is the vision that others have of our future. In
other words, it is their version of our ideal self. But since nobody knows us
like we do, it is important that we embrace what we know is best rather than
what others tell us is best. To reach our ideal self, though, we have to
embrace both positive emotional attractors (PEAs) and negative emotional
attractors (NEAs). Boiling them down to their basic elements, PEAs are the
positive drives that we feel to move us toward our ideal self and NEAs are the
negative emotions that we either wish to avoid or that we experience that drive
us to avoid recurrence. We have to learn to embrace them both (but preferably
we experience more positive than negative) to become our ideal self.
Ultimately,
as I mentioned before, I may not have the typical work experience in a
traditional organization so it is understandable that some of this was
initially a little lost on me. However, I clearly see now how my tipping points
that move me from ordinary to extraordinary don’t even lie in me but rather in
others through networking. I also see the ideal version of myself in which I
can take a step back and just orchestrate allowing others to excel. That is how
I will be successful as a leader.
Boyatzis,
R. E. (2006). Using Tipping Points of Emotional Intelligence and Cognitive
Competencies
to Predict Financial Performance of Leaders. Psicothema, 18,
124-131
Boyatzis,
R. E., Rochford, K., & Taylor, S. N. (2015). The Role of the Positive
Emotional
Attractor in
Vision and Shared Vision: Toward Effective Leadership, Relationships, and
Engagement. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(670). doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00670
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