12 Things Good Bosses Believe (Rule #4)

“One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my job is to strike the delicate balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough.”

Fact:  a team’s performance decreases under too much pressure from its leadership. 

It is also true that a team may underperform without enough pressure from the leader…but honestly how often do you see under-motivated military leaders? Our challenge is usually in scaling back assertiveness and pressure so that our teams can perform their best.

Tommy Lasorda summarized it well: “I believe managing is like holding a dove in your hand. If you hold it too tightly you kill it, but if you hold it too loosely, you lose it.”

Similarly, knowing WHEN to apply assertiveness is a skill of great leaders. They read the environment and anticipate when their teams will need pressure and when to back off. It’s a common belief that military leaders must be constantly assertive, Type-A, and intense. But doing so can be counterproductive to achieving unit goals.

http://blogs.hbr.org/2010/05/12-things-that-good-bosses-bel/

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12 Things Good Bosses Believe (Rule #3)

3. Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is useless to think about them much. My job is to focus on the small wins that enable my people to make a little progress every day.

More important than creating big goals is to actually connect those goals to each level in the organization.

This is the process of translating a Mission Statement into Commander’s Intent into actionable tasks. (“There’s the hill we’re going to take…but nevermind that because first we have to cross a minefield…and to do that I need you to mark the lane.”)

It’s also vital for the team members to see that their small win contributes to the team’s big win. And even though Soldiers will dutifully execute any task assigned them…leaders will shift from positional power to transformational power if they can connect at the Soldier level and show how their contribution matters.

http://blogs.hbr.org/2010/05/12-things-that-good-bosses-bel/

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12 Things Good Bosses Believe (Rule #2)

“My success — and that of my people — depends largely on being the master of obvious and mundane things, not on magical, obscure, or breakthrough ideas or methods.”

Robert Sutton’s second belief about good bosses reminds us that while it is important for leaders to create vision for the organization, the more important work deals with leading people through the tangible steps to achieve that vision.

bossesConsider commanders you’ve seen that set out “Command Philosophies” containing lofty goals and the challenge to reach ill-defined levels of “x” capability. These documents may chart a path but they’re not what the junior leader will rely on when he’s trying to do his part to reach those goals.

Our military typically operates in a complex environment during combat and a muddled, overtasked environment in garrison. It is the leader’s job to sort through the muck to clearly define the steps/systems the team must perform to reach his goal. Task – Purpose – Endstate. Teams need this clarity to perform well.

Incidentally, consider that our system affords certain perks and comforts to commanders (his own vehicle, good accommodations, etc) because it expects them to get their head out of the weeds and identify the “obvious” when the team is rowing too hard to see what’s ahead.

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12 Things Good Bosses Believe (Rule #1)

“I have a flawed and incomplete
understanding of what it feels like to work for me.”

This statement comes from Robert Sutton’s “12 Things Good Bosses Believe,” which is a pointed and humbling summary of lessons stemming from years of leadership research. Sutton is the author of the very successful books “The No A$$hole Rule” and “Good Boss, Bad Boss.”

His series of articles in The Harvard Business Review dives into each of 12 Beliefs and provides illuminating examples about how easy it is to become a bad boss, and what to strive for in becoming a good boss.

Do the lessons apply to military leadership?…you be the judge.

bosses

Soldiers stretch during sunrise before an early morning run at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, June 13, 2016. Army photo by Sgt. Brandon Hubbard.