Tag Archives: Articles

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Why Curiosity Matters

I don’t know about you, but I have noticed that the best leaders are always moving forward. They don’t stagnate, are curious about themselves and their environment, and continually break new ground. They advance their talents intellectually, physically, emotionally, professionally, and so on.

When you think about it, curiosity is required before one can improve at all…it is a prerequisite for growth.

The Harvard Business Review article “Curiosity Is as Important as Intelligence” highlights the idea of a Curiosity Quotient, much like the commonly known psychological capabilities of Intellectual Quotient (IQ) and Emotional Quotient (EQ). The Curiosity Quotient (CQ) is one’s affinity to be “inquisitive and open to new experiences” and, similar to IQ and EQ, improves one’s ability to navigate complex environments.

curiosity

Soldiers at Camp Robinson, Arkansas, trying to get books from the Service Club Library. Miss Maurine Doores is the librarian.  January 22, 1942. Signal Corps Photo #162-42-79 by Weber, 162nd Signal Photographic Company.

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Article: “9 Things Successful People Won’t Do”

This short article on LinkedIn, by the coauthor of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, provides a list of 9 Things Successful People Won’t Do that challenges leaders to examine their professional practices and interactions.

Dr. Travis Bradberry elaborates on this universal set of behaviors to avoid, recommending them as a way to improve the emotional aspect of one’s leadership. “The trick is that managing your emotions is as much about what you won’t do as it is about what you will do.”

Here are a couple highlights, but the author expands on each one:

  • They Won’t Prioritize Perfection. “Emotionally intelligent people won’t set perfection as their target because they know it doesn’t exist.”
  • They Won’t Dwell on Problems. “Emotionally intelligent people won’t dwell on problems because they know they’re most effective when they focus on solutions.”
  • They Won’t Say Yes Unless They Really Want To. “The more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression.”

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Article: “Getting the Most Out of Professional Reading”

Are you gleaning the right lessons from your professional reading? Do you read military literature with an appropriate level of scrutiny? How do you know that an author is making assertions within the legitimate context of historical events? Maybe the more appropriate question is…“Are you reading at all?”

Today’s recommendation is an insightful post by fellow military leadership website host and talented writer, Army Major Joe Byerly. It’s a May 2014 article that also appeared in Small Wars Journal, entitled “Getting the Most Out of Professional Reading.”

Byerly challenges us to go beyond the block-check of professional reading and gives tips on how to engage with literature in a way that solidifies insight. He recommends:

  • Approach military writing in the proper context of history
  • Challenge authors to prevent confirmation bias
  • Capture your thoughts and reactions for reference and lesson permanency
  • Connect with other professionals on the topics (military blogs are a good place to start)
  • Transmit your own thoughts and insights on professional topics, through discussion or even professional writing

You’ll also find some article and book recommendations in his post.

Questions for Leaders:

  • Has professional education taken a back seat to professional execution?
  • How much more talented would you (and your team) be if you could internalize one professional lesson per day through books?
  • Is professional reading an individual’s responsibility or should leaders direct reading activity for their units?

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Article: “8 Ways to Spot Great Leadership”

What qualities signify great leadership? We know the typical answers…example, courage, inspiration, etc. But this Forbes article provides a different perspective, highlighting leader characteristics you probably hadn’t considered.

great leadership

Spc. Jason Curtis, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 151st Infantry Regiment, pulls security while leaders of a medical civil action project searched for a suitable site in Parun, Afghanistan June 28. Link to photo.
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12 Things Good Bosses Believe (#10)

Bad is stronger than good. It is more important to
eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive.

In my first few weeks as a company commander, I noticed that directly across the hall worked a consistently loud mid-level leader. He made a point to interrupt and talk over everyone around him who was either junior in rank or wasn’t annoyed enough to walk away.

As his leader, though, what concerned me was that his talk was also constantly negative. He seemed to be incapable of agreeing with or encouraging a positive thought by those around him. It was an emotional drain to listen to and I’m sure it was exasperating for the Soldiers working for him.

#10 on Robert Sutton’s “12 Things Good Bosses Believe” zeros-in on negative interactions and caustic team members because they can quickly overwrite the positive that exists within an organization. Being a nice leader and encouraging others is not enough, Sutton explains in his Harvard Business Review blog post on the topic:

Eliminating the negative, as any skilled leader can tell you, is not just the flipside of accentuating the positive. It’s a whole different set of activities. For someone with people to manage, accentuating the positive means recognizing productive and constructive effort, for example, and helping people discover and build on their strengths. Eliminating the negative, for the same boss, might mean tearing down maddening obstacles and shielding people from abuse.

Some might say that the climate of authority and bravado in military units makes positivity “uncool.” Success in the military, like anything else, “rises and falls on leadership” (John Maxwell). Sutton’s point is that actively developing a positive climate is less important than removing the negative people and interactions. Sutton draws an analogy to marriage:

Negative information, experiences, and people have far deeper impacts than positive ones. In the context of romantic relationships and marriages, for example, the truth is stark:  unless positive interactions outnumber negative interactions by five to one, odds are that the relationship will fail.

In the instance of my former subordinate, it was clear to me that his corrosive attitude was exactly opposite of the command climate my First Sergeant and I were trying to build. One day after a particularly cynical monologue, I engaged him with an ultimatum…cut out the negativity or I’d pull him out of the position, period. He adjusted his attitude.

Here are a few tips for action:

  • Lead with positivity and publicly reward such behavior in your team.
  • Words matter. Pay close attention to how you discuss problems and difficult people. Your attitude will propagate through the organization.
  • Frame conflict in the context of growth, always placing the outcome and the learning process higher than the friction that caused it.
  • Establish no tolerance for caustic, negative people (Robert Sutton’s book on this topic is called The No Asshole Rule)
  • Go on the hunt for negative people. Roam around the building, get conversational with people, and investigate rumors of negative behavior.
  • Use Baird CEO Paul Purcell’s approach to clarify your stance on negativity:  “If I discover that you’re an asshole, I’m going to fire you.”

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Avoid Becoming an Intellectual Roadblock to Your Team

These two articles from Harvard Business Review look at different areas of the same critical topic:  the powerful, sometimes unintentional ways that leaders influence the intellectual capability of their organizations.

Maj. Kirby Robinson, chief planner, 1st ABCT, briefs a movement plan to convoy drivers prior to a key leader’s engagement April 24 at the tactical movement area at NTC, Fort Irwin, Calif. Photo by: US Army Images

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Be a Smart Ranger! Stop Doing These 7 Things

Do you ever get to Friday and ask yourself, “Why does it feel like I didn’t get anything done this week?” The reality is that you probably didn’t get as much done as you could have. Which, is ok…as long as you’re committed to improving your productivity. (Hint…if you’re not in the mindset to regularly assess your work productivity, you need to start.)

This article from CamMi Pham Medium.com, 7 Things You Need to Stop Doing to be More Productive, Backed by Science, touches several topics that are routine challenges for military leaders:

  • Military leaders typically work long hours. Are we overtasked or just inefficient?
  • We say YES to ideas that help Soldiers, even if they’re not the unit’s priority.
  • The military is full of perfectionists who spend too much time refining products.
  • Money and bureaucracy prevent the military from automating many of the procedures that make it inefficient.

Here are the bullets from the article:

  1. Stop working overtime and increase your productivity
  2. Don’t say ‘yes’ too often
  3. Stop doing everything yourself and start letting people help you
  4. Stop being a perfectionist
  5. Stop doing repetitive tasks and start automating
  6. Stop guessing and start backing up your decisions with data
  7. Stop working, and have do-nothing time

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“7 Things You Need to Stop Doing to be More Productive, Backed by Science” was published on Medium.com by Digital Marketing Strategist CamMi Pham on April 29, 2014.
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12 Things Good Bosses Believe (#9)

Sutton’s #9 from 12 Things Good Bosses Believe has significant, daily application for the military leader. You definitely need to read his expanded blog post on #9, which provides details on how successful companies become more effective at cultivating the right ideas. Here is #9:

“Innovation is crucial to every team and organization.
So my job is to encourage my people to generate and test all kinds of new ideas.
But it is also my job to help them kill off
all the bad ideas we generate, and most of the good ideas, too.”

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