Tag Archives: Teamwork

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7 Ways to Fail as a Staff Officer

by Nate Stratton

“I want to claw my way up to brigade staff!” No little kid ever grew up wanting to be the best at briefing slides, brewing coffee, or writing operations orders. There’s a reason war movies don’t portray the struggles of warriors whose meritorious planning performance led to the creation of the perfect brief. Slideology 101 isn’t a required course at West Point.

Time spent on staff, where officers spend the majority of their career, is thankless, laborious work that is too often viewed as a block check between command positions. Much of the Army’s educational emphasis is on success as the man in front of the formation, but the officer’s plight is that he will spend much more time rowing the ship than steering it.

staff officer

U.S. Soldiers of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division provide information to the ground units from the tactical operation center while a Latvian soldier, right, observes during exercise Combined Resolve IV at the U.S. Army’s Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany, May 17, 2015. U.S. Army photo by Private First Class Courtney Hubbard.
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The Most Important Leadership Quote You’ll Read this Year

When I read this leadership quote a few weeks ago, I kicked myself for not having found it sooner. (It’s the type of advice I’d put in my signature block…and I’m not even a “signature block philosophy” kind of emailer.) It is attributed to the immutably inspirational leader of the Allied coalition in World War II, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. This insight is powerful because it captures the fundamental nature, the heart, of what it means to be a leader. And Eisenhower uses only 26 words to do it.

Leadership Quote

Senior military commanders of World War II. Link to photo.
[Seated L-R: Gens. William Simpson, George Patton, Carl Spaatz, Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Courtney Hodges, & Leonard Gerow
Standing L-R: Gens. Ralph Stearley, Hoyt Vandenberg, Walter Bedell Smith, Otto Weyland, & Richard Nugent.]
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Leadership Speed and Why It Matters

In another post, I shared some of the guidance I issued during my company command time years ago. In How Do You Spot a Leader?, I suggested the notion that leaders naturally move faster than everyone else.

If you are a leader and you find yourself moving slowly throughout the day, you are probably not doing enough to help out the team.  Most of the time, leaders dart from one event to the next, or are focusing to create a new product/presentation that will help the team.  They are always looking to identify problems in the organization and tackle them quickly, so that the organization can become better or more effective.

Leaders create and disseminate energy throughout the organization to keep it moving in the right direction and responding appropriately to the environment. There is an inherent risk, however, for naturally driven leaders who move quickly towards success. Today, I want to talk about this risk.

Leadership

Paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, sprint to emplace an M240-B machine gun as they demonstrate crew drills to Afghan National Army soldiers prior to a foot patrol May 8, 2012, Ghazni Province, Afghanistan.
U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod.
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This is #Slack…and Here’s How Your Unit Can Use It

One week spent in a military unit will show you that efficiency isn’t its shining characteristic. Not only does information bombard the unit from multiple levels of the chain of command, but within the organization there are hundreds of conversations taking place to prepare for, synchronize, and execute the myriad of events on the calendar. (And I’m sure the same is true for the business world.)

These conversations happen over thousands of emails, in meetings, face to face, and on the phone. And if your experience is like mine, almost everything goes out over email.

But what if there was a way to customize your conversations based on your team’s requirements instead of relying on the single “channel” that is the email inbox? What if you could have your conversations in the right place, instead of all over the place?

Enter #Slack.

slack

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Achieving Effects with Your Boss, pt. 3: Decision Time

So far in the Achieving Effects with Your Boss series, we’ve covered how to make the right first impression and how to engage your boss with intention. Now that you’re comfortable with the leadership environment your boss has established, it’s time to discuss how to influence their decision making to achieve effects for you, your team, and the greater organization.

Boss

Secretary of the Army John McHugh listens as Commander of the Combined Arms Center Lt. Gen. David G. Perkins briefs during a visit at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, April 20, 2012 at Joint Base Langley–Eustis, Va. U.S. Army Photo by Staff Sgt. Bernardo Fuller.
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Making Destructive Comments (Habit Series #4)

Think back on your recent interactions. If I asked you how many times you made destructive comments towards the people you work with, how would you answer? “Destructive? No way. I’m a nice person. And when I do give feedback, it’s never destructive.” What about if I asked you how many times you talked negatively about someone when he or she wasn’t present? “Well sure, but everyone does that. It’s part of our culture.”

The topic we are approaching here is a silent leadership killer. Whose leadership, you ask? Yours, your boss’s, your subordinates’. Destructive comments slip into an organization, infect the culture, manifest as other problems, and kill the trust that leaders worked so hard to build.

Today, you’ll be guilty of making comments that can destroy your organization, and you likely don’t even know it.

destructive

Command Sgt. Maj. Alan D. Bjerke, command sergeant major of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, speaks to Canadian Soldiers during practice for a live fire event during Cooperative Spirit 2008 at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center near Hohenfels, Germany. Link to photo.
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14 Simple Ways to Connect with Your People

Leaders who find ways to connect with their people are the ones who build great teams, inspire the best performance, and rise to positions of influence when others wane. If you look back on your career, you’ll likely observe that the most impactful leaders were the ones who made a personal connection with you.

Maybe it was keen professional mentorship, or timely advice during adversity, or a personality trait that invited trust. Sometimes there’s no pinpointing it…just an intangible feeling that makes it easy to follow a person.

In the culture of busyness that we face today, it’s distressingly easy to ignore the personal side of leadership. But trust will never develop without a personal connection between leader and follower. And without trust, an organization will be confined to a transactional environment of mediocre results and melancholy people.

Connect

Sgt. Donald M. Khun, San Gabriel Valley Recruiting Company, right, presents Brooke Willis, spouse of the new company commander Capt. William G. Willis, with yellow roses to signify a bright new beginning at the change of command ceremony Mar. 15. Capt. William G. Willis, the new company commander is sitting to the left of Mrs. Willis, and their son Blake is sitting to her right.
Photo by Mr. Fernando Sanjurjo, U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion Los Angeles.
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Achieving Effects with Your Boss, pt. 2: Intentional Engagement

Spotlight Ranger. That’s the label service members use to characterize people who put in average performance day to day, then put on a show whenever the boss is around. Soldiers see right through them and they earn little respect in the unit.

While you must at all costs avoid becoming a spotlight ranger (i.e. dedicate yourself to superb performance regardless of the audience), you don’t want to miss an opportunity to showcase your unit’s good work to your boss. The first post in this series focused on how to start off on the right foot with a new boss. Today’s post looks at how to engage during three types of opportunities you will encounter during your tenure as leader.

boss

Brig. Gen. Robert B. Abrams, National Training Center commanding general, briefs Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, TRADOC commanding general, during Dempsey’s visit to Fort Irwin, Cali., Sep. 23, 2009. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Angelica G. Golindano.)