weLEAD
Online Magazine
leadingtoday.org
Copyright
2004 ă weLEAD, Inc.
Winning with a Leadership Team
By M. James
Kedro
Finding
a Framework
Old axioms ring
true. Leadership is not inherent. No one is a “born leader.” Leadership is acquired
by taking an honest look at oneself. So says a 1964 copy of the Guidebook for Marines. The manual lists
14 traits of the leader: integrity, knowledge, courage, decisiveness,
dependability, initiative, tact, justice, enthusiasm, bearing, endurance,
unselfishness, loyalty, and judgment. As relevant today as 40 years ago, these
characteristics can be acquired and improved upon, and they continue to be
modeled in the U.S. Marine Corps.
A central principle of leadership
identified in the Guidebook is teamwork.
The true leader gains respect and trust when he/she works at tasks alongside
the team and accepts full responsibility for outcomes. But Marine Corps
guidelines also emphasize that leading does not mean oversupervision
of subordinates. From an organizational standpoint, the leader does not
micromanage because the team is trained to its highest performance levels.
The leader has faith in the well-prepared
team’s ability to act. All team members are able to cope and take the
initiative. Even in uncertain and chaotic situations, each member of the team
can respond using the most effective means available.
Team members are not compelled to adhere to
preconceived plans when it becomes plain that those plans will result in an unfavorable
outcome. Time is not lost waiting for orders from the top, forfeiting the
ability to capitalize on valuable opportunities. Neither straightjacketed
by set formulas nor denied the possibility to exploit superior alternatives,
each team member creatively adapts to change, reacts quickly, and refuses to
accept failure.
This system of decentralized leadership is
designed to produce a cadre of leaders throughout the ranks, confident in the
soundness of their own ability to make decisions—a capable leadership team. As
the Guidebook says, “ . . .the
backbone of the Marine Corps is its noncommissioned officers. Every one of them
started as a private.”
Many conditions must be met before the
above system of leadership and its connection of competent working
relationships is realized.
The attainment of the organization’s
objectives is built on tasks and intent. The effective leader establishes
meaningful purpose. Individual tasks can change as the team works to reach its
objectives, but the intent, the organization’s coherent focus on the goal,
stays fixed in the minds of all team members, even as they alter tactics to
accomplish the mission. This level of understanding is achieved when the leader
cultivates the full potential of each member on the leadership team.
Discovering
Potential
Leadership teams should be identified and
selected on the basis of potential abilities. The leader with savvy chooses the
right people and places them in slots where they can unlock potential and
achieve the greatest success on each mission. When all personnel have the best
fit, team members will better know and appreciate their talents. They’ll be
able to build on their strengths.
Practical
activities at self-improvement can unlock hidden potential, showcase individual
strengths, and produce team cohesiveness. There are many personal development
programs that can be accessed to find strengths and improve performance. The
training that is selected should be designed to uncover the latent talents of
all team members, capitalize on specialized competencies, promote camaraderie,
and support the organization’s vision.
Successful
leaders know the value in expanding their knowledge base and applying new
ideas. They work daily to develop and sustain relevant skills that meet current
social and economic demands.
Because
they appreciate learning better ways of doing things, the leadership team
thinks in terms of providing all staff members with a competitive advantage.
Each member of the group develops an edge, either in the pursuit of internal
organizational objectives or in the ability to compete globally in tasks that
require quick decisions and robust implementation. As strengths are determined
and applied, specialized skills are focused where they will most effectively
impact organizational goals.
Focusing
on Strengths
There are keys to the strategic development
of personal strengths. One key involves specialization. No person can be the
end-all and do-all in every matter to accomplish the organization’s mission. No
one is the personification of all things to all people.
Success in
a specialty field is embedded in choices. First, each team member focuses on a
particular field and becomes fully competent in that field in order to do an
excellent job. To establish a more enlightened focus on the specialization,
team members must take some time for self-examination. They may already be
capitalizing on strengths, but it doesn’t hurt to regularly analyze
accomplishments and reassess powerful points. A team member’s strongest skills,
sometimes overlooked and untapped, may be those talents best suited to improve
the organization. This is part and parcel to expanding personal horizons so
that goals align with organizational intent and unity of effort.
With
professional development and other venues of learning, team members should
regularly re-examine their strengths, and thus anticipate personal growth
hand-in-hand with organizational improvement. The strengths of all are
identified and utilized to best serve the needs of the whole organization.
Professional development is one piece in the process that will help leaders
implement results-oriented change.
Changing Mindsets
Effective leaders
understand change processes. To achieve success, it’s imperative that the
leadership team guide positive change on two interrelated levels. Innovations
and reforms must take hold at both upper management and line levels. Change
mandated from the top that influences the line
levels very little may be good window dressing, but it’s relatively
worthless for improving outcomes.
Useful change is built on a
series of manageable steps. Even in the most set-in-its-ways organization, the
leadership team can find a place to commence worthwhile change. Each step in
the change process provides short-term essentials, allowing innovative thought
to ease its way into the day-to-day workings of the group. Change processes
gradually accommodate anticipated requirements for improvement. Old-guard
factionalism gives way to new cohesiveness and efficiency.
The
leadership team sees resistance to change as essentially a part of human
nature, not necessarily the response of an obstinate staff, although a few curmudgeons
may be on board. Leaders recognize that sustainable revitalization toward the
accomplishment of goals is an evolutionary process.
The
leadership team anticipates reactions to change and uses strategies that
incrementally chip away at resistance. People who make up the organization are
encouraged to come out of isolation, seek self improvement, and work jointly to
attain unity of effort. Ultimately, this translates organizational intent into
successful outcomes. Yet the hardest part in achieving unity of effort and
accomplishing the organization’s intent may simply be putting good ideas into
action.
Getting
Started
No
leadership team can tackle challenges if its members do not open the door and
begin the journey toward improvement. As Plato put it more than two millennia
ago, envisioning a new beginning is the most crucial part of work. Starting a
change effort to uplift organizational culture and improve output does not
guarantee success. However, a sure guarantee for failure is not starting.
The first
obstacle to overcome is to rise up and address resistance. The leadership team
finds ways to ameliorate lack of cooperation, apathy, and inertia.
In the
early 1500’s, Niccolo Machiavelli’s advice on
leadership overemphasized the use of fear, but he rightly stated there is
nothing harder than leading in a new direction and getting others to follow.
Some of Machiavelli’s thoughts, like those of Plato, might be applied to
organizational inertia today.
A commonly
asked question comes to mind: What is needed to surmount inertia and unlock
potential in an organization? The laws of physics tell us that inertia is
overcome by the application of force. In this case, however, “force” is the
energy of the leadership team to begin the change process. Often personal
intuition and creativity affect positive change as much as the laws of science.
When change is under way, many resources at the disposal of the organization
can be brought to bear on improvement. But the act of beginning the change
process originates in the insightfulness of the leadership team.
Finally,
starting the change process can’t await unanimous support. The leadership team
should not lose precious time trying to get all stakeholders on board. Some
staff members will never buy in. The change process can be initiated when there
is general agreement among a majority in the organization that the time is ripe
to improve operations and outcomes.
And once
positive change is under way, the leadership team might capitalize on another
old-Corps axiom: “Gung Ho”—all together now!
References
Beck, G.
At all costs: Accomplish the mission. An academic paper written for
Blanchard,
K. and Bowels, S. (1998). Gung ho! Turn
on the people in any organization.
Carrison, D., and Walsh, R.
(1998). Semper fi: Business
leadership the Marine Corps way.
USMC.
(June 1964). Guidebook for Marines.
Ninth revised edition.
USMC.
Marine Corps leadership principles and traits. Retrieved
USMC.
(1994). Warfighting: The U.S. Marine Corps book of strategy.
Comments
to: editor@leadingtoday.org
About the author:
M. James Kedro (mjkedro@yahoo.com) is a member of the
Marine Corps League and the Marine Corps Aviation Association. Kedro is a
senior evaluator for the St. Louis Public Schools and an adjunct professor of
history at St. Louis Community College-Meramec. His book, Aligning Resources
for Student Outcomes (2004), is available from ScarecrowEducation Press, http://www.scarecroweducation.com/ISBN/1578861276.