Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell

YOU CAN'T PLEASE EVERYONE

Effective leadership is exercised across a full spectrum of responsibilities, and also over time. Across an entire organization involving a wide variety of people engaged in a multitude of tasks (both concurrently and in sequence), the leader must spark high performance and ensure the welfare of the group. Well, that's complicated. Even if the leader manages to get everybody happy with today's reality, somebody's very likely to get off the bus tomorrow. A leader simply cannot please everybody all the time.

"Making people mad was part of being a leader. As I had learned long ago . . . an individual's hurt feelings run a distant second to the good of the service."

Leadership can't be a popularity contest. Trying not to offend anyone, or trying to get everyone to like you, will set you on the road to mediocrity. Why? Because leaders who are afraid to make people angry are likely to waver and procrastinate when it comes time to make tough choices. Leaders who care more about being liked than about being effective are unlikely to confront the people who need confronting. They are unlikely to offer differential rewards based on performance. They won't challenge the status quo. And inevitably, by not challenging tradition, they hurt both their own credibility and their organization's performance.

Oren Harari, The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell

Learn to follow first

Stellar followers approach their roles with enthusiasm and commitment to establish and maintain competence. Competence is an elusive quality these days. Competence demands more than acquisition of several competencies or microskills.

Competence is the capacity to integrate knowledge, experience, and contextual factors in order to function smoothly and effectively in the real world.

Competent followers start by doing their homework. They become intentional students of the organization, literate in the organization's mission and objectives, and very aware of the CO's philosophy and leadership style.

Because they anticipate problems and questions, they acquire all the information their superior requires to make well-informed decisions. In fact, they routinely go above and beyond minimum expectations in this regard. They are proactive in seeking opportunities for enhancing job knowledge and practical competence.

From: Becoming A Leader The Annapolis Way

No more exacting method of determining an officer's worth

"The 20-year-old bluejacket is the backbone of the navy." And he advised the 1970 graduating class at the Naval Academy: "When you step aboard ship and stand in front of your first division of bluejackets, they will evaluate you accurately and without delay. In fact, there is no more exacting method of determining an officer's worth."

"Furthermore, you can't fool bluejackets. They are quick to recognize the phony. If you lose the respect of these men, you are finished. You can never make it back."

"Some officers get it backwards. They don't understand that we are responsible for our men, not the other way around. That's what forges trust and loyalty."

Admiral John S. McCain

The qualities of practical intelligence

“…we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington…”

Theodore Roosevelt

Defense Against Buzzword-Nomograph-Acronym Mentality

Ethics is taught in many forms in service academies and postgraduate institutions. But Stockdale wants to create a model specifically designed to help the military "regain our bearings." Says he: "Today's ranks are filled with officers who have been weaned on slogans and fads of the sort preached in the better business schools—that rational managerial concepts will cure all evils. This course is my defense against the buzzword-nomograph-acronym mentality."

VADM James Bond Stockdale, PhD, Heroism

In his class, "Foundations of Moral Obligation" at the Naval War College. Taken from TIME MAGAZINE, February 1979

Vision

Think about the future—frequently.

Constant change is a characteristic of the modern era, and constant change requires people of vision who can look beyond the current paradigm in order to chart our future. Develop ideas that guide your career, the Naval Intelligence community, and the Navy. Seniors are looking for bold officers with good ideas. Although not all people possess equal capabilities to look to the future, all of us have the capability to try.

Look for opportunities to contribute your ideas. If opportunities don’t present themselves, look for ways to create the right opportunity.

VADM "Jack" Dorsett, Director of Naval Intelligence

Integrity is powerful

The moral forces are order, courage, confidence, and cohesion, forces that assure the troops' faith in the integrity of leadership, its dependability to keep consistent standards of right and wrong.

Integrity is a powerful word that derives from a specific concept It describes a person who is integrated, blended into a whole, as opposed to a person of many parts, many faces, many disconnects. The word relates to the ancients' distinction between living and living well.

Contrary to popular thought, a person of integrity is typically easygoing with a sense of humor. He knows himself, reflects a definite and thoughtful set of preferences and aspirations, and is thus reliable. Knowing he is whole, he is not preoccupied with riding the crest of continual anxiety but is free to ride the crest of delight with life!

VADM James Bond Stockdale

A Positive Attitude is Crucial

A positive attitude is crucial in achieving success. If I had to pick out one characteristic that I would want to have myself or hope that I was able to produce in the people I work with, it would be the concept of having a positive attitude about their work, about what they're trying to accomplish and what they are accomplishing.

I'd like to deal with the negatives as tasks to take on that will lead to further success. I think its absolutely critical that one be able to develop within one's peer groups, and certainly one's subordinates, a positive attitude, and that goes to whether you're working with just two people or four or ten or hundreds of thousands. It is critical that you have a positive attitude about what you're doing, what you're trying to accomplish and what the groups are trying to accomplish.

Hopefully you're able to lead people in a positive fashion that will build into a success-oriented organization, and they do go together, there isn't any question about it. If you have a negative attitude in a unit you will not have success, and the leader has to turn that situation around. The leader has a very difficult challenge if he has a lot of people coming in and asking for transfers. He better understand why and be able to deal with that, and I guess one might say there's another element there. If you're the next senior up, you had better be wise enough to know what the cause; of that negativism is and remove it, even if it's the division officer or the division chief who is the problem.

Admiral Thomas Hayward

Once I Was A Navyman

I like the Navy. I like standing on deck during a long voyage with sea spray in my face and ocean winds whipping in from everywhere - The feel of the giant steel ship beneath me, it's engines driving against the sea is almost beyond understanding - It's immense power makes the Navyman feel so insignificant but yet proud to be a small part of this ship, a small part of her mission.

I like the Navy. I like the sound of taps over the ships announcing system, the ringing of the ships bell, the foghorns and strong laughter of Navy men at work. I like the ships of the Navy - nervous darting destroyers, sleek proud cruisers, majestic battle ships, steady solid carriers and silent hidden submarines - I like the workhorse tugboats with their proud Indian names: Iroquois, Apache, Kiawah and Sioux - each stealthy powerful tug safely guiding the warships to safe deep waters from all harbors.

I like the historic names of other proud Navy Ships: Bennington, Midway, Hornet, Princeton, Suribachi and Saratoga. The Ozark, Hunley, Constitution, Missouri, Quincy and Manchester, as well as The Sullivan's, New Jersey, Tecumseh and Nautilus - all majestic ships of the line. Each commanding the respect of all Navymen that have known her or were privileged to be a member of her crew.

I like the bounce of Navy music and the tempo of a Navy Band, "Liberty Whites" and the spice scent of a foreign port - I like shipmates I've sailed with, worked with, served with or have known: The Gunners Mate from the Iowa cornfields, a Sonarman from the Colorado mountain country, a pal from Cairo, Alabama; an Italian from near Boston, some boogie boarders of California, and of course a drawling friendly Oklahoma lad that hailed from Muskogee; and a very congenial Engineman from the Tennessee hills.

From all parts of the land they came - farms of the Midwest, small towns of New England - the red clay area and small towns of the South - the mountain and high prairie towns of the West - the beachfront towns of the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Gulf - All are American; all are comrades in arms - All are men of the sea and all are men of honor.

I like the adventure in my heart when the ship puts out to sea, and I like the electric thrill of sailing home again, with the waving hands of welcome from family and friends waiting on shore - The extended time at sea drags; the going is rough on occasion. But there's the companionship of robust Navy laughter, the devil-may-care philosophy of the sea. This helps the Navyman - The remembrances of past shipmates fill the mind and restore the memory with images of other ships, other ports, and other voyages long past - Some memories are good, some are not so good but all are etched in the mind of the Navyman, and most will be there forever.

After a day of work, there is the serenity of the sea at dusk. - As white caps dance on the ocean waves, the sunset creates flaming clouds that float in folds over the horizon - as if painted there by a master. The darkness follows soon and is mysterious. The ship's wake in darkness has a hypnotic effect, with foamy white froth and luminescence that forms never ending patterns in the turbulent waters. I like the lights of the ship in darkness - the masthead lights, the red and green sidelights and stern lights. They cut through the night and appear as a mirror of stars in darkness - There are rough stormy nights, and calm, quiet, still nights where the quiet of the mid-watch allows the ghosts of all the Sailors of the world to stand with you - They are abundant and unreachable, but ever apparent - And there is always the aroma of fresh coffee from the galley.

I like the legends of the Navy and the Navymen that created those legends - I like the proud names of Navy Heroes: Halsey, Nimitz, Perry, Farragut, McCain, Rickover and John Paul Jones - A man can find much in the Navy - comrades in arms, pride in his country - A man can find himself and can revel in this experience.

In years to come, when the Sailor is home from the sea, he will still recall with fondness the ocean spray on his face when the sea is angry - There will come a faint aroma of fresh paint in his nostrils, the echo of hearty laughter of the seafaring men who once were close companions - Now landlocked, he will grow wistful of his Navy days, when the seas were the largest part of him and a new port of call was always just over the horizon.

Recalling those days and times, he will stand taller and say -"ONCE I WAS A NAVYMAN !"

E.A. Hughes, FTCM(SS),
USN(Retired)
- Copyright, 1958, 1978
Hughes235@aol.com

Writing

Writing is a skill that is improved through practice, so officers should seek every opportunity to write and therefore to improve their technical ability to write. Imagination and the desire for self-improvement play a large part in the effectiveness of an individual's writing.

Some people know the mechanics of how to write, but they are not very good writers because they don't have the imagination to add the appropriate descriptive phrase, adverb, adjective, whatever it is that makes this thing live A little, makes it more readable, more appealing. I don't think you necessarily can teach just anyone to be a professional writer, but you can help them improve, I would encourage young officers not to draw away from the normal approach to writing tasks but to accept them as a challenge to create, just as any other artist does.

Rarely is rewriting unnecessary. Write it, read it, and, as a consequence of reading it, write it again and work it and rework it and get suggestions and get it critiqued.

General Barrow, NAVAL LEADERSHIP - VOICES OF EXPERIENCE

Integrity

First you find yourself overlooking small infractions that you would have corrected on the spot in the past.

Soon you are a participant in these infractions. "After all," you say, "Everybody's doing it."

All too soon you find yourself trapped. You no longer can stand on a favorite principle because you have strayed from it.

Finding no way out, you begin to rationalize, and then you are hooked.

The important fact is, the men who travel the path outlined above have misused the very basic quality and characteristic expected of a professional military man, or any other professional man for that matter.

They have compromised their integrity.

Admiral Arleigh A. Burke, NAVAL LEADERSHIP - Voices of Experience

The Issue of Accountability

I hope actually in the time you’re here (Air Command and Staff College) you really do chew on this and have some healthy debates and discussions about it – is the whole issue of accountability. It’s how I grew up, it’s why I stayed in, it’s why I love command. And there isn’t anybody at any level of seniority that wouldn’t tell you, you know, that their worst day in command was better than any other day they had anywhere else, and that their worst day in command, some days, you know, there was a hand that reached in to save their careers and they got lucky.

That said, we are accountable for our commands at every level, and that message is very important. That’s a very important message right back to – and I’ll speak specifically to the chiefs’ position, and having been a chief of a service, I do understand that. And when you lose that accountability, when accountable officers don’t step forward and say, it’s my command, okay, and my command – in Navy terminology – is aground, and when you are aground, you know, you walk off the brow. That’s the rule. We know that. So the accountability aspect of all that is also really important.

Ol' Time Khaki Deckplate Leadership

Creativity is vital to the Deckplate Leader because without it change will never begin at the level that it should, the deckplates. The only constant in life is change, and change requires leaders to “Be Creative” in order to be successful. Deckplate Leaders take ownership of this fact and are always thinking about process improvement to make the mission just as successful, but more efficiently.

Also, leading when everything is okay is easy. The true test of one’s leadership ability is to lead in the face of adversity, crisis and transformation; “leading in the suck”. This all usually takes place when new situations arise, and requires a certain degree of creativity to be successful.

The idea is not to re-invent the wheel. The wheel still works and we all like it. But if we can improve on the tread of the wheel’s tire, well, then now we have something special.

Remember:

• Be persistent
• Keep it simple
• Do the right thing
• And eat the elephant one bight at a time.

From Deckplateleadership.net

Chiefs Should Take Responsibility

“The Chief Petty Officer can, and should, take the responsibility of keeping every Sailor under his leadership informed. If one of his Sailors has a problem, he has a problem. There should be no excuses. There is a solution to every problem, and it should be pursued until his Sailor is satisfied that every means has been exhausted in the effort to find a solution. I feel very strongly that we need to improve our leadership abilities to keep pace with the high level of technical skill. The rapidity of advancement has caused a need for establishment of more leadership classes at the command level. My feelings are that we must have a chain of command from top to bottom, but even more important, we must have a channel of communication and understanding.”

Former Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, MCPON Del Black

A new comment on your post "Chiefs Should Take Responsibility":

Captain,
Maybe it would be appropriate to point out that MCPON Delbert Black was the first MCPON. He was stationed at Dam Neck, VA in 1967 when he was selected for that job, and I was stationed there as well at Guided Missile School.
Very Respectfully,
Navyman834 (MCPO Hughes, USN, retired)

SORRY THIS IS A REPEAT POST FROM EARLIER IN THE YEAR. I GUESS IT MUST HAVE BEEN WORTH REPEATING. I DID IT BY ACCIDENT.

We Must Sail

To reach a port, we must sail - sail, not tie at anchor- sail, not drift.

Franklin Roosevelt