Center for Creative Leadership interview

Nicely done by CCL–a very classy team. 

http://www.ccl.org/leadership/pdf/publications/lia/lia29_1Danger.pdf

Interview: The Washington Post

Truth Hurts, but It Also Builds

by Sally Jenkins
Wednesday, December 31, 2008; E01

 

A long time ago, football coaches formed interesting sentences with words and said useful things that made sense. Then something happened, and they became hypnotically boring and habitually evasive.

An exception is Redskins Coach Jim Zorn, who has no trouble talking, even when he uses the wrong or imprecise words; in fact, sometimes his wrong words are even more descriptive than the right words, especially when his energetic search for concision involves antic pantomimes.

Zorn’s frank expressions are taken to be the epitome of inexperience as a coach, and the effect on his players is so far equivocal. It’s been suggested he needs to learn to be less honest.

That would be a mistake. First, it would mean conceding to a stereotype of modern NFL players: They have the emotional fortitude of principessas, and unless they are treated with a charade of niceties, they will fall into palpitations of shock and refuse to perform. This does a disservice to them.

Second, hypnotic boredom doesn’t really work as a strategy. Fired Jets coach Eric Mangini was so robotic he even refused to say which leg a player hurt — how’d that work out for him? Cowboys Coach Wade Phillips wallpapered over the feuding mess in his locker room with false amiability. That worked, too.

Actually, Zorn’s paint-thinner brand of honesty is a critical quality if he’s going to transform the Redskins from a second-rate franchise into something better.

Candor is an indisputable requirement in a leader in a high-risk enterprise, especially one seeking to refashion a team into a higher-functioning one, according to Col. Thomas A. Kolditz, head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy, and author of the book “In Extremis Leadership: Leading As If Your Life Depended on It.” It’s a riveting manual that weaves first-person accounts from soldiers, captains of industry, firefighters and other command situations.

“The leader’s job is to create for that team the reality of their performance,” Kolditz said in a phone interview from a parachuting competition in Arizona, with the whine of airplanes in the background, as he watched cadets float to earth. “The players get feedback from the press and public, and on all these teams, you have a lot of testosterone and ego on one side of the equation, but a very high need for team interdependence and teamwork on the other side of the equation. Sometimes egos get in way of making a candid appraisal, so it’s very important for a coach.

“Candor allows them to focus on the things getting in the way of their success. Candor is not necessarily abusive or mean-spirited. It’s just honest. And right now I’m trying as hard as I can not to say that it’s unsurprising to me that in Washington D.C. they think there’s too much candor on their football team.”

How Zorn’s honest appraisals are received this offseason, up and down the chain, will say a lot about just how poisoned an outfit the Redskins are by mediocrity. Zorn seems to sense as much, and made a point of acknowledging his words were “not always well received” in his news conference on Monday.

As he spoke, he sounded a lot like Kolditz, especially when he described how he had bitten into quarterback Jason Campbell on the sideline in a season-ending loss to San Francisco, trying to get something more than a neutral performance out of him.

“As a player, sometimes it hurts to hear some of the things you’re hearing,” Zorn said. “Like, I was after Jason Campbell yesterday on the sideline, I was in his business. Just very, ‘As a matter of fact, here’s what I see.’ And that’s hard to hear sometimes, from a coach to a player or a player to a coach. But hopefully it builds strength, and it doesn’t build bitterness.”

Kolditz analyzes and surveys leadership in dangerous circumstances, such as sky-diving outfits and units in Iraq, and writes treatises applying the lessons to the private, public and social sectors. He is also the coach of Army’s sport parachuting team. He argues high-risk environments are valuable crucibles in which real leaders are forged, because in “stark, unforgiving reality,” people unerringly sense phoniness or someone who seems less than fully aware. Under threat, he suggested, they naturally gravitate to more authentic leaders.

Studies of leadership have found the value of truth-telling increases with the risk of the endeavor. In a low-risk activity like business, an organization can get by with inauthenticity from a leader and not suffer, but a parachute squad prizes frankness because the penalty for crisis-denial is death.

Where does the NFL rank, in terms of risk? Probably somewhere between bond trading and parachuting. The players are under physical threat, and the stakes in terms of their “life savings” are also high.

Nobody dies if a team loses, but livelihoods and bodies are on the line. It’s therefore imperative Zorn be perceived as authentic by his players, even if they don’t like what he says. Which they apparently do: Out of the playoffs and with nothing at stake, the Redskins didn’t quit on Zorn, and instead responded with two of their stronger performances to close out the season.

But finishing 8-8 doesn’t mean he has completely won them over, either. The transition to new values can be awkward and take some time, especially if the team members are unaccustomed to Zorn’s type of confrontation, Kolditz noted. In some cultures “there is too much of an emphasis on face-saving to withstand that level of candor,” he said.

Face-saving is the issue that has caused the most trouble for Zorn. Most notoriously, he publicly called out Clinton Portis for missed assignments after the running back sat out practice, nursing injuries. The sensitive but egotistical running back exploded, trashing his coach on John Thompson’s radio show. The NFL code seems to be that private honesty is okay, but public honesty is dicey. Zorn essentially invited the world into internal team issues, and some players didn’t like it.

But according to Kolditz, Zorn did the right thing, because public exposure of uneven habits are necessary to curing them in the organization as a whole.

Whether it was calling out Portis for being in the wrong place on a play, or the rookie receivers for being lazy and running the wrong routes, or Campbell for making a poor read, Zorn’s policy of public accountability unquestionably chafed. But in Kolditz’s in-extremis manual, silence and privacy are not options when confronting mistakes.

“If the wrong kind of behavior is happening on the team and the coach is allowing it without talking about it openly, then he’s effectively endorsing it,” Kolditz said.

There are of course a thousand subtle and nontransferable differences between Zorn’s job as a head coach and Kolditz’s squad leaders who are in extremis. Even so, truthfulness promises to be a core issue for Zorn going forward.

“Men occasionally stumble on the truth, but most of the them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened,” Winston Churchill observed. Not Zorn. Whether he is in Washington to stay or not, he won’t be hurrying off from the truth.

Leadership Lessons from Flight 1549: Sullenberger is More than a Pilot

Today our world celebrates the successful ditch of US Airways 1549, and appropriately lauds her crew and their Captain, Chesley Sullenberger, as heroic.  But Sullenberger showed more than brilliance as a pilot in the emergency landing, double checking the cabin for survivors, issuing clear, calm guidance to frazzled passengers, and speaking to investigators and the media with quiet humility.  He showed character.  As we celebrate, it’s also important that we reflect on the development that produces such leaders of character.

The media was quick to cite Sullenberger’s skill training as a glider pilot and his honor in receiving the Outstanding Cadet in Airmanship award at the Air Force Academy, but there is an incredibly important back story here that leader developers can’t afford to miss.  The Air Force Academy runs a course each summer where second year cadets are taught to solo gliders and to make several freefall parachute jumps on their own, with instruction by upper class cadets.  The course, Airmanship 490, is not a mere military skills training course, but  instead derives from the character development program at the academy (after all, teaching pilots to parachute as a skill seems akin to teaching race car drivers to change flat tires).  The link between dangerous training and the development of leaders of character is at the core of in extremis leadership, and they “get it” at Air Force.

Likewise, the sport parachute team at West Point is viewed as a leader development lab, rather than merely an adventure sports team.  In the six years from 1999 to 2005, the tiny team (only 12 parachutists per class) produced four of the Academy’s pinnacle cadet commanders—the class First Captain—as well as two Rhode Scholars and much of the Corps senior leadership.

Captain Sullenberger mastered the outward focus that allowed him to make tough decisions about landing the aircraft, without getting emotionally balled up with the almost unimaginable responsibility attached to his passengers and other crew members.  Such outward focus and self-confidence is honed in people who are put in dangerous contexts—land the glider, pull the ripcord, or inherit the Earth.  His selfless concern for others is likewise derived from hyper focus on the environment, an environment which of course includes passengers and other followers.

The Air Force Academy is picking apart this miracle of development with good behavioral science.  Professors Steve Samuels and Craig Foster do psychological research on the airmanship course, showing which facets of that course produce statistically significant and lasting gains in psychological self-efficacy (confidence in the ability to handle tasks).  Their work, and the work of others, has convinced the prestigious academic journals Military Psychology and The Leadership Quarterly to produce special issues on leading in dangerous contexts.

The best in our Army “get it,” too.  When I was the artillery coordinator for the 101^st Airborne Division in the mid 90s, the operations and training officer (G3) for the division insisted that I help redesign a benign rifle range so that machine gun fire and artillery shells would land danger-close to infantrymen who would be advancing and firing their weapons among each other as well.  I’m ashamed to admit that I was less than energetic at completing this task; I viewed the procedures required for the range as reasonable for actual combat but perhaps a bit aggressive for peacetime training, and I was concerned about accidents.  The G3 insisted that the value of the range was not merely weapons training, but the immense pressure on the weapons crews and the very real danger that would be faced by the assaulting soldiers.  He was firm that with reasonable safeguards the range would significantly improve the tactical ability of the troops and the combat leadership of their commanders, and he wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.  Thanks to his tenacity, the vision eventually came true.  Range 52 was a great success and subsequently trained thousands of competent, confident, courageous infantrymen.  The G3, as the patient but inflexible architect, demonstrated the moral courage to put his own career at calculated risk to produce the finest infantry soldiers possible. This prescient leader was then-Lieutenant Colonel David Petraeus.  His highly successful “surge” strategy in Iraq was, of course, risky as well, and on a grander scale.

Sully demonstrated those hallmarks of the in extremis leader—extraordinary competence, outward focus, selfless concern for followers—by greasing an Airbus 320 onto a couple hundred feet of Hudson River and shepherding his passengers to safety.  In the process, he showed as much about his character as a leader as he did about his tremendous skill as a pilot. 

Mayday Leadership – Competence and Focus

It’s hard for those of us who lead in both routine and dangerous conditions to recognize how we change, as leaders, when lives are on the line.  But there is a unique leader character demanded by followers when leader decisions may influence their physical well being or survival.  Army researchers have systematically studied leaders in dangerous contexts, and have developed some principles that describe how leadership in dangerous settings differs from day to day leadership.

In extremis leadership is part of the job. It’s very important at the outset to recognize that leading in extremis (where followers believe that their physical well-being is on the line) is not something unanticipated that we hope will never occur.  To quote former Army Chief of Staff Gordon Sullivan, “Hope is not a method.  Maydays are a rendezvous with destiny; your time will come.  Think ahead.  Be ready.”

Competence becomes the primary basis for trust. Business leaders can build levels of trust in their organizations through social interaction like golf and team dinners.  In contrast, among firefighters, soldiers, and other public servants who operate in dangerous contexts, competence is the primary basis for trust.  In Iraq during research in combat operations, competence was measured as the number one characteristic leading to trust in the leader.   Once a Mayday is called, no one cares if the leader is sociable or friendly—it’s all about ability.  Leaders need to develop competence, and reinforce perceptions and recognition of their competence, long before a firefighter’s life depends on it.

There is such a thing as too much motivation. In training and routine contexts, good leaders develop habits that motivate their people.  When crisis occurs, the situation itself becomes inherently motivating.  Therefore, leaders should calm down, not spin up, during a Mayday.  Focus energy, don’t create it.  Quiet, steady competence is what people need from leaders during crisis, and the worse the crisis becomes, the more important self-control becomes.  The Hollywood characterization of “drill sergeant types” who scream into microphones and bombastically express anger and frustration is a terrible example for real leaders who manage real crises.  Mayday leaders control arousal, excitement and fear, both their own and among the people around them.

Focus outward.  At any given point in time, leaders can be introspective, focusing internally, or focus outward on the environment.  Crisis is no time for balance.  The leader’s focus needs to be outward, on the environment and the problem at hand.  Such outward focus can be practiced and developed with experience, and is important because it enables the leader to accomplish three specific tasks:

1. Make sense of the (always) ambiguous environment that’s causing the mayday, or other crisis;
2. Control emotions, since sufficient outward focus makes it very difficult to experience emotions; and
3. Orient on learning from the event, so that the lessons of experience are capture and paid forward.

Be there. Sharing risk and experiencing the misery of the elements right there with firefighters is an inspirational necessity, and sends the unmistakable message to the rank and file—“I feel your pain and I’m with you.”  Lead and manage as close to the action as you possibly can.

Global Economic Crisis

Our current global economic crisis has leaders at all levels—from heads of firms to heads of families—asking what they should do to lead in these difficult times.   We can learn from people for whom crisis conditions and dangerous contexts are a characteristic of their employment.   Lessons from professional in extremis leaders transfer nicely to leading to the bottom of the economy, and beyond.

1. Competence is the basis for trust and loyalty in crisis.  In serious economic crisis, expect that trust and loyalty based on pleasant social interaction takes a back seat to raw competence and capability.  Now is the time to use all your ability—don’t ask people to trust you because you’ve been loyal in the past, or because you’re a nice person.  Tell them to trust you because you know what you’re doing.  When you trust yourself, it’s called confidence, and it makes people trust you even more.
2. Danger is inherently motivating.  People who are fearful about their futures are already motivated by conditions; they need quiet competence, not a cheerleader or an angry boss.   People who are afraid usually prefer clear direction and an unemotional delivery.  Never arouse their fears in hopes of increasing motivation—fear mongering as a form of influence is the height of irresponsibility in a crisis.  If you need to plan through worst case scenarios, keep that among your closest advisors.  The leader’s job in crisis is to portray believable light at the end of an uncertain tunnel.
3. Focus outward, and learn.   Focus on the environment that threatens, and learn about your situation.  Watch enough news to be informed, and stop watching when it inevitably becomes repetitive.  Resist the temptation to focus inward on yourself (leading to emotionality) or to drill into the organization (leading to collective insecurity and panic).  Never finger-point or assign blame during a crisis—it can be viewed as an abdication of personal responsibility, and part of the crisis you’re trying to control.  Accountability can wait.
4. Extreme threat reveals the true character of leaders and followers.  One of the best things about a crisis is that it reveals who people can count on, and who people can’t.  Be the former.
5. Use the life altering character of your role to inspire.  Chances are that the survival of your financial position affects more than your personal well-being.  Leaders in crisis are fate makers in that their work helps determine the destiny of other people.  Inspire yourself and your organization by reminding yourself that you’re not in business solely to profit.
6. Leaders are physical beings .  Work out, drink less, and eat well.  Your physical condition is important in crisis.  Fit leaders are better able to handle stress, and a disciplined lifestyle projects control to those who are gauging the seriousness of the situation from observing your behavior.
7. Sharing risk and misery enhances credibility.   In crisis, people find it difficult to trust a leader who is working from a position of advantage relative to their own.  Highlight the common threat, and the common consequences of failure.
8. The best leaders WANT to be leaders, with passion.  Today a senior employee in an international investment firm called to talk about leadership in the volatile global markets.  Early in the conversation he admitted that, as bad as circumstances were, he was excited to be leading in such turbulent times.  His spirit was infectious.  Little wonder that his organization is among the best of its kind.  One reason you accepted your role as a leader is because you wanted responsibility.  You not only have permission to enjoy the ride—it’s really an obligation.

Leading as Commander in Chief

Originally posted on Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership Forum

Our next President’s role as Commander in Chief will entail at least four unique leadership contexts and responsibilities.

Balanced application of the elements of national power. All Presidents balance the elements of national power to execute strategy in an international context. Among the government agencies that represent elements of power, the military is among the most responsive and broadly capable. Yet such responsiveness and capability makes the military tempting to employ in place of other governmental agencies whose role is required, but whose capability may fall short. An example of this is the current situation in Iraq, where the development of economic, political, and social stability is being aggressively pursued by military forces in addition to their traditional security mission. There are tough questions to be answered about how the next President will reform the ability of the United States to apply multiple elements of power to avoid open ended military engagement.

Leadership of defense principals. The President of the United States bets the future of our Nation on the competence and candor of senior defense officials and flag officers. Although four star decision makers are top tier leaders in their own right, only the President can develop and maintain the climate that ensures honest and forthright assessments about defense strategy and capability. In such a leadership climate, no general or admiral should fear that an honest professional assessment will be interpreted as disloyalty by the President or senior defense officials. Likewise, the President must not tolerate those whose military assessments are based on popularity, partisanship, hope, false assumptions, servility, or other inappropriate foundations.

Leadership in contexts where lives will be lost. Our military is uniquely responsible for operating in settings where the loss of life is not only imminent, but virtually guaranteed. The ability to lead in such contexts moves beyond international relations and defense management into authentic leadership that spans social and political boundaries. Presidents must be able to confidently task the Joint Chiefs to commit forces on the same day that he/she grieves one-on-one with bereaved families. Questions about such capacity are very challenging to answer. Candidates must somehow demonstrate their capability to make life or death decisions, and must be careful not to be caught in embellishments because of the dishonor that accompanies public perceptions of false valor. In the context of the 2004 Presidential election, an editorial in the February 15th 2004 New York Times cited the need for candidates to demonstrate the capacity to operate in extremis: “People need to feel that the President is not going to be fazed by life-and-death situations. And the only way you can demonstrate that is by showing that you’ve made some.” Such capacity is even more important in 2008 than it was four years ago.

Stewardship of our capacity for national defense. Ongoing operations have extended our ground forces well beyond a sustainable pace. Even if every Soldier and Marine returned from the Middle East today, it would be a long, expensive, and arduous task to restore our volunteer military to its former capability. Casualties and departures due to the stress of repeated deployments have created a context where the next President will be the principal steward of restoring our force. The task will require a long term vision because of the extended time it takes to develop excellence in human capital. A jet fighter or a ship can be replaced in a day—as soon as the equipment can be produced, the replacement is made. In contrast, it takes 22 years to build a Colonel-level commander, assuming that the right person is retained as they progress up the ranks. Military human capital has to be recruited, developed, educated, inspired, and retained over time. The President has to be able to lead the American people to the commitment to rebuild a tired military in its most valuable (and expensive) commodity—the human dimension.

Thomas A. Kolditz, PhD
Colonel, U.S. Army

The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the position of the US Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense

Review: Perdido Magazine

Bill Farley, an Oklahoma City police officer, had just settled himself down for a well-earned vacation when he received news of a bombing. He grabbed his gear and rushed to the scene. What met his eyes was horrifying. Rescue personnel worked frantically to retrieve the dead and injured from the smoking rubble, but their efforts were painfully disorganized despite the presence of top officials.

Bill’s supervisor, a lieutenant on the Emergency Response Team, arrived minutes later and walked into the chaos. “He is a big, tough guy, a cop’s cop who always worked alongside his men,” Bill recalls. “Though self-effacing, he commanded respect not only because he was capable but because he cared about his subordinates.” The change at the scene was dramatic as he began issuing orders and organizing teams.

“People gravitated toward him immediately,” says Bill. “They understood that he knew what he was doing.”

When Thomas Kolditz began his study of leaders like this Oklahoma City lieutenant, he thought he was researching a unique form of leadership. However, in his book In Extremis Leadership: Leading As If Your Life Depended on It (Jossey-Bass, 2007, $27.95) he says, “The more I study leadership, the more it is apparent that thinking like a life-or-death leader can be a useful form of introspection for almost any leader.” He discovered that people in leadership deal with risk, pressures, strong emotions, opposition and loss in many arenas, including the business world. So instead of directing his findings to a select few—soldiers, firefighters, police officers, medical personnel, etc—he addresses a much broader audience.

Kolditz defines in extremis leaders as confident, optimistic people “who are high in character and aware of their own thoughts, behaviors, abilities and values.” They bring these characteristics to life-threatening contexts, recognizing that they “are fatemakers in the sense that their purpose and function are to continue to value the lives of others who are at the point of death.” When these leaders “live out” their character, they are able to provide their followers with purpose, motivation and direction.

Developing in extremis leaders requires training in a variety of areas, according to Kolditz. He discusses the required competency, illustrates with vivid, sometimes riveting examples and then shows why that competency is important for all leaders. Areas of training include personal competence in the job at hand, capacity to assess and manage levels of follower excitement, dedication to life-long learning, sense of shared risk, willingness to share the lifestyle of the followers, and commitment to truth, to name a few. The author even includes a section on the physical development of in extremis leaders and shows how this can benefit leaders in general.

However, In Extremis Leadership is not a detailed, how-to manual. Kolditz offers the facts about successful leadership he has discovered through research and illustrates liberally with stories he has collected from a long list of strong leaders in a variety of professions.

For instance, he tells the story of a 24-year-old Marine corporal who commanded eight infantrymen during the march toward Baghdad in the current war in Iraq. His squad had learned to respect him because he was an superb rifleman who fought shoulder to shoulder with them for 30 days of intense combat and little sleep. His consistency had earned their complete trust and loyalty.

Squad members told the author of a period of four days they were forced to share one MRE prepackaged meal per day among the nine of them. The soldiers soon discovered that their leader was meticulously giving each man his fair share while he ate only the coffee creamer. Needless to say, Kolditz notes, “The eight Marine infantrymen, some of the toughest people on the planet, would have walked through fire for their leader.”

The author also devotes an entire chapter to the dynamics of dealing with strong emotion in high-pressure or life-threatening situations. He describes the power of fear, one of the most prevalent in high risk situations. Through stories, he illustrates this phenomenon and discusses how leaders have overcome it by an outward focus.

Kolditz further explores the personal element with a chapter on coping with loss. While in extremis leaders may face death more often than leaders in other fields, these experiences offer the leader an important occasion to influence his or her organization for good. This is true, Kolditz believes, because handling death is about celebrating a life that was and caring for the living who remain.

Readers will find In Extremis Leadership a compelling argument for competence and sterling character in leaders—two abilities that are honed with practice and a steady focus on the benefit of followers.

Taken from PerdidoMagazine.com