Would Your Team Volunteer to Follow You?

I envy people who lead volunteers. You know why? Because they buy into the vision; it’s the only reason unpaid workers work.

 

It’s true that volunteers can cause a leader a lot of headaches. You can’t discipline them (How? Pay cut? Suspension?) and they’re really hard to fire. And they’re prone to quit when things don’t go their way.

 

But volunteers have the best possible attribute of a team member: They believe in what you’re doing. They’re there out of love and conviction; they’re working from the heart. Motivating volunteers is so easy a caveman can do it.

 

So here’s one of the most challenging tests of your leadership: Would your team volunteer to work for you? Take the pay question out of it; if they could choose any boss and any department in the company, would they choose yours? If you asked which team did the most meaningful work, would they say yours?

 

The work your team does is important. Do they know it? Do they believe it? If not, it’s on you. Get out there and paint the vision in such bright colors they can’t miss it.

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The President's Leadership Challenge with Syria

Our president’s in a tough spot right now. Doesn’t matter if you like him or not, any leader can feel for him; he’s up against an almost no-win situation in Syria, leadership-wise.

 

His problem: Those he’s trying to lead aren’t buying his vision. If he does what he thinks is right, it might erode his leadership as followers, at home and internationally, become disillusioned. If he doesn’t, he could lose leadership cred too, as he might appear indecisive or willing to sacrifice his own integrity to be popular. To make things worse, every day of delay makes it less likely that his desired course of action will do any good.

 

You’ll have days like that, when life throws something at you that you never saw coming, and you don’t have time to paint the vision or build buy-in with your team. Every one of those situations is different, so I only have one piece of advice for you: Never, ever compromise your own integrity. Do what you think is right, explain why you think it’s right, and always be consistent. Then, your detractors will have to challenge you on values, not on actions.

 

Trust comes from walking your own talk. Down the road your team will likely forget the details. They’ll never forget it if you take the easy path against your own conscience.

 

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Day-to-Day Leadership is Easy

The best kind of leadership is also the easiest.

How many books haven't you read by or about great leaders, only to find that you struggle to do what they do, or what they recommend? How many seminars haven't you attended that inspired you at the time, but didn't change a thing?

There's a reason: You can't ever take a break from leading, so your leadership methods have to be as natural to you as breathing. That's not to say you don't want to change or learn, you do, but you have to approach leadership growth the same way you would a fitness program or a diet: It takes lifestyle change.

There are some big components of leadership, like setting the vision and strategizing, but day-to-day leadership comes down to two things: the passion you have (that's your energy source) and the things you communicate (how you translate your energy and vision into their action).

Lead from your place of natural passion. What gets you excited? Is it the environment? Then drive your leadership from your passion to make your workplace sustainable. Is it money? Then use your passion for wealth to lead to more profits. Is it socializing? Then spend your day with people, leading one-on-one. Is it service? Get your energy making work life better for your people.

In the same way, use your natural means of communication. Strong, silent types communicate by example, by doing. Talkers talk. Writers write. Presenters present. You have to do some of all of them, but day to day do what's most natural to let your people know what's expected and how to do it.

When you build your passion and do your communicating just by being yourself, the job is easy. When you try to be Colin Powell or Tony Dungy or Oprah, you'll work twice as hard and fail.

Sounded Better in My Head

My administrative assistant sometimes says, "That sounded better in my head." It makes me laugh, but it also states clearly the basic problem of communication: How do you make sure what's in your head ends up in theirs?

All you have to work with is words, so here are a couple of suggestions:

1) Make sure your words do their job: communicate the right meaning. My Tac Officer said, "Use precise terms precisely." For me, "Start at ten" means in your seat and ready by then; to our Sales Manager it means start getting ready to attend the meeting at ten - "In your seats at ten" works better for him. "Fix" means repair to a maintenance man but to an infantryman, it means to hold in place. To a paint-maker, it's a noun that means the stuff you need to correct a batch.

2) State your point in a single short, declarative sentence. "I want you to be on time" works a lot better than "You know, when the team has to start short-handed, there are a lot of outcomes that affect a lot of people." Say it the way you want them to get it.

That's it: Just use the right words, and then don't use more of them than you have to. Oh, and then ask enough questions to make sure they understand. The burden is on you to communicate, not on them.

There's a great conversation on the value of speaking skills over at Leadership Freak. If you've never been there, just Google it. You won't be disappointed.

When You Don't Feel Like It

A leader's work never ends. Your team demands your leadership every single day.

But sometimes you don't feel like it. Sometimes you're tired or out of sorts and you just want a quiet day with no hassles. Not gonna happen, so what do you do?

First, remember that your problems are yours, not your team's. If you need to vent or want to whine, see your pastor, call your mom, have coffee with your spouse. But don't dump on your team; not only will you drag them down with you, you'll scare them. At work you're like the mom or dad; the kids don't want to think things are too much for you.

Second, you can act your way into feeling. No, really, you can. Just start doing what you do every day. Get out there, talk to your folks, identify their problems and get to work solving them. Forecast demand, measure your resources, start planning. Get your eyes on the vision, that place that you're en route to with your team.

I promise, after an hour of grinding away at your normal leadership work, you'll be a lot more motivated. Your focus will shift from yourself, and the issues will engage you again. It might even be good therapy.

Yeah, the first hour of a down day sucks. But if you don't soldier up and get to work, the whole day is going to suck, plus you'll have to repair your relationship with the team.

Old Sergeant's Wisdom: Advice for Leaders

The Army puts newly-minted young second lieutenants in charge of platoons; that's the first leadership assignment these school-trained but inexperienced officers have. There are a lot of pitfalls out there for fledgling leaders, though, and the beauty of that first assignment is each platoon has a senior, experienced sergeant who can mentor these young officers. If you're smart, you listen, because rough as they can be, these old sergeants know a lot about leadership.

I was reminiscing about my days as a lieutenant, and marveled at the rough-hewn wisdom my sergeants passed on. A few examples:

- "Try not to suck." This is the Army version of the Hippocratic Oath for doctors ("First, do no harm.") It's a pointed reminder that when you're a leader, your team bears the consequences of your choices. Sometimes no action is better than bad action.
- "Life gets tougher when you're stupid." There are very few situations your team can get into that you can't make worse by doing something dumb. Study the problem, get advice, think things through, and then decide.
- "Don't talk when you're full of s**t." Every one of us has had a boss that couldn't follow this bit of advice. The implications are obvious.
- "If you're gonna spend us, buy something good." In the Army, some objectives require spending human lives, but in every organization you can use people up. Never, ever, demand from your people more than the benefit is worth.
- "You're not as smart as you think you are, but you're probably not as dumb as I think you are either." Keeping a realistic perspective on yourself is tough, but important. It's also important to have a sense of how others perceive you. Reality is somewhere in the gap.

I thought it wouldn't hurt to give you a few chuckles at my expense - you can imagine what I might have done to prompt this kind of feedback. But don't miss the nuggets of wisdom in there. Old sergeants are pretty smart; the dumb ones don't make it that far.

[Note: It isn't fair of me to let you assume the crusty old sergeants I had all those years ago represent today's professional NCO. In response to a more complex mission, today's NCOs are bright, competent, and considerably more polished than old-school sergeants.]

Your Health is a Leadership Issue

We like to think how we maintain our bodies are our own private concern, but health is a leadership issue. Think of the outcomes of poor health habits:

- less energy, which means less gets done, and you look like you don't care.
- your brain functions slower, so you take longer to decide and tend not to think in depth or make connections as readily.
- your moods tend to swing, which makes you unpredictable to your team. That in turn causes them to have to try to read you.
- when you don't feel good, your focus centers on yourself.

Admit it, when your body is complaining, it captures your attention and tends to drown out what goes on around you. Sure, Steve Jobs led effectively when he was sick, but not as effectively as when he wasn't.

I'm not talking about weight. Heavy people can be healthy, and a lot of skinny folks aren't. I'm talking about your body's systems working well. You know what good health feels like, and you know when you don't have it.

Better health is just a few choices away: enough sleep, decent nutrition, 30 minutes of walking. You need to do it to be at your best as a leader.