The study of Army Leaders

Through the years when I have worked with leadership trainings and development I have used several different theories and models. Somebody once told me that a critisism towards many of these theories and models were that they were done on army personell and students. The claim was then that they were not so relevant for the every day workplace.

So why the study of army leaders and staff? Well, lets clear my guess about the students first. When I was a student myself we were often invited to participate in different tests. I guess it was because it was cheap, or at least cheaper, to use students and we often had free time in the day to spare.

When it comes to army leaders and other people in the military I am more certain that one of the reasons many have studied them is because behaviors and patterns that are more subtle in the every day work place become more obvious under those conditions. A conflict that might be hard to spot the dynamics of at the office because it is so subtle, like a group questioning its leader, can be so much more clear in a military situation. There the stress is higher or more connected to life and death, so a questioning of the leader there can be quite brutal.

For example one of the most widely used theories on group dynamics is the FIRO-theory, Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation. That was conducted during the late fiftees on army leadership and personell during the Korean war. It has then been used to illustrate group dynamics and leadership around the world.

Thank you for your support…

At a recent meeting I learned about a management team that fell apart during a rough time in company history. We talked about how we support each other or not support each other I everyday work life.

This made me think about support on my way home and I decided to look up how many people had searched for the term support online in the last month or so. After skimming through some of the top contenders such as Child Support with 1830000 (that is nearly two million) searches in a month and Support Our Troops with 368000, Tech Support and Technical Support with 301000 each, I found some that where more along the line what I originally was looking for.

There was the search term Support Groups with 368000 searches. Then a big jump through dozens of bra, camera and body part supports, I found Support Letters with 8100 searches.  Yet further down Online Support Group with 5100 and then the header for this post Thank You For Your Support with 2900 searches a month.

I started out thinking I would find what kind of support people where looking for in their online searches but ended with just being amazed at how important support is in our lives and how that is also displayed by looking at the technical map on search engine searches per month.

My thought, while you are picking up your one piece of trash a day also remember to at some part of your day reach out and support another human being. What you give you will receive.

How to be a Good Leader?

So many times the questions comes up about being a good leader. How do I do it? What are the leadership characteristics of such a leader? What do I need to learn to take this step in my leadership quest?

As with many of the greatest things in life the answer is very simple, but can be made very complex. I would answer the question of how to become a good leader with four things:

• Know your self (Gnothi Seauton)
• Be your self
• Have an interest in other people (listen…watch…)
• Have a genuine interest to make other peoples life better

Of course you can pay your way through plenty of leadership training courses that help you become a better leader and increase your leadership skills. You can read shelf after shelf of books on this topic. You can devote time to reflection.

All these things are great but it is easy to loose the bottom line of being a good leader and I believe that bottom line is summed up in the four points above.

Mind over matter, Mind over body

We have all heard and read about visualisation can help you achieve your goals. How seeing is believing. If we can see it first in our mind then we can experience it in the real world. One of the laws of success states that everything is created twice, once in your mind and once in the real world

Along those lines I had an interesting read to go with my morning shake. Att BBC UK:s site there is a story about how a game can get people walking again. I recommend you to read the article, but the brief summary is; using modern technology and a virtual reality the mind starts to believe that better walking is possible.

So away goes some of the previous limitations of walking slowly with a cane. The trick is that the virtual reality makes people think they walk slower than they actually  are doing so they speed up and forget that they are old and limited. 

Next step, set up at virtual reality machine for life success where people can have their personal goals visualized and experience them fully, hmm…might be a business concept. Leaders could design the goal they wish their group to achieve and then have them experience it beforehand.

Dynamics of Senate Leadership

I cant help but to ponder about Senate Leadership these days with the election in the United States coming up. Of course it is the presidential election but I still came across some news and homepages about different senators.

I wonder what the requirements are really to be a good senator. How much do people vote for soft skills, such as he is a good listener, she is good at communicating or she can really really create trust in a group of people? Do we rather vote for impressing resumes, flashy presentations and promises given?

Of course when choosing Senate Leadership it is natural to also pay attention to the personal qualities and charisma but also the basic ideas and ideologies of the given senator, but I think it would be great if these people would also campaign with the results of some soft skills leadership inventory result.

Might be a tough one to pull off, but leadership in the senate would never be the same again, or would it?

Leadership styles in parenting

My wife is just reading Dr Phil:s book called Family First and that got us talking about leadership styles in parenting last night. As I recall the concept my wife described was that there are three different styles of parenting.

• One where the parent simply tells the children what to do, using power
• A second is a team perspective, we do it together, homework etc
• And the third and final one is one based on coaching

My wife was strongly drawn to one including coaching as she likes this way of relating to people in general and also is a very good coach. The comparison was pretty clear though that just a leader in the corporate world needs to have a set of leadership styles that he or she utilize in accordance with the situation so do parents.

No one style will fit all occasions so developing a good toolbox for effective parenting is of the essence. I look forward to applying this concept in my own role as a father, I am sure it will be even more rewarding learning wise than previous leadership I have been given.

The window opens to Self Knowledge

I just had a talk with a collegue yesterday that included the concept of self knowledge. In this case it was person who seemed not to be aware of how he was perceived by people around him. This made me think of a model that I presented to a client last week.

It is called Johari Window and has some great perspectives on self knowledge. This can be a concept that is hard to grasp at times, especially the interaction between others and yourself in the discovery of more of who you truly are.

If you are not familiar with this model I suggest a visit to the link above to see it illustrated. It basically speaks of one part of the window which contains what we know about our selfs and that others do to. Common knowledge about your personality that is.

There is also the hidden field, knowledge about your personality that you intentionally or unintentionally hide from others. Further theres is the blind field, things that other perceive about you, but that you are not aware of. A lot of times this can be for example how your body language comes across. This was field that was appropriate for the discussion initially mentioned in regards to self knowledge. Feedback would have been useful in that case to open up some of blind field would be my guess.

The last and fourth part of the window is the unknown. Unknown to you and others. Can be accessed via personality tests, therapy  and the like.

What is your leadership program?

I believe we all have a leadership program. If you are familiar with NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming, you know the speak a lot about internal programs. In this case I imagine our leadership program containing a set of beliefs and structures about our traits as a leader, how we believe that others will perceive us and what results we can achieve.

Sometimes these beliefs, the systems can be very supportive and sometimes they can be very limiting. I just spoke to a corporate leader today who was very thankful towards two of her collegues who believed in her as a leader before she did herself. She was convinced that without their support she would not be in a leadership position today and much less feel like a leader.

This would be a perfect example of a leadership program at work and how an old one was replaced by a new one by supportive people in the environment had higher expectations of the person than the person did herself.

5 Project Management Skills

When it comes to project management there are some skills need to be succesful in this type of leadership. To work on different projects can be a challenge at times since it often includes a deadline and a temporary grouping of people.

Some leaders enjoys this type of setting immensly, others find it rather tough to deal with. Here is a check list with some project management skills that come in very handy to fare well with these projects:

• The ability to communicate with a wide range of people
• Being able to persistently follow up with people without the fear of “bothering” them
• Working independently with little supervision and/or praise at times
• Being able to manage money and your personal time effectively
• Being comfortable with effecient recording keeping

Of course there might be more project management skills that will help you be the greatest project manager you can be but the above is a good start.

Another good competence to posses is for example the knowledge of group dynamics and how this is in play in a temporary group like this. Knowing how to adapt your leadership style accordingly is definetely also on of the skills in project management that are very useful.

Go Gratitude!

One of the experiences in my life that I will also cheerish in life is about gratitude and happened in China some years back. I was there teaching together with some american friendes of mine and one evening we arranged a bingo evening for the kids that we were teaching.

It was not that fancy really, in a very simple school dining hall and with beans to put as markers on their little bingo sheets, but the gratitude they showed over this arrangement was amazing. They had so much fun and when somebody got the needed beans for a bingo on their sheet that person would quiet modestly say a quite silent “bingo”.

The rest of the dining hall, around 200 students would then erupt in cheers for this one person. Then they game would go on. I think their gratefulness serves as a great reminder to us all to show gratitude in our life.

A take on this is also that it was of course so inspiring to put even more effort into creating great kids things for these grateful kids. So I believe the universe works also, if we are truly grateful from the heart, the universe, or God if that fits your religous beliefs, will be more than happy to put an extra effort in so you can have more of the goodies in life.