The first thing I was taught after becoming a NCO was to always take care of my men and they would respond by always taking care of me.
I took that responsibility seriously, so when I thought that my Division Officer was screwing my guys, I fought back. Without going into the details, he finally agreed with me. Afterward my Chief came to me and thanked me for battling it out with the Div O. He told me that he couldn’t afford to rock the boat because it was evaluation time and he needed to make Senior Chief. I was too shocked to tell him what I thought of him. I knew he was spineless, but was surprised that he would actually provide me proof of it. I never had the good fortune to make Chief, so I never went through the initiation, but I’m fairly certain that throwing your troops into the path of the train and looking out for number one weren’t taught when he was getting his Anchors pinned on.
Leadership, what does it really mean and how do you get there? Is it true that leaders are born, not made? Or is it the other way around? And if leaders are made, does that mean anyone can be a leader? How do you ensure that you get to be one of the good ones?
With three notable exceptions, almost everything I’ve learned about how to lead and inspire people came from observing how not to do it.
My first opportunity to strut my stuff as a “Leader of Men” came when I was a member of the Naval Security Group. I was amazed at how well I was doing. Tasks got accomplished exactly the way we planned them. Being the Boss was a piece of cake.
My next real challenge came years later as a newly minted 1st Class Petty Officer in the Engineering Department on a ship, where I realized that my previous idyllic tenure as the Boss had very little to do with my skills as a Leader and everything to do with the fact that like me, no one wanted to take a chance of losing their security clearance, and the associated perks. It is very easy to look good when everyone is doing what they’re supposed to be doing.
Running a maintenance shop was an entirely new situation for me. I had never experienced personnel problems and had no clue of what I was supposed to do to fix things. For the next year I made one misstep after another.
I eventually realized what I was doing wrong and was surprised at how simple the solution was. I could and would listen to advice, but started adopting only those things that I felt comfortable with. Simply put, I would treat people the way I wanted to be treated. That approach may not work for everyone, but it worked extremely well for me.
I honed my skills further by trying to emulate those three exceptions I mentioned earlier, Captain Edwin Baldwin, Lieutenant Commander Jessie Hinojosa, and Doug Holt.
Have you seen any of those old war movies where there is one guy who others would follow “through the gates of hell?” For me, Captain Baldwin was that guy.
He would never have been cast as the hard charging Captain of a warship by anyone in Hollywood. He wasn’t physically imposing, and with the scraggly beard he wore on deployments, he looked more like a skid row bum (sorry Skipper) than a Naval Officer. But he had this energy and drive about him that you just couldn’t help getting swept along for a wild ride. He was always running at Flank Speed. He believed in working hard and playing hard, and made sure we had plenty of both. What I learned most from him was that if people know what is expected of them, you’re probably going to get it from them.
I had the pleasure of working directly with Lieutenant Commander Hinojosa, the Main Propulsion Assistant (MPA). The MPA is the Engineer’s go-to-guy and usually not the most popular person in the department. He would be the Bad Cop in the Good Cop/Bad Cop tag team. But amazingly the guys in the department would bend over backward to keep from doing anything that would disappoint him.
One example sticks out. We were preparing to pull into our Homeport after two weeks at sea. We were leaving again in two days for another week of sea time. Prior to pulling in, all the senior NCOs not on watch were discussing who was going to come in and work that weekend “so we won’t make the MPA look bad.” This wasn’t because of some directive from the above; it was because they wanted to give the MPA everything they had to give.
The lesson I learned from LCDR Hinojosa was how to put into practice that first lesson of, taking care of your people. He took care of his guys. That is not to say that we didn’t have to work for our pay. If it took you ten hours to do an eight hour job, then you just had to suck it up and work the ten hours. But if you had some issue that was keeping you from focusing your attention on the task at hand, he would do whatever it took to remove the obstacle.
Last but certainly not least, was Doug Holt of Holt Office Systems. I was fortunate enough to be able to work for Doug part-time during my last year in the Navy. Doug was a great guy (he has since passed away). Doug taught me the value of trust.
When I first started with him he would take me out on calls to introduce me to customers and learn my way around. After a few weeks I noticed something that had me stunned. He would walk in and talk to the customer about whatever issue they had, come up with a solution, and then leave assuring them that it would be taken care of. They seemed like a pretty typical business transactions until it hit me that nine out of ten would never ask what it was going to cost them. I finally asked him what his secret was. He said that he had worked with most of his customers for many years and they knew he wouldn’t cheat them. They trusted him.
From Doug I was able to define what those other two gentlemen had going for them. We trusted them to take care of us. Not only when it was easy, but also when we really needed to be taken care of, even if it would get them in hot water.
So where do those three gentlemen sit on the leadership continuum? I’d definitely put them high up on the plus side. They showed me the ideal that I should be running toward instead of the one to run away from. They each had a distinctive way of doing things, part of which I was able to embrace and make my own. And even though I have lost touch with them, I still find myself wondering what advice they would give me if I could ask them.
As a small business owner, to be truly successful you must lead and inspire enough of the people who work for you so that they can see your vision and embrace it for themselves. It isn’t about just telling people what to do. The ones you have to continually tell what to do aren’t the ones who are going to help you become successful. You need the ones who are looking out for you and the rest of your team just as much as you’re looking out for them.
You will have three types of people working for you. To paraphrase Jack Welch, from his book “Straight From The Gut,” you’ll have the top 20%, the vital 70%, and the bottom 10%.
The top 20% will be your studs. They’ll be the ones you just have to point in a certain direction and they’ll run as fast as they can, for as long as they need to. They’ll also be the ones you need to spend the most time, at least initially inspiring. Why, because once they get it, they go and get it done. And as good as they are they can always go somewhere else.
The vital 70% will be the ones that come to work and give you a good effort everyday.
Then you have the bottom 10%. Those are the ones that work just hard enough to not get fired, and you pay them just enough so they don’t quit.
Leadership is about dealing effectively with each group. It’s about knowing when to praise and when to punish; when to promote and when to let them go. And let me say right now that equality is highly overrated. When the time comes to hand out rewards for a job well done, the people who have done the most should get the most. The top 20% should get a bigger reward than the vital 70%. The bottom 10%’s reward should be still having a job.
Some may think that sounds cold and heartless, but trying to treat everyone the same may end up costing you more than you want to pay. It may cost you your top performers. Anyone out there remember ending up doing someone else’s work because your boss knew you would get it done? Your employees have options that we didn’t have in that situation. As I mentioned earlier, they can go elsewhere. The really good ones are already being approached by recruiters.
So where do you sit on the leadership continuum? Are you the one people would follow through the gates of hell, or just the person who signs the checks?
Do your employees go out of their way to keep from disappointing you, or is it just another job?
Do they trust you to look out for them or are you just in it for yourself?
The answers to those questions will most likely determine how successful you are.