Leadership

Leadership Philosophy: FM 6-22 defines leadership as “the process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation while operating to accomplish the mission and improve the organization.” My general leadership philosophy is to encourage buy-in and empower Soldiers to accomplish the mission. By giving members a stake in the mission and skin in the game, I believe you can motivate people and get the best out of them. While I believe that is a sound leadership philosophy, at the organizational level I may need to slightly modify my philosophy to deal provide more direction and accountability. In a unit level leader environment there is much greater opportunity for hands on leadership and face-to-face contact with people in your organization. In that setting I feel confident that people can pick-up on my expectations and I can refine and shape my expectations on a continuous basis. For example, in a direct-level environment I tend to avoid concrete deadlines and instead follow-up with people to let them know when things need to get done. Similarly, while I give big picture guidance I am loathe to tell someone exactly what to want or how to do their job. I believe empowering individuals to make decisions has several advantages. First, it makes all members feel like essential members of the team motivating them to work harder. Second, by demonstrating I am open to other ideas I can build trust and increase dialogue and communications. By demonstrating this willingness to listen I make it clear that I don’t need ‘yes man”, I want to know both bad and good news, making it more likely we can identify and address problems as they arise. Third, I firmly believe that all members of a team, subordinates and superiors, have valuable ideas and can make contributions to the team. By giving them a general direction and allowing them to solve the problems themselves, I encourage team members to innovate and create new ideas. This innovation not only expands theteam’s talent pool and ensure the organization increases excellence, it also helps instill knowledge in subordinates and gives them necessary training and development opportunities to grow within the organization. Empowering subordinates develops future leaders and communicates my trust in individual team members. While I believe that I can maintain that philosophy as organizational leader, in that type of environment there is less day-to day interaction and less opportunity to influence a decision informally, such as by “walking around.” As a result, as an organizational leader I believe I have to be more directive about the goals, expectations, and objectives of my organization. For example in a direct-level leadership role I would impress upon people the importance of honor and integrity by my behavior and my actions. While that is still necessary in an organizational leader, I must make also make clear at the onset that I expect and demand ethical behavior and I will hold people accountable who fail to live up to that standard. By demonstrating that ethics is non-negotiable, regardless of a person’s technical competence or individual success I can instill an atmosphere where team members know the importance of doing the right thing and taking the hard right over the easy wrong. I believe a leader must be true to himself and follow a philosophy that works for him or her. At the same time I believe an effective leader must tailor his philosophy to different environments. I believe in empowering people, leading informally and not micro-managing. While I can continue that philosophy as an organizational leader, I need to adjust that philosophy to set clearer expectations and provide more direction within this larger group setting.