As a leader, how good do you think you are?

Do you ever get the feeling that you have the best idea in the room? Are you a leader who shuts down any opposition to current strategies? Do you punish those who oppose you because they have challenged your authority? Are you that good? 

If you are a leader, and you think that you have the best ideas in your team, then I challenge that you are not in fact a leader at all. A leader is someone who knows how to use the people within his/her team, a person who inspires and encourages innovation, a leader is someone who develops his/her team, and in turn, their organisation. If you are a leader who isn’t doing these things, then you are… simply an individual with a title. 

I make the point that as a leader you MUST be completely transparent, encourage information sharing and have bloody thick skin. A leader needs to feel comfortable feeling uncomfortable, because if he/she is comfortable, then they aren’t doing their job.

The only way to ensure that your strategy is a winner, is to run it through your team and ask for open and honest feedback. This will ensure your biases are corrected/checked, and that potential weak points not in your specialisation can be optimised by those members of your team that hold the relevant experience. 

The challenge with hierarchy

An environment I am all too familiar with is the military. When thinking about the strict rank structure of the military and the class difference between the soldiers and officers, there are more similarities to the private sector than you would think.

Much like the private sector, the military has leaders who take their power too seriously and abuse the benefits it affords them. The most common time you will see this is when one of these leaders has been proven wrong by someone “beneath” them in the hierarchy.

Let me say this, if your ego is so fragile that you need to shoot someone down after they have provided a valuable piece of advice, simply because it differed from what you have said, then do yourself a favour and quit, because you are not helping anyone. 

I will always have an “open door policy”, meaning anyone of any rank can come and speak to me when they want to. I also have a “free speech” policy when it comes to strategy building/planning.

Having both these policies in place has led to a culture where soldiers are willing to share their thoughts/ideas with me, and as someone who has a broad understanding of a number of areas, there is often absolute GEMS of information which I would not have if I shut everyone out.

Running start-ups like a ‘combined arms team’ 

I feel like I can say these things as I have recently ventured out into the private sector myself, experiencing the thrill of the start-up space for the first time. The school of thought which I mention above is 100% transferrable into any sector.  

I have built a team of people I know and trust, who have skills and experiences which I don’t have. I found myself building my team off the military concept of  ‘combined arms teaming’. To simplify the concept, this refers to covering one teams’ weaknesses with another teams’ strength, leading to complete synergy. 

An example of this in practice would be to examine an Infantry Platoon (approx. 30 x people) that conducts regular patrols on deployment with the very real threat of improvised explosive devices lying in wait to tear away life or limb. In order to follow the concept of a ‘combined arms team’, you would attach an engineer section (approx. 10 x people) to the front of the patrol. This way, the engineers check for explosive devices before the infantry step on them, and the infantry provide enhanced security with their weapon systems while the engineers focus on the ground. Perfect synergy. 

If leaders could structure their business like a ‘combined arms team’ then they can begin to quickly see if there are any outstanding weaknesses which exist in their organisation and modify it to ensure its ongoing success. I have found myself consistently turning to my team for advice, and readily receive criticism, provided they provide an alternative solution with it.

I will not lie, it takes thick skin to consistently have what you believe are good ideas shut down…but you are a leader, you exist in the realm of the uncomfortable, and flexibility and thick skin is simply part of the job.

What are your experiences with open feedback?

Let me know your stories where feedback from a subordinate was received/rejected and what the subsequent result was, I’d love to hear some crazy success/failure stories!