Tag Archive for: leadership

Chris Kolenda | What Princess Kate’s doctored photo teaches Leaders about Transparency

What Princess Kate’s doctored photo teaches Leaders about Transparency

Have you ever struggled with how transparent you should be with your employees? Pay levels, promotion decisions, disciplinary action, and profitability rank among the more difficult information-sharing decisions. 

You may invite conflict and grievances if you share too much information about everyone’s pay. Share too little, and an employee may leave, suspecting you are screwing them over. Lack of information about profitability can cause employees to wonder about the business’s viability and whether their bonus was appropriate. Too much information about a promotion decision can prompt grievances and concerns about unfairness.

Princess Kate’s doctored photo can help you navigate these information-sharing quandaries and make the best possible decision.

As you’ve probably heard, UK’s Princess Catherine underwent abdominal surgery and expected a lengthy recovery. The Royal Family provided no other information, leaving people to speculate on what problem prompted the surgery and if she’ll ever recover. To assuage the rumor mill, the family sent out a picture allegedly showing Kate and her children happy and healthy. The photo was doctored, heightening the swirl of speculation.

Similarly, the Royals revealed that King Charles has cancer but won’t reveal the type or stage, thus fueling speculation about his reign. 

Glass has three levels of see-through: transparent, translucent, and opaque

Under Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Family was largely opaque: don’t explain; don’t complain. This approach kept most personal matters private and added a level of dignity but created a media frenzy around the late Princess Diana and Harry and Meghan’s Megxit.

The monarchy under King Charles has grown translucent, a tricky balancing act that can quickly go wrong. You come across as too cute by half, fueling drama and speculation.

The royal family might be better off with transparency about Charles’s and Kate’s conditions and opaqueness regarding their daily struggles. There’s little to gain by noting an illness exists but not what it is and much to gain in greater revelation. At the same time, the royals should determine what to share about their personal journeys. Stories about perseverance, courage, and resilience are inspiring. 

What does this mean for business leaders? 

Set your information-sharing standards around what you want to be transparent about and opaque about. Your processes, for example, should be transparent, especially concerning decisions that affect people’s lives and livelihoods. 

Opaqueness is appropriate regarding an individual’s reasonable right to privacy. You can be transparent about the process you used to determine pay without revealing individual pay and benefit packages. 

You don’t want to be translucent about the processes or individual matters because people will suspect favoritism, and you’ll find yourself embroiled in drama like the royal family. 

How well is this process working for you? Email me to let me know. I love cheering your success and helping you get over obstacles.

Did you know people read this newsletter over 50% of the time? I’m thrilled that you get so much value out of it. 

One way you can increase your value to others is by sharing what helps you grow. Whether it’s this blog or another, sharing it and encourage your colleagues to experience what’s valuable to you. Sharing wisdom is like a rising tide lifting all boats. 

Chris Kolenda: How a Catalyst can help you SOAAR to New Heights as a Mentor

How a Catalyst can help you SOAAR to New Heights as a Mentor

I love helping people, so being a good mentor is essential.

My journey towards good was rocky sometimes because I offered too much value too quickly. I’d often latch on to my employee’s or client’s first words and provide advice. I made this mistake with Geraldine (not her real name), one of my first clients.

I liked being fast and responsive, but that approach got in the way of understanding and buy-in. A person’s first observation tends to be a symptom of a more significant challenge that you need to uncover because they often have not identified it clearly for themselves. Providing advice based on surface understanding met Geraldine’s resistance, and we didn’t get anywhere. We both felt frustrated.

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Chris Kolenda: Optimism versus Wishful Thinking? Here’s what you need to know.

Optimism versus Wishful Thinking? Here’s what you need to know.

I was so sure that leaders would jump at the opportunity for leadership seminars at historical battlefields that I hired a digital marketing company, made excellent videos, created sales funnels, and poured thousands into Facebook ads. 

It was an epic fail. 2 million views, over 250,000 likes, not a single buyer. I was right that leaders value off-sites at historic venues, but the marketing strategy was flawed. Wishful thinking costs me tens of thousands of dollars. I fixed the value proposition and marketing and it’s now among my most successful and impactful programs. 

Are you optimistic or a wishful thinker? Do you sometimes struggle to decide whether to stay or change the course? You are not alone. 

Having the courage of your convictions can help you weather inevitable ups and downs, keep naysayers at bay, and provide the patience you need to see innovations succeed. You can easily cross into wishful thinking, hurtling eyes wide shut into bankruptcy.

At the same time, a lack of conviction can lead to hyperactivity as you swing from one idea to another, shift courses constantly, and perpetually change your mind. 

Leaders need optimism; no one will follow you if you don’t believe in success. You also need guardrails against ostrich-like wishful thinking that can ruin your business or get people hurt. For example, wishful thinking was in plentiful supply until the bitter end in Afghanistan.

You need the right balance between conviction and open-mindedness – a prudent optimism. It’s not easy.

According to The Wall Street Journal, 23andMe, a DNA-testing company, has seen its valuation plunge to nearly zero today from $6bn in 2021 as it tried to pivot into becoming a small biotech. Meta, meanwhile, reportedly loses $3bn to $4bn per quarter on Metaverse. Autonomous vehicle companies are struggling to meet safety concerns and avoid liability issues in the event of a crash or injury. Electric vehicles aren’t selling well despite generous government subsidies. Since FTX’s fall, crypto seems even more of a gamble. A lot of money seems to be circling the drain. 


Should these companies press on and risk bleeding cash until bankruptcy, like Blockbuster, or miss out on a massive breakthrough, as Kodak, which invented the digital camera and ditched it in favor of film?

This chart can help you determine whether you are optimistic or inhaling your own gas.

Chris Kolenda: Optimism vs Wishful Thinkful diagram.

The critical difference between optimism and wishful thinking is the willingness to try new things. Here are some indicators that you might be on the wrong side of the line.

  • You believe information that confirms your pre-existing views and discount contrary ones (confirmation bias).
  • You create a higher bar for new ideas to prove their worth than you do for the existing approach (status quo bias).
  • You emphasize the effort and investment you’ve already made to justify staying the course (sunk cost paradox).
  • You point to a single anecdote instead of assessing a more comprehensive array of evidence (availability bias).
  • You sideline critics and surround yourself with people who agree with you (sycophancy bias).
  • You treat tough questions as personal attacks (thin-kin syndrome).

Here are strategies to keep hope alive without self-delusion.

  • Have two or three trusted advisors who 1) want what’s best for you, 2) are willing to tell you the truth, and 3) can build your capacity. These confidants will alert you to the traps above.
  • Identify and assess your assumptions about the product or idea. Ask, “What must be true for [x] to work?” Your answers are your assumptions. If the assumption proves untrue, it’s time to modify your approach.
  • Compare alternative strategies using a level playing field. AI can be a superb tool for reducing some of the biases above. AI has its own biases and limitations, but it will give you logical responses that will help you ask tough questions.
  • Gain perspective through history and the experiences of others. You’re not the first one to face challenging situations or tough decisions. Learning how others created proper firewalls between optimism and wishful thinking will help you develop a system that works for you.

Providing you with the tools to sustain prudent optimism is one of the outcomes you’ll get when you join me on a battlefield leadership experience like Antietam & Gettysburg. These and other historical venues are perfect for off-sites because you get everyone out of their comfort zones into the fresh air and gain tools that help you manage your business’s most vital elements.   

Send me an email or schedule a call if you’d like to discuss an off-site for your company.

Chris Kolenda: What Socrates, Roosevelt, and Navalny can teach leaders about courage

What Socrates, Roosevelt, and Navalny can teach leaders about courage

Alexei Navalny reportedly died in prison after an accident, a dictator’s typical euphemism for murder. 

What’s striking about Navalny is that the Russian government tried poisoning him on an international flight. He recovered in the UK and could have remained a dissident in exile. Instead, he returned to Moscow, knowing that he would be imprisoned and probably killed for his beliefs.

Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher who taught that the unexamined life was not worth living, was condemned to death for allegedly corrupting the youth and introducing false gods. Everyone in Athens knew it was a sham verdict, and leading citizens plotted to free Socrates from prison. Even the guards agreed to look the other way. Socrates refused to escape when the plot unfolded, saying he would die obeying Athens’ laws. He drank hemlock the next day. 

U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt described the “man in the arena” as someone who strived to achieve big goals, bounced forward from setbacks, and stayed true to their convictions despite the critics.  

Their examples show there is more to courage than doing your duty in the face of physical danger. Courage, Aristotle explained, is the virtue that allows all other virtues to exist. Developing your courage requires being in life’s arena, risking danger, and making choices that strike the balance between cowardice and recklessness.

Courage is also the foundation of leadership qualities. Developing your subordinate leaders’ courage will increase their credibility and your employees’ trust in you.

If you are like leaders in most jobs outside of the military and first responders, you rarely, if ever, face physical danger. Moral, intellectual, and emotional danger are more common and can be more challenging to face successfully,

Moral courage means doing the right thing in the face of pressure to violate your standards. Leaders may face pressures, for example, to fudge the numbers, tell the emperor their clothes look great, or elude responsibility for a shortcoming or mistake. 

Imagine the cost to your company when leaders cut corners or obscure the facts to protect their backsides.

You can help people boost moral courage by defining your standards (your values and expectations), identifying the 3As (what Acceptable, Awful, and Awesome look like for each), and providing employee examples of the standards in action. Use periodic “feed-forward” sessions to discuss these standards and how you can help your direct reports succeed.

Imagine the boost to your company when leaders do what’s right without you having to watch.

Intellectual courage means balancing conviction and open-mindedness despite pressures to waver in the face of adversity or drive eyes wide shut into disaster. Lego, for example, returned to profitability by re-focusing on its core products and seizing lucrative licensing deals, while Kodak rode its 35mm business into bankruptcy. Apple, on the other hand, overcame losses by innovating new products like the iPad and iPhone, while 23&Me lost billions in valuation trying to pivot from DNA testing to pharmaceuticals. 

Imagine the cost to your company when leaders fail to adapt to change or create hyperactivity.

You can boost intellectual courage by strengthening your employees’ psychological confidence and giving them the tools to manage risk. Psychological confidence combines the willingness to speak up, disagree agreeably, and confidence you’ll be taken seriously. People with psychological confidence report problems quickly, offer fresh ideas, and try new things. Risk, meanwhile, is a function of likelihood and seriousness. Give your employees the tools to address both factors and the expectation to tell you when even mitigated risk is too high. 

Imagine the benefit to your company when your employees innovate, nip problems in the bud, and let you know when the juice is not worth the squeeze.

Emotional courage is the willingness to place yourself in emotionally challenging situations for the common good despite the urge to avoid it or pass the danger to someone else. Leaders with emotional courage take on crucial conversations, manage conflict, provide regular feedback and feed-forward to improve performance. They serve as the heat shield – passing the credit and taking the hits – so their employees have the backing to try new things without fear of retribution.

Imagine the cost to your company when behavioral problems go unaddressed and become bad habits, no one knows how to improve their performance, and organizational conflict becomes endless.

You can boost emotional courage by giving people the tools to quickly and effectively address toxic or counterproductive behaviors without creating resentment. Correcting behavior early is far easier than trying to reverse a bad habit. Organizational conflict is about objectives or ways to get there. When your employees know how to address these factors, they’ll keep conflict healthy and confidently approach it.

Imagine the boost to your company when leaders help employees improve their future performance, keep behaviors in line with your standards, and manage conflict so people can move quickly into implementing solutions rather than talking in circles and litigating decisions.

I have simple, practical tools to help you build the kinds of moral, intellectual, and emotional courage displayed by the most respected and admired leaders. Email me or schedule a call to discuss ways to increase your bench strength of courageous leaders.

Chris Kolenda: Boosting your Self-Awareness

Boosting your self-awareness

He lacks self-awareness! She’s totally un-self-aware. Leaders need more self-awareness.

Have you heard descriptions like these at work? If you are like most people, you get the importance of self-awareness, but you have few tools to put it into practice. If you’d like to improve your self-awareness, you’ll want to read on.

What’s the big deal about self-awareness? According to Tasha Eurich, author of Insight, self-aware people tend to be happier, have better relationships, and be more effective leaders. Who doesn’t want that?

Self-awareness might seem like a new management buzzword, but the idea has been around since the ancient Greeks. Travelers to see the oracle at Delphi saw the words “Know Thyself and Seek Mortal Thoughts” as they made their way to the temple. 

Know Thyself means your purpose, motivations, values, natural talents, and blindspots; Seek Mortal Thoughts implores you to be humble and avoid what the ancients called hubris or overweening pride. Ancient Greek literature is full of cautionary tales of pride preceding faceplant.

How, exactly, can you know yourself? The earlier discussions of purpose, of course, are vital for self-awareness. You also need to know your natural talents and values. Here are two tools to help you. 

First, get to know your PROM Archetype®, which helps you identify your natural talents. PROM stands for Pioneers, Operators, Reconcilers, and Mavericks, which denotes how people contribute when in their zone of genius. I developed a quiz that you can use to determine your PROM Archetype®

Next, pinpoint the values that are most important to you. I based this quiz on the four cardinal virtues of ancient Greece and Rome: Wisdom, Courage, Justice, and Moderation. Based on your responses, you get a list of supporting values.

Internal self-awareness, as Eurch points out, is not enough. You also need external self-awareness. I like to break down the latter into knowing how others see you and what others need from you (I’m indebted to Lisa Larter for helping me with this formulation).

Knowing how others see you helps you learn if your actions and behaviors are consistent with your sense of yourself. Let’s say you view your purpose as a spouse or parent as a top priority and encourage others to do the same, but you spend late nights at the office, which prompts your employees to stay after hours, too. They are likely to see your family-time emphasis as empty and hypocritical. 

In this case, you can do what Secretary of Defense Robert Gates did: leave the office daily at 5:30 pm. Take some work home if you need to. When you leave the office at a reasonable time, so will your employees. 

Combining knowing yourself and how others see you creates authenticity. 

Knowing what others need from you helps you to use your talents to inspire others to be their best. You might be upset that your child’s team lost the game, for example, but what the kids need from you now is to model resilience and grace. When you do, your actions are aligned with your purpose of helping young athletes become good adults.

You have integrity when you know yourself and what others need from you. Knowing how others see you and what they need from you shows empathy.

Do you want to discuss your self-awareness or your PROM Archetype® results? Schedule a call with me or send me an email.  

Chris Kolenda: Daisy showed us what gratitude looks like

Daisy showed us what gratitude looks like

Do you have people and companions in your life that inspire gratitude? 

My wife, Nicole, and I are grateful for our dog, Daisy, who blessed our lives for six years before dying on February 1st last year from cancer. 

She showed us the meaning of gratitude in her love and affection (and the strange way she would shake her butt at us when she was ready for a walk!).

How do you show gratitude for the people (and companions) in your life and work who matter most? The 3 As can help.

Acknowledge: people want to be seen and heard. When someone’s talking to you, do you listen to understand, or are you multitasking (a.k.a. fake listening) or thinking about your response to an earlier point (listening to respond)? Acknowledge people by giving them your undivided attention.

Appreciate: Notice what people in your life do and how well they do it. Be specific when you compliment. Instead of saying, “You’re awesome” (empty praise), say, “I love how you gave that customer your full attention, understood their concerns, and used your resources to solve their problem and make them feel that they were the most important people in the world to you at that moment.”

Anticipate: Know their aspirations well enough that you can anticipate ways to help them grow personally and professionally and set them up for success as they face more significant challenges and levels of responsibility.

Daisy was found several years ago on the side of the road in Virginia and taken to a shelter and then a foster family. She found us on the internet. We think she was in an abusive household because she would often growl at men when we first got her.

The nearly six years we were together brought joy to our lives. Daisy loved chasing her ball, following Nicole obsessively, and treasuring her five daily walks. She was a dear friend and excellent companion, and we are grateful for our time together.

Rest in Peace, sweet girl. 

P.S. I help you combine your unique genius with simplicity and practical wisdom by turning your patterns and ideas into conscious processes you can teach, evaluate, and improve. Your genius creates an inspiring belief in the future. Simplicity creates a shared understanding, and practical wisdom generates coordinated action. 

Hit reply to this message or schedule a call to discuss ways process visuals can accelerate your growth and success.

Chris Kolenda: 3 Steps for Managing Fear

Overcoming Fear: Proven Strategies for Managing and Empowering Your Team

Do you have employees and clients that have fears? Fear is a powerful emotional response to danger that can motivate people to lash out, flee from a task, or paralyze their progress. 

Helping them will boost their confidence and productivity, strengthen your relationship, and set a solid foundation for growth. The best way to do that is to give them a conscious process for understanding their fear and action steps to move forward. 

You don’t want to miss this article if you want to help your employees move forward in the face of their fears.

Fear can be a tape that plays in the back of your mind, activating your amygdala’s fight, freeze, or flight instincts. You feel deep anxiety or trepidation, but you often cannot put your finger on the actual cause. The results can include anger, procrastination, stewing, withdrawing, and other impulses designed to reduce the fear. Such actions can harm your performance and relationships.

As my friend Dr. Mark Goulston (may he rest in peace) counseled and Dr. Susan David discusses in Emotional Agility, the first step is to label the fear. “I am feeling fear, because …” Identifying the emotion and cause lowers the intensity and makes the intangible tangible. Now, you can create some space between the emotion and your response.

F.E.H.R. can help you categorize the source of the fear – what is the danger you perceive? Some fears involve Failures: you try something new that does not work. Others concern Errors; you fear making mistakes. The prospect of Harm or physical danger can arouse fear. Relationships are another source of anxiety; you do not want to let someone down.  

Second, you can use this double-axis chart to help you understand why you fear Failure, Error, Harm, or Relationship damage, and, third, develop action steps to manage it. 

Fears can result from past experiences or anticipation of future events. You can fear Problems or Success.

In the upper left, you fear an inability to repeat past successes. You turned around a struggling enterprise, ran a successful fundraising campaign, or climbed a difficult mountain peak, for example, and you don’t think you can do it again. The prospect of making mistakes, failing to achieve past results, hurting yourself or others, and/or letting people down causes fear. 

To deal with this fear category, you can set a different success benchmark based on the conditions you face today, strengthen your support network, and take steps that reduce the risk of problems.

The lower left deals with the fear of repeating past problems. To address this area, you can identify the causes of those problems and take steps to reduce the probability of recurrence or their seriousness.

You can manage fear of future FEHR problems (lower right) with risk mitigation, insurance, boosting capacity, and pre-mortems that identify hidden challenges.

People can fear their inability to manage future success or harm to relationships that come from it. Strengthening your support system, anticipating future needs to meet success, and reducing the sappers and trappers in your life are some ways to deal with this area.

Giving people the tools to understand and address their fears is one of the best ways to help position your employees for success and roles of greater responsibility. 


I’d be delighted to discuss ways to position your employees to soar to new heights and make ever-better contributions. The call is free. There’s no sales or B.S. I’ll give you action steps that get results whether or not we decide to take the next step.

Chris Kolenda: Poor Leadership is an Aberration, Not a Norm. What you can do to make your subordinate leaders even better.

Poor Leadership is an Aberration, Not a Norm. What you can do to make your subordinate leaders even better.

Do you have to put up with bad behavior from your subordinate leaders as the price of getting results? 

It’s easier to rationalize poor leadership practices if you believe these are the norm. The good news is that most of the leaders in your organization seem to be doing a good job, which means you should lower your tolerance level for toxic behavior.

Bad leadership behaviors scream so loudly that it’s hard to hear reports about the good ones. 

Just recently, we’ve seen the shocking hypocrisy of Ivy League Presidents who could not bring themselves to condemn Hamas’ atrocities, even as they enforce ideological speech codes and use DEI administrators as thought police. Government officials have engaged in outright lies and manipulation during COVID, along with some high-profile do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do mandate flaunting. The rules are for the little people.

It’s no wonder that trust in officials is at an all-time low since Pew Research began its trust in government survey in 1958. Back then, over 70 percent of Americans trusted the government. Only 25% of Democrats and 8% of Republicans today say they do. Trust in the military is at a historical low.

The news gets better as you come closer to home.

A recent Pew Research survey suggests that most American employees highly regard their supervisors, with 55% reporting their boss as Very Good or Excellent and 26% selecting Good. 

Fifty-eight percent or more of respondents said that their bosses were confident, capable, fair, and caring. Only twelve or thirteen percent characterized their supervisors as arrogant, dismissive, unpredictable, or aggressive.

This chart helps you determine what your subordinate leaders need.

In short, a small percentage of leaders engage in toxic behaviors and drag your business down. Most are leading well. Here’s how to handle each type.

  1. Proper-Fits. (culture and skill fit) Invest in these leaders with more coaching and development opportunities. Those skills are infinitely upgradable, making your business thrive even more. When you invest in them, you signal that you appreciate and reward excellence.
  2. Culture Fit, Skill Misfit. Train them on the specific job skills they lack and upgrade their leadership qualities. They care for your employees, so boosting their capacity will increase their confidence and respect.
  3. Skill Fit, Culture Misfit. These are your talented people engaging in toxic behavior and dragging your company down. You have to take clear action to improve their behavior, or people will believe you condone it. If the Culture Misfits don’t improve, you need to fire them or they will demoralize your proper-fits, who will vote with their feet. 
  4. Misfits. Easy call. Fire them. They’ll fit somewhere else.

If you are ready to help the excellent leaders in your company upgrade their skills, let’s discuss my two trademarked programs, Becoming a WHY Leader® and Building an Inspiring Culture®, or an off-site experience at a spectacular national park or historical venue. 

Send me an email to schedule a call, or click here.

Chris Kolenda: It’s what you’re hearing, Listen. You don’t have to suck at listening.

It’s what you’re hearing, Listen. You don’t have to suck at listening.

Do you find yourself repeating yourself or asking others to repeat themselves? Is miscommunication a challenge at your company? This could be a result of common listening errors.

“It’s not what you heard; it’s what you’re hearing, listen.” The immortal words of deceased rap star DMX tell us, “It’s what you’re hearing, listen.”

The trouble with hearing is that it can be hard to listen. According to a 2022 Harris poll, the average company loses eight hours of productivity per week per employee due to miscommunication. That’s one day per week and 400 hours per year down the drain. At a $50 per hour wage, that’s an annual $20,000 loss. In a company with 100 employees at that average wage, you are out $2 million. As DMX might say, “Errrrrr.”

If listening skills could improve at your workplace, you definitely want to read on.

Two common listening errors are distracted listening and listening to respond. 

Distracted listening occurs when you try multitasking when someone is speaking to you. Your mind pulls in two directions. You try tapping out a coherent sentence on the keyboard or phone while Jane is telling you about a problem in marketing. You’re probably looking at your screen instead of Jane. You’re hearing, but you are not listening.

Two things happen. First, your performance at each task is terrible. Your sentence is awful, and you get a fraction of Jane’s message. You waste time rewriting the sentence and asking Jane to repeat herself or acting on an erroneous understanding. Some studies suggest that your performance while multitasking is the equivalent of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. 

Second, Jane thinks you don’t care. You may have your back to her or your eyes glued to the screen, making comments like, “I’m listening … oh, that’s awful … I’ll get on it … thanks for telling me.” Jane knows you only caught part of her message, and your lack of eye contact and reflective listening is insulting. 

How do you feel when you try to talk to someone in distracted listening mode? Jane feels the same way you do.

Listening to respond is a more subtle problem I suffered for years until I learned how it affected my ability to communicate.  

Listening to respond means hearing something that triggers you, and your mind drifts into crafting your response instead of listening to the entire conversation. You might be making eye contact, but your mind is focused on what you will say instead of what the other person says.

In meetings, I would play with various arguments in my head about how to counter or support a person’s point and miss the rest of their message. When I gave my response, it was often out of step with the flow of the discussion. They moved forward; I was stuck in the past because I wanted to deliver the perfect response to something someone said ten minutes ago. I was hearing but not listening.

Listening to understand is the way to go, saving you time and boosting your credibility. When you listen to understand, you give the person speaking your undivided attention, and you ask follow-up questions to make sure what they meant and what you understood are in sync.

Most people err on the side of brevity, so you’re only getting part of the message anyway, and you need them to amplify their main points. Some great open-ended questions include:

  • Tell me more about X.
  • When Y happened, how did you feel about that?
  • Describe in more detail what you observed.
  • Help me to understand your point of view on Z.
  • Talk me through your thought process on this.

As they answer your questions, you want to make sure you understand their message (and to be sure they know you understand it), so put their point in your own words, beginning with statements or questions like Help me to know if I understand you correctlyMay I summarize what I think are your key points on this matter before we move on? [The latter question works particularly well when someone is overexplaining or moving to a new point.]

When they say, “Yes, that’s exactly right,” you have mutual understanding and can co-create a way forward. [Check out my video on using RAVEN to encourage the psychological confidence of people to disagree agreeably.]

How well is listening to understand working for you? Send me an email and let me know!

Chris Kolenda: What we're getting wrong about “Command and Control” and why you need it to succeed.

What we’re getting wrong about “Command and Control” and why you need it to succeed.

Have you heard leadership and management gurus rubbishing military-style command and control leadership practices?

The military has a field order paragraph called Command and Control. The gurus presume command and control means someone barking orders (command) and micromanaging compliance (control).

If you’ve ever been in a good military unit, you probably scratch your head at what they mean by the term versus what you’ve seen with your own eyes.

Only the worst leaders in the U.S. military try to lead that way.

The only ones who’ve been successful using that approach fought even bigger idiots who barked orders while no one listened to them (or, even worse, did listen to them).

When you look at what the terms actually mean, you’ll notice that command and control is precisely what good leaders have done across time and cultures. 

Command means to be clear about responsibility and accountability: the authority to make decisions, set priorities, and enforce standards, while exemplifying the behaviors expected of everyone in the organization. 

You make decisions. You have the authority to do so unilaterally, but only the most benighted and ineffective make it a habit. Sure, there are times in combat when you need to do so. As a matter of normal practice, wise commanders take the time to co-create so they gain buy-in among the ranks. Doing so creates trust. Good leaders draw from that well of trust only when absolutely necessary. 

Command creates clear accountability. You are answerable to your boss (or board), your employees, and your peers and partners for your mission and desired outcomes.

You must exemplify the values they expect of every team member. In the U.S. Civil War, for example, commanders rode on horseback so they could see and be seen. The message was simple: I’m the most vulnerable person on this team; everyone is shooting at me. If I can do my job, so can everyone else.

The highest casualty rates in the Civil War were colonels and brigadier generals. Their examples of courage inspired their unit’s performance.

The good news for business leaders: no one is shooting at you. 

Control identifies the scope of the person’s responsibility, which includes communication and cooperation. 

Effective delegation includes identifying the mission and desired outcomes along with the boundaries of your direct report’s decision-making authority. The boundaries may include territory, resources, legal and regulatory restrictions and the like. You have your direct reports let you know when they get close to the boundary to coordinate and preserve your decision-making space.  

Control delineates your expectations about cooperation between your direct reports. You cannot afford the silo-effect where people operate in fiefdoms and don’t cooperate for the common good. You know you have a silo challenge when everyone reports progress but the overall situation is going downhill. 

Creating objectives that rely on the cooperation of your direct reports yields a whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts effect.

Are you ready to use command and control properly?

  1. Set clear objectives by identifying the task you want someone to do and the outcomes you want them to achieve. X so that Y is your winning formula.
  2. Use co-creation to gain buy-in for decisions and changes – it makes accountability much easier.
  3. Model the behaviors you want from your employees. You lose trust with a do as I say, not as I do approach.
  4. Set up your direct reports for success when you delegate by giving them the X so that Y, co-creating boundaries, and asking “what does ideal support from me look like?”
  5. Identify lead and supporting actors for each company objective, so your direct reports are clear on their roles and cooperation responsibilities.

Practice command and control like this, and you’ll find your company improves trust, communication, cooperation, and performance.

Are you interested in a company offsite that will make a positive impact for many years? Battlefields, historical venues, and national parks are terrific venues for adventure experiences that build trust and capacity. 

Send me an email or schedule a call to discuss if a leadership off-site like this is right for you.