PREFACE:
In the movie City Slickers Curly (Jack Palance) tells Mitch (Billy Crystal) that it all boils down to “One Thing.” You find that one thing and everything makes sense. Curly says that this one thing is something you have to figure out. To be an effective leader requires great confidence yet what bestows confidence for one person may not be what generates confidence in the next. We are all like Mitch, searching for that one thing that will give us the confidence in our ability to manage people, resources, and situations in a successful manner.
The example of leadership I provide in the article below is a real example. It is someone I personally know. I also know that the mentor that helped him become an effective leader was not his Battalion Commander in Afghanistan. Yet the lessons learned stood him well. He was able to call on them repeatedly during a very long and difficult deployment. The ability to persist when other would have quit allowed him to achieve that which others dared not try. His one thing was a sense of “never quit, never give up.”
The persistence factor may not be what gets another leader to success. For someone else it might be the clarity with which he or she sees tactics and strategies. For another it might be the ability to solve complex problems. And for others it could be the ability to read people so well that their actions can be anticipated in any situation. Whatever that key skill is, it is critical that a leader discover it for themselves.
Now this article is focusing on that one thing but it should not be construed that we are suggesting that a leader should ignore the dozens of other skills required for success. It is important to become competent in as many skills as is humanly possible and then to find key people who can take over in the areas where the leader will never achieve competence. But, it is essential that we all discover our one most powerful quality. That is what will carry us on into the arena. It is the one key skill we will be able to rely on when all else fails. Other skills will help the leader maintain balance but when the going gets tough every leader needs their ace-in-the-hole to rely on. If you are going to rely on that key strength to achieve managerial effectiveness, it had better be the right one for you!
THE ARTICLE
Finding that ONE THING that makes the Leadership Role Your Role:
All leaders want to affect change within their organizations. Some leaders seem to be more successful at this than others. What separates the effective leaders from the ineffective? This is a question that has resulted in years of research and countless publications. Gurus conduct workshops and seminars. Businesses pay big bucks to bring people like Colin Powell, Lou Holtz, Rudi Giuliani, Steve Forbes, and others in to inspire the team to be more effective. But a few weeks after the seminar, little has changed.
Everyone wants to find that one thing, that silver bullet, that magic formula that will transform a so-so individual into a dynamic and successful leader. We’ve discovered that silver bullet, that one thing. It’s not something that you add onto a person. It’s something you build from within a leader. That one thing? Managerial confidence. Unfortunately, that one thing is not the same thing in every person. What builds managerial confidence in one person might be having all of the data and information in front of the team before a decision to take action is made. For another person the managerial confidence might emanate from years of experience in similar situations. For a third person that confidence might come from having a diverse team that has diverse experiences to draw upon as the tasks are tackled.
Let’s take a look at one example of a person who became a great leader by developing extraordinary managerial confidence. This individual, we’ll call him Paul, was a somewhat ordinary young man. He wasn’t a great scholar, a great athlete, an inspiring orator, or a masterful strategist. But he was persistent and he had an insatiable desire to read.
This young man graduated from high school and went on to college and joined the ROTC battalion at his University. He took to the study of the military like it was what he was meant to do. Upon graduation and commissioning he became an infantry officer and then specialized from there. Without a great background in anything notable he was assigned to a company that had a commander that took a real liking to Paul. He groomed him for success. Paul’s confidence grew and the troops he commanded began to notice his extraordinary ability to get them to do what it took to succeed.
Paul was deployed to Afghanistan. His company was constantly in harm’s way. But his troops looked to him to help them get through the most challenging experience of their lives. Not every soldier returned unscathed. In fact a few were killed in action. But the vast majority of them did come home, safe and reasonably sound and with a huge sense of gratitude to the Captain that guided them through the morass that is Afghanistan. Paul has been promoted since that deployment and continues to lead men and women in an effort to make sure they all do their jobs in a professional manner and as safely and securely as is humanly possible. That cannot be done without an immensely respectful level of confidence.
SUMMATION:
Leading people is a tough job. Many people aspire to the position but few succeed. Failure as a leader has more to do with focus than it does skill. Too often leaders try to be more than they are and fail to take advantage of the skills that followers bring to the table. By learning about yourself and coming to an understanding of your greatest strengths as well as your greatest weaknesses and blind spots, you can set yourself up for success.
We all need that fail-safe skill; the one you can draw on when all else fails. Finding that one thing that gives you managerial confidence frees your mind so you can focus on the task at hand. It’s that play that a coach can rely on to work when the other plays seem to get bogged down. As a leader, knowing where your strength lies does not mean it is the only tactic you use. In fact some leaders go to the well too often and become a one trick pony. Using other skills as much as possible allows you to draw strength from your core power. That one thing gives meaning and purpose to all the other skills and tactics and can feed them in a way that is not possible if you never discover that one, most powerful skill of all.
Paul in my example in from the article above discovered an incredible capacity to persist when others might quit. This allowed him to know that when the going gets tough he could persevere when others might quit. It also fed his other skills because he knew he had that ace-in-the-hole to fall back on. If careful planning, attention to detail, coordinated tactics, and tight motivation of the troops didn’t produce the outcomes he needed, he knew he could stick with it as long as it would take to get the job done.
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