Contrasting Leaders

It isn't a great academic leap to state that not all leaders are created equally. Many of us can point to leaders that either inspired us or made us dread going into work. For the most part most of the managers with whom I've worked fell between these two extremes. I've been fortunate in that I've not experience too many toxic leaders. Even completing this exercise I struggled to think of a leader that was the polar opposite of what I considered to be a great leader.

In the end I settled on a former Chief Controller from my time in the Air Force. In all fairness this leader was stuck with a senior leadership structure that appeared to be dysfunctional in its pettiness but that doesn't excuse this leaders responsibility to filter that for his followers. Filtering some of that pettiness is one way  a leader gains trust. This Chief failed in that regard and his interpersonal relationships were based on favoritism. It didn't help that this particular posting was frustrating for me in a great many ways and he didn't seem interested in forming the type of relationship where I could speak with him regarding these things.

What is particularly toxic regarding the above situation is that this leader wasn't overtly a bad person. He wasn't prone to fits of anger, he didn't demean people, nor did he micromanage or abuse authority. In some ways the almost gentle negativity and behind the scenes favoritism was worse. At least with an in-your-face horrible manager you know where you stand and you can plan accordingly. That doesn't make them good leaders but it does make them easy to read. Instead the constant sense of unease and uncertainty meant that it was a slow death of morale. I left work drained nearly every day and dreaded the thought of another moment in that place.

Contrasting that manager was my first manager in post-military life. She was the manager for the South Dakota Department of Labor and while to this day I am not sure what I said in the interview that impressed her I am glad I did. Postings in government jobs are political even when they aren't supposed to be. There is a constant worry over appearances and what the tax payers will think and this can lead to directives that can be frustrating at times. Additionally, funding is always a constant worry. Yet despite this this manager took time to get to know the people that worked for her. She was a good judge of character and seemed to know when you were "off" or struggling.

While she could be directive (which is sometimes needed) if there was an opportunity to modify a process or figure how best to implement whatever brilliant scheme the Governor's office had cooked up she would ask the people it would affect how best to get it done. She also did an excellent job of keeping the staff informed of what changes were coming or what current issue was on the radar of someone at the capitol.

That being said, what really set her apart was the genuine concern for the people in her office. I always got the impression that she would fight tooth and nail for us and was far more interested in developing people rather than keeping them in line. It made a huge difference in the way I felt getting up and going to work in the morning.

In some ways comparing military leadership and civilian leadership isn't totally accurate. Military leaders have a captive audience and more absolute authority. Civilian leaders may like to think they have those things and for some jobs (entry-level or areas where employment is scarce) that may be true but at certain level people have options. Civilian leaders therefore have a vested interest in developing loyal workers. However none of that excuses military leaders from their negative traits. I left after my enlistment was up largely because of the leadership failings I saw. I only left the job at the State as I needed more career development and advancement potential. Additionally the State of South Dakota isn't big on wages. While wages are not the primary reason people leave jobs they can play a part. Those variables were out of the State Manager's control though if they were I may have stuck around.

I am not sure that she would have considered herself "resonant" even if she did or did now know the term as it applies to leadership. Part of me thinks that applying labels to one's self as a leader defeats the point of resonant leadership. If one is only being relationship minded in order to make one's self feel like they are resonant than they are doing it for the wrong reasons. What made her unique was that it was a natural part of her personality. She didn't be a good leader to earn the title of "good leader" she just was. That doesn't take away from the importance of learning about leadership skills and taking a good look within but I posit that if a leader is trying to be resonant simply to earn the title they will fail. A leader must first seek to improve themselves simply because they want to be a better person. The rest tends to fall in line.

                                                                              

Positive Leader	Not so Positive Leader
Delegated	Favoritism
Trusted her people	Petty
Solicited opinions	Interested in appearance
Interested in personal struggles	Didn’t want to learn about people

Emotional Decision Making

It seems rather intuitive that emotions can affect decision making but confidence has a specific affect on how others see your decisions. In a prior career, air traffic control, we were taught to project confidence in our voices. A great deal of air traffic control is making decisions, often quickly, in rather congested air space. At busy times, such as when the base's fighters were recovering, a controller makes choices on determining how aircraft will be sequenced, what parts of the airspace to use, and even deciding between different types of approaches a pilot can be cleared for in order to expedite traffic. Not every request a pilot makes is granted. Confidence in these choices is gained through a rigorous training  process.


I recall working a wing recovery in poor weather when a KC-135 took a lightening strike. Lightening strikes on aircraft aren't typically fatal but they can damage aircraft. The pilot declared an emergency and requested clearance to land. Aircraft declare emergencies for many reasons and they are common enough in military aviation that controllers see enough of them not to panic. That being said, they can cause a great deal of disruption to an otherwise orderly pattern. Also the pilots are looking for the best vectors they can get in order to get to an airfield without delay. Not every emergency is the same but the procedure for handling them in air traffic control is the same and that is to expedite the aircraft's safe return and to make every effort to not delay the aircraft. There are other things we need to do but they aren't germane to the choice I had to make. In this case I had to vector the aircraft away from the airfield for a few miles as a second aircraft had failed to make radio contact with the tower. The second aircraft could not have picked a worse time to fiddle with his radio and he was taking his time getting down final. In order to ensure the KC-135 was safe I had to build a few extra miles of separation between the second aircraft and the emergency aircraft. Vectoring away from final during an emergency is something that is not ordinarily a good idea but when I issued the vector I explained, in my best controller voice, why and the pilot accepted this information and took the turn. It was the best way to ensure every aircraft was safe, the slow-poke on final who forgot radio was a thing, and the emergency aircraft. The delay was only a few miles but that can make a great deal of difference to an aircraft  in distress. I was confident it was the safest move and the pilot accepted the vector without question.


I could have let my anxiety creep into my voice and that could have raised concerns in the pilot's mind that I wasn't keeping things safe, especially with a rather unorthodox procedure. To be sure I had a great deal of anxiety over the situation but in the end I trusted that what I was doing was correct. The pilot on final suddenly remembered he had a radio by the final approach fix  (in fairness he likely keyed up an incorrect frequency by accident but at the time I wasn't feeling charitable) and I had built the extra few miles of separation I needed. Both aircraft landed safely. Anger at the aircraft that wasn't in radio contact also enters your mind but there isn't much you can do about it except try to contact the aircraft on emergency channels. While that may have been an option it takes time and there is no guarantee the pilot will answer their either, although they are supposed to. All the while the KC-135 would have been getting closer. I am still not 100 sure that I couldn't have used "guard" as we called the distress frequencies but I had to trust myself. Had the pilot had a more severe emergency such as cabin decompression or an onboard fire I may have used the emergency frequencies. So, a certain amount of subjective reasoning on my part was undertaken, and while that isn't an emotion it plays a part in assigning value to a decision.


Lately I have been working with  a few cases that are increasingly difficult. These are particularly trying emotionally as one can get very frustrated and begin to let negative emotions affect decision making. I will never say that I am perfect but I do try very hard to remind myself that I cannot let those emotions change how I approach things. But it has happened.


Without dabbling into politics it should come as no surprise to anyone that reads my work that I tend to lean left. I say that so that I can say I also freely admit that people do game the system. It doesn't happen as often as portrayed on some media sources but it does occur. Thankfully sooner or later it catches up with people.


I had a patient that I was working with who was like this and I became so frustrated that I started finding myself giving this patient incomplete advice. This patient was one that Dr. Shiv was referring to in this video; he took up all my time.  I wouldn't not see the patient or attempt to do my job but it is fair to say that this person wasn't getting my best work. Knowing that I did that, affected my confidence with other patients. A bit of shame creeps in and my own personal demons of extra self-doubt started their chorus. In times like this it is good to take a small break and come back refreshed and this is what I did. But during that time where I was experiencing what is called "compassion fatigue" the other patients noticed that I wasn't at my best. Or in the words of one patient, "what's wrong with you?" This wasn't a moment of personal epiphany but I did take stock of how my emotions were affecting how I was doing my job and consequently the decisions I was making; patients were getting less than they needed to make their own decisions. Guilt, shame, and some self-directed anger were all going through my head. Thankfully a day off and some rest allowed me to get out of the funk. Many of my co-workers have similar experiences and it's nice knowing that others "get it."

In many ways I find what I do now more intellectually draining than air traffic control. ATC could leave you exhausted and stressed out but it was also something that is dynamic and quite simply...fun. Working with people takes something out of you every day. This is important for leaders to understand. People will push your emotional buttons and knowing how to manage and work with those emotions is a critical skill.

Transformers...No Not That Kind

Being prior military listening to Stanley McChrystal's give a Ted Talk was an interesting experience. When you are in the military your perspective is limited; typically just the job in front of you. As you gain a bit of rank that perspective changes and broadens a bit. However, very few ever make it to the rank of General. Though looking back on my time in the service part of why I left was a loss of faith in leadership and a focus on image rather than substance. It's anecdotal but certain career fields such as McChrystal's have a much more focused mission and as such less time is spent devising ways to politic among themselves.

McChrystal's understanding that he is leading a group of people with vastly different life experiences was refreshing to hear and it's part of what makes transformational leadership so effective. Transformational leadership understands that an individual brings more to the group than just their skills and talents. They also bring synrgey and what happens to that person also affects the group as a whole. A focus on developing the subordinate's overall ability to be a better person is much more important than just developing skills.

Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale also makes some valid points regarding leadership and changing how he employees viewed their roles. Jim invested a great deal of time and money into improving his workers skillset. What I found most interesting was teaching employees how to use iPads and electronic devices. This is a skill that goes beyond work into making a worker a more flexible citizen, able to adapt to a changing economy, and is certainly a function of transformational leadership.

When a company moves to a transformational leadership model a culture change typically takes place. Mattress Mack's team building was a great example of how company understood the need for change and then began to manage the change itself. It appears from his answers that the workforce was resistant to changes at first and I wonder how it was finally sold to them though if I had to guess once the state of company was made clear there buy-in began to increase. This would place the company near the line of quadrants three and four on a Strategy-Culture Matrix. They knew they needed to make a change quickly but still had the time to properly implement a transformational process throughout the company. 

McChrystal's leadership was more a change within himself and Mattress Mack changed external processes, though likely by learning new things. Both are important for transformational leadership. This form of leadership isn't particularly new and it's taught in many leadership courses but the component that I feel is left out is the transformation is a two-way activity. Leaders need to also be aware of how they themselves may need to change and grow in order to proper grow those they lead.  

Contexts and Decisions

The past few weeks have been spent on decision making and when you stop and think about it, decision making is something that can easily be taken for granted. I would argue that for most people decisions are constantly occurring. From the manager deciding on bonus or strategic planning, to the homemaker deciding on dinner, or the professor deciding just how close the rubric a student's assignment really is. For some of these the decisions may not be overly complex or at least on the surface. Even a homemaker will need to weigh several variables from budget to individual tastes when deciding dinner. Yet those cause and effects are linear. Add in the potential mood of whomever is returning home and things become slightly more complex and a homemaker may have to do some guesswork or asking of questions to get to a result.


Recently I had a good decision to make. In April of 2016 I was offered jobs concurrently on two different sides of the country. One in California and one in New York. There were some known variables such as the position descriptions, climate of the area,  and pay scales but there were quite a few unknowns as well. I had to research housing costs in each area as both areas are expensive enough to be of concern. I also had to use some intuition to determine which supervisor I would best get along with. I know that I am fairly irreverent at times and that doesn't sit well with everyone. To go along with this, I also had to pack, move, budget, apply for school again, arrange storage, and so on and so forth. In some ways that was a bit of chaos.  Anyone who has ever moved for a job can understand just how much of a pain it is. However, the actual choosing of the jobs was decided in two contexts. The simple was New York was slightly cheaper on housing and my pay would go just a tad further. However, the more complex context was determined by chatting with the two supervisors on opposite ends of the country. I informed them both of my conundrum and chatted with them about the "average day" of the office. In the end I made my choice. What's funny about making decisions in the void is that I find myself constantly wondering if I made the correct choice. I will never really know what the other office was like and that bothers me to a certain extent.


Most of my day to day decision making in the professional sense tends to stay in the complex or complicated quadrants of the Cynefin Framework. I struggle to actually think of specifics as lately I've had more than one at a time to worry about. In that sense I do have to decide what cases will get my priority. In the simple context I can look at the severity of their cases and decide from there, however it sometimes turns out that the less severe case will need the most attention. Levels of severity in terms of addiction can mean how ready the person is to make a change. So while it may be easy to divert resources to a severe case that may mean wasting those resources that could have been used for someone that is further along in treatment. This gets into a great many unknowns but I wouldn't qualify it as being in the chaos quadrant but rather in the complicated quadrant. We have to use some intuition and "sense" to make a choice on where we focus efforts; though sometimes we reverse courses midstream.


Therein lies part of the problem as well as serve the underlying point of complexity theory in leadership. It both works and it doesn't. Just as the quantum particles that complexity theory is derived from are both there and they aren't. Many decisions do occur in a fog or are based on intuition and a certain level of subjective-ness. The interconnecting relationships that form between people add to these layers of psychological push and pull. A leader may not have time to sit down and analyze what quadrant something is in before making a choice. Many choices are time-sensitive. The Cynefin Framework is best described a tool to change thinking. It forces the learner to understand that forces both seen and un-seen are at play with decisions and that simple cause and effect relationships are actually quite rare. When you dig into most decisions, like our homemaker up there, you can add many layers of  complexity. The trap is that a leader can drive his or herself crazy by trying to answer layer upon layer. At some point a choice has to be made, what is hoped is that the Framework has trained the decision maker to think around SOME of those corners and take into account that other relationships (un-intended) may be affected.

Cynefin Framework and Decision Making

The Cynefin Framework is a tool designed to help a person start to sort complexity theory into an overall decision making process and it looks like this though sometimes the labels are slightly different for each quadrant (Unknown for Complicated and Known for Best Practice):

At first glance this isn't overly helpful but once you start to sort incoming information or lack of information into one of these sectors you can start to see the relationship between the quadrants. Each quadrant can also help in decision making.


Complex: Here is where many things cannot be immediately determined. Negotiations related to a sales pitch or a contract may start here. A car buyer may not know all the faults of a model or in business an agent may not understand the motives of those with whom the agent is negotiating. Meeting new friends can even start here. Understanding that many variables are dark means that a person can begin to lessen anxiety over said variables and try to move them into the best practice or "Simple" quadrant. Complex is the normal starting point for most any relationship or decision. Here one needs to seek information and begin to understand relationships.


Complicated: Here the causes and effects are separated over time. Things here may not always be straightforward but they can understood with investigation. Part of this quadrant is related to Complex as when things in Complex are being sorted out they can be moved into Complicated (or even other quadrants as we will see). Here people can respond based on knowledge and factual information. Of course all actions based on information are only as good as the information itself so this area is still not the best for decision making. I see this area a great deal with established patients. While they may not be telling us everything we generally know enough to make reasoned responses. I would think long term business relationships can exist here, especially between competitors. Coca-Cola and Pepsi may be fierce in regards to competition but they also understand one another.


Simple: This is where all variables are known and cause and effect is obvious to all involved. Interpersonal relationships may not always be in this quadrant as people are not always logical creatures though I think they can rent space in it for some time. This isn't a bad thing but more a reflection on the complexity of the human nature. However, some things are much more simple. When dealing with accurate information a manager can see a clear cause and effect with some actions. Engineers can "do the math" and see how something can play out when building a structure. Knowing to pay debts and when payments are due to your company are all examples of simple areas where decision making can be straightforward. Pilots understand the physics that keep them aloft and know that control inputs will result in a planned change in the aircraft.  However, keep in mind that the saying "there are exceptions to every rule" means that even simple things may not stay that way for long. Simple is great so long as everything is working and the concepts involved aren't vague themselves.


Chaotic: It can be easy to confuse chaotic with complex but with chaos the agent tends to act first and then see how things play out rather than seek information first. With me this area occurs with crisis situations when patients either go missing or act out in dangerous ways. Some police and military interventions may be chaotic and with drastic and unfortunate consequences. Thankfully, in the business world this quadrant may emerge in times of stumbling stock prices or a breach of safety has occurred. I've seen meetings where people let their emotions take over and things head into this quadrant for a short period. However from chaos emerges order. Complexity theory in leadership is dependent on that order emerging. Less dramatic areas where chaos is useful would be in brainstorming sessions or research and development.


What is apparent when studying this framework is that things can move between quadrants or hover over the line of quadrants. While it might be great to have everything in the Simple category there is a danger in removing all ambiguity. Removing all ambiguity can remove possible options. Allowing ideas to move into complexity or even chaotic can generate possible outcomes that may not have been there if a desire to move in the Simple quadrant was so strong it drowned out information. All in all the framework is a handy tool to remind managers and leaders that these states exist and have relationships with one another.