Military Review English Edition July-August 2014 | Page 28
Invest in a professional relationship with your subordinates and reach out to their families. Understand
their goals and devote time to mentoring them. You
know you have done right by your subordinates when
they seek you out as a mentor, and when they achieve
professional success years down the road.
Never put your leaders in a bad situation. A strategic leader will deal with highly complex problems and
likely will need to solve them quickly. It can be too easy
to put undue pressure on subordinates, even unintentionally, when facing tough challenges. Subordinates
want the team to be successful, and they want to support their leader. This represents power that any leader
must employ carefully and thoughtfully.
Therefore, you must avoid putting undue pressure
on your subordinates, while still providing your boss
the same timely, accurate advice and support you
expect your subordinates to give you. Moreover, when
your boss makes a decision, you must execute it as is if
it was your own.
You probably provide one of many information feeds
your boss must consider, but the boss’s decisions may be
predicated on other information or guidance unknown
to you. Therefore, unless something is obviously missing or just does not make sense, you should proceed as
directed. If you need to, huddle with your boss to gain
understanding of the situation and his reasoning.
Think completely outside your lane. Good strategic leaders know as much as possible about their roles
and responsibilities, as well as those of other people
that affect their organizations and missions. They have
a thorough understanding of outside influences on
their areas of responsibility. There is no artificial separation between the organizations of strategic leaders.
Take the broadest possible view of everything that
affects your lane and get smart about those things.
Professional curiosity leads to greater understanding.
The broader your informed perspective, the better service you provide others as a strategic leader.
Challenge convention. Ask questions that challenge what passes as conventional wisdom in your
organization. Challenge people to explain the status
quo—why things are the way they are—especially
when your instinct tells you your organization can
do better. Trust your instinct, build confidence in
your academic and analytical rigor to address problems, and produce thoroughly investigated decisions.
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Develop a team of deep, critical thinkers who can
wrestle a problem to the ground, work through the
analytics, determine where your thinking is wrong or
right, and build an accurate set of options for your
consideration.
Tell your boss when he is wrong. Sometimes the
boss is wrong. There are different ways to bring it up,
depending on the situation, but the best approach is always to use tact and candor. Communicating with your
boss can be hard; telling him he is wrong is even harder.
The best way to start usually is with private, faceto-face discussions, especially for contentious issues.
You can bring up how you disagree with your boss in
a meeting if asked. Conveying disagreement through
staffs can be effective, as long as it is done respectfully.
Creating a forum for diverse perspectives sometimes
works. So does a written message or memorandum,
but never surprise your boss with something in writing. Try to settle the issue orally first. Use writing to
follow up. Pay attention to how your boss best receives
certain kinds of information, and use good judgment.
Build personal relationships. Personal relationships—friendships—can foster effective working
relationships with counterparts in other organizations.
Building friendly networks inside and outside your organization can greatly enhance your strategic leadership.
Use your seniority to collaborate with other senior
leaders outside your organization and agency to achieve
common objectives. This is particularly important with
interagency teaming. Friendly relationships with your
counterparts in the Department of State, United States
Agency for International Development, and other governmental agencies can be very valuable when making
strategic-level decisions across the joint, interagency,
international, and multinational community.
Conclusion
As a strategic leader, giving intent-based orders in
a positive command climate where everyone understands their left and right limits is essential. Never
lose perspective about what you are doing strategically
and how it will play out tactically. This is a key to balancing intellectual energy with practical application.
Know the facts before you make decisions; you can
never be too well informed when dealing with tough
problems. Operate through your network and within
your spheres of influence to make various strategic
July-August 2014 MILITARY REVIEW