January 11, 2017
What
is great leadership? Everyone has some
idea or an opinion on what sort of traits that comprise
great
leadership. I have had the opportunity
in my long military career (33 years and counting) to work for two people that
were polar opposites. In this blog, I
will first describe the great leader that I served under, and then contrast him
with the poor leader that I served under.
Interestingly, they also fell on a timeline where I had the great leader
first (2005-2007), and the poor leader second (2014-2015). I have used only their initials to protect
their privacy as well as my own.
In
2005, I was at a low point in my career.
I had been transferred to a brand-new unit within the 10th
Mountain Division. I was to be the
aviation tactical operations officer (TACOPS) for a Brigade Combat Team
(BCT). I knew very little about an
infantry unit because most of my career had been spent in the aviation branch
of the Army. The one thing I did know
was that I was not going to be flying, and was going to be a brand new TACOPS
officer. I had been an aviation safety
officer (ASO) with nearly 2,000 flight hours.
Over 1,000 of those flight hours had been in the AH-1S/F Cobras, an Army
gunship helicopter. I accepted my fate
and resignedly accepted my new assignment with the 3rd BCT of 10th
Mountain in February 2005. My section
was called the Brigade Aviation Element (BAE) that was part of the S3
Operations Section. I was immediately part
of the Brigade Staff. That was when I
was introduced to the Brigade Commander, J.N.
An Army Brigade Commander is a full colonel (O-6).
During
the first brigade staff meeting, we were told that we would be deploying to
Afghanistan in about a year. Our task
was to relieve the 82nd Airborne Division and continue combat
operations against the Taliban in North East Afghanistan. Our battle space was known as Regional Combat
East or simply RC East. J.N. was
impressive. He was tall, confident, educated,
well-spoken, and exuded a personal warmth not usually found in Army brigade
commanders. During that first meeting,
he laid out everyone’s assignments and started questioning us all on our
backgrounds. When it came to my turn, I
briefly introduced myself and described my aviation background and
experience. J.N. simply smiled and said,
“Oh. You are my aviator!” I answered in the affirmative and he
questioned me a bit more about my knowledge and how I felt to be part of a
BCT. I told him that I was just excited
to be there and looked forward to the challenges that he had laid out. That was my first inkling that J.N. had this “it”. It was some sort of leadership trait that
made people want to follow this man and be part of his team. A week earlier, I had been despondent and now
I was fired up about the new job! It
wasn’t all fun and games. J.N. worked us
harder than I had ever worked before in my military career. Many weekends were totally shot as we
performed exercise after exercise while we prepared for our looming combat
deployment. Speaking of exercise, the
brigade staff officers worked out harder and longer than the enlisted did in
the BCT, and longer and harder than in any other unit I had ever been in! I had to toughen up and get better in several
different areas.
J.N.
not only made me and others excited about our jobs, but he made us feel
important. He made us feel as if we were
part of something larger than ourselves.
He was an excellent communicator and motivator. Early on, he quickly identified officers on
the brigade staff that were disgruntled or would not subordinate themselves to
our larger goals. Those officers were
replaced and without fail, the new-comers were always better than the outgoing
officers. That also taught me a
lesson. If J.N. was unable to get you
excited about what you were doing, then he didn’t want you on his team. The danger was that bad attitudes would
spread like cancer. At the end of 12
long months of grueling train-up, we were ready. We trusted J.N. We loved him.
Most of us would fall on a grenade and sacrifice ourselves to save
him. Why? It is hard to point to any one example. His leadership was one constant highlight
reel of resiliency, resonant leadership, and smooth polished and cuss-free
communication. He didn’t have to yell or
raise his voice to get things done. For
example, one day he called me to his tactical operations center (TOC) during
one of our combat simulations. He took
out a map and said to me, “Chief, we have to pick up a medical evacuation
(MEDEVAC) casualty by regulation within one hour”. Our helicopters are stationed here, but what
if we get a call to respond here? I went
to work on the problem with my team of aviators and we finally were able to
figure out an optimal staging of our MEDEVAC assets to cover the entire
RC-East. Once we figure that out, he
then threw another variable into the equation.
What if we were picking up a MEDEVAC casualty from that area, and we got
another call for air-support for troops under fire in this area? The area he was pointing to was at the
opposite end of the RC. We racked our
brains for hours attempting to solve the dilemma. RC-East was a very large area cover with only
1 BCT and two-thirds of an aviation brigade.
The exercise made us very aware of our limited resources, but it paid
off once we arrived in Afghanistan and began our combat operations. It was his insight that forced us to make
worst-case scenario plans based upon limited resources available. This insight was repeated countless times in
all functional areas of our BCT. He
thought about logistics, maintenance, transportation, troop strength, air
power, mountain tactics, air assaults, and local Afghan troops. His mind was that of a genius working through
various scenarios and plans. All of it
was based upon his goal of maximum efficiency, and maximum combat power
directed in all the right places.
We
encountered numerous challenges in our combat operations in RC-East. We spent 16 months fighting the Taliban and
were the last clearly successful unit to take the offensive and control the
most territory within RC-East. The
examples of J.N.’s leadership are too numerous to list here, but he also placed
trust in me as a Chief Warrant Officer 3rd Class (CW3). We planned to do an air assault into the
Korengal Valley NE of Jalalabad. A
tactical decision needed to be made about our exfiltration route of our
helicopters after our initial landing.
J.N. was going on the air assault, so the decision that I made could
mean life or death for him. I made a
very tough call as to how we would accomplish the exfiltration and it worked
out. We did not lose a single aircraft
and the air assault was wildly successful.
He trusted me! Wow. That felt good and it spurred me to get even
better as a TACOPS officer.
What
was J.N.? He was a resonant leader. He had emotional intelligence. He had great communication skills. He had great vision. He was the ultimate personification of
everything an Army Colonel should be……………and more! He had that unique something that made him a
natural leader and inspired people to follow him and want to be part of his
team. J.N. is now a three-star
general. I am honored that I got to
serve with the finest Army Colonel during my career, and serve with the
ultimate role model of a great leader.
The
heights that I experienced with J.N. vanished to the darkest depths of despair
while serving under N.T. in 2014-2015.
N.T. was an example of a person who interviewed well and got selected
into his position, but was totally out of his league for the responsibilities
that it entailed. What made N.T. a bad
leader? People dis-trusted him. He was totally self-serving. He always took credit for anything good that
was produced by his team, and NEVER took responsibility for any failures. He was not a good communicator. He was vindictive and dishonest. He set people against each other. He thought that was funny and he thrived in
an atmosphere of animosity and distrust.
When
I arrived at my unit where N.T. was in charge, I thought that the stories I had
heard about him were either exaggerated or told by some disgruntled
subordinates. Boy, was I wrong! N.T. had no vision. He was not a team player for the larger
organization. N.T. was all about power
and demonstrating that he had that power and the ear of the commanding general. People actively tried to bypass N.T. because
of his corrosive style of leadership and the inability to get anything
done. N.T. had a way of talking to the
senior leadership to make it appear that he was running a great shop when the
opposite was true. Communication from
the bottom up was non-existent. Team
relationships were constantly being damaged due to his meddling and
micro-managing of all day to day affairs.
N.T. never respected anyone except for higher ranking individuals that
he was vested in deceiving.
I
clashed with N.T. on a regular basis.
His decisions were not optimal for the mission of United States combat
power in the Middle East. He personally
berated me both in private and in front of others. He tried to diminish me as a person. I had completed 4 successful combat
deployments prior to this one, but he spoke to me as if I was a private. I was now promoted to CW5. Other high ranking colonels tried to
intervene to save our team from the abuse by N.T., but his political power was
too strong. They all failed in their
attempts to reign him in. As with J.N.’s
successes as a resonant leader, N.T.’s failures and nasty traits are too
numerous to list here.
I
did learn some things from N.T. I
learned that he had no communication skills, emotional intelligence, integrity,
or ability to build an effective team.
No feedback loops were established so the commanding general was never
made aware of the true dysfunction of that section or its leader, N.T. I was personally threatened with career
ending consequences if I went to the general on my own to let him know what was
going on. N.T. is a cancer that will
remain with that organization until the day that he finally retires and that
unit can start de-toxifying itself from his poisonous leadership. N.T. never should have been put in charge of
that section in such a large Army organization.
He is the perfect example of what not to do as a leader.
John
Hescott
References:
Nosich,
Gerald M., 2012, “Learning to Think Things Through” Salt Lake City: Pearson
Education
Obolensky,
Nick. (2016). “Complex Adaptive Leadership 2nd Edition”. New York: Routledge
McKee,
Annie., Boyatzis, Richard., Johnston, Frances. (2008) “Becoming a Resonant
Leader” Boston: Harvard Business Press
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