Phenomenon: “An unusual, significant, or unaccountable fact or occurrence; a marvel.”
– Webster’s dictionary
How powerful is leadership? Is it powerful enough to be called a phenomenon?
From 2003 to 2006 my job in the Navy was to assign officers to Navy commands around the globe. The Navy’s term for this human resource job is “detailer”. The typical officer moves to a new tour of duty about every 3 years and I was responsible for ensuring 3,000 Naval Officers had jobs that were career-enhancing, challenging and overall suitable for themselves and their families.
Over that 3-year tour, I had literally thousands of conversations with officers as we balanced the needs and desires of the officer with the needs of the Navy – which were inordinately high, considering this was the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We were stretched thin in many areas and the Navy needed all hands on deck. Myself and other detailers worked hard to retain in the Navy as many of our top performing officers as possible.
Through that process I would sometimes have multiple conversations with the same officer over a period of weeks. These conversations ultimately resulted in me “writing orders” for the officer to detach from their current command and report to another command.
But not always. After all, the United States Armed Forces is an all-volunteer force. A viable option for any officer whose obligated service is complete is to tell the detailer that they’re not interested in another tour – they’re getting out of the Navy. This of course happened.
During those years I came to better understand why an officer elected to leave the Navy. Many reasons for getting out of the Navy I could have predicted – great job opportunities in the civilian sector, spouse and/or children not wanting to move, among others. While deploying into harm’s way was mentioned as a reason from time to time, it was extremely rare.
The toxic effects of poor leaders…
What wasn’t rare was a shared motive for leaving the Navy that I found very surprising. It had to do with leadership – specifically, their current boss. They worked for bad leaders.
I could sometimes convince an officer to stay Navy and take orders to another assignment if they had recently worked for one poor leader. However, despite offering these officers excellent jobs in beautiful parts of the world, like Spain and Hawaii, which I was able to do many times, I could never convince any officer to stay in the Navy if they had worked for two poor leaders in a relatively short period of time. They all got out of the Navy.
“…I witnessed many more officers distressed by poor leaders than from deployment to a war zone.”
More revealing was the raw emotion in their voices as they described how their boss behaved and treated them and others. I will never forget some of those discussions. I had many emotional conversations with officers who experienced truly horrific events during deployments to unsafe, austere environments. However, the sheer number and intensity of the conversations I had with officers working for poor leaders, while in safe, air conditioned hospitals, clinics and a variety of facilities in beautiful areas throughout the United States and abroad, was startling. During my 3 years in that job, I witnessed many more officers distressed by poor leaders than from deployment to a war zone.
The Navy was losing outstanding officers because of poor leaders.
Further, the vast majority of the officers who left the Navy primarily because of poor leadership were outstanding officers. Both their leadership skills and unique medical skills were needed to help fight and win our nation’s wars. I realized that the Navy was losing excellent officers at a crucial time in our country’s history due to something seemingly within our control – poor behaviors by those in positions of leadership. This revelation was both upsetting and shocking.
While I had read and studied much on the topic of leadership up to that point in my career, that experience gave me a much deeper appreciation of its profound influence. It exponentially increased my respect for the power of the leadership phenomena and turned a mere curiosity into an insatiable quest to dig much deeper.
Is leadership powerful enough to be called a phenomenon?
Webster’s dictionary defines “phenomenon” as “an unusual, significant, or unaccountable fact or occurrence, a marvel”. My revelation from that tour of duty as a detailer was that leadership was indeed a phenomenon – an unusual, significant, or unaccountable fact or occurrence, a marvel.
Embrace your role as a leader!
As a leader, embrace your role as a person of tremendous influence. Two quick examples: Be mindful that every interaction you have with a staff member impacts his/her trust in you (see my May 2017 blog), and never forget the importance of optimism in the face of adversity (see my July 2017 blog).
Remember, enjoy the journey!
Sincerely,
Mark