Organizational Leadership
In action, organizational leaders translate strategic objectives into organizational practices. Also, their duty is to build their teams and develop their capabilities, through developing their personnel.
Direct leadership skills are still necessary in their daily work with their direct reports, who themselves are leaders of units within the organization. It is through these subordinates that the organizational leader's objectives are accomplished, though management of their own subordinates.
Skills to Lead Organizations
Because organizational leaders are further from the front, they must remain familiar with the abilities and needs of the front line, where action will ultimately take place.
Interpersonal Skills
Communication, particularly persuasion, is important to organizational leaders: they must build support for the mission among their subordinates, and through them, the individual soldier. They must communicate down through channels, receive information upward through channels and, when necessary, to cut the channels and communicate directly to be effective.
Organizational leaders must supervise, but the importance shifts from supervising soldiers to supervising leaders, which means delegation is necessary. However, it's a careful balance between delegating enough authority and delegating to much of it. This largely depends on the capabilities of the subordinate, and their need for information to accomplish their mission.
Conceptual Skills
The scope of an organizational leader's responsibility and authority is broader than that of a direct leader, and has greater complexity. Problems are more abstracted, complex, and uncertain on this level.
Organizational leaders must establish intent - to make it clear what the end state of a mission is, and clarify the high-level tasks his subordinates must address to achieve it. The intent answers the "why" behind the mission, and the "how" that guides the tasks. Ultimately, it is the subordinates who will translate this intent into reality.
Filtering information is also a critical skill. At the organizational level, there is far more information to deal with, not all of it is relevant. Thus must filter what they receive from the field, and what they send back to the field.
Understanding systems becomes of greater importance: it is not enough to understand how a rifle works, or how a single soldier works, but how an entire company of soldiers works: their capabilities and limitations, and their needs.
Organizational leaders must also think in terms of procedures rather than individual tasks. In many instances, a subordinate leader may be operating very effectively, but the procedures by which he is operating are flawed.
Technical Sills
The technical skills of an organizational leader are more high-level than those of a direct leader, and may focus more coordinating with external organizations rather than performing specific tasks.
While the organizational leader may not need to be able to perform a hands-on task (firing a mortar), he must know the nature of the task (what it accomplishes) and what support is necessary to enable the soldier to achieve it.
Resourcing is a key skill: obtaining and managing the resources (time, equipment, facilities, budget, and people) under his command.
Prediction of unintended effects is also key: because any decision has a large impact, there are immediate effects and secondary effects (effects of those effects) - the order to do something means other things must be done.
Tactical Skills
A "tactical" skill comes into play when obstacles arise to carrying out the original plan, or when it is discovered that the original plan is unlikely to accomplish its objectives.
On the organizational level, three tactical skills are key:
- Synchronization arranges activities in time, space, and purpose to focus them on a specific purpose at a specific time.
- Orchestration is arranges activities that are not synchronous to have a compounding effect, and to support, rather than conflict with one another.
- Coordination with other units, including those over which the leader has no direct authority, is necessary
Actions to Lead Organizations
Because actions on the organizational are on a broader scale, they have broader effects, so organizational leaders must spend a more time thinking about their action than direct leaders do to ensure that their intent is clear to the large number of people who will be contributing their effort.
Influencing
Communication is more complex or organizational leaders because of their increased span of control and separation from the elements that are actually accomplishing the mission. Since orders are carried down from subordinates through the chain of command, the organizational leader must also understand how his orders, even his comments, might be interpreted.
For this reason, the leader's communications must be more powerful, focused, and unambiguous than direct leaders - he will not be involved directly where the work is done, and will not get immediate feedback if his orders need clarification.
Keys to effective communication are:
- Know Yourself - Assess your own strengths and weaknesses and commit to an appropriate leadership philosophy. The techniques used in direct leadership may no longer be effective, so you must shift gears. Be aware of your personal mannerisms, behavioral quirks, and demeanor that can reinforce or contradict a spoken message.
- Know the Purpose - Go beyond understanding what must be done, to the level of why it must be done, and ensure that subordinate leaders understand this as well.
- Know the Environment - Specifically, try to understand the target audience of communication to understand how it might be received and interpreted, and tune it accordingly
- Know the Boss - Assess one's superior as an audience: understand his need for information and his possible reactions to minimize friction between the unit and command
- Know the Subordinates - It is important to know your direct reports, and know a bit about their direct reports, to understand how you message will be communicated through channels. It is especially important to consider that they will attempt to read between the lines of any communication.
- Know the Staff - Network with your peers and others who report directly to the same boss. Communicating across channels can provide greater clarity.
- Know the Best Method - There are various channels for communication: informal conversations, staff meetings, organizational meetings, written communication, phone calls, e-mail, etc. Decide which method is the most effective and appropriate, and use multiple channels if need be.
When it comes to decision making, an organizational leader must also determine if a decision is needed, and whether to make it himself or delegate it. An effective leader must encourage initiative and risk taking, and trust in his subordinates to do what is right.
An organizational leader must often act on incomplete information. It is a careful balance to know when to invest time in gathering better intelligence to make a more informed decision, or to act o what you have to avoid the negative consequences of delaying a decision. A good decision now may be more effective than a better one later.
In addition to problem-solving, organizational leaders must engage in problem preemption: anticipate what might go wrong, and lay plans accordingly.
Motivation is also key: you must have the support of your subordinates, and you must earn their trust. Being open, consistent, and fair is key.
In some instances, the organizational leader may motivate the entire organization by communicating directly to every soldier.
An organizational leader sets the climate for his organization, and expects his subordinates to reflect the same qualities in the climate of their units.
Operating
Planning is the process of laying out how the future will be achieved, which follows seven steps
- Establish Intent - Have a clear vision of what you want to achieve, and announce it at the earliest possible time, at it is the intent of the plan, rather than the particular tasks it encompasses, that is critical for subordinates to understand.
- Set Goals - Set concrete and measurable goals that have a clear connection to achieving the intent of the plan
- Determine Objectives - Objectives are milestones and measurements by which the accomplishment of the plan can be measured
- Determine Tasks - For each objective, determine the tasks necessary to achieve it
- Establish Priorities - Decide which of the tasks is most critical
- Prepare - Ensure that the systems needed to execute the plan are in place, or will be in place by the time they are needed
- Follow Up - Ensure that your team understands the plan, and have them ensure their subordinates understand the plan
The function of the leader in planning is not to do the work himself and hand it down for execution: involve subordinates in the planning process. Doing so avails the leader of his staff's expertise and gives the staff a sense of ownership in the plan.
Put the right people in the right places, give them a vision, then back off and let them achieve it. Provide clear guidance to keep them on track, and check up often, but do not micromanage. Tell them what to do, but not how to do it, and let them use their initiative and ingenuity.
A "chief of staff" is a subordinate who takes on leadership responsibilities for keeping the team focused and moving in the right direction, even in the absence of the formal leader.
Some organizational work is self-contained - handled within the organization entirely - but often, other organizations come into play, and in some cases, these organizations do not report to the same officer. In the case of joint task forces, there may not be a common superior short of the CINC. This requires cooperation and persuasion in the absence of formal authority.
Delegation and empowerment are critical for the organizational leader: he cannot do everything himself, and where responsibility is delegated, so must be authority. This empowerment gives subordinates a sense of purpose and importance, and is a sign of trust. You must underwrite honest or well-intentioned mistakes - but not stupid, careless, wrong-headed, or repeated ones.
Assessment is also a critical tool: the ability to surmise a situation accurately, determining cause-and-effect, and effectiveness of action. Of importance, focus on what is mission-critical: placing too much emphasis on secondary matters muddles the understanding of your intent.
Getting clear and timely information from the field is requisite to making valid assessments - and because the scope is broad, getting alternative perspectives on a situation can help prevent getting blindsided. For the same reasons, be aware of preconceived notions and their potential to bias your analysis.
Some of the most important assessments are:
- Evaluating the progress toward organizational goals
- Evaluating the efficiency of a system (ratio or resources expended to results gained)
- Evaluating the effectiveness of a system (even if it is efficient, is it beneficial)
- Comparing efficiency and effectiveness to established standards
- Comparing the behavior or performance of individuals to standards
- Evaluating the support systems
Also, realize that assessment can also be overdone: when measuring impedes performance, where the cost and time of conducting an assessment exceeds its benefits.
Improving
Improving actions make the people, facilities, and systems better over time.
Especially on the organizational leader's level, improvement has a larger scope. It also tends to take more time, and often has a delayed payoff. In fact, the effect of many improving actions on the organizational level may not be evident during one's own time in command.
Developing subordinates remains of importance: seeking out opportunities for training that will benefit them immediately, as well as in the long run. Avail yourself of army training and civilian training. Seek out on-the-job learning opportunities (innovative assignments, interagency exchanges, maneuvers, etc.) Also, evaluate the effectiveness of training to determine whether it has been beneficial, and should be considered in the future.
Of particular importance to military leaders is building combat power, increasing the capabilities of the organization to fulfill its central purpose: to win battles.
In addition to developing each individual, the organization leader must build cohesion within his organization: giving purpose to each task, and personnel a sense of their role in the shared goals of the organization.