“We believe that what pulls us apart today, whether in business,
the military, or politics, is exclusion.” (p. 168)

General Martin Dempsey & Ori Brafman create a companion work which reminds us of both General Stanley McChrystal’s Team of Teams and Captain Michael Abrashoff’s It’s Your Ship. The first two parts of this book seemingly acquaint the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to our contemporary environment removed from a prior insulated military environment.

The authors share three central takeaways (p. 42):

• Not including – exerting control – comes at an economic cost, one that is increasingly difficult to bear and harder still to justify. In Teams of Teams, McChrystal realized the same ultimately concluding the role of a leader is that of a gardener.
• Bring a cause to a preexisting community. Similar to Jim Collins’ advice to select people predisposed to your organization’s values and Academy Leadership’s focus on Core Values Alignment.
• Real inclusion is about understanding the pillars of participation, personalization, and purpose. Or put another way, it’s about alignment in the pursuit of excellence. Recall, Abrashoff prudently reminded us:

“Forget diversity. Train for Unity.”

Dempsey shares an early glimpse (he seemed genuinely surprised) when he was challenged by a twenty-eight-year-old captain for a deficiency in training (p. 48) while in Afghanistan. Perhaps a safe environment for feedback was routinely suppressed simply by the presence of a flag officer.

Our review focuses primarily on Part 3, The Inclusive Leader and seven leadership (chapter) tools:

• Belonging Isn’t Optional
• Connect Effort With Meaning
• Think About What You’re Not Thinking About
• Prevent Decision Paralysis
• Collaborate At Every Level Of The Organization
• Expand The Circle
• The Leadership Instincts: Listen, Amplify, Include

Belonging Isn’t Optional

With our combined effort aligned and everyone working toward a common goal, we find a sense of control that produces a sense of order for each of us within the organization, and this trickles into our individual daily lives (p. 77). Imagine how much more effective team goal setting rather than a typical hierarchical top-down approach may be, perhaps during an Aligning and Accomplishing Goals workshop? And if we’re not inclusive? If people don’t feel like they belong to your group, department, company, or corporation, they easily can and probably will find something else to believe in and belong to (p. 81).

The authors describe successes, failures, being cared for, what right looks like, and what wrong looks like as five kinds of experiences a leader should provide (pp. 87-88). Each of these may be described in advance in our Personal Leadership Philosophy, or PLP.

Connect Effort With Meaning

Most of the responsibility is on the leader: to explain, to encourage, and to inspire (p. 90). Repeatedly, in Creating a Motivational Environment workshops, course attendees wrestle with whether or not leaders actually motivate people. Our authors appear in agreement that the environment we foster is what matters, and that ways leaders can “make it matter” include (pp. 93-94):

• Define and allow others to understand who you are
• Make each individual feel that they have the potential to be a better person
• Make sense of things for the team

As Simon Sinek reminds us, provide the Why.

Think About What You’re Not Thinking About

Humility is a terrific leader trait. Leaders can learn to imagine if they place the emphasis on “learn:” (p. 100)

• If they learn to listen and seek to know
• If they learn to be alert
• If they learn to find advisors
• If they learn to connect disparate thoughts
• If they learn to challenge assumptions
• If they learn to become comfortable with complexity

This is just what McChrystal shared when establishing an increasingly effective situational awareness headquarters. Set up an operations center manned and equipped to process and share information, establish a transportation hub to monitor and coordinate the flow of logistics, and establish a training base for the hundreds of international medical volunteers eager to assist in the crisis (p. 104). Cross The Knowing-Doing-Gap.

Prevent Decision Paralysis | PLP

Consider the following as a leadership philosophy operating principle: A bias for action is a leadership instinct based on the belief that in order to decide, you must learn, and in order to learn, you must alter the status quo (p. 108). Let’s add three excellent priorities, also useful in any PLP:

“But to do it, and to keep faith with my soldiers, I need three things. First, I need to keep the unit together. Second, I need you to give us a mission. And Third, most important, led me entrust my soldiers and their families with information (p. 115).

Especially in a dynamic environment, perfection frequently is the enemy of “good enough.” As leaders, we need to ask ourselves what we can do right now to make an impact in solving the issue, sometimes without fully comprehending where that action may lead (p. 120).

Collaborate At Every Level Of The Organization

In our Leveraging the Power of Conflict workshops, we explore how collaboration is the most effective (albeit most time-consuming) strategy. Similarly, an open and safe collaborative environment is the hallmark of a good After Action Review, yet few organizations, especially big ones, ask their junior members about opportunities the organization may be missing (p. 122).

Expand The Circle

The authors indirectly promote an abundance mindset:

Real power is measured not in degree of control, but rather in the ability to find optimum, affordable, enduring solutions to complex problems (p. 130). Remember Dempsey’s surprise at the Captain’s training improvement idea?

However, at least for now, there are more examples
of leaders succumbing to the fear of losing power
by aggressively seeking to exert greater control. (p. 134)

Lead by example and live your leadership philosophy. Leaders must understand, however, that relinquishing control works only when there is an ethos in place that supports it (p. 147).

The Leadership Instincts: Listen, Amplify, Include

We may think of the three instincts as a condensation of the prior six chapters:

• Listen to learn (p. 150). Think of how others communicate, as in our Energize2Lead workshops.
• Amplify to establish expectations (p. 150). Think of best practices and ideas and incorporate them in our leadership philosophy expectations.
• Include to empower (p. 151), then share knowledge, which in turn inspires loyalty.

Summary

Let’s treat knowledge as an active process, not a static thing. Everyone became aware, vigilant, and committed to creating a shared understanding of what was happening on the battlefield (p. 164).

“The highest such bar is being willing to set aside your individual
interests in order to advance the interests of the group.” (p. 68)

JE | May 2021