I spent almost ten years wearing the
“Green Tab” in the Army. The “Green Tab” was a small piece of green felt that I
pinned around my epilate underneath my rank insignia, indicating that I was a
troop leader. It also meant that I was responsible to my commander for the
behavior, good or ill, of my troops. I was also responsible for the equipment
and facilities I was signed for. As a second lieutenant I was responsible for
over one hundred soldiers, NCOs, and a handful of civilian contractors. I was
accountable for four buildings and millions of dollars of communications
equipment. Additionally, I was responsible for communications links that
sprawled across Europe and at times other parts of the world. The load only
increased as I moved up the ladder. As part of this, I often had to bring my
superiors bad news, always an experience full of trepidation. During the
eighties and early nineties, some commanders embraced a zero-defect style of
command. They considered any bad news a failure of one sort or another on my
part. Bringing them bad news was always a journey through a minefield full of
ambushes; consequently, their subordinates tended to drag their feet when
delivering bad news. Often, they did not have a full understanding of how
things were in their command; due in part to the hesitancy of their
subordinates to deliver bad news and their unwillingness to deal appropriately
with problems. Dealing with problems is a significant part of leadership.
As a leader we must solve problems,
and shooting the messenger is not a good way to solve problems. After you shoot
a few messengers, they stop telling you the truth. They know that you do not
really want to understand what is going on You simply want to feel good. I had
one supervisor who had a sign on his wall which read, “If it looks good, it
probably is.” That summed up his zero-defect view of the world quite well. In the
late nineties, I took over a recruiting company, which was known across the
command as a very problematic company. The commander had stopped caring and let
things slide for a long time. Following the example set by the commander, most
of the NCOs had stopped caring and did little to complete their mission. Before
I took command, my commander pulled me aside and told me that I should, “Clean
house.”
One of the problems that I found was
several NCOs who espoused racist attitudes and regularly used inappropriate
language and actively sought to enlist young men and women that also embraced
such an unacceptable attitude. It was evident that this problem was a cancer
that infected the company, even into the leadership. It was so bad that it had drawn
the interest of the local chapter of the NAACP. Gathering the evidence, I
approached my commander with this disturbing news.
Fortunately for me, he was not the
kind of commander who would shoot the messenger. Instead, he, with clear eyes, assimilated
the information, and together we took the actions necessary to root out the sickness
and rectify the situation. Our willingness to confront the problem head on and
take appropriate action to hold the guilty individuals accountable so impressed
the NAACP representatives that instead of pillorying us, they applauded our
actions. All this was due to my commander’s ability to absorb bad news, develop
a plan, and then take affirmative action. Had he been a “shoot the messenger”
kind of leader, the problem would have festered.
Good leaders understand that at
times they must deal with bad news. Dealing with bad news takes courage and
fortitude. Beating up the bearers of bad news causes them to either keep it to
themselves or to shade, color, or lie about it so that it is no longer bad. Either
way, problems languish without a solution, often hidden from sight. Sooner or later,
they will manifest themselves and usually are much worse and harder to solve
due to the delay. We need fearless leaders that can face up to problems and
then labor to solve them, not leaders who shoot the messenger.
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