While in the USA recently I watched a documentary on the leadership development programs of the US Marines. I was struck by what a senior officer described as their “leadership philosophy”: Know Yourself, Know Your Job, Know Your People.

Undoubtedly, the Marines are an elite and highly effective military force. Their leadership training must equip graduates to make life and death decisions under the most extreme circumstances. Leadership is a complex responsibility and yet they responded with a stunningly simple and potent philosophy. Know yourself, know your job, know your people.

By contrast I’m deeply concerned that so many business leaders can’t describe their plans without a 50 page document and Powerpoint slides. In complex times, every leader must choose to simplify. So here’s how to lead like a Marine:

Know Yourself
Before you assume this is the “easy one”, why not do a quick inventory of your self awareness?

• What are your top five values?
• What have been your key life-defining events and how have they shaped how you see yourself and your world?
• What are your greatest strengths as a leader?
• What are your greatest weaknesses and opportunities for growth?
• What are your blind spots and what are you doing about them?
• What makes you angry?
• What are you most afraid of?
• How do you change when you’re under pressure?
• How do others see you as a leader?
• … and we haven’t even scratched the surface.

Self awareness is foundational to effective leadership. To know yourself is a challenging mission.

Know Your Job
You cannot truly succeed in any role without understanding your job. Not just what activities are you to be involved in, but what results are you there to deliver? Clarity in understanding your role and objectives is critical, and without it you’re like a sportsperson competing without knowing the rules of the game. Lasting success becomes unachievable.

I wonder what would happen if I was to interview you and ask you to describe to your job in detail? What if I then asked your boss how he or she sees your role? And what about those who report to you? What would I get? Consistency? Conflict? Clarity? Confusion?

If you haven’t got clarity on your job- get it or get going elsewhere, because you can’t succeed without it.

Know Your People
Something I have observed often as I’ve coached individual leaders is that many haven’t made the effort to get to know the people they lead. Some believe a convenient myth about keeping people “at arm’s length”. Some have never applied themselves to understanding people with a different outlook or personality to their own. Some are preoccupied with themselves and lead people as resources rather than human beings (which is why “Human Resources” is a sort of oxymoron to me).

To my shame, I’ve led people for years only to discover later that I hardly knew them at all – that they had a painful divorce, a life’s mission, a serious illness… whatever it was, I knew nothing about it. Not because it was a secret, but because I was content with only a superficial knowledge of my team.

But the Marine Commander’s benchmark for leadership was extraordinary. “I will not let a man become an officer that I would not allow to lead my own son into combat”, he said. That’s a serious benchmark for knowing the people you lead.

Recently a friend said to me, “Criticism is the death gargle of a non-achiever”. It’s a great statement and I’ve found it to be true. Many years of leadership have given me the opportunity to see the long-term impact of different mindsets on a person’s life. The truth is that all too often those whose criticism rings the loudest are the very same people who have contributed nothing but words. Non-achievers.

It’s easy to be a critic. To pick apart what others have created. To appoint ourselves as judge and look down on those around us. To deflect attention from our own inadequacies by focusing on what we believe are the faults of others. Sadly in Australia, where I live, it is so common in our culture that we created a name for it – Tall Poppy Syndrome.

We’ve probably all sat in business meetings where the culture made being creative nearly impossible. In that environment you quickly learn that bringing an idea to the table is seen by others as invitation to shoot you down. Those businesses often wonder why there isn’t more innovation coming from their team, but they don’t recognise that their critical culture is the silent killer of creativity.

I just spent seven weeks traveling with my family. While we were in New York City I saw a subway advertisement that read “Stupid creates. Smart critiques. Be stupid”. To me it was a great reminder that there’s a certain risk of appearing stupid that comes with being creative instead of critical. But it’s the risk every achiever must take.

Does that mean that we should never be critical? Do we hold back on feedback? No, I believe it’s really about the overall balance of our communication. It’s one thing to offer suggestions on how something could be improved, and another thing altogether for negativity to be your default setting. What’s the theme of your communication? Do you tend to notice and commend what is good, or notice and condemn what could be better? When my team know I am for them and I give encouragement whenever possible I can bring criticism from time to time without becoming “the critic”.

I recently heard speaker Steve Penny say, “I would rather fail tremendously than live dismally”.

To me that’s the bottom line. I’d rather being defined by my creativity than by my criticism.

I’d love to hear your comments and feedback

Plus click “ShareThis” below to post this article to your blog, Facebook, Twitter and more…