The Leadership Coach™

How To Lead Like A Marine

Posted on 15. Feb, 2010 by Paul Andrew in Leadership, The Leadership Coach™

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.

Related posts:

1. What Every Leader Wants (And Why Most Don’t Get It)
2. Fast Lane Frustrations
3. Think Like Your Successor Would

Tags: Executive Coach, Executive Coaching, Leadership Coaching, Leadership Development, Leadership Training, Paul Andrew, Team Building, The Leadership Coach™