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Controlled and Uncontrolled Environments
IN ORDER TO take care of our teammates we must ensure that they can succeed in the confusion and chaos of competition. As stated in the previous chapter, taking care of your teammates does not necessarily mean making sure they are comfortable and always having fun. In the Marine Corps it meant demanding our teammates did everything necessary to ensure that they would arrive home alive to their loved ones after accomplishing our mission. It means making sure your teammates are truly prepared for their competition so that they can accomplish the mission and reap the rewards for doing so. There are two clearly delineated types of environments: controlled and uncontrolled. A controlled environment is one where we control the variables: we choose the location, duration, and intensity level of any training. An example would be practice, or the weight room, for most athletic teams. For corporate America, examples include a simulated cold-call training session with sales staff, or simply a “normal” business day. In an uncontrolled environment, there is an enemy out there trying to kill us, figuratively (athletic or corporate) or literally (military combat operations; police, fire, and other emergency first responders). For corporate America, we can think of an uncontrolled environment as any “normal” day that becomes abnormal: our biggest client unexpectedly leaves us, our firm lays off 10% of its workforce, or we are rushing to meet a tight deadline. In training and practice, leaders should make their controlled environments seem uncontrolled. We should try to replicate game-time or battlefield conditions: do a “two-minute drill”, but give the offense one minute to do it in; tell participants that their simulated cold calls will each last five minutes and then make them three. Even though we can never truly replicate the stress of an actual uncontrolled environment, we must add adversity to our controlled environments to help the team prepare for them. By the same token, leaders must make uncontrolled environments appear as controlled as possible. Many don’t. Leaders may not be responsible for “the fire,” but there is no need to add fuel to it. Unfortunately, many leaders make uncontrolled environments appear even more out of control. Behind in a game, coaches yell, scream, and smash clipboards. Business leaders get just as emotional and make already tense, challenging meetings, or days, even more so. Instead, even if you don’t feel cool, calm, and in control, communicate and act as if you do (more on communication in Section 7), which gives confidence to your team. Leadership is influence. If a leader “loses their cool,” that influences subordinates and they will lose theirs. Making controlled environments appear as uncontrolled as possible, and then ensuring that we do the opposite while in uncontrolled ones, is taking care of our teammates. It allows them to focus on the mission in front of them instead of the fear within them. In the military, it allows Mac to bring his Marines home from Iraq. In business, we are able to provide more products and better services to our clients. This allows us to reach our sales targets, which leads to increased salaries and bonuses (and all of our teammates will agree that that is in their best interest). Improving your performance through controlled and uncontrolled environments For the leaders of successful, well-balanced organizations, accomplishing their mission and taking care of their people is often one and the same. Making every decision with the best interests of their team at heart is the best way to ensure mission success. This holds true for military organizations as well. However, sometimes in combat it seems like mission accomplishment and taking care of your people are leagues apart. Early in the Battle of Najaf, as he and his platoon were in their own firefight, Mac listened in horror as one of the other officers in the unit called in an Urgent Surgical Casualty Evacuation (the most serious kind) on Mac’s best friend, Dave Lewis. Mac had known Dave for years and they had been roommates in Southern California for the last two. Dave was leading his infantry platoon through a brutal period of fighting. As he knelt next to a crypt in the cemetery where they were fighting, Dave saw a flash of light in the corner of his eye. He glanced up to see a rocket-propelled grenade streaking toward him. Dave barely had enough time to duck his head before the rocket struck. Amazingly, instead of exploding immediately, the rocket hit his Kevlar helmet and bounced a few feet in the air before detonating. Although it didn’t kill him straight out, the blast knocked him out, and the shrapnel tore apart his face and upper torso. When Dave awoke, he had been completely blinded, yet his own Marines had to hold him down to stop him from attempting to rejoin the firefight with his blood quickly pooling around him. At the time, Mac knew none of this. He knew only that an urgent evacuation had been called. The officer who called it in was hesitant to use Dave’s name because he didn’t want to damage the morale of the other Marines by notifying them that one of their most beloved leaders was down. However, after repeated requests for his identity, the reporting officer used Dave’s callsign, “Blackhorse 2,” to inform Mac that his best friend was injured and quite possibly dying. Naturally, Mac wanted desperately to drop what he was doing and rush to his injured friend’s side. Instead, he muttered a quick prayer for Dave and got back in his own firefight. That may sound callous to an outside observer, but combat simplifies many things into their black-and-white essence. Mac had a mission to accomplish. He knew that if he abandoned that mission to go to his friend, other Marines could be injured or killed. Furthermore, Mac had thirty other Marines who were looking to him for leadership and guidance in the middle of their own brutal fight. Dave would have done exactly the same thing if the roles were reversed. Leaders must accomplish the mission, and running to Dave’s aid would have hurt Mac’s own unit’s ability to do so. It would not have been taking care of his people, because it would have been counter to the best interests of his unit.1 Leaders are held to two standards: accomplish the mission and take care of your teammates. Every decision we ever make is done with the best interests of our team at heart. The best interests of our team and teammates is ensuring that we stay focused on accomplishing the mission. If not, in the military, many more people are killed in the long run. In our own daily lives, many more people’s livelihoods are destroyed. Leaders who constantly prioritize their own personal interests and desires or those of individuals on the team, before accomplishing the mission, inevitably hurt many more on the team. If the mission is to reach a particular revenue amount and we don’t reach it, then the consequence can be layoffs to numerous members of the team, or even the whole business filing for bankruptcy. The first scenario negatively affects those who are, and even those members of the team who aren’t, losing their job. They will have to assume more work and greater responsibility at no extra salary (a business can’t increase salaries if it doesn’t have the money to pay them). This also doesn’t consider the physical, mental, and emotional toll that layoffs cause to everyone in an organization. Furthermore, individuals who consistently ask a leader to put personal needs first are in effect saying that an individual’s needs are more important than the team’s. They are not, and leaders who allow this are failing in their role. Now that we have established what leadership is and isn’t, who leaders are and aren’t, and have defined the standards to which leaders are held, we address the biggest question The Program receives (and is hired to address): How do you develop them?
Action Items for Taking Care of Your Teammates
Saved Round on Taking Care of Your Teammates
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