I came across the post linked below recently and it struck a chord with me. As I gradually spool down after three-plus decades in operational roles, I’m reflecting on some of the good and not-so-good habits of leadership I experienced, and what they meant to the relative performance of people and teams.
The late Adm. James Stockdale was a recipient of the Medal of Honor and survived more than seven years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, where he endured torture and desperate deprivation which claimed many of his colleagues. He understood a thing or two about composure and perspective, even and especially when confronting brutal realities.
Here his words carry wisdom applicable in operational and business environments. Catastrophizing … making everything inappropriately urgent, wringing the hands, creating artificial pressure to coerce performance from teams rather than constructively generate it ... is seldom useful and usually leads a team further from a solution.
When it's done too frequently and starts to influence the culture, it makes teams more sensitive to pressure and less tolerant when it happens. This can lead to an organization setting aside or compromising its core values when the pressure comes on. I saw this vividly in the US Air Force and have experienced elsewhere as well.
A key leadership skill is to maintain calm and clarity in moments of calamity. Work the problem, don't let it work you. Your composure will reassure and steady the team, and keep everyone thinking clearly instead of letting emotion or panic carry them away. If you react badly to pressure, that too will be contagious, with often disastrous results.
While Stockdale refers obliquely here to political leaders who had made particular choices in a particular context, his advice is wise, universally applicable, and worth sharing.
See the original post from Ros Poplar on Linked In and click through to engage:
Lt. Col. Tony Carr, USAF (ret.) is an American veteran and businessman with more than thirty years of experience leading teams in tough operational environments. The views expressed here are his alone.