A Leader’s Defining Moment
In May of 2004, I lost two soldiers assigned to my command during Operation Iraqi Freedom due to an improvised explosive device buried into roadside rubble along a route that we would frequently travel during routine missions. These two young men executed to the best of their ability a plan that I designed and communicated to them. All my decisions. To disastrous result. I will never forget the simultaneous anguish, heartbreak, and sheer helplessness I felt as a leader. All mixed together at the exact same time and at a magnitude that I had never experienced before.
The Questions That Shaped My Leadership
That experience drove me through the rest of my deployment (and to this day) to ensure that any plan I devised, and any decision I made, were evaluated through the lens of two questions: (1) Do I have a good plan?’ and (2) ‘Will it work?’. These specific questions empowered me as a leader to challenge my thinking and seek to increase my perspective. I would strive to ‘look at the problem from all sides’ with the explicit intent to have a better understanding of the task at hand to minimize risk of failure. I started to actively look for ‘holes’ in the plan that I could ‘fill’, so that I could account for contingencies and any unforeseen or unanticipated circumstances. However, these seemingly positive goals ultimately turned into the very thing that undermined me most as a leader: an insatiable desire to (1) know everything, (2) be able to do everything, and (3) never make a mistake again.
Read those three things again. How likely is it on any given day at any given time that any leader (anyone!) will be able to do ANY of those three things to a high degree? Zero. None. No chance. And yet still, this is what I told myself every minute of every hour of the day. I told myself that as a leader I could never make a mistake again.
When I was unable to achieve these (unrealistic) expectations, I would tell myself follow-on statements as a result. Statements that were not close to being true but still ‘felt true’. These are the lies that we tell ourselves.
The Lies That Took Hold
Statements such as “You could not even protect your own soldiers, how are you going to be able to protect your wife and newborn?” ruled my thinking. As a result, any time that my family experienced discomfort or pain or any negative result, that experience reinforced my sense of ‘failure’ as a leader and turned up the ‘voices in my head’. Consequently, everything I heard from anyone else was heard through the lens of “you are a failure as a leader”. As a result, regardless of what was said or how it was said, I was unable to receive what was being communicated. When my thinking was at its most debilitating, what I heard repeatedly in my head was the following: “You killed your soldiers, and you are doing the same to your own family”.
The Turning Point
After 10 years of hearing these lies that I told myself, I can look back and see how they impacted the way in which I led. I attempted to control everyone and every situation to the utmost extent in the hopes of ensuring that those who were in my care would never be hurt. And the very thing I wanted to protect them from (being hurt) is the very thing that I ultimately caused (hurt that came from being led poorly).
I am so grateful for the guidance and counseling that eventually empowered me to make the following statement: “I did not kill my soldiers; however, I was responsible for them.”
Replacing Lies with Truth
By hearing the alternate truth to the ‘lie’, I was able to better perceive the impact of believing the lie over the truth. And once I was able to say those things out loud, I could do something about it!
I also gained a better appreciation of why it is so important in communication to understand how our own internal talk can skew how we ‘hear’ (perceive) what is being said to us. And conversely, how what we are trying to communicate may not be heard because the other person is hearing everything through a similar lens of ‘what they are telling themselves’ which has been shaped by their many past experiences that you may not be aware of!
Moving Forward with Understanding
As a result of this understanding, I will continue to seek to understand alongside my desire to be understood (Read my previous blog, Are You Listening?). Practicing one without the other will never get us closer to our desired goal of shared meaning and shared understanding!
Why This Matters for Leaders and Organizations
This is why we at Michael Rainey and Associates desperately want to come alongside invested leaders in decision making, especially when making high-stakes decisions amid uncertainty and ambiguity. To assist in identifying lies organizations may be telling themselves and providing support to reveal the alternate truth. The very truth that will galvanize the organization and ignite them along the path of mission success!
If you’re interested in exploring how we can assist your organization, we invite you to reach out for a complimentary consultation. Let’s discuss how we can help you achieve your desired outcomes and move forward with confidence.
