Chris revisits the key points made by Reynold Hoover, adds his own insights and gives listeners some suggestions for practical actions they can take immediately to help them get where they want to go.
Welcome to every one of our Perspectives from the Top community of listeners around the world to “Reflections on the Top”. And through your support and sharing with friends it is around the world as Perspectives from the Top now has listeners in 44 countries, on every continent. “Reflections” is to help you get the best from the series by me reviewing the key insights from our latest guest. You will get much more out of Reflections key points if you have listened to the guests interview and heard the broader discussion.
Our last guest was REYNOLD HOOVER – who has unique experience in military, business and government, he practised as a lawyer before joining the military, primarily working in bomb disposal. After a number of roles heCommanded the Alabama Army National Guard, and served in Iraq and Afghanistan but he also served in Government as Chief of Staff at FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency, served in the CIA as Deputy Director of Public Affairs; was Special Assistant to President George Bush for Homeland Security and then commanded Northern Strategic Air Command. He is now a Partner at Donovan Capital which invests in aerospace, defence and government service organisations. He however still finds time to teach future Generals at Westpoint and serve on boards of service charities.
Reynold is the 1st guest that we have had who has served full time in the military, and at senior level, as well as in the world of business. This gives him a uniquely broad perspective on what leadership is about and what delivers success in organisations.
It was interesting that he, as is typical with somebody with military training, immediately identified what he felt were three critical leadership Success Factors
Certainly those last two relate back to the exercise I do with leaders you will have heard me mention before, the best boss exercise, where I ask leaders what the best boss they had did on a regular basis that made them so special. That every time I ask this question two of the key factors that come out are that my boss let me get on with things and didn’t interfere and that they showed they trusted me, and indeed cared about me, as a person.
Reynolds experience was this trusting others creates emotional power which inspires others.
One of the really interesting things that Reynold mentioned was the effort now being put in by the US military to identify potentially toxic leadership early on, before it's potentially does any damage. Clearly this is critical in that leadership failures within the military, unlike business, can mean people die. That said there are clearly areas of industry that are safety critical where fatalities can occur, and have occurred because of leadership failures.
Unlike the military where in most cases leaders are in the organisation for many years commercial organisational turnover means that the identification and prevention of toxic leadership is inherently more difficult. That said it will be really interesting to see the conclusions of the approach taken by the US military to see if it could potentially be transferable to the civilian world.
The development of leadership is fundamentally different between the military and non-military world. So perhaps a little explanation for listeners who are non military to understand the military world and vice versa might help.
It can be summed up quite simply by saying that the military recruits on the basis of leadership potential knowing that they can add technical capability on top whereas the commercial world recruits on the basis of technical capability and the development of leadership capability at some point in the future. Often organisations make the assumption that the previous employer has already developed core leadership capabilities. But the military makes sure that required skills are in place before somebody takes up role whereas is the commercial world tends to put somebody in a role, realise that their leadership capability might not be up to the level required a then tries to add the capability afterwards.
The problem from my perspective is that, based on asking leaders around the world what basic leadership capabilities they have, clearly many leaders don't have basic capabilities, eg ability to delegate effectively, in place. That inevitably significantly reduces leadership capability at the most basic level of effective task delivery. My experience clearly indicates that somewhere in the region of 70% of leaders have never been taught how to delegate effectively. That’s a frightening figure. However it is a problem that could quite easily be solved by any organisation with something as simple as a two hour workshop, but organisations repeatedly seem to not recognise that this problem even exists at their own cost.
If we take this simple act of delegating and then look at how the military deals with it the picture is very different. The military cannot function, nor indeed cam commercial organsiations perform at their bests, unless people are delegating effectively and cascading decision-making to the lowest possible level. The first thing that military leaders are taught is not leadership but these simple but critical skills of prioritisation, time management, delegation, communication, and giving feedback. Its only once these are in place then they move on to the development of inspirational leadership.
Reynold also interestingly reflected on his experience that leaders within the commercial world need to more often let go of the tactical, ie operational, and think about the big picture. And certainly at C-Suite level leaders should be thinking, as Reynold put it “up and out” not “down and in”. This linked to his work after leaving the military for Donovan capital investing in start up organisations that provide services to military and public sector. Reynold put it that for a leader delegation is freedom but many startup leaders have great difficulty in letting go of the baby. That's a point that was also reflected very strongly in Lak Ananth's assessment as a key factor that he found critical within the context of what made a successful founder.
This letting go and thinking more broadly Reynolds said was also critical for those at C suite level where within the commercial world he too often saw that leaders were not taking time out to think strategically. He said they should literally blocking out time in their diaries to think about the future rather than being distracted by the detail which, if they had delegated affectively, someone would be dealing with.
This reflection time was also linked by Reynold back to leader wellness. Again an another principle from the military that you must take care of yourself to be able to take care of others. So within that sense what can be seen as work life balance is also something that is critical to effective leadership, if not life itself.
From my perspective having compared both the military and commercial world what Reynolds says is absolutely true that organisations which pay little attention to enabling leaders to take time out to reflect and to stay well do not operate as effectively as those where leaders and indeed employees given the opportunity, and time, to reflect and stay healthy.
It's simple that if you are being expected to work 10 hour days the time left to eat, sleep, exercise, reflect and stay healthy is therefore extremely limited. Again back to the military comparison where keeping fit is actually part of the weekly work routine.
I would argue that it would make sense for organisations to encourage and facilitate its leaders and employees to be able to take an hour a day to reflect and to stay healthy. That could be by either ensuring that the length of the working day does not prevent people from doing this after work or enabling it to happen at some point during the day. However it's something both Reynold and I believe needs to be done for the good of both organisations and people.
It's probably worth mentioning, as Ronald and I discussed, one other difference between the military and the commercial world, the underlying culture. Within the military the culture is, and has to be, one of “we not me” -it is about me as a team member enabling the team to be successful at what it has to do, my interests are secondary to the success of the team, whereas in the commercial world there is a tendency for the culture to be more driven on the principle of “me not we”, so this is about the development of my career and if in the process the organisation benefits then that's good. However from everything that both Reynold and I have seen, from all the evidence of numerous case studies, organisations within the commercial world that are more operating on the we not me principle are the ones which tend to perform better, quite simply because they are operating as a team not a group of self focused individuals.
This was an important element in the work that Reynold now does as a partner in a firm when considering investment into organisations seeking funding. The fact that his team conducts a culture review as well as a financial review before any investment is made, that they review attrition rates at middle and lower levels to see if there are signs of any leadership issues there clearly shows that from the investment perspective if you are investing in an organisation which has potential leadership and culture issues you are unlikely to get a good return.
Interestingly from my own experience I know this to be absolutely true in that during my role as global head of leadership for UBS a Wall Street share analysts firm quoted our motivating and empowering culture as a specific reason for advising their clients to buy UBS shares.
Reynold also mentioned the power of leadership example, something which the military focuses on particularly strongly, but which the commercial world tends to pay less attention to. As Reynolds said people see what you do all the time and from that they make judgments about you and whether they want to work with you. But what might frighten you a little is that these judgements aren’t always a conscious decision either, our sub conscious also makes assessments based on hundreds of non verbal signals which allows us to sense if another person is positive towards us or not. This doesn't only apply to leaders it applies to us all. This is powered by neuroscience, it's the way our brains are wired, that if somebody is being positive with us and they are positive with us we will probably reciprocate, that simple.
And that linked into our discussion about the power of relationships. The fact that whilst an organisation may have an organisational chart which sets out who does what, who works with whom, and how this is all supposed to work all of this is based on human relationships, which are essentially as emotional as they are rational.
But for the leader what is even more important is the creation of a positive relationship which encourages people to give their best for you. Reynold emphasised how critical that was.
Reynolds said that for the leader it's about not hiding behind email it's about getting out there and interacting face to face, to not only focus on what needs to be done but also to focus on the your people as individuals, to understand them, their hopes their aspirations their strengths their weaknesses and how you can support them to give their best.
But this interestingly then comes back round to the core principles of military leadership. The motto of the British officer training Academy, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, is “Serve to lead” which is exactly what successful leaders do for their people. And as Reynold said that this doesn't have to be grand gestures or large actions, small simple regular actions that leaders do day today to support their people and show they care build up a reserve of trust as I call it.
The power of small actions also came out in the interview with Emily Chang who spoke about the notes that she wrote thanking people in her previous roles. She recently discovered that these people who she has now hired in her new CEO role still have those notes she wrote them many years ago, and indeed Paul Polman when I interviewed him as chief executive of Unilever saying that he regularly wrote personal notes to thank all support employees. So never forget that small gestures to other people can mean a great deal.
What were Reynolds key pieces of advice for leaders? Here they are and I would suggest that all listeners think about doing some of these:
I might add one more given Reynolds comments - take regular time out to reflect and to stay healthy.
All of us can focus on one of these from tomorrow – so pick one now and do it! Can you imagine the amazing impact if everyone did these as of tomorrow!
With the previous guests and now Reynold hopefully you are seeing a pattern of simple actions you can take to be more successful. Share these interviews colleagues who would benefit so they can grow and develop with you. Certainly I will be using these powerful points in my speaking and Masterclasses in the future.
If you have any thoughts or questions contact me on LinkedIn or via email as detailed on the Perspectives website. don't forget to sign up to Perspectives from the Top. It's free, so you don't miss any of the more than 25 great episodes in the future.
That’s it for now, so onwards and upwards until our next episode!