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Leadership Styles - A Lesson From Warzone Afghanistan

Guest post by: Stephen Warrilow

Article Overview: How do you motivate people living with the constant insecurities engendered by the current economic climate? How do you lead people through change in times of extreme and turbulence? In tough times people are capable of doing extra-ordinary things and of enduring previously unbearable privations - if their hearts are in it...

Leadership Styles - A Lesson From Warzone Afghanistan

How do you exercise a leadership style that will provide inspirational motivation to people living with the constant insecurities engendered by the current economic climate? How do you lead your people through change and identify the most effective strategies for managing change that are appropriate to these conditions?

Making tough decisions, implementing change, and telling people that this is the way it is - really isn't the same as getting them giving them the inspirational motivation to accept how things are and to work well.

As Michael Hammer - former Business Process Re-engineering guru of the last recession - now says: "The human side [of change] is much harder than the technology side and the process side. It's the overwhelming issue."

Daniel Goleman ["Primal Leadership"] has eloquently articulated the principle of a style of leadership that resonates with people - that speaks from the heart and offers a measure of re-assurance and certainty of conviction about the direction in which they are being led.

But how you do you translate that into action? How do you actually provide inspirational motivation for people?

People will do anything if they accept the "emotional logic" - Win the battle for their hearts as well as their minds.

People may rationally understand why you need to implement major change - such as getting rid of people - cutting costs - reviewing and streamlining processes etc - but they won't feel any better about it - they won't automatically buy in to it.

And yet, in tough times people are capable of doing extra-ordinary things and of enduring previously unbearable privations - if their hearts are in it.

Having "their hearts in it" actually means that they are feeling a very deep and powerful emotional connection with some form of "greater good".

It means that they find - or are shown - some element of the mundane, tedious, scary and [in extremity] dangerous situation they find themselves in that transmutes their negative feelings into something positive that is deeply connected with some person, some group, some value or belief -something they hold very dear. This is a big key to understanding inspirational motivation.

A current and poignantly dramatic illustration of this is the serving soldier. At the time of writing, British forces are involved in "Operation Panther's Claw" - the current and to date largest British offensive against the Taliban insurgency near Gereshk in Helmand province Afghanistan.

Having taken heavy losses and in the context of reported current briefings estimating anticipated losses [i.e. deaths] at 10% of troops in the frontline, a young soldier recovering from his injuries at Camp Bastion the British HQ said:

"...We don't care about the future of Afghanistan. We don't care about democracy, clean water, schools for girls or the political overview. All we care about now is each other and making sure that our mates get out of this alive".

I have also personally spoken at length with 2 active serving soldiers in Afghanistan - one a Commando who is a family member - and they both expressed it in very similar terms.

So the first lesson for achieving a leadership style that provides inspirational motivation to leading your people through change and turbulence is to find out what your people really care about.

This simple powerful truth underpins all successful strategies for managing change.

And, to ensure that you ARE employing successful strategies for managing change - that are appropriate to your organisation - you need to know how to apply: (a) an inspirational and motivational leadership style, AND (b) how to apply the supporting programme management based processes - to ensure that you avoid the catastrophic 70% failure rate of ALL business change initiatives.

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Article Tags: inspirational motivation, leadership styles, strategies for managing change



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