Military Lessons and the Battle Ready Leader
Dr. David Finnigan, DBA MBA MBE
With over thirty years military experience, I have faced crisis situations many times including national emergencies in countries such as Sierra Leone, catastrophe’s as a result of conflict such as Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and crisis as a result of more closely related occurrences such as aircraft incidents and accidents. Today, we are experiencing unprecedented problems, from national, through business to individual levels. Many individuals and companies are seeking a way to deal with the current situation while ensuring they are better prepared should something similar happen again. I am often asked how I, as a military leader, deal with crisis and also after crisis. The answer is relatively straightforward; the military train hard.
Train hard; fight easy.
This cliché phrase is told to military people from the first day that they start their service. The reason that specialist units train so hard, it is to ensure that the day they are faced with a crisis, they are prepared for it. One of the most significant dangers that arise during a crisis is a leader moving from their comfort zone into their panic zone. In this region of thinking, rational thought is difficult as leaders waste energy managing their anxiety. However, by exposing leaders to varied, unfamiliar and ambiguous situations, and by applying pressure in training, they build resilience and learn to become more comfortable operating outside of the comfort zone and better equipped to face a crisis. Pressure can be applied in many different ways, and significant training benefit can often be achieved if the leadership training is conducted outside of the workplace and away from familiar tasks and routines. This can include adventurous type training, game and role-play activities, and exercises that place leaders in complex, unclear and challenging situations. New advances in technology mean that there are now far more innovative and exciting ways in which to create training packages that provide the desired resilience training while applying the required training pressure. But being a leader is more than just managing oneself; it is about managing the team.
“If it isn’t raining, it isn’t training!”
This infamous phrase is used in military training in the UK where the weather invariably seems to be cold and wet making training a generally miserable experience for those taking part. So why is it so important to corporate leaders? Surely rain isn’t going to make a better leader. The answer lies in the environment. Anyone can lead when all is well when our people are motivated and determined to achieve the common objective. But leadership becomes significantly more demanding when things are going wrong, when the team is under intense pressure, or when our people are de-motivated, for example, when they are wet, cold and miserable in the rain. Complexity, unfamiliarity, ambiguity, things going wrong, and a de-motivated team are all challenges a leader can experience when faced with a crisis. It is under such circumstances that a leader trains to become a battle-ready leader.
The battle-ready leader has trained to expect the unexpected, is unafraid of the unknown, has been schooled in the art of operating in pressurised situations, and has exercised his communication skills to a team under pressure. And a battle-ready leader is not afraid to be hyper-critical of his performance. In physiological terms, his neural pathways have been made, enabling his body to work under greater pressure allowing him to think more clearly despite the additional stress. Training achieves this. Military leaders are continually immersed in simulated situations that force them to go outside their comfort zones and build resilience. It is in such circumstances that leaders can be judged; talent can be identified, (for example, within assessment centres), and individual capabilities grown.
Challenging training in unfamiliar environments, with added pressure created by external factors such as resource limitations, and unfamiliar task requirements, builds resilience and is what enables leaders to thrive in crisis situations. The use of innovative training solutions that embrace emerging technologies such as virtual reality, significantly enhance the training experience by exposing leaders to threats in a controlled and safe environment. By undertaking such training, leaders can be prepared to face the present and future crisis by becoming battle-ready leaders.
For more information on preparing the leaders of tomorrow, get in touch via action@identifyaction.com.
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