After reading the first two
chapters of the book, I find myself anticipating future discussions much more
than I have in the past – the author of the text does a great job describing challenging ideas while also sparking my interest in the topic. I really like the way he begins each chapter
with a thought exercise to get you into the correct mindset for the chapter. In chapter 1, there were 3 relatively simple
questions to be answered regarding how leadership has changed in the recent
past. I think the 3 questions themselves
could be discussed at great length but instead I will try to summarize my
thoughts into 3 paragraphs.
His first question is if my
attitude to leaders changed in my life and if so, how. To answer the first part of the question, a
resounding yes is the answer. I think
this is largely in part to 2 key factors.
First is the fact that my life can pretty much be split into 2 different
time zones – pre-Navy and the present.
Before the Navy, my only real exposure to leadership and being a leader
came from the sports I participated in, specifically swimming. At the time, I would have followed my swim
coach to the end of the earth if he asked me to, but then again I also had a
very generic/basic understanding of what it means to be a leader. Once joining the military, I figured out that
being a leader is a daunting task in most situations and that one has to
practice in order to get good at it.
This idea of experience leads to the other reason for the change, and
the author alluded to it in one of the chapters. While having knowledge is important, it is
not the end all be all – you must couple that knowledge with the wisdom in how
to apply it. Wisdom is something that is
learned through experience – as my time in the Navy has increased, my experience and exposure
to different leaders and leadership styles has increased. Coupled with the knowledge I have gained
through training and this curriculum, I’d say I have a pretty good
understanding of what it is to be a good leader. As a result, I look back on previous leaders
in my life with an analytical eye and am often disappointed in what I
find. From the above, I think one can
extrapolate how my attitude towards leaders has changed. I look at leaders now much more
analytically. I am constantly looking
for methods to incorporate into my own style while also looking for things to
avoid and am much less likely to get caught up in group thought. Essentially, leaders nowadays have to earn my
respect and don’t necessarily get it just because of their position.
There definitely is a trend with
how leaders are viewed as one moves from the older to younger generations. Just like my own opinions outlined above, I
think that many people from the younger generation require their leaders to
earn their trust and respect whereas in the past the position was all that was
needed. While not necessarily a
completely oligarchic stance, I think that older generations were much more
willing to just accept the powers that be in order to make their lives
easier.
The reason for this change is
pretty simple in my opinion: they had less access to information, and information
is power. The book Freakonomics is just
as much a study on how important it is to have information dominance
as it is a study on how fun and bizarre statistics can make the world out to be. Older generations essentially had the
newspaper and the library to figure out what was going on in the world whereas
today there is almost unlimited information at your fingertips when you have a
smart phone with internet access. While
all this information can be overwhelming (as discussed in chapter 2 and any
class on tactical decision making), it prevents leaders from pulling the blinds
up and over people’s eyes. As a result,
when a leader messes up, the people see it and want to hold them accountable. To further prove the point that access to
information is what is driving this process, one only needs to look to a regime
that has been in the news lately. North
Korea is a totalitarian state ruled by a single guy with all the power. The people below him are kept in absolute
darkness or artificial light created by Kim Jong Un in order to make him
appear omnipotent. People there accept
him as the leader because they have no reason to believe he isn’t the greatest
thing since sliced bread. There is no
access to the internet and the only news they get is from the state run
media. The people have no information and thus no power. Move one country north to
China. While still a communist state
with a ruling select few, the internet explosion and the growing availability of
it within China is causing a deregulation of the state and an increase in the power of the people. As information awareness increases, the
ability of the people in power to remain so just because of their position
rapidly decreases. So, the reason why the attitude
towards leaders in the younger generation has changed from what it used to be is
because the leaders no longer have a monopoly on the information.
With respect to the leadership gap,
I would argue that the gap has always been there, it just was not as apparent
due to the lack of information flow. In
the past, bad leaders could cover up their ways so that it wouldn’t filter down
to the masses. In present times, a
leader might not even know he has messed up before the internet gets ahold of
him. The presence of information has
only highlighted the gap that was always there.
In order to close the gap, I think people need to figure out what type
of person they want as a leader and then get that person into the
position. If you want to be part of an
ethical business that pushes to do things right while also making a profit,
going out and getting someone who has made a career stabbing people in the back
might not be a good fit. Additionally, I
think that leaders need to recognize that their ultimate purpose is to create a
vision, build a staff that will execute that vision, and then stand back and
watch the process work. As structured as
the military is, we still have a process like that with the CO making the
policy for the XO to execute.
Additionally, leaders must have trust in their subordinates – the days
of the leader being the expert at everything has closed!
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