Shock Creates Team Leaders

Education

No matter how brilliant a commander may be, a unit will not survive on the battlefield if that commander cannot bring out the strength of the team.

“Many young people who aspire to become officers have a misguided sense of elitism. A military academy is a place where they are given a shock and taught the habits they need to become leaders,” says James Cameron.

Companies that can give talented individuals such a shock and develop them into team leaders are strong.

James Cameron, CBE: Former officer in the British Army, who was twice chosen to be Chief of Staff Executive Officer to the British Army's most senior generals, the youngest instructor at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and served as Assistant Director Counter Terrorism in the Ministry of Defense. He was also a member of the British Government strategic crisis management committee (COBRA) during the terrorist attacks on London in 2005.

Deep Dive

The young people who enter military academies such as Sandhurst and West Point are among the very best of their generation—in intellect, physical ability, and, in many cases, even appearance. They are an elite group who have already survived fierce competition: roughly twenty applicants for every place at entry, followed by an attrition rate of around 20 percent before graduation.

James says:

“Many of them arrive with a misguided sense of elitism.”

Of course, they enter knowing that after graduation they may well be sent as commanders to some of the fiercest conflict zones in places such as the Middle East. There is nothing false about their determination to “risk their lives fighting for their country.”

But precisely because they have always been outstanding, James says many of them also carry a degree of overconfidence and self-interest:

“I have always been number one, and I always will be.”

They do not yet believe in the power of the team.

Correcting that mindset is one of the purposes of military academy training.

They are taught that:

“If even one person fails to cooperate, the whole team can fail spectacularly.”

For example, there is an exercise in which participants are divided into two teams and must get over a high wall to reach the other side. Only after crossing the wall are they told that the two teams will then face each other in a combat exercise.

A team that allows only its strongest members to get over the wall ends up with too few people on the other side—and is badly defeated.

Through exercises like this, they learn a painful lesson:

“Proving that you are exceptional is of no use whatsoever on the battlefield.”

By repeating such exercises, they develop the habit of asking:

“How can I bring out the best in everyone so that we can win?”

Training based on similar principles has also been applied to the development of astronauts at NASA and JAXA. Many Japanese readers may find it easier to picture this if they have read the manga Space Brothers.

The idea is to let people learn the right habits of a team leader through painful failure—and then experience for themselves how those right habits lead to success.

After graduating from university, I joined a U.S.-based consulting firm. It was full of exceptionally capable people who had graduated from top universities and often had experience studying abroad.

I panicked.

“Someone like me, who has little more than physical stamina, no real business common sense, and poor English, has no chance of competing with these people.”

So I somehow managed to survive by being worked relentlessly—or, to put it more positively, by becoming highly valued—as the person who analyzed enormous amounts of data.

In other words, I survived by “proving that I was exceptional.”

When I later moved to the marketing department of a U.S.-based consumer goods company, I was still obsessed with the same idea:

“I have to acquire business skills somehow, prove that I am better than my internal competitors, and survive in the world of multinational companies.”

It was almost exactly the same mentality I had had when practicing martial arts as a student.

My first competitors were my colleagues, who were professional marketers.

“I may not beat them at marketing yet, but when it comes to negotiating with factories and logistics teams through sheer determination and persistence, I won’t lose.”

I threw myself into the work, and little by little I began to be given bigger assignments.

My next competitor was my boss.

I could not beat him in English or business skills, so I sold myself to senior management by saying, in effect:

“My boss keeps changing companies, but when it comes to loyalty to this company, I won’t lose.”

Eventually, I won the role of leading a global project, leapfrogging my own boss.

My next competitor was T, the first person who ever reported to me.

He had also come from a consulting background, just as I had.

“Marketing is different from consulting. You’re ten years too early to be doing the same work as me.”

I gave him nothing but minor tasks and criticized almost everything he did.

I was even trying to “prove that I was exceptional” to my own subordinate.

Just remembering it makes me break out in a cold sweat.

I was a pretty awful businessperson. But after fighting for several years—or rather, after working hard for several years—I gradually gained recognition from senior management thanks to things such as:

・a fortunate hit with one of the products I was responsible for;

・a network with our Chinese factory and U.S. headquarters built through sheer persistence; and

・support from advertising agencies that were effectively acting as our subcontractors.

Eventually, I was given the opportunity to move to the U.S. headquarters.

And even there, without having learned my lesson, I continued to survive by “proving that I was exceptional.”

The real shock came when I moved to my next company as its president.

“This is a new industry for me, and there is so much I don’t know. If I make management decisions on my own, I will make mistakes.”

“I hardly know any of the employees. If I promote people simply because I happen to get along well with them, I will make the wrong choices.”

If you keep making the wrong management decisions and the wrong personnel decisions, you do not get results.

And, of course, shareholders care about results. They are not interested in excuses such as, “I didn’t know enough about the industry,” or, “I didn’t know the employees well enough.”

Only then did I finally realize that what mattered was not “proving that I was exceptional,” but “proving that the company could deliver results.”

I began struggling with questions such as:

“How can I get our employees to perform at their best?”

“How can I get the executives to bring out the best in our employees?”

“And before that, how can I bring out the best in the executives themselves?”

It was while I was wrestling with these questions that I met Damian and James.

Under their guidance, I took part in a military academy-style High Performing Team (HPT) exercise together with the executive team that reported to me.

What I discovered was painful:

・I did not listen to my subordinates.

・I had a habit of making decisions by myself.

・And as a result, most of our failures during the team exercises were caused by my own words and actions.

The realization hit me so hard that my heart was pounding.

Needless to say, from that point on I threw myself into learning ASPIRE®.

It had taken me twenty years to arrive at the kind of leadership that officer cadets are trained to develop in two.

“I wish I had understood the power of a team much earlier.”

That regret became the starting point for why I now work to spread Mission Leadership®.

 

Damian McKinney, MBE: Former Royal Marines Commando, who founded McKinney Rogers in 1999. Born in Republic of Kenya.

Jed Stone: During 25 years in the British Royal Marines, Jed spent six years at Joint Services Mountaineering centres and three years at the Royal Naval School of Leadership and Management Training. Former world record holder in Zip Wire.