While few environments may be tougher than a warship
or submarine, it may be striking to many that much is done using “soft”
leadership skills. For example, officers
leading small teams in constrained quarters, there’s no substitute for
cheerfulness and effective storytelling.
In fact, it’s said that naval training is predicated on the notions that
when two groups with equal resources attempt the same thing, the successful
group will be the one whose leaders better understand how to use the softer
skills to maintain effort and motivate.
Andrew St. George, writing in McKinsey Quarterly,
writes, “I believe that the same principle holds true for business”, as holds
true for the Royal Navy. St. Andrew, a
business school professor and communications advisor, wrote the Royal Navy’s
first new leadership handbook since 1963, which was based on research “of
unprecedented length and breadth.
Here are some of his findings:
Cheerfulness counts:
No one follows a pessimist and cheerfulness is a choice. It has long been understood to influence
happiness at work and therefore productivity.
There’s an old saying that every organization reflects the personality
of its leadership, and mood travels fast.
Royal Marine commanders understand particularly well that cheerfulness
is fueled by humor. Conversely, empty optimism
or false cheer can hurt morale. As one
naval captain put it, “Being able to make the uncertain certain is the secret
to leadership. You have to understand,
though, that if you are always uber-optimistic, then the effect of your optimism,
over time, is reduced.
The relevance of many of these techniques to the
corporate workplace should be obvious, particularly given a world of rapid job
rotation, team-based work, and short-term projects that may be set up in
response to sudden, unexpected challenges and require an equally fleet-footed
response.
Keep spinning ‘dits’: The Royal Navy has a highly efficient
informal internal network. Leadership
information and stories, known as dits are exchanged across it—between tiers of
management, generations, practices and social groups. Through dits, the Royal Navy’s collective
consciousness assimilates new knowledge and insights, while reinforcing
established ones. These dits are one way
the Royal Navy fosters what a business would call its culture, or
philosophy.
There’s a fine line, of course, between respecting
timeless values that can sustain an organization when times get tough and
becoming a prisoner of the past or desensitized to changes in the forces at
work on that organization. The power of
the Royal Navy is to focus on what individuals actually did in situations big
and small, thereby providing inspiration for new challenges.
According to the author, “navy life has created a
style of leadership that fosters trust, respect, and collective effort. Softer skills such as cheerfulness,
storytelling and the creations of a collective memory—all of which make
indispensable contributions to the effectiveness of ships and fleets—merit
serious reflection by business leaders, too.”
For the full article, go to: https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Organization/Strategic_Organization/Leadership_lessons_from_the_Royal_Navy_3053
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