Leading on the front lines

Friends,

My daughter Kate announced a couple years ago that Alexander the Great was the one general that she would have wanted to fight for. “Why?” I asked. She replied, “He was the one I’ve read about who actually fought next to his soldiers and never asked them to do anything he wouldn’t. It made him a better general because he knew what he was talking about and he knew the danger his soldiers faced.”

Reading for Leading is less an attempt to teach fancy new stuff than to remind you and me of the core practices of leadership. And to recognize that often really innocent forces - within us and without - knock us off track from practicing these basics. Such forces make it hard to be Alexander-like. When you have some authority in an army, a bureaucracy, or a corporate structure, you’re pulled away from the front lines. By your own thoughts: “I’m too busy.” “My time’s too expensive to be digging, greeting customers or cleaning up after a board meeting.”

Sometimes folks at mid-levels in the organization really don’t want the brass on the front lines. Consciously or otherwise, they’d rather you not hear things directly. Or, they don’t want it to look like they haven’t planned perfectly. I imagine that’s what staff thought when Roger Penske, chair of the Superbowl XL Host Committee grabbed a shovel, to pitch in when Detroit’s Winterblast preview was treated to a blizzard the night before kickoff. It would have been easy for him to stop, with folks saying, “Here Roger, give me that shovel. You shouldn’t be doing that.” But you can bet the volunteers and hourly workers appreciated his persistent humility and attention to the task at hand.

This past Friday, Colonel Tadarial Sturdivant was feted as he retired from his post as the 15th director of the Michigan State Police. I was most taken by the speech given by Mike Moorman who represented the Troopers Association, the frontline, non-officer corps of the MSP. Trooper Moorman said that Tad Sturdivant was “a trooper’s colonel.” He went on to describe how when the MSP was dispatched to quell the disturbance in Benton Harbor in 2003, Colonel Sturdivant was on the street with the troops, not back in an office in Lansing. And when a Michigan unit was dispatched to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Colonel Sturdivant served right alongside the troopers. That, he said, is a trooper’s colonel.

If it’s been a while since you’ve hit the front lines, you might look for a chance to get back there this week. Question the thoughts and the words that keep you from getting there, a vital place to -

Lead with your best self,

Dan