INTRODUCTION
Jim Wallace is a graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon.
After serving regimental duty in the 8Th/9Th Battalion, The Royal
Regiment and the Special Air Service Regiment, he returned to the
Royal Military College as Adjunct in 1977. In 1980 he was attached
to the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation as a Military
Observer in Syria and Lebonon. On Return to Australia he again served
in the Special Air Service Regiment as the Operations Research Officer
and as Commander of the then Counter Terrosrist Squadron, 1 Special
Air Service Squadron. It was for his exceptional performance of
duty at this time that he was appointed as a Member of the Order
of Australia.
Following
his graduaction from Staff College at Camberley in the UK, in 1985,
he was appointed Staff Officer to the Chief of Operations Army.
Brigadier Wallace commanded the Special Air Service Regiment from
January 1988 to December 1990. He then spent two years in the UK
as an instructor at the Britisch Army Staff College, before returning
to Australia on
promotion to Colonel. He is married and his wife, Poppy, is a General
Practitioner. They have two Daughters, one 16 years of age, the
other12 years of age. Jim has been chairman of the Military Christian
Fellowship.
What
I have learned about leadership.
Well I'm very honoured indeed to be asked to speak to you tonight.
I have to say that I feel completely unequal to the task, feeling
I could really offer nothing to anyone here about either leadership
or Christian living. Both are certainly under threat. I don't need
to tell anyone here about just how much Christianity and Christian
ethic and principle are under attack in our society today, but so
very much is leadership. Leadership and leaders are of course victims
of the increasingly cynical nature of our society. There is an automatic
assumption, particularly by media, that any holder of public office
is in it for his own good. Few leaders today are given even the
benefit of the doubt, as to their motivation.
Leadership
has also been further compromised by our strongly economic rationalist
approach to both government and commercial business. There is simply
less room for people and for concern of people. We have forgotten
that while you can manage an organisation, its people have to be
lead. That leadership is a people business. As leaders of Christian
organisations you have at first glance an even more onerous task.
The expectation placed on you, and indeed all Christians in leadership,
of example is extremely high. And yet there is almost a denial that
you have any right or authority to speak from a Christian perspective,
to influence society as other leaders would be expected to do, to
pursue Christian principle. Thankfully this potentially accurate,
but somewhat superficial view, denies the power of Christ to act
in every leadership situation in which we find ourselves. But it
still puts the onus back on you and I to be good leaders - to equip
ourselves to be used of Christ.
In
looking at what I've learned about leadership I will therefore look
first at this confused state in which we find leadership, before
talking about what I think are the most important lessons. Leadership
confused. As a soldier we have little doubt that leadership is what
we are about. We train leaders as Cpl., Sgt., WOs, Lts and so on
right up, because we realise this is our core business. And yet
even with this focus, we have more lately allowed ourselves to be
infected, and I use the term advisedly, infected by unproven contemporary
philosophies.
The
reality is that we are totally subjected to market forces in our
society. The market doesn't test something for whether it's good
or useful, but only for whether it can be sold. It's always seeking
something new, because old things don't sell so well, and so we
have willingly accepted theories that have actually confused and
even eroded leadership. It's true that some contemporary emphasis,
and it is usually emphasis rather then anything new, has strengthened
leadership.
Participative
leadership as a style stands to strengthen leadership. But when
the desire for participation is higher or stronger then the central
imperatives of leadership itself, it damages it. Vision statements
have been a great innovation in recent years. But how many have
made an iota of difference to the way an organisation is actually
managed or lead on a day to day basis. I would certainly say that
hardly any have realised the marginal benefit to the organisation
of the additional cost they were to produce. I would seriously doubt
that many organisations dynamically manage their vision statements
to reflect the constantly changing environment in which we find
ourselves today. It's not that vision isn't essential in a leader
- and I'll talk about that, but it's that we are seeing a victory
for process over purpose, of marketeering over quality in the proliferation
of leadership theory today.
What
we need badly is not to redefine leadership, but to rediscover it.
Vision.
Well what are the lessons I've learnt? The first, and I am going
to assume that you are all engaged at the strategic level of leadership,
the first, is that vision is indeed essential. But it's not new,
can we possibly deny the vision of truly great leaders in history
and its central role to their success. Alexander - a vision to conquer
the known world, achieved by the age of 25 yrs; Churchill - a vision
for victory even while in the depths of defeat after Dunkirk and
Singapore, Marshal - a vision for a peaceful, prosperous and united
Europe, when at the end of WWII many people must have seen revenge
as more appropriate and immediate a concern.
No,
vision in a leader is essential, but much more important than its
crafting, is its communication. The purpose of a vision is to give
the organisation its focus, its direction. Its crafting takes perhaps
some hours. But its communication, keeping it out there takes continuous
and total commitment. I like the example of Alexander the Great.
In battle, Alexander would form and then commit his troops and then
observe the ebb and flow of battle to decide where the main effort
should be applied. Where the already committed troops should shift
their effort and reserves be introduced. He wore plumes in his helmet
that when he had decided on the spot he went there himself, a clear
symbol to everyone of where they were to rally.
This
commitment to moving the army to where he wanted it, placing himself
tangibly out in front of them was total. A rallying point to his
troops, he equally became a target to the enemy, the cumulative
effect of wounds received eventually killing him at 27 years of
age. Now today, even in armies, communication and the greater lethality
of weapons means we can only draw on Alexander's example as an analogy,
at all but the lowest levels of leadership. But a strong analogy
it is.
It tells us that a vision has to be communicated and it takes commitment.
It means, not just producing another glossy brochure, but getting
out there and enthusing people with the vision, showing them their
part in it. And it also illustrates to us that there is a cost -
there is a personal cost.
Alexander
shows us something else about the leader's role in delivering the
vision. You see in Alexander's day a commander had no hope of addressing
his whole army before battle. Despite the popular film images, the
PA system to achieve that just didn't exist. So it was critical
that he communicated his vision for the battle to the right people
- the critical people at the critical time. He made himself visible,
gaudy armour and plumes, and communicated the vision, to the people
that mattered most in achieving it at that time.
This
is a very important lesson for leaders today, as they are under
ever increasing pressures of time. As a brigade commander of the
1st brigade in Darwin last year, I couldn't hope to communicate
my vision effectively to all of its 2,700 members. Instead I had
to concentrate on, in my case, my direct subordinates, the commanding
officers of my regiments. I put a great investment in time and effort
into those individuals to ensure they understood my vision and their
part in it. This was both as a group and one on one. Identifying
and empowering key people in achieving your organisation's vision
is essential to its effective communication. In identifying this
key group it's important to not only think hierarchically. You are
trying to identify the people or groups of people with key influence.
Not necessarily those next in the hierarchy. In my
case I also put a good deal of time into my regimental sergeant
majors - the RSMs, the people the soldiers really believe.
In
a strange way, doing this, meeting with the RSMs in a two way conversation,
also increased their profile, they were seen to be in the mind of
the "boss" in others perception and so their already substantial
influence was reinforced. Of course this is tiring - as you travel
a lot to achieve this communication, and no matter how you try to
focus your effort, you
invariably have to repeat the same message over and over again.
But it's essential, communicating the vision is much more important
than how you craft it, and the object of your communication is people.
People
and Unleashing Their Potential.
Now lets talk about these people. The object of leadership, the
whole rational for leadership - people. The successful leader in
my view accepts that in reality he is a facilitator - a facilitator
of the inherent power in the group. The reality it seems to me is
that there is very little difference between the leaders and the
lead in raw talent. In fact in many cases and particularly today,
with so much of an organisation's power reliant on information technology,
the diet of the younger generation, the balance of talent, even
knowledge, is the other way. That old adage: "get a teenager
while they still know everything" is becoming to have a ring
of truth about it.
What
the leader mainly brings is maturity and experience. So it's no
longer just advantageous to unleash this power in subordinates,
it's essential. A traditional hierarchical approach to the exercise
of leadership, an authoritarian approach that assumes knowledge
and wisdom are the preserve of the leader or leadership group these
days, will consign an organisation to the scrap heap. I had the
great fortune to command the SAS Regt, the Australian special forces
and then a mechanised brigade - the 1st Bde. In all those organisations
the potential combined talent was, as the young say these days,
awesome. But how do you unleash it?
The
first thing is to accept that you aren't the residue of all talent
- to value the talent in your subordinates. Having humility has
a real role to play here. The second is to accept that in strategic
leadership there are two essential roles. One to provide the vision
of which I've spoken, what we call the "left and right of arc",
and the second to resource and facilitate
the objectives that vision requires.
Now
unfortunately, the propensity of strategic leadership in any organisation
to fail to limit itself to these functions - the communicating of
vision and the facilitating and resourcing of its objectives, is
I believe the main reason for dysfunctional organisations. Organisations
with disgruntled team members because instead of concentrating on
this the strategic role, their superiors meddle in theirs and so
prevent them from meeting their potential.
Of course to empower subordinates does entail risk. It's not just
organisational risk and business risk, but the psychological risk
to the leader of feeling his power being challenged. I use to compare
commanding SAS to having loose rein over a chariot pulled by 500
odd horses, my job to keep them basically between the halters -
but what a ride. The sheer dynamism of any organisation with individuals
empowered, simply given left and right of arc and authority and
trust is incredible. But it requires leadership to consciously and
deliberately reject paranoia that its role is challenged and then
to stick to its strategic responsibilities. As Christians we have
a great advantage here, because we should be seeking God's glorification
through our exercise of leadership, not ours, so this shouldn't
be an issue
.
Leadership - A Spiritual Business.
The next dimension of leadership which I believe needs reviving
is acknowledgement of its essentially spiritual nature. I believe
that in this era of denial of anything remotely spiritual, that
leadership is a clear loser. We seem to have forgotten that leadership
is much more than the manipulation of management tools such as bonuses.
Leadership is an appeal to the spirit. It is asking people to go
beyond the rational, reaching through the cognitive to the emotional.
In
extreme cases of conflict or danger, no rational calculation would
cause men to be persuaded to do what we ask of them. For those of
you who saw "Saving Private Ryan", what rational calculation
would see men enter and then leave those landing craft. How many
of them would have been steaming into Omaha Beach thinking I wonder
what the army can do for me today? What's the bonus for this one?
I suggest that in the actual operation, it was an appeal by leadership
to the spirit that kept them there and even harder, kept them going
after it. I'm not suggesting this appeal to the spirit requires
a religious consciousness or results in a religious experience.
But even our idiom acknowledges the fundamental role of the spiritual
side of man in performing above himself. we certainly say in the
army that it's not the size of the dog in the
fight that matters, as much as the size of the fight in the dog.
The
spirit.
When a football team everyone has assumed will lose, knocks over
a higher ranked team, you will inevitably hear it described as a
"spirited performance". It resulted from them drawing
on something within. To understand this to me is the essence of
leadership. To comprehend that management might use artifacts to
manipulate effort, but that leadership reaches into the spirit to
generate it. It's not that this just creates a means by which leaders
can cause individuals to perform above themselves, but that this
focus on the spiritual dimension of those been lead, creates a people
focus in the leader.
The
spirit is the source of our humanity. The leader with a spiritual
focus should automatically take account of the human factor in leadership,
the need, for example, for acknowledgement and praise in those been
lead.
The essential requirement for the leader to treat subordinates and
view them, not as pawns, but as people. No leader is in my view
successful with out this capacity.
Humility.
I can't leave this subject without one final point. It is the issue
in leadership the lack of which has brought too many leaders undone
and which Christian leaders need to particularly exhibit --it is
humility. We have enough contemporary examples of this failing for
me to save on time in treating it. But I will say that for Christians
in-particular, lack of humility is unacceptable, because it denotes
someone working not in God's power, but his own. How many times
have we all given some seemingly irresolvable leadership problem
up to God, seen him miraculously resolve it, and then strutted around
taking the credit.
But as soon as we lose humility we think its actually us achieving
the results, go off in our own strength and before too long it all
comes apart. Humility is essential in Christian leadership.
Conclusion.
Well I want to thank you for inviting and listening to me. I was
the wrong person to ask "what have you learned about leadership?"
Because unfortunately I continue to learn as much by default as
commission every day, I have lots of lessons. Had you asked someone
who had this leadership business squared away, you would have suffered
a shorter talk I'm sure.
If
I am to sum up the lessons on leadership, I would say that vision
is essential, but its communication is infinitely more important
than its crafting and that takes commitment. That leadership is
essentially about unleashing the power in people and directing without
constraining it and that to fully realise the fundamental human
factor, you have first to accept that we are all spiritual beings
and it is the human spirit that true leadership seeks to reach.
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