Semper Fi: Business Leadership the Marine Corps Way by Dan Carrison & Rod Walsh

Author:Dan Carrison & Rod Walsh
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub

Prepare Your Subordinates for Two Jobs—Theirs and Yours

“I must prepare my “exec” for two jobs—his and mine,” says Colonel Richard J. Dallaire, a twenty-eight-year veteran. “We may go into combat, and I might get killed. Suddenly, he’s in charge.”

This grim scenario is the basis for the Marine Corps’ policy of leadership cultivation. In combat emergencies, privates to colonels can suddenly be expected to fill the shoes of their respective superiors immediately. Civilians can only imagine how unnerving that must be. The very person you depended upon to get you out of a dangerous predicament is killed or incapacitated before your eyes; suddenly your men are looking to you for the command decisions.

Fortunately, legitimate business is never a matter of life and death (if it’s become that, you really need this book). Nonetheless, there is a corporate mission to fulfill that goes beyond the individuals responsible for carrying it out. The players can change (one hopes, for less dramatic reasons than death!), and the “next in line” may find himself without the guidance of his predecessor. If the corporation does not have a policy of preparing for such contingencies, momentum can be lost at the worst possible time, such as during a major negotiation.

Managers can prepare their subordinates to take charge in a number of ways—some gentle, some not so gentle. On the more comfortable end of the spectrum, a manager can call in his “right-hand man” for advice and counsel on a business dilemma and ask, “What would you do in this situation?” A simple friendly chat like this can have training benefits out of all proportion to the casual setting. The manager gets a peek into the subordinate’s method of thinking, while the subordinate sees for himself the kinds of challenges his boss must face. The office becomes a simulation room; and the experience is accepted by the subconscious of the assistant as a “real” experience. By thinking the problem through, he is preparing himself to one day sit at his boss’s desk. For his part, the boss has a sounding board for his own ideas and may come away from the conversation with a whole new strategy.

A more shocking way for a manager to introduce his second in command to the responsibilities of the next level is to simply tell him that he must take on the next major presentation or report. This is not meant to be a way of off-loading one’s own responsibilities; it is, rather, a simulation of the sudden loss of leadership. The subordinate who must now step up to the plate will be learning some very valuable lessons. He will have to find a way to juggle more than one ball, while dealing with this new assignment in addition to his own pressing responsibilities. He must learn how to do the project suddenly thrust upon him, which is good preparation in itself. And, finally, he will develop an attitude of readiness; if a surprise like this can happen once, it can happen again. For his part, the boss can see how well his next-in-line rises to the occasion.

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