The Process, Art, and Science of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Confidence and Clarity in Combat, in the Boardroom, and at the Kitchen Table by Doebler Errol

Author:Doebler, Errol [Doebler, Errol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Leader 193, LLC
Published: 2020-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

9

Make Them Your Own—How to Define and Practice Guidelines for Behavior

G uidelines for Behavior are essential to any great leader, team, organization, or family. They establish what you will hold people accountable to. They move teams past the grind of industry best practices to a predictable behavioral environment that people love and will thrive in, regardless of profession or circumstance.

The work for establishing your Guidelines for Behavior comes from Elements One and Two of the leadership process: Emotional Awareness and Recognition and Cultural Awareness and Recognition. We cannot establish good behavioral guidelines if we are not first aware of what is actually happening to us and around us. Being aware of our emotions and the actions they drive, without judgement and for better or worse, will allow us to identify areas for improvement. It will allow us to establish what we will hold ourselves and the people we lead accountable to.

If you are struggling to define your behaviors, do your research. If you are reading this book you have probably read others like it that perhaps outline some leadership traits and behaviors that you like or are drawn towards. Try them out within the Guidelines for Behavior.

Remember, there are no absolutes. Guidelines for Behavior will be specific to you, the leader. They will reflect the needs of the organization and your personal behavioral compass.

Guidelines for Behavior are essential to the leadership process. However, choosing which Guidelines for Behavior are the right ones for you or your team requires some work. Welcome to the Art of Establishing Guidelines for Behavior. Some of your guidelines will remain forever because no matter how good you become at them they are the bedrock for how you do business. That’s fine! As you fine-tune guidelines you may find that some can be retired because they were simple behaviors that have become ingrained and you are ready to move on to more advanced ones.

Unfortunately, sometimes your messages will get misinterpreted. Sometimes accidently, sometimes on-purpose. Either way, the messaging is your responsibility because you delivered it. You either delivered the message with clarity or with ambiguity. If you’re not sure what I mean, ask yourself if your guideline for behavior can be interpreted any other way than how you meant it. Put yourself in the shoes of “that guy,” the lowest common denominator who is always looking for a way around things. Keep this concept in the back of your mind as we move on to some other examples of Guidelines for Behavior. We’ll come back to this.

To this day, one of the best leaders I ever encountered was my Commanding Officer at SEAL Team ONE. One of the many reasons was that he introduced me to the concept of Guidelines for Behavior. He laid out a series of short and very specific guidelines that he wanted his platoon leaders to abide by. If something went wrong, he could be counted on to bring you back to his guidelines for … guidance. They were behavioral guidelines that we were always accountable to.

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