What Does The Team Need From Me?

Good leaders are constantly adjusting their approach according to the situation. If you’re familiar with John Boyd’s OODA loop model, originally inspired by an analysis of air to air combat, Observe and Orientate, are the first 2-stages in the cycle. They are all about creating good situational awareness. In an effective planning process, the first question is always, what it the situation? Situations often share general characteristics but vary significantly in their specifics so leadership becomes even more important. What to do, can’t simply be templated on the past or read off a flow chart. Boyd’s model is built around the insight that effective action is built on an understanding of the situation. In order to decide 1^st understand.

In the German military there is a concept called Fingerspitzengefühl, it translates to mean finger-tip feeling. The idea that a leader has an acutely sensitive feeling built up through deliberate engagement and observation with what is going on around them. Those who are able to make best sense of the chaos and confusion of a battlefield make better decisions and tend to win. For leaders our situational awareness needs to encompass not just the environment but also very clearly what we are trying to achieve. What does success look like and how will we know when we get there? It must also encompass the team and all the people who you need to work with to turn ideas and planning into action.

Situational awareness = mission + environment + people.

What does the team need from me is a profoundly useful question as it constantly challenges leaders to evaluate, has the situation changed and if so what do I need to do differently to most effectively respond? Putting yourself into the place of those who will experience your leadership, being able to recognize and meet them at their point of need and having the intellectual and emotional intelligence to flex your behaviour over a wide spectrum according to the needs of the situation are the characteristics of the best leaders. Being the leader, the team and the situation needs, quote not necessarily the leader you want to be.

In turn, good team members take personal responsibility and are challenging themselves; what does the leader and my team mates need from me?

Freedom Inside Constraints

The Legendary Basketball coach John Wooden[1], would begin each new season by sitting down his new players and demonstrating to them how they were to tie the laces on their shoes. Surely unnecessary? – These athletes had been playing the game for years. Wooden’s point, was that for many things…

What Do You Notice?

‘Clarity begins with realizing what we do not notice—and don’t notice that we don’t notice’. Sir Alex Ferguson the legendary former coach of football club Manchester United was quite clear in his leadership philosophy and approach to coaching that the ability to notice what was going on, to…

What Do We Remember?

‘…a war begun for no purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, was…

Are You Listening Or Just Letting Me Speak?

‘The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place’ George Bernard Shaw We know that good communication depends in good measure on listening but we mostly spend too little time thinking about what that really means. Listening is usually passive, in the sense that it…