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Telling people what you want them to do is important. Telling them why you want them to do it is essential. I find many leaders miss this when crafting and delivering their intent to others. “Jack, I’d like you to install cameras in the warehouse entrance and loading dock.” Jack, the dutiful employee will indeed take on this task but if he fails to understand why, he may not meet your intent.

I was an aide to a U.S. Army General years ago. We traveled quite a bit meeting with other Army senior leaders and visiting soldiers. At one particular base we frequented, there was an older man, Mr. Wallace who worked the front desk at the military guest house. I never knew his first name. He had a plastic gold plate at the counter with, “Mr. Wallace” engraved on it. He was there in the quiet, late evening darkness every time we arrived.

Talk is cheap. “I’m on it!” “Got it boss!” ‘Thumbs up’ emoji. How often have you heard or seen these things but not the follow up? Daily, in organizations, people – leaders and subordinates alike spout these phrases or send symbols which indicate they will act on what is being asked of them. Not all of them follow up. Phrases and symbols such as these are easy to say or send. Give the boss a thumbs up but forget or ignore what you’ve been asked to do, and you may get away with it.

My first experience with a hurricane was the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2005. I was a U.S. Army Major serving in the famed 82nd Airborne Division and part of a response force to rescue people, restore order, and assist in recovery. I’ll never forget entering the city for the first time, days after the storm in a military vehicle near midnight. New Orleans, a city of nearly 500,000 people with skyscrapers, parking decks, and a giant football stadium was eerily lifeless - dark and vacant. Sunrise the following morning would expose a city landscape of despair and destruction. I was humbled by the power of nature and saddened by the loss of life.

I’m thinking of everyone affected by Hurricane Helene as I type this. This storm really packed a punch, and its full effects are yet to be felt as the storm travels inland. Times like this call for leadership. For a comprehensive collection of my thoughts and experience with crises, pick up a copy of my book, “Left and Right of the Boom. The Art of Leadership, Before During and After Crisis.” When crisis visits us, whether before it, during it, or after it, people look upward toward leadership. Whether it is the local and federal government, or the boss at work, times like this call for leadership. Here are my thoughts as I watch Helene do her thing.

Super Bowl coming up for your team? A company version of a Super Bowl can come in many forms. Sometimes it’s a large project with a deadline and an unveiling which demands the focus and effort of the entire team. Or it can be a time of the year such as the Annual or Open Enrollment Period (AEP or OEP) where consumers can sign up or make changes to medical coverage. These periods represent significant revenue for many organizations – where they strengthen and or expand their offerings and achieve substantial revenue growth which allows them to survive and thrive in an ever competitive market.

The more time I spend helping organizations and coaching leaders the greater the alarm bells ring signaling the epidemic of poor leadership we have in organizations today. Look no further than Gallup’s global research and reporting on employee disengagement for proof. And all arrows point to poor leadership as the cause. This is not at all the fault of those who lead in the contemporary organization. Indeed, there are bad apples, but most leaders struggle to lead because of a complete void of leadership training and education all through one’s public and private education experience. My training came from the U.S. Army. I did have a good upbringing with a fairly normal childhood with a father who set a good example, but the Army gets most of the credit for my leadership tutelage. From day one, I was a leader in training and from that day forward the Army provided daily leadership opportunities for me. It allowed me to lead, fail, and try again. Countless mentors showed me leadership – both good and bad. I’m a leader, therefore I lead.

The chain of command is a military term which translates to direct report in a private business. “Direct" or "Command" being the operative words, it is the direct reporting and responsibility (command) between two individuals – leader and led. We used chain of command in the military to establish crystal clear lines of authority and communication. Ambiguity surrounding who had authority and where orders came from was taboo in the military – get it wrong and mission failure and human life were at stake. I’ve carried this into my small businesses, and I preach it in my leadership practice. Who works for who and who orders what? Achieve clarity here. People want that.

If hard conversations were easy, they would call them easy conversations. Duh! Is there such a thing as easy conversations? Are there conversations at all anymore? Have we all moved to texts, emails, and office chat applications? Some days I wonder. I’m not on a rant here. I too value the ease of modern technology. I was pleasantly surprised and advantaged when applications such as Microsoft Teams and Slack appeared. But I’m old enough and wise enough to know the downsides. I’ve done a ton of coaching on communication. I’ve developed a course on it. In the course I ask participants where certain messages belong – especially ones which would qualify as hard.

Today’s hot potato – politics. It is a topic to avoid, especially in the workplace yet that is impossible with overabundance of media which forces its way into our consciousness day and night. The mere mention of a candidate’s name, a political party, or policy and the tension and negative emotions spike. Some people may shut down or attempt to shut others down. I remember the days when political discourse was spirited yet cordial, not infuriating as it is today. I hope that we can return to those days again but for now, especially in the workplace, leaders must manage the hot potato.

In any organization the leader at the top – the commander or the CEO, is the one who gets all the focus and attention. That’s not unusual. They are the face of their organization. They carry all the risk and responsibility. If the proverbial ship sinks, down they go with it. Their shipmates can swim away to other opportunities. But what about the leaders below the leader? Who are these people and what function do they or should they perform?

When crisis arrives, as it surely will, leaders and their organizations must stand on firm ground to weather the storm. A leader must take steps to display some “Battlefield Patience” when the going gets tough. We used this term in the Army to describe the characteristic of the leader in the group who seemed unaffected by the crisis — who was able to think and lead calmly, allowing others around them some latitude to express their emotions while they remained resolute and calm. Battlefield patience meant not acting injudiciously. It referred to the leader’s ability, in the heat of a crisis, to apply tolerance and restraint — to act intelligently, informed, and deliberate even in the span of seconds. Indeed, it took practice to master this crisis-leader trait of battlefield patience, and it could only work if the leader invested time building a competent and confident team.

I’m known as a caring, attentive, and patient leader. I do my best to get to know someone and then I provide those things I know they are looking for in a leader-led relationship and in a work environment – fulfillment, autonomy, praise and recognition, safety, discipline, and growth. This my “List of Six,” from my first book, “It’s Personal, Not Personnel.” I know I’m leading well by the feedback I get from my people. Indeed, I don’t always get it right and I’m always growing as a leader. My organizations and my small businesses, moreover, my people generally perform well under this style of leadership. But we and they have their moments.

You just delegated a task you could do yourself to Sharon. Now what? Let’s talk about delegation for a moment before I address that question. Irish playwright and political activist, George Bernard Shaw shared about communication, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” The same holds true for delegation. Has it taken place? How do you know? Delegation is not easy, and because it is not, many leaders either fail to do it at all or get it wrong. Even after over three decades of leading, I struggle with delegation. Leaders fail to delegate for three main reasons.

On August 14th, 2002, President George W. Bush declared August 16th National Airborne Day to honor the legacy of military parachute operations and paratroopers. In the years before World War II, the U.S. Army experimented with several new battlefield technologies such as advancing the utility and lethality of aircraft (Army Air Corps before the U.S. Air Force) and the insertion of soldiers via parachute to name a few.

Here for you, the Rob Campbell Leadership Blog subscriber is a small piece of my recent book, “Left and Right of the Boom. The Art of Leadership – Before, During, and After Crisis.” You’ll find this part of the book in Chapter 3, “The Crisis Ready Foundation.” Here I get left of the boom where leaders form and foster a strong foundation upon which their organization and its people can stand – one which will endure when crisis comes as it surely will. In the book I offer, “The 5 C’s of Crisis Leadership. They are, Calm, Communication, Courage, Confidence, and Creativity. None of them were chosen by accident. Together they capture the true essence of leadership under crisis. Here is Creativity.

Oscar, a retired military veteran runs a trucking company. He has a small fleet of vehicles and seven drivers. Business is good and he has ideas for expansion, yet he finds himself anchored to the business running the day to day, unable to break free, strategize and network in his area to expand his offerings and grow. Time for an office manager! Last Tuesday he mentioned this to one of his drivers who knew of someone. Tracy, a veteran herself and a single mom was looking for work. Oscar, excited about hiring a veteran and eager to break free of running the business asked to be connected with Tracy. A group text message followed, and Oscar arranged to meet Tracy the following Monday.

I was at a conference recently listening to a series of keynote speakers speak on a variety of topics. As a professional speaker myself, I’m always attentive to the delivery, voice inflections, pauses, and other mannerisms and techniques of other speakers. I wasn’t impressed with the speakers at this conference. There was one who knocked it out of the park, but the others missed the mark. I don’t like to be critical – I’m sure I’ve disappointed many an audience member. I critique usually to myself and log my criticisms as lessons to improve my own speaking.

“You can never pay a soldier enough for what they do…,” I heard the U.S. Army Chief of Staff state years ago when I was a young Army officer. Military pay is known for being below what employees in the private sector make. Each year, the Army would distribute a document which did a comparison between military and private sector compensation. I never understood the purpose of the comparison. I always viewed it with a sense of, “so what…” It was known we were paid less for what we did and the awesome responsibility we carried. Pay was never a conversation in the military. Uncle Sam was in charge, and he didn’t have an open door policy. In my small businesses, pay is among the first considerations when hiring and retaining employees. I’ve always wanted to pay my people more. Pay is an emotional topic. Pay usually finds itself in the ‘hard conversation’ family. Here are my leadership thoughts on the conversation – from both sides of the table.