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CHAPTER 1
Why Community Leadership Is Important
"We can't all be heroes, because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Throughout history, men and women have changed the world through their strength of will and courage of conviction. Such extraordinary people find something within themselves to change the way things are. They are able to inspire others to follow them, despite the odds. In the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. are inscribed the following words penned by Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ... endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights."
While we can marvel at the vision of a Walt Disney or a Henry Ford, who created new ways of entertainment and transportation, there have been only a handful of people in history who have had the audacity to declare a new state of human rights. Prior to the words written in the American Declaration, people did not have rights. Kings had rights. There was no special privilege to just being human. It was an extraordinary act of courage to declare such a new reality. It inspired men and women to action and ultimately to the action of war. People voluntarily gave their lives because they yearned for freedom of expression, found it, and declined forever to forfeit it.
The feeling of passion evoked by the Jefferson Memorial represents a standard of leadership. True leaders, through the integrity of their values, communication, and action, have been able to inspire others to act differently. They accomplish this, not by forcing them to act differently, but by creating a clear glass for them to see themselves, their deepest desires and finest motivations, and act accordingly.
Goals
Every organization and team is organized to provide certain services and has responsibilities outlined in their charters, protocols, or statements of purpose. Team goals are important. When team members work together and share ideas and responsibilities, they can accomplish much more than a group of individuals each working alone. Keeping everyone working toward the team goals may require close attention and occasional redirection in order to maintain the team's purpose and focus, and to accomplish their mission. It may be necessary to occasionally remind members of the team's purpose. It is easy to get sidetracked or lose sight of the goals. A good leader provides encouragement and motivation by showing appreciation for good ideas and extra effort. Mediating differences and disagreements between team members by stressing compromise and cooperation helps keep people on track and goal-oriented. Involving team members in discussions and decisions allows everyone the opportunity for input. However, there are times, as the team leader, when you must make the decisions by yourself.
Getting to Know People
People have different abilities, needs, desires or wants, and purposes in life. In order to get results and get along with others, you must find out what makes them tick. There are a number of ways to accomplish this. They all involve meeting and getting to know others in order to work effectively.
1. Interact with other team members as often as possible. Usually the best way to get to know others is through direct personal contact. Take note of each person's unique qualities and characteristics.
2. Treat others as individuals. Use your knowledge and understanding of each team member.
3. Be aware of expectations. Each team member deserves individual treatment. Everyone expects something different. Some expect recognition. Others expect an opportunity to learn, a chance to work with others, etc.
4. Provide reinforcement or rewards for performance. A pat on the back is always a source of personal satisfaction and is a positive reinforcement for a job well done.
5. Delegate responsibilities. Team members should share in the work to be done. That way, everyone can also share the pride in the accomplishment of the team. In this regard, it is also very important that each team member know what is expected of him/her, what resources are available, what deadlines need to be met, etc. It is important that delegated team members accept responsibility for getting things done. This is an aspect of leadership in which everyone can and should excel.
As a leader, you should become actively involved. You are not able to do the job all alone. However, you can help get the job done better and faster by:
1. Taking the initiative. Do not stand around and wait for someone else to get things started. Roll up your sleeves and dig in.
2. Seeking help and information. If you need advice, don't hesitate to ask for it. This encourages group involvement and helps accomplish group goals.
3. Offering information and help. It may be that your particular skills and knowledge are exactly what is needed.
4. Knowing when and how to say NO. When your time and/or resources are already committed, it is OK to turn down extra tasks. However, it is important to do this tactfully and politely.
5. Making things happen. Be decisive, energetic, and enthusiastic. By doing so, you increase the probability of getting things accomplished.
Leadership Values
Leaders are responsible for making sure they have the right rules (i.e., those policies that reflect their values) and that they carry them out themselves. If responding is a value, then they can't be sitting behind their desks in times of crisis. They need to be active, on their phones, in the community or involved together with others who also devote their lives to this value. It will be critical that our community leaders and other prominent citizens be actively involved as leaders, for example, in working with our Veterans as they return home. Our returning Veterans also will be prime candidates as leaders in our communities and in business and industry. These men and women already have training in various skills and abilities. They are also well trained in leadership skills through training and experience. As such, they already have much of what we need in these ways in our communities and other areas. They have the opportunity to rival many of the accomplishments of "The Greatest Generation" that returned from World War II and built our country into a well-respected one in industry, business and world power in a very positive way.
We all want to believe in an ideal. While no leader is flawless, the good ones take on the task of trying to live up to the ideal. In our age of speed and change when nothing seems stable, a leader's role is even more important. After more than two decades of writing about the qualities of leadership, Bennis (1999) believes it comes down to "... in tomorrow's world, exemplary leaders will be distinguished by their mastery of the softer side — people skills, taste, judgment, and, above all, character." (p.19).
Everyone wants to work with people of impeccable character. Just as one's own character determines one's personal ability to generate trust, so it is for the organization or community as a whole. An entire organization built on the strength of character as its foundation would be a compelling place to work. Such an organization requires focus on three aspects: responsibility, integrity, and generosity of spirit.
Responsibility
Many organizations, like many individuals, have public values. Being responsible for them means interpreting them as spirit rather than law. That way, the values become a positive guide rather than a hindrance to be avoided. To see values in this way is seeing them not as policy, but rather as a body of ethics that created policy in the first place. Politicians are often heard saying things such as "We play by the rules, and we all know that we need to change the rules." An admission such as this suggests that the body of ethics that guides behavior, the character of the individual, is subservient to the rules. It further suggests that we interpret the rules to avoid our own responsibility rather than applying them as positive guides for our action. Such an approach is unconscionable. It will inevitably ring hollow and will not inspire any measure of loyalty or commitment from your people. Responsibility doesn't mean never changing. However, if change is proposed, it should be consistent with one's fundamental beliefs. One should be "able to respond" to what is needed without altering the basis of who one is as a person and organization.
Integrity
The second aspect of character is integrity — actually doing what one says one will do. It is the follow-through to being responsible.
Generosity of Spirit
The final aspect of character is generosity of spirit, which has two dimensions. The first is being able to maintain a perspective beyond what obviously serves one as an individual — or even beyond what obviously serves one's organization. The second is a graciousness of attitude about one another. Developing a broad perspective results in caring for all stakeholders, including the greater community.
The second dimension of spirit, graciousness of attitude, is critical because it manifests itself daily, minute by minute. Situations may seem ambiguous in a world moving as fast as ours. It is important to provide the context of change as a way of mitigating the ambiguity. However, providing context is not always possible. Many times, we need to accept each other on faith. Graciousness may sound soft. However, it speaks to the heart of teamwork and support for one another, even as one discusses, disagrees and makes tough decisions. One may want to foster the ability to presume the best about fellow workers, clients, and others. Graciousness means that one willingly places trust in others, generates good will, belief, and faith in what is good, rather than focusing on failure or threats to one's own existence.
Conclusions
With every decision one makes, one risks an unknowable result. Regardless of how fine the analysis, the future will stubbornly remain unknown. What is not obvious is that the chasm between what one knows and what one can't know has to be bridged by an act of faith, and any act of faith will attract naysayers who demand more evidence. Such cynicism erodes relationships and freezes action. When character is developed, decisions are based on the assumption that people will respond positively when they are trusted, supported, and cared for.
In our current society of electronic everything, it would be easy to think that leadership is about information sharing or moving more quickly than some other person in one's field. However, precisely because the world is electronic, a leader's job has shifted to one of personal, values-based communication and action. It is easy to get caught up in the tactical day-to-day operation of the organization. It is easy to move from graciousness to selfishness. Responsibility demands that one spends a lot of time considering what one stands for, acting in a way consistent with the answer, and then making sure that the principles of behavior are reflected in one's organization.
It is difficult for leaders to be so visible and be held to a higher standard than the rest of the workforce. However, it is also a privilege and an incredible opportunity. Knowing what to do and constantly looking for ways to improve is challenging, rewarding, and provides an atmosphere where everyone wants to contribute — and usually does. Our returning veterans have been trained in these values, exposed to adversity, and are prime candidates for leadership positions in our communities. Together with the current leaders in our communities, our veterans can and will live up to their legacies and have the potential for being the Next Great Generation.
CHAPTER 2
Brief Background and Review
"I have never accepted what many people have kindly said — namely that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it."
Winston Churchill, on his 80th birthday, address to Parliament 11/30/54
What is Morale?
Manning (1991) defines morale as a function of cohesion and esprit de corps. There is a distinct national character for each nation. It affects the ways in which an army fights and can affect the outcomes of battles. Knowledge of the enemy's national character can help commanders and planners determine the outcome of any given battle (Labuc, Stasiu, 1991). Stewart (1991) examined the cohesion, morale, motivation, and unit performance of both sides in the Falklands conflict. Based on face-to-face interviews with British and Argentine officers, NCOs (noncommissioned officers), and enlisted personnel, she explains the successes and failures of land forces during the 1982 campaign. She shows clearly that cohesion is indeed a "force multiplier" and in many instances determines small units' ability to stand and fight.
History
Seidule (1997) examined the morale of the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I to determine its competence. When examining morale, military psychologists cite the importance of three factors: cohesion, esprit de corps, and biological and psychological needs such as health, rest, and nutrition. Morale, however, has more to it than the battlefield determinants, particularly in World War I. Societal values also played a key role. Officers and soldiers came into the army with idealistic and romantic expectations of war and service. Those expectations were particularly strong because the army used conscription without sufficient training to overcome pre-war perceptions. The morale of the AEF was poor. Poor morale served as both an indicator of inferior battlefield performance and a factor in the Americans' tactical problems. The sorry state of the AEF in November, 1918 would probably have precluded it from continuing to fight into Germany in 1919. Studying morale provides an evaluation of an army at the tactical level by assessing more than just tactics. In the case of the AEF, poor morale was a cause and a symptom of tactical ineffectiveness (Seidule, 1997).
Keene (1994) reviewed the broad agenda pioneering military psychologists during World War I set for themselves in studying problems relating to the psychology of the soldier. Psychologists in the newly created Morale Division, for example, initiated rudimentary studies on issues that would become staples of 20th-century military psychology. These included the adjustment of recruits to Army life, the effectiveness of Army propaganda in changing attitudes, the reasons soldiers' desert, and the impact of military service on civilian soldiers. By encouraging military policymakers to consider the importance of soldier psychology in a mass army, the Morale Division introduced a new and somewhat controversial perspective into the organization. Consequently, plans to develop soldier morale were integral to the interwar mobilization plans prepared by the Army War College, considerations notably absent in 1917.
From the outset of World War II, Canadians wanted to avoid the horrors encountered on the western front in 1914-18. The most significant was "shell shock". Most medical personnel preferred not to assign to combat those who showed neurotic symptoms during training, but this approach was challenged by the Canadian Psychological Association and by the new Personnel Selection Directorate established in 1941 (Copp & McAndrew, 1990). Personnel Selection claimed to be able to distinguish, before training, between those suited and those unsuited to combat duty. When Canadian troops went into battle in Italy, however, the preparatory work seemed to have had little impact. Canadian losses due to "battle exhaustion" were no less than those of other allied forces. Front-line treatment allowed about half of those affected to return to their units. Eventually, however, a very large number of soldiers were assigned to non-combat roles because it was judged they could no longer function effectively in battle. Copp and McAndrew (1990) are critical of military commanders who thought strict discipline coupled with high morale from good training and success in battle would keep battle exhaustion in check, and of officers in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps who tried to impose theoretical solutions that did not fit the circumstances. The authors suggest that some doctors, using energy and common sense, contributed to the evolution of contemporary psychiatric ideas about the realities of large-scale psychological casualties.
Suicide can sometimes be the result of lowered morale, but also may be a result of training and expectations. Suzuki (1991) discusses two facets of an American program to prevent suicide among the Japanese during WWII. One was a research component in the foreign Morale Analysis Division (FMAD), a subunit of the Office of War Information. The principal FMAD researcher on Japanese suicide and ways to prevent suicide among the Japanese military was the anthropologist R. Benedict, assisted by a Japanese-American aide, R. Hashima. The second facet was the suicide prevention program itself, put into effect toward the end of the war in the battles of Saipan and Okinawa. American GIs used Allied propaganda in an attempt to alter the professed no-surrender policy of Japanese military leaders.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Crisis in the American Heartland — Coming Home: Challenges of Returning Veterans (Volume 2)"
by .
Copyright © 2013 George W. Doherty.
Excerpted by permission of Loving Healing Press, Inc..
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