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There's something that an ex girlfriends old man told me that kind of stuck with me over the years.
Carl was a Lt.Col in the marine corp. He actually was a leader of men. At that point when I was with his daughter, he was in charge of the pacific division. Whenever her family would come visit, he had this small laptop with really crazy antennaes all over it. I wasn't allowed to touch it, lol. Turns out, every morning, he'd get a detailed list of every marine who had been Mia, Kia, arrested, hospital, injured, etc.
Anywhos, one day we were talking about drill instructors and whatnot. He explained to me that he doesn't yell at his soldiers. Doesn't raise his voice. I kind of looked at him funny because that's not my impression of the military. He explained that the officers who do, the ones that constantly yell, you learn to tune it out after awhile. It just ends up going in one ear and out the other. Desensitized.
He has raised his voice a few times over his career but because he doesn't do it for every single incident, he says that the few times he's had to pop off, heads rolled and the situations never occurred again.
He was right. I was young, thought I knew better, probably wasn't the best manager. I took what he said and applied it. Spent more time with employees instead of being irritated somebody couldn't do the job as quickly or efficiently. Spent a little extra time molding and coaching. Honesty and integrity. I build for culture fit. I build with personalities that I think will gel nicely with the current culture or that can be a value add to current culture. Not something you could've convinced me when I was younger. Not only that, every scenario, business, audience is going to be slightly different. Know your audience.
But you yourself needs to be at a certain level of self understanding before you can even fathom being in a leadership role. If you aren't developed mentally and emotionally, having a conversation about what makes a good leader is moot.
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