By the red frame: leadership lessons in what should not do
By ray ray
The story is load of production accounts. Nicca Tenders and products carried out by graceful, but may undiser from younger, quiet fallres that rare the headlines, and run inside the internship.
We will be off to study the Big Collapses: Caesar stated by himself emperor for life, nero Siddling while rome burning airless. These are drammal examples, easy gawk to the slow train jalline. But I’m not the ones I want to write about. This is not a piece from the green frame. Is of the red one – that where you register what not to do. Not the powers of power or public implosions but the thin sin of leadership. The small drafts of poison sobbly poisoning the well until it is too late to recover, and the damage is done. These errilists are less salty than news titles, but can also be just as harmful and are often more prevalent. In infect quietly daily, normalize poor behavior, and stuck in the guise of “I have always been.” The subtlety of these mistakes can be easy to miss you, so it takes the deliberate study to ensure you can avoid.
Mixed # 1: avoiding hard truths – “It’s nice, not gentle”
Have been 30 minutes but feels like three hours. And you are in your first major military conference, the week of marry, one of those ttidi erent, alms. I am a field degree of field of field, feces with construction relationship, failing to adventure cocation, and follows people to help some game technology.
While she was floted by hand, trying to hit the balance and humble, visible, you will get it but your hands need something to do.
Eventually, nature wins. Make a break for the bathroom, relieved for the break. Having finished, goes to the mirror, wash your hands, and-for 57th time with your hair. Is when you see: a piece of billoward in fondriate between your front teeth. Virtually you win.
In that moment, the pans put on. The achievement dawn:
- The difficult smiles
- The exit educated
- The wrong connections
Was that spinach here all the time? Why didn’t anyone say anything? How can you alone … let me know?
Answer: they were beautiful. Not kind.
This is the trap several rulers fall. We avoid discomfort in the politeness name. We configure protect someone’s feelings with protection of their future. But the true leadership more requirements that requires being enough to say the truth, especially when it is uncomfortable.
Give feedback is one of the most important, most important liability of leadership. Setting the goal is easy. Drive the ship-correct their course in real-time-is where the real work begins. Whether the guidance of every day or conducting of formal performance drivers, feedback is the rudder.
Some feedback leaders leaders as a flamethrower, sliding subordinate in front of their peers. Other evitates entirely clouding its silence in the patience of the monk. No approach serves the individual Oa team, but the most common sin is the last silence.
In the UltrancrentingScott yong. Iseckes three types of feedback:
- Based as a result – you have passed or failed. Tells you what happened, not because.
- Information – immediate but vague. As you see where your straight hit the table, but not as if you get better.
- CORRECTIVE – a specific, expert guide on what to improve and as. The rarest and most valuable form.
In the military, we will tend to recover a lot in the first two. Corrective feedback needs time, effort and vulnerability. But it’s the kind that build skills, confidence, and engagement. It’s an investment in your people – and in the future of the organization.
And here’s the catch: We often have more attention to our basic bases. That makes sense in a sculpted culture zero as the military, where you delete someone from a role is difficult and documentation. But in the process, our upper performers if they are ignored.
I did this mistake. I poured the time in team battles and dragged the highest. But your best performers need feedbackin particular when they could be better than you were in the same job. So how do you provide you for a proper feedback?
Here’s what I have learned:
- You say. They know that they are doing well. Say it anyway. Praise is fuel.
- Asking. Invite its feedback on your own show. It takes humility, but build trust – and reveals your blind places. I appreciate respect and trust you have placed in their word.
- Defiance. High crave growth. Give them stretch projects, more responsibility, or space to drive. Let them stumble in a controlled environment. That’s how they grow stronger. If you want to challenge it in more, push to gather peer feedback – is often the most honest type.
In his Ted 2011, Gen (R) Stanley McCerstal said, “Leaders can make you fail and still don’t allow you to be fail.” That’s the essence of good feedback. It’s not on Control – it’s on care. Is not about perfection – it’s on the development. Feedback is how we keep people from learning, aligned, and able to do more than they believe as possible.
Ery # 2: communication transferred – “The eye twitches but the tail wags”
We’ve all seen it. A big dog spoting a squirrel sprinkle a shrimp because of the window, glue, crazy crazy, kids, children have topple. The whole chaos, all because of a small twitch.
This is the images that come to mind when an older head floated an idea in a meeting. Not an order. No directive. Only a thought. But because of their position, the room reacts. Suddenly the staff if spinning slides, throw the white books, short prepping short. The “Journey” tail is to express hard – and the head is already moved, asking what is for lunch.
Don’t hurt me: the heads it should have good ideas. Were often selected for their creativity, insight, and ability to drive action. But the error is not in having the idea, but the lack of clarity as well as he is removed.
A mentor told me once, “Don’t make your opinion first ask all others.” That advice makes more important the highest you go. The most rank that you bring, the most weight your words still have when you are just thinking about loud.
If you speak first, risky closing better ideas before surface – especially from the most calmas or more junior person in the room. And if you are not clear, your offhand comment can be wrong for marking orders.
Yes there is a time for direct orders. When bullets are flying, the clarity of battle consent. But most of the leadership is going out of those moments. And in those spaces, you have Coaxnot command. I am You should talk with intention-or stay quiet long enough to let someone else goes.
In the Good for greatJim Collins describes level 5 leaders as those who create success from success – even in their absence. Great leaders build systems, not spotlight. They will deliberately develop the rooms where others can talk, and organizations that move with clarity – not chiaos. So next time your eye twitches with a bright idea, make sure the tail only the wags with deliberate intention.
EURRU # 3: Declined culture without drawing – “Be the architect, not the billboard”
All products of our environment. That’s not new. What is new is the Volume of this environment.
It’s no longer just the five people we spend the most time with. It’s our inbox e-mail, our pads depip, the advertisers spreads, and scream you more than we are utmost multiplied, and if you are pushing, whether not.
But here is the good news: If we are in my mind, we can train in return. We can be Architects of growth-personally and organization.
This principle is often lost on leaders who confuse The decided work with conceive the. I am Especially in the military, we have already seen the commander entered that turns on a bang: a modic speech, a pile of the command philosophical.
I have done myself. Is not wrong – but is often out of sequence. These documents describe a final state. Articulture What We want to be. But they do not create the Conditions to become that thing.
You can’t just say, “I want to be jewed and tan”, and wait that happens. You have to build the habit, the ancurities, access by gymnastics, and motivation. The same passes for an organization. Culture does not hurt because you put it on a poster. Emerge from daily routines, allocation of resources, decision-decision-degree, and behavior.
A folder says who we are. An architect of buildings to build that demonstrate.
Being driving a unit of special operations that claims to produce the most capable warriors of the world? So make sure your environment assume the protected time to form physically and mentally bring in recovery resources, and reflecting the standards that reflect the etos.
Is running a brand of five-star hospitality known to go to the extra mile? Then build the policies that empower employees to do alone. Give them permission to replace the lost child’s toy, to send a discharge letter without approval, to do the right things before the customer is incorrect. And don’t just do for your customers – do for your people. They deserve the same treatment because as the architect alive your values through the action not invoices.
That is architecture.
Claim to be a server head is easy. But unless daily practices support that people, give real feedback, keeping your door open, and investing in their growth.
The leadership is not declared. Is thought.
I have done each of these mistakes. I stretched silent when someone needed honest feedback, thinking that you were nice when I had to be kind. I floated a thought of stray that has cleared a full staff clamp-all because I haven’t talked to the clarity or intent. And I have been sciped on the wall on the wall on the Bricks Send it – Jox Another Billed Bildards With Me.
These are not the things I observed in others – are the lessons in the margins of my red frame, written, frustration, and more of a bit of a little self-deprecant humor. But is the work of leadership. You do not arrive clean. Build, stumble, adjust – and you are doing well, you share what you learned on the way.
So here is my question:
If you have a red notebook of your own full of lessons learned the hard way – I would like to read a page. What mistake do you form? What do you want to know before?
And if you had the unfortunate pleasure to serve with me, above me, or below me … feel free to contribute. I’m listening to.
Drop a comment. Share a story. It’s up.
The limo ramos is an US Army’s Army’s Army Officer who is currently serving as a USAREC batting command. He served in Joint’s Staff, the Army’s Operations Joint Operations, 7th Special Forces (aircraft), 72th Division of Lower. In that time, deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Central America. He has a teacher in global and international student from the University of Kansas and a bachelor of the science of the US military academia.
