An excuse to post
I'd love to tell you about my work, but there's a limit to my ability to talk about that in a public place (and a friends-locked post only affords so much protection). When I quit the Chinese Medicine course, it was because (among many other reasons) I realised that there are very few people in the world who can teach me more about healing minds than I've already been taught, and that most of my learning was going to come from doing. Did I really want to spend years getting a piece of paper, or did I want to just get out there and do it?
And I realised that workplaces are where a lot of mental health injuries occur, and where a lot of opportunities for helping people are. Because if you spend a full working day around someone, you're going to have an impact on their mental health. And while I don't mind programming, the thing I really enjoy is being in the company of programmers.
So, a year and a half ago, I found myself appointed an IT manager, not my first supervisory appointment, but the first time where I'm reporting directly to a company director. It's been a hell of a ride, and in the last few weeks, a whole bunch of things have come together, and I'm really proud of what I've achieved.
And I can't tell you about it. Because the things that matter, the things that I'm really proud of, have to do with the mental health of people that aren't me. And it has to do with the mental and social health of a company. When my mind split open, and I could no longer pretend to myself that I was one person, I was well motivated to learn about teamwork, and I did so. It seems Musashi was right - if you can learn to defeat one person, you can learn to defeat two, which means you can learn to defeat five, which means you can learn to defeat ten. I've learned to forge partnerships, then teams, then coalitions.
Which is a long-winded introduction to what prompted me to talk, which is this story of an officer cadet who is proud of her squad. I found out about it from FPB's observations on leadership, and his comment that "This young woman seems to have what it takes to get people to risk their lives in your name." The only mistake that he makes is that he attributes it to a mysterious gift that can not be understood, as opposed to something that can in fact be understood, studied, learned, and taught. Allow me to demonstrate this by explaining what she did, and how you can do it too!
Firstly, let's look at FPB's rather instructively-chosen example of how to get it wrong. That's right, treating your soldiers with contempt will lead to them finding out that you don't like them, and at the end of the day, they won't like you. If they don't like you, their willingness to get themselves killed because they think it's what you want is diminished.
Kate describes her squad as "fantastic", and she does it in a sincere way. She also intends to supply them with food - giving food to people is a very effective way of getting them to look favourably at you. But there's more to it than that, she's actually tapping into a much greater need, one that's rarely fulfilled:
My team. Which had abandoned its squad leader because they saw me running around. That was a very wicked, tactically unsound thing of them to do, and it means that I failed to tell Hill that he was in charge, and that the SL lost command and control of his element...I also know that they would have run after any other junior they were used to.
But even considering all that and knowing that it is basically just a game, I can't help but thrill at the fact that my people followed me into "battle" because it was me and not someone else.
This is the key to understanding Kate's leadership. Everything you need to know is in those paragraphs. Let's start with the obvious, and proceed to the obscure:
She's really pleased by the fact that her squad demonstrated loyalty to her. This is actually extremely important, and it lays the foundation for everything else. If she's picking up on evidence that she's leading effectively and she feels happy when she gets that evidence, then she's going to learn leadership faster. Celebrating wins is vitally important for learning in any field of endeavour, and here she is, winning and celebrating.
She's disappointed in them for a failure of discipline, even though that breach of discipline had no immediate negative consequences. Coming to her rescue was tactically unsound (and, if you read the full post, she didn't actually need rescuing). One imagines that she's going to tell them that they really shouldn't have done it.
She's pleased with them for their loyalty, in the same breath as she's disappointed about the discipline issue. Similarly, even though she's really pleased with herself for winning their loyalty, she's disappointed with herself for giving unclear orders. This capacity to see the silver lining and the clouds at the same time is essential to effective leadership. And that's where she's tapping into that greater need. If you can say to someone "I'm really pleased with you because of X, and disappointed by Y" then you send a mixed message. Mixed messages are addictive. For the mixed message to be genuinely effective, you have to include simple messages, otherwise anyone with a brain will eventually say "That person always sends out mixed messages" and then they interpret everything as a negative, and you've lost them. (Indeed, as I become more and more comfortable with my life, I try to keep my individual messages very simple, and let them build into a complicated, mixed picture.)
Finally, if you know what loyalty looks like, you'll recognize that not only was Kate's squad loyal to her, but she is loyal to them. Reciprocity is a very powerful force - give enough of something out, and it will eventually start coming back to you.
And I realised that workplaces are where a lot of mental health injuries occur, and where a lot of opportunities for helping people are. Because if you spend a full working day around someone, you're going to have an impact on their mental health. And while I don't mind programming, the thing I really enjoy is being in the company of programmers.
So, a year and a half ago, I found myself appointed an IT manager, not my first supervisory appointment, but the first time where I'm reporting directly to a company director. It's been a hell of a ride, and in the last few weeks, a whole bunch of things have come together, and I'm really proud of what I've achieved.
And I can't tell you about it. Because the things that matter, the things that I'm really proud of, have to do with the mental health of people that aren't me. And it has to do with the mental and social health of a company. When my mind split open, and I could no longer pretend to myself that I was one person, I was well motivated to learn about teamwork, and I did so. It seems Musashi was right - if you can learn to defeat one person, you can learn to defeat two, which means you can learn to defeat five, which means you can learn to defeat ten. I've learned to forge partnerships, then teams, then coalitions.
Which is a long-winded introduction to what prompted me to talk, which is this story of an officer cadet who is proud of her squad. I found out about it from FPB's observations on leadership, and his comment that "This young woman seems to have what it takes to get people to risk their lives in your name." The only mistake that he makes is that he attributes it to a mysterious gift that can not be understood, as opposed to something that can in fact be understood, studied, learned, and taught. Allow me to demonstrate this by explaining what she did, and how you can do it too!
Firstly, let's look at FPB's rather instructively-chosen example of how to get it wrong. That's right, treating your soldiers with contempt will lead to them finding out that you don't like them, and at the end of the day, they won't like you. If they don't like you, their willingness to get themselves killed because they think it's what you want is diminished.
Kate describes her squad as "fantastic", and she does it in a sincere way. She also intends to supply them with food - giving food to people is a very effective way of getting them to look favourably at you. But there's more to it than that, she's actually tapping into a much greater need, one that's rarely fulfilled:
My team. Which had abandoned its squad leader because they saw me running around. That was a very wicked, tactically unsound thing of them to do, and it means that I failed to tell Hill that he was in charge, and that the SL lost command and control of his element...I also know that they would have run after any other junior they were used to.
But even considering all that and knowing that it is basically just a game, I can't help but thrill at the fact that my people followed me into "battle" because it was me and not someone else.
This is the key to understanding Kate's leadership. Everything you need to know is in those paragraphs. Let's start with the obvious, and proceed to the obscure:
She's really pleased by the fact that her squad demonstrated loyalty to her. This is actually extremely important, and it lays the foundation for everything else. If she's picking up on evidence that she's leading effectively and she feels happy when she gets that evidence, then she's going to learn leadership faster. Celebrating wins is vitally important for learning in any field of endeavour, and here she is, winning and celebrating.
She's disappointed in them for a failure of discipline, even though that breach of discipline had no immediate negative consequences. Coming to her rescue was tactically unsound (and, if you read the full post, she didn't actually need rescuing). One imagines that she's going to tell them that they really shouldn't have done it.
She's pleased with them for their loyalty, in the same breath as she's disappointed about the discipline issue. Similarly, even though she's really pleased with herself for winning their loyalty, she's disappointed with herself for giving unclear orders. This capacity to see the silver lining and the clouds at the same time is essential to effective leadership. And that's where she's tapping into that greater need. If you can say to someone "I'm really pleased with you because of X, and disappointed by Y" then you send a mixed message. Mixed messages are addictive. For the mixed message to be genuinely effective, you have to include simple messages, otherwise anyone with a brain will eventually say "That person always sends out mixed messages" and then they interpret everything as a negative, and you've lost them. (Indeed, as I become more and more comfortable with my life, I try to keep my individual messages very simple, and let them build into a complicated, mixed picture.)
Finally, if you know what loyalty looks like, you'll recognize that not only was Kate's squad loyal to her, but she is loyal to them. Reciprocity is a very powerful force - give enough of something out, and it will eventually start coming back to you.