Caring About The People You Lead

Caring about the people you lead is one of the keys to getting the best possible performance from them.  The best leaders care about the conditions their colleagues are working in.  They care about their morale.  They care what individuals are feeling.  And they care how well everyone is working together.

Twenty-five years ago, a book called A Passion for Excellence contained a powerful example of what it’s like when a hardened leader cares deeply about his people.  It was a speech by Melvin Zais, a U.S. Army General to senior officers at a staff college:

 “I will stop providing you with pearls of wisdom and I will elaborate on one.  The one piece of advice which I believe will contribute more to making you a better leader and commander, will provide you with greater happiness and self-esteem and at the same time advance your career more than any other advice which I can provide to you.  And it doesn’t call for a special personality, and it doesn’t call for any certain chemistry.  Any one of you can do it.  And that advice is that you must care.

How do you know if you care?  Well, for one thing, if you care, you listen to your junior officers and your soldiers.  Now, when I say listen, I don’t mean that stilted baloney that so many officers engage in and stand up to an enlisted man and say, “How old are you, son?  Where are you from?  How long you been here?  Thank you very much, next man.”  That’s baloney.  That’s form.  That’s pose.

I can remember when I asked my son, when he was a cadet at West Point, how he liked his regimental commander, and he paused awhile and with that clean-cut incisiveness that most midshipmen and cadets evaluate people, he said to me, “He plays the role.”  Wow!  That was damning!  “He plays the role.”  And I noticed this officer in later life, and he postured a great deal, and he always stood with his knees bent back, and he always turned one toe out, and he always wore special little things around his collar.  And, you know, he always turned sideways, and I knew what he meant when he said, “He plays the role.”  Well, I’m not talking about that kind of stuff.  I’m talking about listening… listening … ´cause the little soldier won’t come out and tell you everything’s all wrong.  He’ll be a little hesitant.  If you ask him if he’s getting along all right and he just shrugs, he’s getting along lousy.  If he’s not enthusiastic in his response, there’s something wrong.  You better dig a little deeper.

To care, you must listen.  You care if you listen to him.  Really listen to him!  You care if you really wonder what he’s doing on his off-duty activities.  When you’re about to tee-off on Saturday afternoon, when you’re at the club at happy hour, if you’re wondering, if there’s a little creeping nagging in the back of your head, “I wonder, I wonder what the soldiers are doing.”  Do you do that?  What are the airmen doing?  What are the sailors doing?  Where did they go?

You care if you go in the mess hall, and I don’t mean go in with white gloves and rub dishes and pots and pans and find dust.  You care if you go in the mess hall and you notice that the scrambled eggs are in a puddle of water and twenty pounds of toast has been done in advance and it’s all lying there hard and cold, and the bacon is lying there dripping in the grease and the cooks got all their work done way ahead of time, and the cold pots of coffee are sitting on the tables getting even colder.  If that really bothers you, if it really gripes you, if you want to tear up those cooks, you care…”

Speech by Lt. General Zais recorded in A Passion for Excellence, T. Peters & N. Austin

The point General Zais was making is clear: your effectiveness as a leader depends partly on how much you care about your people.  When they know you care as much about them as the goal, they’ll respond with the best performance they can give and follow you anywhere.