Let’s talk a little about a few things I’ve been bouncing around as of late. You’ve heard it before: “So and so had an incident last night so I heard they were going to make it difficult for everyone and do a massive disciplinary training for all personnel...” Putting more restrictive policies on our People every time something bad happens, in addition to what we already have in place (which are several and confusing even to me), is viewed as another negative to duty in the Navy as a whole and in my opinion contributes to a lot of dissatisfaction on and off the job.
I understand the U.S. alliance piece which we have since protected by instituting policies that may mitigate further occurrences of incidents detrimental to our presence in foreign countries. And we’ve gone high and right on those at times as well. Some valid, some overboard but the bottom line is the number of incidents the Navy has experienced in the last year or so are minute in comparison to other organizations.
There has to come a time when we just have to TRUST our People to do the right thing and to remove that once they prove us wrong attitude. Give them that trust when you first meet them and tell them that they and they alone can have the potential to lose that trust. It is now up to them. They have to make the right choices and do the right things. People have to know to take responsibility and accountability for anything that they do and that there is a price to pay for non-conformance. That, in my mind, is the only way they will learn to take some amount of risk when making decisions in and out of the organization they are a part of and can ultimately make them better leaders.
The days of “babysitting” in the guise of “taking care of our People” should be a thing of the past. When someone falls flat on their face we tend to come to their aid right away; picking them up and dusting them off. All good for a leader but step back and think about that again...what if you just let them pick themselves up and compose themselves? I believe they learn a lot more that way. We cannot continue to exist as leaders if we don’t get back to leading people. Leading not only by being examples of uncompromised integrity but leading by teaching them their jobs and making sure that every mission and every piece of equipment is operational and ready to respond to any situation/contingency.
The bottom line is trusting your People to do the right thing all the time and respecting them for that. Three basic things can make anyone happy: Food, money and time off (yeah, yeah --- I know... Sex too, but that comes with the time off). Not all-inclusive of course but doing them right by those things will give you a content, happy and motivated person who is ready to work until you tell them to stop.
"Thanks for reading, thanks for visiting."
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