A strategic arm of Western University's Ivey Business School was invaded by the U.S. military for a second time, when the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership hosted its second conference on collaboration at the Ivey Spencer Leadership Centre. Sitting on over thirty acres of land north east of the university's campus, the prestigious building, which made history as Western's first female residence, was once home to Major General Alexander Charles Spencer. But if the benefactor of the Spencer Leadership Centre was alive today, he probably wouldn't be enraged by the presence of U.S. troops on his former estate, and not just because it has no strategic value aside, of course, from the strategic thinking on leadership that it now facilitates.
The Institute for Leadership is a big believer in transferring leadership learnings from the military to the private sector, which is why foreign military leaders are often invited to invade the place with their thoughts on best practises in leadership. Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré (Ret.), who led the U.S. military's response to numerous crisis situations, ranging from the sniper shooting spree that terrorized Washington D.C. in 2002 to the devastation unleashed on the American South by hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, issued the keynote address at the inaugural collaboration conference last year. He advised command-and-control types of business leaders to learn to love sharing power because the world has become too complex for them to call all the shots. Collaboration among multiple groups and leaders, he said, is what it takes "to get things done in the new normal," where hierarchical thinking is a barrier to achieving results.
This year, the conference keynote was served up by four-star General (Ret.) Wesley Clark, a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, not to mention West Point valedictorian and Rhodes Scholar. As noted in an earlier blog post, Clark is another big believer in collaboration, which he credits with helping him prevent a larger conflict in the Balkan States as the NATO commander during the volatile Kosovo War. "Do we need strategic leadership? Absolutely," Clark told the select group of invite-only conference attendees. "Not just in the United States, but for where we are with humanity right now. Effective strategic leadership is a combination of knowledge and experience."
But the retired general also warns leaders to be realistic about expectations when heading a team comprised of multiple organizations or departments. "Effective collaborative leadership is about building relationships based upon shared values and finding common ground between different perspectives," he explained in an interview following his address, noting smart leaders will realize early on that there is often "a limit to how far people will go."
When it comes to making collaboration work in complex environments like NATO, Clarks says social niceties are important, but it pays to remember the job at hand is not like serving as head of a family. Nobody, he says, should expect everyone to form life-long friendships like kids on an elementary school playground. In Clark's significant experience, the key to dealing with a team comprised of members with conflicting agendas, or different levels of commitment to a team goal, is motivating people in a way that they see self interest in collaboration.
The former NATO commander, who playfully noted during his keynote that he once held the closest thing to nuclear strike authority that can be held by a non-president, advises leaders of all stripes to make sure they are battling the enemy inside, meaning ego, in order to maintain the perspective required to really listen to others, act responsibly and actually deserve the trust of stakeholders that are granting you power. Perspective, he adds, also comes in handy when impressive titles are taken away. "You have to approach the job of leader with integrity and just bear down and do the work in the same manner that landed you the position of trust because you'll eventually end up the same person that you started as," he says. "I used to tell my wife that the wonderful chateau we had in Belgium was just our home, not our house. Like my title, we didn't own it. We had just been given the use of it." A true leader, he says, uses his or her title for the right reasons, not for self-aggrandizement.
Clark also warns ambitious individuals to expect a bed of frustration, not roses, to come with any serious leadership position. What happens at the top, he says, is that leaders end up with authority and responsibilities that they sought for a long time. But as talented people climb up any organizational ladder, they tend to find more and more success-orientated individuals with confidence and ambition to rival their own. And since these other individuals have their own ideas and power, effectively deploying authority and meeting mission objectives can actually become more difficult, not easier, as a career advances.
"In the case of the military," Clark says, "most of the guys I've seen have been disappointed in one way or another when they leave." Most leaders, he adds, don't end up claiming to be unhappy. But if they are totally candid, he thinks the majority of retired generals and CEOs would admit that they were constantly frustrated by being routinely blocked from doing what they wanted to do with the authority when it was handed them. "I think that happens in any organization that narrows like a pyramid at the top." And according to Clark, only really remarkable people can go through the experience of constantly battling competing interests and be content with what can be achieved. So before anyone embarks on a journey to the top, they should understand the destination may not be "what they expected" if they are lucky enough "to arrive at all."
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