This blog is the second in a series derived from the insights shared by leaders in the public, private and not for profit sector during Ivey’s Learning from Leaders course.
This October, Lieutenant-Colonel Eleanor Taylor (retired) participated in a class discussion on leadership, confidence and building trust. Taylor had a 26-year distinguished military career in the Canadian Armed Forces during which she was the first woman to command an infantry company in a war zone and was awarded the Meritorious Service Cross. She holds a Masters Degree in Defense Studies (RMC), is a guest lecturer at Oxford University, and an advisor to the United States Marine Corps on gender integration. She now runs Eleanor Taylor Consulting, a company that supports the development of teams and leaders who thrive in adversity. She shared many of her hard earned lessons with Ivey students.
Have the hard conversations
As one can imagine, being the first woman in any position within a male dominated profession, let alone in a leadership role where lives are at stake, creates circumstances ripe for difficult discussions. Whether it was responding when her capabilities were questioned, to confronting incidents of sexual harassment or inappropriate behaviour, to dispelling myths about women on the frontline, over her years of service Taylor got a lot of practice. But due to a seminal moment that occurred early in her career, she learned one of her most valued lessons: hard conversations become the bedrock of trust between you and your team. She asserts that you can not build real professional or personal trust with your superiors, your subordinates or your peers if you do not have the courage to speak your truth and or say what needs to be said.
She acknowledged that engaging in these types of conversations can be intimidating, so a tactic she has found helpful is to separate what you feel or want as an individual from your duty as a leader—especially since they are not always aligned. For instance, you may try to avoid conflict by pretending to not notice an incident as that will make it easier for you personally but, in Taylor’s view, it isn’t about you. As a leader, it is your responsibility to do what is best for your team or organization. She recalled a time when she was required to confront a well-liked and charismatic person in her platoon even though it was the last thing she wanted to do. However, in her words “it was somewhat easier for me to do the right thing because it wasn't about ‘Eleanor Taylor.’ It was about my duty and responsibility as a Platoon Commander. This took some of the responsibility away from me as a person and placed it onto the role that I held. Eleanor Taylor might have chosen to walk away from it, but as the Platoon Commander, I had no right to do so because it would be to the detriment of the organization.”
Another kernel of advice Taylor offered for engaging in hard conversations is Newtonian, harkening to Sir Isaac’s First Law of Motion that states that objects at rest or in motion will remain as such, unless compelled to change its state by an external force. It will take an exertion of energy, often in the form of courage, to address a situation that has brought you to a standstill (or that has even propelled you backwards somewhat). However by being committed to speaking up and speaking out, to taking risks, or to just get up and start the day again, you rebuild your forward momentum.
Decide when emotion gives you solid footing or shaky ground
I think it is relatively safe to say that we have all been in situations where our emotions served as the foundation upon which we engaged in substantive action or as an earthquake that brought our best intentions crumbling to the ground. For Taylor, emotion is an crucial component of leadership, especially as it is an important ingredient in developing relationships with your colleagues— to helping them feel understood, to applying empathy when called for, and to showing them that you are collectively striving towards the same goal. Relationships are critical to leading successfully and emotion serves as its facilitator, but it is important to note that emotion can not go unmitigated. You must control your emotion to lead effectively.
Taylor considers an emotional response to be appropriate when you know you are 100% right, such as when a team member experiences a tragedy or conversely, when someone behaves in a manner that is completely outrageous and unacceptable. When you know you have strong footing as a leader, Taylor says to “just go for it and absolutely show your emotion, as long as it's not abusive emotion, of course.” But depending on your temperament and if you are feeling uncertain, you may need to find a way to separate yourself from an emotional situation to find the best way forward.
For instance, there are times when we are forced to deal with difficult people who are not responding to our attempts to diffuse a situation. In that scenario, Taylor councils to take the emotion out of your response entirely and regroup. By disengaging from the situation and the emotion it drags along with it, you can seek advice and plan your next move. But admittedly, sometimes we are forced to act in the moment, and under those circumstances, she recommends deploying techniques to control our emotion such as deep breathing and visualizing the desired outcome of a conversation. By taking a minute to think about what you are trying to accomplish once you reach the other side of an engagement— a better team, a stronger relationship, etc., you can boil it down to your desired result and simmer down the emotion.
Provide a road map
As a leader, it is important to set expectations and the culture of your team. Taylor feels fortunate to have learned how to accomplish this from many exceptional leaders during her time in the Canadian Armed Forces. However, there was one general in particular who used a technique that she experienced as acutely effective and she draws upon to this day. He provided a clearly written out mission statement that he called “a command philosophy.” Within it, he was explicit about the things he valued and the things that he could not abide by; of the expectations he had of his subordinates and even the little things that irritated him. But, as Taylor relates, it wasn't all about him—it was about what he felt the team could do collectively and how they were going to accomplish it. “I thought that was very powerful and I now use it in every new organization I join,” Taylor said.
By providing a road map, you give the people working for you the courtesy of understanding what you deem to be important, the values you admire and will hold to, and your expectations of them as individuals and as a team. Taylor found it helpful that this philosophy was presented verbally and was also available in a written format. If she wanted to get inside her boss's head, it was right there. By creating a command philosophy and then diligently and constantly communicating it—not in general terms, but in very specific terms—people learn where they are being led and how they are expected to follow.
Confidence – being your own bedrock
As leaders and as human beings, we all experience times of doubt. In the last decade however, stories of accomplished, talented people being wracked with the Imposter Syndrome has garnered much attention. Although this syndrome afflicts women and men, it seems as though women experience this phenomenon more frequently (or at least, they are more open to admitting they suffer from it). When Taylor was asked if she has ever experienced the Imposter Syndrome, she responded candidly. “I feel like at every stage in my career, I have looked around and ask myself, how did this happen? How did I find myself here? And never quite believing that I could be in the position in which I found myself. Early in my career, that feeling was quite intense but as I became more aware that I was, indeed, capable, it lessened.”
In addition to the accumulation of accomplishments, Taylor shared other means through which she built her confidence. Throughout her professional life she was exposed to tremendous leaders in action, whom she diligently watched, soaking in their wisdom and seeking their advice. Because of her confidence and trust in their judgement and decision-making, the integration of their teachings into her own leadership style built confidence within herself. She also acknowledged that the experience of taking on difficult tasks early in her career and thus failing sometimes, allowed her to put failure into perspective. In her words, “early in my career, I had some experiences with failure and so I could no longer pretend to be a perfectionist. Because I had not done perfectly and everyone knew that I had not done perfectly, it alleviated the burden of perfectionism from my shoulders.” Lastly, to gain confidence and overcome the imposter syndrome, Taylor stated that you need to observe how big the distance is between who you are (or, at least, who you perceive yourself to be) and who you believe is the ideal person to inhabit a position or role. You need to explore the stereotypes and biases you carry, consciously or unconsciously, and begin to dismantle them, especially in a world that is crying out for diverse role models and new paradigms of leadership. If you can not see yourself within your own ideal, even when you are at your best, you will never consider yourself to be good enough. Align yourself with ideals that serve your success, that exemplify good leadership, and that will bring you joy. Taylor’s parting advice was to quote words from Mahatma Gandhi that she has long been inspired by: “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”