This week's exercise was all about discovering how much of our solutions actually come from top leadership. As it turns out, while the top leadership might implement many of these solutions, it’s really the lower levels that come up with them. To put it simply, “those at the top know they do not know most of the answers to the problems facing the organizations they lead, but feel they should know. So they often pretend to know. Meanwhile those at the bottom know most of the answers and know the people at the top do not know, yet they expect them to know. So they often pretend not to know.” (Obolensky, 2010, p. 44) So what this means is that there is a shift in leadership occurring that entails higher leaders asking the lower level individuals to help make large changes. I’ll talk about three cases that support this change and how leaders can be more accommodating towards this change.
The first example of this shift happening is by one of my first squadron commanders, Lt. Col. Andre. When he first took command of the squadron, the squadron was at an all-time low in morale. He immediately created a commanders call to ask everyone why morale was low and what was necessary to fix it. After seeking ideas where the main complaint was no time to spend with family, he implemented a 10-hour rule where no individual was allowed to work more than 10 hours in a single day. This gradually and slowly made enough of a difference to bring morale back up.
The second example is within my current team/organization, where we develop innovative solutions to age-old problems. Leadership here actually maintains a very hands-off approach and allows us to create the solutions ourselves without a lot of oversights. We know what problems need to be solved; we were hired to solve them.
The third idea is what the military teaches us in Airmen Leadership School and it’s on the idea of “intellectual humility.” What it means is to adhere “tentatively to recently acquired opinions; being prepared to examine new evidence and arguments even if such examination leads one to discover flaws in one’s own cherished beliefs; to stop thinking that complex issues can be reduced to matters of ‘right & wrong’ or ‘black & white’, and to begin thinking in terms of ‘degrees of certainty’ or ‘shades of grey’. Sometimes ‘I don’t know’ can be the wisest position to take on an issue.” (Thomas N. Barnes Center, 2014) The idea is that we need to recognize that we don’t have the answers and to admit it when we don’t know the answer to something. The next step is to then seek the answer from a knowledgeable source, which could very well come from someone lower ranking.
The best way to encourage this type of leadership style throughout an organization is by changing its culture. McKeown makes mention that in order to create a culture of innovation and knowledge sharing; we need to support what’s known as the “Idea-hungry” culture. (McKeown, 2014, p. 52) This type of culture seeks out knowledge and ideas from people. It’s not enough to be accepting of new ideas; we have to draw it out of people. Only then are we more likely to increase the communication flow of good ideas from the bottom and to feed them to the top.
References
McKeown, M. (2014). The Innovation Book. London: Pearson.
Obolensky, N. (2010). Complex Adaptive Leadership. London, UK: Gower/Ashgate.
Thomas N. Barnes Center. (2014). CRITICAL THINKING. Air Education and Training Command, DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE, AL.
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