Leadership Crucibles

Spend any time leading and one is bound to face leadership crucibles.  Crucibles are defining moments in our leadership careers that can include everything from tough moral – ethical decisions to literally life and death situations.

While a bit intimidating to think about facing trials, crucibles are an important part of leader development and absolutely necessary.  A leader who has not gone through a “trial by fire”, hasn’t fully reached their leadership potential. Doesn’t mean go out and seek a tough situation, but rather, as good students of leadership, remain prepared for crucibles when they come and afterwards, learn from the outcomes.

In my previous career, there were countless moments where I had to make tough leadership decisions.  I am not sure they all qualified as crucibles, but certainly each one impacted my leadership development. In many cases, I made the correct decision, in some I didn’t but I learned from every episode.

These touch points developed my leadership more than any formal training.  It is important to stop and reflect about these leadership crucibles from time to time in order to ensure the lessons learned don’t get lost in the recesses of our busy minds.

I could  fill pages with stories of tough leadership situations from over the years.  Some I’d even prefer not to reflect on.  For the sake of brevity I’ll share a quick one. It is probably one of the very few times during my military career where I came close to disobeying a direct order.

While deployed in 2003, our sister unit was preparing for a raid on a suspected insurgent location. My unit was reconsolidating on that particular day and not involved with the mission. On the morning of execution, the Battalion operations officer directed one of my battery’s APCs to participate in the raid because a vehicle in the other unit designated for the operation had gone down for maintenance.

Finding the Battalion S3 near the assembly area where the unit was preparing , I told him he could have the APC but not the crew as they had not participated in the mission rehearsals. The confrontation grew heated and the Battalion commander arrived on the scene.

Luckily the commander supported my position and directed another Soldier familiar with the operation to drive the APC. While I made the correct leadership decision to stand up for what was right, after reflection, I regretted how I handled the situation. Needless to say my relationship with the S3 was awkward and I’m sure our very public argument wasn’t the best display of professionalism for those who observed it.

This particular episode taught me to take a few deep breaths and get my emotions under control before confronting a challenge. I am thankful I had this leadership crucible as a young Captain to give me perspective later in my career. It also provided a great vignette to teach impassioned junior leaders to stick by their guns but with the right degree of tact.

What are your leadership crucibles? If a few tough episodes don’t immediately pop into your head, I would recommend taking some time to reflect on the trials that helped define you as a leader. Some would argue that our trails by fire are the most important part of our leader development and go as far to say number of leadership crucibles is directly proportional to leader effectiveness. Not sure I am ready to make that assertion, but I do know our crucibles are an important part of leader development.

Last week I looked at leadership philosophies and this week leadership crucibles. Join me next week for the third and final installment in this three part series on leadership as I’ll take a look at leader education.

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