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What is your leadership philosophy?
by
CDR David Stalfort
Commanding Officer
USCG Marine Safety Office Memphis

What is your leadership philosophy?  Do your subordinates know?  Do you know?  Setting expectations is a basic responsibility of all leaders.  Putting pen to paper and sharing your expectations with your subordinates is the first step.  Anything less is a failure of your responsibilities.  So with this I offer some thoughts on leadership.

To All Leaders

Because I consider your performance and leadership development essential to the success of this unit, I want you to be aware of my expectations of you as a member of this unit and as a leader in the United States Coast Guard.

My View of Leadership

You are to consider yourself, first and foremost, a leader.  You must set clear expectations and completely understand accountability to your subordinates and accountability to the responsibilities of your position.  The key to your leadership is development—development of yourself both professionally and personally, and your responsibility in the development of your subordinates.  Don’t waste your talents or the talents of your subordinates.  You owe it to yourself, your family, your service, and your country to challenge your own capabilities and the capabilities of those you lead.  Failure to provide clear expectations and remain accountable to those expectations is the greatest failure to successful leadership.

I do not expect your leadership to be easy.  I see a basic difference between LEADERSHIP, doing the right things, and MANAGEMENT, doing things right.  Leadership, setting the right course and guiding your subordinates along that course, is perhaps the hardest challenge you will face in your career.  It will be hard work requiring study, common sense, and a willingness to learn.  Take off your hat and talk person-to-person when problems affect your subordinates.  Keep the welfare of your subordinates foremost in your mind and you will always be on the right track.

As a leader I expect the team you lead will:

Just do it!

I value initiative the most in a leader and in a manager.  You are expected to look into the future to determine where our unit and your department should be going and make changes accordingly.  Do not be passive.  Rather, take action to make the desired results come to pass.  You should always be looking for opportunities to make quality improvements for the betterment of the command.  Looks for ways to improve service to our customers. 

With this goes innovation; new and refreshing ideas or ways to do things.  I see tremendous opportunities for innovative changes.  Thank advantage of this.  Strive for results in everything you initiate.  Develop measures to document your success and to highlight areas for improvement Take our unit’s goals for action and demonstrate how we can achieve results, not just by being a very busy Coast Guard but by making a measurable difference in effectiveness AND efficiency.  You will be greatly rewarded for it!

Professionalism

In the eyes of our customers, you are a Marine Safety and Security professional.  To them you are the expert.  As such, I expect that you learn all there is about your particular job.  Dig into the regulations, the policy, and the procedures.  As a professional you should never stop learning, never stop growing.  Learn the intent behind the regulations and how they apply to the maritime industry.  To our customers you are also a deliverer of services.  Learn what our customers expect and value of our services and continuously strive to exceed their expectations. 

Leadership Traits

Your leadership will be a function of your own personality and individual style.  Regardless of the amount of natural leadership ability or charisma you are blessed with, there are some basic traits that I expect in you as a leader.  These include the following:

·   You must care for those you lead, be willing to listen to their ideas and be ever sensitive to their problems.

·   Never ask your subordinates to do anything that you would not do in their position.

·   Reward and discipline fairly without regard to personal favoritism.  Be fair, consistent, and honest in your evaluations.

·   Maintain high standards for your own personal appearance.  Lead by example in this regard.  Be “inspection ready” at all times.

·   Never lose your composure.

·   Delegate tasks but not everything.  You must make every possible effort to balance work requirements so that all hands, including yourself, carry an equitable share.

·   Motivate but don’t intimidate

·   Make your subordinates happy about doing the things you ask.

·   Accept blame when your subordinates are in error and credit their efforts, not your own, when your department excels.

·   As a leader you are not obligated to explain your decisions and commands to your subordinates, but do so whenever possible to help them understand their duties and your expectations.

·   Don’t seek to be liked.  You earn, and show your subordinates, respect.

·   Lead others as you would want to be led.

Delegate, Delegate, Delegate!

As a leader, you must continually focus on doing the right things.  To do this well means that you must learn to delegate.  I expect you to delegate to your subordinates as much as possible.  You will be rewarded by me as well as by your subordinates for doing so.

What Delegation Means

It is important for you and your subordinates to know what delegation means.

·      Delegation is not simply dividing up work within your department.  Rather,

·      Delegation is achieving results through empowerment and motivation of others.

4 Reasons to Delegate

There are four very good reasons why you should always delegate as much as possible.

1.        Delegation avoids creating indispensable people by spreading the workload throughout your department.

2.        Delegation ensures that work is being performed at the appropriate level.  This helps maximize return on resources.

3.        Delegation challenges people to become high performers, to learn, and to grow.

4.        Delegation helps you overcome physical limitations such as limited resources, not enough time in the day, etc.

Impacts of Not Delegating

There are some very damaging impacts of not effectively delegating.  By not delegating,

·         You lock in low performers.  There is no reason for them to try to become high performers.  They are not challenged.

·         You force out high performers.  They feel that they are not given challenging work and will go elsewhere to find it.

·         You begin to attract low performers to your department.  “Go work there, you won’t have to work hard at all.”

No Rubber Stamps!

I expect loyalty to this command.  This does not mean I want you to be a rubber stamp.  Your suggestions and ideas are very important to me.  I know there will be times when you will differ on a particular issue being contemplated by those senior.  When this happens, I expect you to present your views and recommended actions as precisely as you can.  Don’t sit back!  State your case!  However, if the final decision differs from your advice, you must back that decision as if it were your own.  This is loyalty.  You are a professional and anything less on your part is considered unprofessional.

Taking Risks is Encouraged and Rewarded

As a leader you will be required to make many decisions.  Along with making decisions comes taking risks.  You are going to make mistakes; that is expected, a part of taking risks, and a part of leadership and life. I believe in learning from mistakes.  When they happen, we’ll discuss it.  If it happens again, we’ll talk again as a reminder to stress the lessons learned.  If it happens a third time, it means you’ve not learned and I’ll take some action.  Don’t let this get in your way of taking risks and deciding to try new things.  Correction of these mistakes by your seniors in no way implies that you are deficient.  Learn from your mistakes, try not to repeat them, and move on.  Likewise, when you are in error and you know it, don’t be afraid to quickly admit it.  Your reputation is not going to be eroded by having the courage to acknowledge that you made a mistake.  Your reputation will be enhanced for it marks you as a mature professional.

Be Commanding, not Demanding

You should command performance from your personnel without demanding it.  Provide clear details of what you expect and challenge your subordinates by telling them what to do, not how to do it.  Don’t ever criticize, condemn, or complain.  If you see a peer or a subordinate not making the grade, find a way to help in such a manner that they can retain their self-respect.  Give frequent, honest, and open praise to your people; counsel or reprimand privately.  Arouse in your subordinates the desire to want to perform; lead by example.  Sincerely make them feel important.

Evaluations

I expect you to give honest, fair, and consistent evaluations to your subordinates.  Don’t use the evaluation as a weapon; rather use the evaluation system as a development tool/checklist for your subordinates. No one should be surprised by his or her evaluation.  If they are then YOU haven’t done your job as a supervisor.  I expect you to provide a clear explanation of your subordinate’s duties at the beginning of each marking period.  Then throughout the period discuss and relate their performance to these duties.  If your subordinates are performing well, tell them, reward them.  If they are not performing as you expected, set them back on track.

Awards and Recognition

Give out deserving awards and recognition frequently.  In the Coast Guard we have high standards for performance and it takes effort above and beyond doing a good job to receive an award.  We expect our people to do good work; we train them well, give them good tools, and give them every opportunity for success.  Find a way to thank someone everyday for his or her contributions.  If the extra effort goes “above and beyond” what’s expected then reward them accordingly.  Take the time to write up awards as often as they are deserved.  It’s far better to receive several awards of lesser significance than a single higher award three years later at the end of a tour.

Authority

As a leader, don’t ever fear using your rank.  I will back any undertaking whose goal is in keeping with the mission, vision, and goals of this command and the Coast Guard.  There is no doubt that there will be occasions when your subordinates will either by design or unintentionally test their relationship with you by saying or doing something that poses a challenge to your position and authority.  When this happens, you must react with authority, not as a friend or a buddy.  You cannot show favoritism or allow subordinates to undercut your authority.  There will be instances when you will have to rely solely on your authority to cause a necessary action or behavior.  Again, don’t fear using your rank. Rest assured, I will back you in this regard

Have Fun!

Finally, realize how important it is to have and project a positive attitude.  A positive attitude will not in itself always assure success, but I have no doubt that a negative attitude will always assure failure.  Enjoy what you do and above all make sure your subordinates enjoy their work even more.  Finally, join me in making this a great place to work!