Life and Leadership in the Navy - Essay Example

Life and Leadership in the Navy There is no one sure successful style of leadership, especially in the navy. That’s what I have realized from my experience as an E5 or petty officer second class. There are no shortcuts to being an effective leader. But I had great advises from great leaders and I have observed that all successful leaders have similarities in characteristics and styles, and, on the other hand, that certain leaders make wrong decisions or actions that one must not do in his own career. Just like me, I recently got in trouble for drinking and being late to work. And because of that I was put on ‘Charlie Liberty’ which means no drinking and limited liberty. If you want to be a good leader you should avoid making these mistakes. Leadership creates a high-performing, successful unit. Making situations that inspire troops, providing clear commands, being a role model in terms of behavior, and being approachable or easily accessible to answer questions or resolve problems, all are important steps in being a successful leader in the navy. Leadership is a very difficult and challenging task. I always ask myself how is it that some people have this natural ability to lead. In the ever present debate about whether leaders are born or made, I certainly, confidently think that they are both born and made. There were famous leaders in history that were natural leaders, born with effective leadership abilities. But those abilities will weaken if it is ignored. Preparation and training improved such abilities. Afterward that natural ability and training were brought together with a determination to lead. When situations called for, the successful leaders in history combined these aspects to create outcomes that led the progress of human history. I remember during my college days when my professor mentioned Voltaire. What he said really stayed in my mind until now. Voltaire advised “not to be occupied and not to exist are one and the same thing for a man” (Durant 153). He in fact summed up the important of our life’s goal and purpose—to labor, to produce, to be successful, and to be interested in important events and world affairs. Related to this is William James who, almost a hundred years ago, said that “we measure ourselves by many standards. Our strength and our intelligence, our wealth and even our good luck, are things which warm our heart and make us feel ourselves a match for life. But deeper than all such things, and able to suffice unto itself without them, in the sense of the amount of effort which can put forth” (Faridzadeh 198). I have always believed that all of us, every human being, have a huge ability to work. But sometimes we underestimate ourselves. Sometimes what we can really do is greater what we think we can. Work starts with an occupation, a career, or a job. Having a job, especially one that you really love doing, is always quite a wonder. In order to be a good leader in the navy, an officer should research and read a lot. It pays to know the names of your people and their family background. Getting to know people in an unofficial or relaxed manner, or getting to know them as ‘who they are as persons’ is important to the productivity and performance of the unit and the officer. Getting to know your troops is a vital portion of the officer’s task, and really improves the performance of the unit in actual activities. When recruited staff observe that the officer is concerned about them or interested in their personal lives, they feel that the officer is not only doing his job but also being sympathetic to them as a person. There is a thin line about where, when, and how you must ask about their personal experiences or private information. An officer should at all times avoid hanging out or consorting, which was a big mistake on my part, when I socialized too much with other personnel especially during drinking sessions. We as human beings appear to have a tendency to be contented with mediocre or average performance. Based on my personal experience, being contented with mediocre performance can be very damaging; I, personally, have been mediocre. I arrive late and drink a lot. It is vital that we keep in mind to differentiate between failure and mediocrity. In truth, what is important is not really whether we earn huge sums of money, occupy a powerful position, or do not; what is important is that we become persons who interact and cooperate with others in order to accomplish tasks and improve our abilities. Leadership, for me, is a self-driven practice of making relationship between people and units. Theories of leadership can help or guide practice, and, using these theories in actual practice has always been helpful for me and other officers in the navy. The continuous improvement of a person is at the heart of effective leadership. Effective leaders enhance performance by adopting a level of competitiveness and enhancing existing abilities. Similar to parenting, leaders know that the development of people requires building opportunities for abilities to be acquired. Sense of worth, caring, and competence are all important to effective leadership. Being a leader in the navy requires developing both emotional and intellectual abilities. Martin Luther King promoted effective leadership with intelligence and a big heart. A leader should earn the respect and confidence of the unit, cooperate with them, and give time for the growth of self-esteem. Leaders are seen as teachers, advisers, and friends who cooperate with followers to guarantee success. For me, leadership is an ‘art of the heart’, or the ability to see, feel, and act as if the future relied on you. Effective leaders know that intellectual and emotional strength are important to inspire people to act or move forward, to express their ideas, and to solve problems. Effective leadership for me requires humility, confidence, courage, dependability, and compassion. I also see leaders for the present time to be thoughtful and willing to do whatever is needed to help the unit. Followers will cooperate with leaders who help their confidence about their own identity and their personal goals. I believe that self-esteem is the willingness to give time, money, character, emotional ability, or other resources. Leaders should have self-esteem and create a positive emotional environment to motivate and inspire people. Based on my experience, effective leadership in the navy needs the confidence to be devoted to something more than your personal comfort. Being our best self needs thinking about an honest evaluation of our relationship with others and our own self. It is difficult and reflective task that is serious and challenging. Reflection or contemplation is evaluating the root of our beliefs. Contemplative or reflective practice requires evaluation of our misunderstandings, biases, and earlier learning to know if what we know is still relevant. I personally believe that attitudes and behaviors are shaped or made by the beliefs, ideas, and experiences that are inserted in our minds; they are the intellectual that are often unknown and ignored. Reflection needs other people and requires determination. For me effective leaders do the challenging task of thinking about their practice and behavior, and the effect that their ideas have on their decisions. The world is created by what people want to see and what appears reasonable to each person. No two people see the world the same. The idea of the culture of present is to have what we desire at the moment and expect the results take care of themselves. Thinking about our emotions and actions are not promoted in the culture of mass production and consumption. Still, ability to self-reflect is an important component of leadership. For example, Thomas and Adair (p. 69) said that “in the current environment, people who are not devoting substantial conscious effort to managing body weight is probably gaining weight”. In order to fight obesity, leaders should focus on the mind ability, knowledge, and reasons for controlling body weight and also begin creating good environment to help with the emotions connected to body weight. Being slimmer, or being an effective leader, can only happen once both mind and body capabilities are involved in analyzing daily routine. Leaders in the navy should work to build good, strong, and positive relationships with their people. When relationships are strong, helpful response or comments can be viewed as a way to learn and develop instead of embarrassing or hurtful comments. By focusing on emotional and mind sides of learning and experience, natural inspiration or drive can be encouraged and improved. Important abilities include listening, understanding, cooperation, compromise, and correct saying of feelings. If leaders make communication and involvement, people will feel that they are important. Learning should be welcoming not to make the process of learning easy but to make difficult tasks easy. Leaders should help persons in thinking about their thoughts and feelings, the roots of their emotions, and their solution to it. It is the responsibility of the leader to enhance the development and growth of learners who are reflective about their everyday practice. Effective leadership is how a leader, through influence, example, or persuasion, encourages followers to achieve their goals for the unit. In easy words, “it is a process (act) of influencing the activities of an organised unit in its efforts toward goal setting and goal achievement” (Stogdill 1950: 3), or a “specialised form of social interaction... in which cooperating persons are permitted to influence and motivate others to promote the attainment of unit and person goals” (Forsyth 1999: 343). These points say that effective leadership needs a “process of influence whereby the leader has an impact on others by inducing them to behave in a certain way” (Bryman 1996: 276). These sayings have the same stress on the idea that leadership is connected to the ability to influence the feeling and action of people in the unit. Also, leadership requires more than being able to realize changes in actions or behavior that come from that connected to the power or motivation connected to the ability of recognizing. Effective leadership needs the having of characteristics that encourage others to willingly follow the commands of the leader, either because they want to do so, or because they feel they have to do so. In short, effective leadership is something that is freely given to a person by others and includes the ability of a person to engage the free and energetic cooperation and support of followers. So for me effective leadership is control that needs persuasion than force. Of course, the ability to motivate members of a unit, while for sure an important leadership role, is not all that leadership needs. Leadership is, also, about the ability to make goals or a dream for the unit; a dream which becoming real keeps the success of the unit. Also, leadership in the navy needs being able to make the organization so that it can successfully achieve those goals; plus, the many leadership theories that have appeared since in the early part of human history show many other standards of leadership, making a simple explanation of effective leadership not enough. This principle of naval leadership focuses on one side of effective leadership— the motivational role of leadership. I am really interested in the ability of an effective naval leader to acquire free cooperation or support from subordinates. The mission of the leader is to involve unit members in cooperative behavior. Naval leaders could change the condition in which their members of the unit are making good behavioral decisions, either by building reward systems to reward good behaviors, by scolding or saying they will be scold those who show bad behaviors, or by both methods. Environment affects also motivation of the unit and also shows the risks and rewards that are present in the environment. These environmental factors affect motivation because one basic motivation controlling person’s behavior is the want to obtain rewards and avoid punishments. Obviously, leaders do not have the way to fully affect the environment. For instance, illegal behavior is not only affected by the possibility of punishment. It is also affected by whether an person is able to getting a job, and has another way to earn their keeps, and also by whether encouraging criminality is there. Yet, as said earlier, the forces of the environment that an effective leader can use do influence behavior and this tenders a chance for leaders to influence the motivations of their followers. Second, effective leaders try to create or make values and attitudes that would encourage followers to willingly participate in positive actions. This person motivational reveals the inner drives that guide the behavior that a person brings into an environment—the things that persons think or feel that they want to do or should do. One side of the form of inner motivation is that of social values, and reveals the effect of person’s sense of duty and responsibility on their cooperation. It is defined that values are “people’s feelings about what are right and proper—what they ‘ought’ to do” (Thomas & Adair 58). Values convince persons to cooperate by avoiding from participating in bad behaviors. For example, persons with values that help the unit feel it wrong to take long lunches, to steal naval suppliers, and to not follow work policies. Also, in our society, encouraging values inspire or push people to follow the law by not robbing banks, not pushing and using drugs, and not killing their fellow people. Morality is an important factor influencing a person’s obey of laws. In fact, in the situation of ordinary people’s relationships with rules or the law, morality has more effect on the behavior of persons than does the possibility of being caught and scolded and punished for illegal behavior. Because of this, if the persons in a unit think that it is not right to violate unit rules, the level of rule violating will reduce hugely. Effective leaders gain from creating and keeping a moral environment where it is seen immoral to violate unit rules. Inner motivation and dedication to the unit are two forms of internal motivations that encourage persons to act for the unit. In every case, persons act in supportive manners, without the need to punishes or rewards as an encouraging factor. Unit benefits from these inner motivated behavior because the unit, its leaders and its basis, do not have to organize unit resources for motivation that depend on them. Instead, unit members act in support of one another because of their own inner motivations and wants and goals also. Of course, cooperation are vital and important for societies, organizations, and units. The concern is how effective leaders might create and keep these motivations. The most obvious example is that of dedication to the unit. Effective leaders serve important function in building and maintaining a unit with followers can recognize and to which they become dedicated and loyal. This feeling of unit belongingness motivates mutual aid for the unit because persons unite their sense of identity in the unit and the interests of the unit become impossible to differentiate from person wellbeing. The experts defines unit identification as important one and emphasizes various ways that this identification can be created, improved, and maintained. They say that a number of forces can influence the strength of persons’ knowledge of unit weaknesses and the level to which persons relate to their own unit. Also, it is obvious for me that situational forces affect the growth of inner motivation in the navy and especially in our unit. Especially, the use of punishments or rewards to encourage good behavior weakens inner motivation. Just like what the ‘Charlie Liberty’ did to me. It weakened my inner motivation or drive to drink. This suggests that the use of these basic instrumental methods, while promoting supportive behavior in the actual instant, also has the result of weakening other encouragement for that behavior. In the end, the use of punishment or rewards to motivation may reduce teamwork. What pushes inner motivation? Still, there is strong psychological proof on this matter, which I cannot completely discusses here. But, it is obvious that effective leaders can enhance this motivation by the way they organize units and unit activities. My point in this discussion and paper is that my attempt to motivate teamwork by using the to values and attitudes are more successful ways to motivate cooperation than are methods that depend on punishments or rewards to achieve goals. I have seen that these goals are more powerful in motivation cooperation that is punishment or reward strategies. In addition, they have the benefit of being inspiring to the self. When reacting to their attitudes, persons are acting in reaction to their own feelings and thoughts about what they want and desire to do. Persons are motivated to participate in cooperation tasks without focusing on the prizes or rewards for these actions. When acting in response to their values, persons are focus on their own sense of morality, or of what are right, and their actions are controlling their own selves. The important role of values and attitudes in motivating cooperation shows the importance of creating and inserting culture or value environment within a unit. I believe that effective leaders have the ability to motivating inner interest in unit tasks, unit identification, and the growth of moral feelings and values that unit leaders are reasonable. This kind of culture can afterward be worked out when leaders are wanting to create cooperative or supportive behavior in a unit. Because of motivation power of influence and authority, leaders, who lead the unit, are in perfect situation of being able to appealing to the unit members to participate in behaviors that include sacrifices and risks for the sake of the unit. This proper power is usually connected to official authorities and leaders. While it could be created by informal leaders in permanent and not organized units, authority is hard to get, not are persons especially willing to give up personal comfort and benefits with regards with the dictates of others. Because of the good and amazing ability of leaders in using authority as a motivation, leadership is usually the most important when a situation needs limit on the part of the members of the unit—especially, the intentional obey to unit policies. This motivation is not the same from the eagerness to make personal sacrifices for the unit that could come from attitudes of loyalty and dedication, and could encourage them to volunteer. From the statements I made above, the following summaries or realizations on my part with connection to my leadership ability or the need to become effective leader are made. First, leadership, discipline, honesty and loyalty, training, communication, education, innovation, good environment, and well traveled and life experience is the qualities required of effective leadership. Even though, not all of these qualities are called the same way, instead they are called either in a more specific or a more general way. Important, too, of these qualities, three: communication, problem-solving, and experience are always seen in the same way. My readings of these three qualities show that these in fact include or cover all the other qualities. In short, it could be reasonably thought that communication effectiveness, problem-solving ability, and a well-travelled life are the main qualities needed for effective leadership. But my experience also revealed the effectiveness of these important qualities not only in excelling in each quality, but in their healthy combination. This can only be effectively made, if these qualities are seen in their core quality or essence. Second, the qualities required for effective leadership are the same qualities needed for effective naval leadership. Yet, even if these qualities are the same qualities for effective leadership, the development of each are better attained in the military. What made them possible is no other than the very nature of military life, which under constant pressure, the very task of the military, between life and death, and the very reason of military’s existence, the higher cause to serve and protect the people and the nation. These important aspects of military life make these qualities natural in the military culture. This makes naval leaders excellent in these qualities, making them valuable to the nation. This makes the military organization strong and good. The dangerous life and too much training that military leaders had prepared them too well for challenging, risky and difficult and dangerous tasks outside the military like managing complicated organizations. Therefore seeing military leaders occupying executive positions in big corporations is not surprising for me. But, even though they have excellent qualities, they cannot successfully handle the organizations without acquiring the main qualities I discuss previous because the nature, the reason, and the task they are to complete is really different from what they used to be in. This could be a small part of the problem but very important still, because owning the main quality will put them in an correct perspective about to how they are to translate and adapt their acquired military qualities to being naval leaders. It is in the correct combination of these qualities that they could be effective. I have heard from my colleages that previous military leaders are now very in demand with employers outside the military. Many of military leaders have successfully changed to or moved to being leaders of outside organization not simply of any organization but really of large and leading companies, usually private companies. This is not yet to say that the Nation’s leading employers, the Federal Government, is now putting military people into the federal system. The comments of military veterans regarding to their reason of recruiting veterans confirms my belief that the successful move of naval leaders to nonmilitary organizations is because of the main military qualities. To conclude my paper, the main qualities: deadership, discipline, honesty and loyalty, training, communication, education, innovation, good environment, and well traveled and life experience, are main military qualities. These, which can be summed up into three qualities: communication, problem-solving, and experience, are similarly seen as main qualities in organizations. As proven by my own experiences of being a naval leader, military leaders can really become effective leaders even outside the military, with their excellent military qualities. Therefore, the military culture is an important feature in making sure of the success of those who become naval leaders or military leaders through the main military qualities similarly needed for effectively managing other organizations not the military. In other words, the hard and dangerous life and the hard training in the military is a good preparation for effective leadership, which means the military is a house of not only excellent leaders but also managers that has to be given more attention if they want to succeed. Works Cited Bryman, A. Leadership in organisations, In S. Clegg, C. Hardy & W.R. Nord Handbook of organisation studies (pp. 276-292), Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, 1996. Print. Durant, Will. Story of Philosophy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961. Print. Faridzadeh, Mehdi. Philosophies of Peace and Just War in Greek Philosophy and Religions of Abraham. UK: Alhoda, 2004. Print. Forsyth, D. Group dynamics, New York: Brooks/Cole-Wadsworth, 1999. Print. Stogdill, R. Leadership, membership and organisation, Psychological Bulletin (1950): 1-14. Print. Thomas, N. & Adair, J.E. The John Adair Handbook of Management and Leadership, London: Thorogood, 2004. Print. Read More