Friday, June 01, 2007

Everything I Need to Know I Learned in…Basic Training, Part 2

Basic Training has historically been a paradigm-shifting, life-changing experience that makes fighters out of people and cultivates the leadership ability within those fighters. Countless leaders throughout history came from the ranks of the military.

I am a man of logic, rational and linear thinking: I take pieces of evidence, investigate, analyze and process, and draw conclusions, insights, and make relationships between varying pieces of data. In this case the evidence is clear: Those things taught throughout military institutions worldwide are a strong basis and foundation for any leader to have. I like to half-jokingly quip that I was the only enlisted soldier in the Army training to become a General. Getting my hands on any information I could from all echelons of knowledge in the armed forces, I internalized it and found ways to enrich my experiences alongside other great passions of mine.

To that end the following are 5 traits that myself and many others have learned throughout Basic Training:

1. Always be prepared: Preparation is the key—whether that means having the right physical tools of the job or the mental preparation for taking on the next mountain in your path, preparation is paramount to the determination of success or failure. Good preparation means having a deep and broad understanding of that which you are about to embark on. Proper preparation allows you to know what your goal is, which result you desire, and how best to adapt to circumstances that are bound to change along the way.

2. Working as a team: Organizations exist to undertake those missions and see through those visions which are too large for individuals to take on. The grandest of missions call for teams to take them on: Whether that means a partnership or a multi-national corporation, working alongside like-minded complementary individuals allows for more to be accomplished. In Basic Training one of the first things that are learned is how to interact like a team: Drill and ceremony. Marching as a team binds a unit together in such a way that actions and intent become uniform, functional, and complement one another towards a unified goal.

3. Conquering personal fears: When someone enlists or is commissioned in the military they are about to start something that is very likely unknown and very foreign to them. I know it was for me. Basic Training forces you to confront many personal fears, especially fear of the unknown. Confronting fears makes you step outside your comfort zone, adapt, and increase the size of that comfort zone. This not only changes how you view the world, it also changes what you can do as a part of it.

4. Plan, prepare, execute: This seemingly simple phrase embodies a lot about what makes the military great in relation to what it means to leadership. Few successes were ever had without a plan. No meaningful success was ever accomplished without proper preparation. No success was ever had without execution. In their book, “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done,” authors Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, and Charles Burck pose that “the biggest obstacle to success is the absence of execution. Indeed, in my experience success has greatly hinged on the ability to execute and the subsequent follow-up.

5. Physical and mental fitness begets success: The biochemistry of a physically fit individual is important to sustain and grow mental fitness within the individual. People who are complacent and idle in their spare time find that their lethargy grows until such time that it consumes and becomes apathy. In Basic Training a day does not go by without physical and mental conditioning taking place. You will find this trait in many great leaders as well. Take a little time each day for physical exercise and something to test your mental prowess: You will find that it is beneficial.





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