Dear Writer, Good morning

That is a POST on the discussion board from James. Please see how the instructor replied to his POST. I would like to respond to the Instructor. Please reply to the Instructor accordingly. Thank you.

Part of leading is earning trust and engaging teams to move toward a desired goal. How is this actually done? How do you earn trust? How do you engage people when they are tired, disbelieving, and seemingly uninterested? Share your experiences or what leaders can do to earn your trust and engage you.

For my classmates feel free to skip to the story section. I have what I hope is funny story about leadership experience I share a lot.

What is Trust: I hope you don't mind but I would like to go back to General Mattis. This time I will quote the book you talked about in last week's post Dr Smith. It really is a good book. "Trusted personal relationships are the foundation for effective fighting teams, whether on the playing field, the boardroom, or the battlefield. When the spirit of your team is on the line and the stakes are high, confidence in the integrity and commitment of those around you will enable boldness and resolution; a lack of trust will see brittle, often tentative execution of even the best-laid plans" (Mattis & West, 2021).

Building trust takes a long time but you can lose it in a second and never get it back. When we look at how General Mattis cultivated this trust the very first thing he talks about is to show trust. By letting your staff have freedom of action for example. Let us take given an assignment to staff as an example for this. I try not to randomly give out duties. I also try not to give out assignments just because they need to be done. First you need to know what your staff is cable of. That means more than knowing the scope of practice, that means knowing what Mary or John is capable of. You know that by getting to know them. That builds trust. Some people you will know better then others. You might have staff, the only thing you know is what their resume said but you do have some idea from the interview or first team meeting. If I don't then I probably won't be assigning them something till I have that talk at a minimum. Once we have that bear minimum of trust, I do something which we refer to as giving them rope. I have a good idea what you are capable of so I will let you have the freedom to accomplish the task which shows my trust in you. Sometimes the tasks that we gave out needed to be delegated further and to people I don't know. I trust you though and if you trust them, they get that same respect. When the trust is misplaced, you might have to pull back on the rope. We don't jerk it though. You must reassess. Your staff should never lose their trust in you as a leader until you have no trust in that staff member. All of that seems like it builds a lot of trust with people, but this is just the minimum or the starting point. If you want to engage people when they are tired, disbelieving, or uninterested the best thing you can do is be the catalyst for new ideas. You might think you know the answer to a problem or want to see a certain solution but does your staff see a solution? Have they thought of a problem before you realized it? When you ask your staff questions and have them generate ideas, they become invested in the solution. It is better to get 100% buy in from a good idea than 50% buy in of great idea. I have always felt most leaders I meet do not understand this process. They think they do but as an NCO I would often brush new lieutenants' collar when they started to have ideas. They would look at me and ask, "What are you doing sergeant?" To which I would reply, "brushing the good idea fairy off your shoulder sir." In nursing I have often wished I could do that to some management staff I meet. Often we would be in the middle or waiting for a task when a officer would walk up and say the words, "I have a idea." Every soldier hated that phrase because it was often followed by something we thought was dumb and would not make our lives easier. This in contrast to when a good officer would walk up and say, "what do you do guys think about doing this....." That often got our engagement. You may have an idea in mind but if you cant steer the conversation to get your staffs engagement than that is something you should work on.

My experience: During this time, I served in an artillery unit. We were out in the field for two weeks practicing shooting moving to a new location emplacing the guns shooting. We would repeat this process many times through the day. These are big guns and takes a lot of logistics and manpower to this properly. There are lots of moving parts. Our first day went fantastic. No one complained, every move went perfectly, and a lot of training got done. At the end of the day all the officers and higher NCOs get together in a Battle Update briefing (BUB). We talk about what went well and what we can improve on. At this time I am a fresh NCO who just made sergeant not to long ago. I really don't belong in this meeting, but the commander took a liking to me because a few field exercises back I impressed him with my excel and power point skills that he designated me to run the power point for the briefing. That sounds more impressive than it really was. I used to the standard formuals to make it show up red when were low on ammunition. I had the Excel always showing in the Command tent. He walked in one day, saw it and was over the moon. As they were talking about the training the Commander says how impressed he was with the 'boys' and thought they deserved a break tomorrow. This I am sure was a way to keep moral up which helps build trust. His 'idea' was for the men to still get practicing emplacing the gun but they didn't have move to a far location. He said we should have them pack up off to the side and re emplace in the same spot. That should be easier, which will give them a break. Everyone on staff praised him for such a thoughtful idea. Telling him how much the men were going to love him. I am giggling to the point where I almost cant control it trying not to laugh. The Commander looks at me at the far end of the table, "What's so funny SGT Pazzaglia?" He was genuine in his question. He couldn't understand what was so humorous. I looked right at the high-ranking NCOs these are enlisted and not officers but been around awhile. They knew what I was laughing at but didn't want me to tell the officers how we run things. If looks could kill they, had it. I told the commander anyway; dam the consequences. I said, "sir, do you know what will happen on the line tomorrow if we do that?" He said no. "Sir Smoke (the person in charge of the gun, NCO normally) will walk up take the cigarette out of his mouth and yell, 'Take that gun and put it over their' pointing at a new spot. Place the cigarette back in his mouth and he will walk away. When the soldiers get finished, he will walk back up take the cigarette out and say, 'Ok. Put it back." 0_0. This is something I think that must be experienced to get the full impact but here is a video of what that feeling kind of looks like.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/f2sWCLc363c (PSG is Platoon Sargent) FYI they had to fill this hole to.

The Commander turned to the higher NCOs there and said, "No no no. We cant have that. Please make sure they know its for break." They said they would but then turned to me I got the 'we will be having a conversation after this BUB' look. We did and I got chewed out for telling the command staff how we run things as NCOs. I think the best part of the next day was when my friend, who works at one of the guns, came into the Command Tent (TOC) screaming about having to move the gun 10 feet and put it back when he came to get me for lunch that day. He didn't notice the commander in the room. I did not hide my laughter this time. I fell out of my chair. The commander didn't say a word, but I know he trusted me after that. He always came and talked me. He was a really good guy. I miss him.

Mattis, J. N., & West, F. J. (2021). Call sign chaos: Learning to lead. Random House.

One more for the road: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/soldiers-water-poland/

That is how the Instructor replied to the his POST. Please reply to the Instructor accordingly

James,

Your stories and insight are really great. I enjoyed the reference to Mattis (as always). Honesty is the easiest way to earn trust. It costs us nothing to give but everything if withheld. You took a risk when you started to laugh at the idea from the Command staff; and even more of a risk ignoring the warnings from your superiors. Class, it is not uncommon to feel that questions from the C-Suite or higher are rhetorical. How do you go about expressing disagreement or an opposing opinion to those who everyone seems to be afraid of? Was the risk worth it? Please share.

Dr. Smith