I’m committed to life-long improvement of my leadership skills. That has me reflecting regularly to examine how I’ve performed and how I can improve.
On one early occasion when leading a team of law-enforcement agents at a crime scene, I relieved an officer from duty for consistent poor operational performance. On this occasion he had allowed a prisoner to escape when the prisoner had asked to use the toilet. I was angry as the prisoner had vital information that we needed now.
I yelled at the officer, told him to return to base and write a report as to what had happened and to report to my office at 7am the following morning. I tore strips off him and booked him into redo the investigator program that he had already completed.
Looking in the mirror, I saw that my actions were over the top and that I could have handled it very much more calmly and effectively.
Then I looked at the cause of my behaviour. It wasn’t the officer’s actions. It was what I felt as a result of his actions. I felt fear – because ultimately I was responsible for the escape. I would be judged for losing access to valuable information.
I also saw that my reaction was habitual. I got angry out of habit. I behaved the way an early supervisor treated me when I had made a mistake.
Further reflection showed that I also acted out of ignorance. I knew what the problem was – the officer’s lack of skill – but I hadn’t resolved the situation. Not acting delivers the same as not knowing – and that is ignorance. I hadn’t acted to rectify his performance earlier when I was already aware of it. Now at a crucial time, that lack of resolution exacted its price.
I learned that we all suffer these root causes of our accidents, mistakes, conflicts and dysfunction.
In fact the root causes of all that goes wrong with humans are fear, habits and ignorance. Check it out with all the unwanted outcomes you’ve been responsible for.
I also learned that if we face the cause whether it’s fear, habits or ignorance or a combination of them, then we can identify what we can do to resolve them.
We do that by looking closely in the mirror.
What’s been your experience?
