A lesson in leadership
My wife and I watched Apollo 13 last night. She had never seen it (we’re not really big movie watchers) and I got excited when she chose it at the movie rental store even though I had seen it. It’s an awesome movie that shows the greatness of American ingenuity and teamwork. It also showed the greatness of a leader who is secure in his leadership, who makes decisions, and who empowers his workers to provide key input to his decisions.
The leader, Gene Crantz (sp?), was awesome. He made life or death decisions based on the information he had at the time. He called in the experts, listened to them, and then made the decision. He didn’t wait for management approval, he didn’t fear for his own career, he just made the best decisions he could make using the best information he had. All organizations should have leadership like this.
Crantz also listened to the people who worked for him. I was so impressed by the way he would call his experts in, ask them to assess the situation, explain their conclusions, and then Crantz would make the decision based on the information he got. The experts must have felt valued when he would listen to them so closely. Listening is one of the most overlooked leadership skills today. A lot of leaders today think their position as leader calls on them to speak, direct others, bark orders, and ‘be the boss’ and forget the value of listening to our experts as they explain why they’re experts. It doesn’t matter how much a micro-manager they may be, the experts are going to know more about the situation.
Finally, the experts who worked for Crantz were not afraid to go up to him and tell him things that were not popular, were not ‘yes men’ answers, but would get the Apollo 13 crew home safely. The guys would give him the information straight up; regardless of how they thought he might take it. This shows a culture of openness and empowerment under Crantz. He encouraged his people to step up and step out to do their jobs to the best of their ability and boldly speak the truth to him. Again, I don’t think this is too common in today’s world with today’s leaders. Today’s leaders, many of them anyway, want to dismiss their employees as they seek truth from committees and meetings of their peers.
