Go With Your Gut- But Not Always

At first they believed the fire would be easy to control. In August 1949, fifteen smokejumpers parachuted into a forest fire in a remote place called Mann Gulch, Montana. The situation appeared routine enough that the team's leader, Wagner (Wag) Dodge, paused to eat his dinner before mobilizing to fight the blaze. But circumstances quickly took a perilous turn. The fire gained in size and fury, and Wag Dodge suddenly realized that he and his men were in grave danger. He instructed the men to drop their tools in an attempt to outrun the fire. But it spread too rapidly, and in a brilliant flash of intuition, Dodge set a small fire in front of the raging inferno and called to his team to lay down with him in the ashes. The confused and terrified men failed to follow Dodge's lead and instead sprinted frantically to try to stay ahead of the conflagration. Thirteen of them died. Dodge's escape fire, however, deprived the main blaze of fuel, and it leapt over him. He survived unhurt.

In one dramatic instant at Mann Gulch, Wag Dodge demonstrated both the extreme potential benefit and the occasional adverse downside of using intuition in decision making. Dodge proved that as a leader, sometimes it is important to go with your gut- but not always.

In his bestselling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, author Malcolm Gladwell analyzes this powerful phenomenon of intuitive decision making, of gut-level choices made in a "blink." Gladwell explains that it is the part of our brain known as the adaptive unconscious that enables us to leap to frequently correct conclusions by quickly and efficiently processing huge amounts of data. Indeed, our very survival as human beings depends on our ability to engage in this process of rapid cognition.

Despite our general bias towards thoroughness in decision making- we usually assume that the quality of a decision is in direct proportion to the time and effort that went into making it- Gladwell says, "… decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately."

The key to making consistently good intuitive decisions is training and experience. In the case of Wag Dodge, he had spent many more years as a smokejumper than most of the men he led at Mann Gulch. He soon understood the fire was not routine based on pattern recognition from previous fires. His expertise told him that the team could not outrun the fire while carrying their tools and, soon, that they could not outrun the fire at all. While he had never seen an escape fire used before, again, something in his long experience told him that such a technique just might work. He was right. Gladwell says, "This is the gift of training and expertise- the ability to extract an enormous amount of meaningful information from the very thinnest slice of experience."

But it would be foolish for a leader to rely on intuition under every circumstance, for two reasons. First, our instincts can sometimes be disrupted and lead us astray. In other words, sometimes we are wrong. Second, if we rely on gut decisions but fail to communicate our reasoning to our teams and to bring them along- as the Mann Gulch scenario so tragically demonstrates- we will fail in our objectives.

Gladwell writes, "Taking our powers of rapid cognition seriously means we have to acknowledge the subtle influences that can alter or undermine or bias the products of our unconscious." For example, how often do you make a really good decision when you are in an emotional state of mind, frightened, angry or upset? What about decisions made when you are incredibly rushed for time? Self-awareness and open acknowledgement that conditions may not be ideal for a gut-level decision can go a long way toward guiding us to a more deliberative process and a potentially better outcome.

And if our team does not understand what we are doing or why, then we have failed a critical test of leadership as well. For Wag Dodge, a number of important factors worked against him in his effort to make an intuitive decision to save his team. Dodge was generally described as an extremely poor communicator, a "man of few words." The team therefore did not know him well to begin with. His team read his actions in taking time to eat his dinner as an indication that all was well. When Dodge quickly discerned that he was wrong in his initial assessment of the fire, he then became pressed for time to convey his urgency to the team. When he called to the men to join him in the escape fire, because they did not know or fully trust him, they could not make sense of his behavior. Disaster resulted.

In the end, we as leaders need to determine when to rely on our intuitive instincts and when to be more thorough in our approach. No two situations are exactly alike and there is no magic formula. Malcolm Gladwell argues that judgment and understanding are critical. He writes, "Judgment matters; it is what separates winners from losers," and, "The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter." In using our judgment and understanding, regardless of our decision making process, we need to communicate effectively to bring our teams with us. So the next time you face a critical decision, just remember: sometimes it is important to go with your gut- but not always.

Show Humility

George Catlett Marshall was the U.S. Army Chief of Staff during the Second World War. In that capacity, he managed the astronomical growth of America's armed forces from a tiny pre-war entity to the thirteen-million-person juggernaut that defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. After the war, Marshall became secretary of state and oversaw implementation of his namesake Marshall Plan, which succeeded in rebuilding war-ravaged Europe. He went on to serve as secretary of defense and, later, as head of the American Red Cross. Despite these profound achievements during a lifetime of service, Marshall is perhaps one of the least-well-known leaders in our history.

Marshall's relative lack of name recognition today represents the natural outcome of his supreme selflessness coupled with his fierce and unwavering commitment to always putting the needs of the country first. George Marshall embodied a critical leadership trait that, unfortunately, we seldom see in sufficient measure: he showed humility.

When the Allied high command decided in 1944 to invade Europe via the Normandy beaches of France, President Franklin Roosevelt confronted a difficult choice as to who should lead such an important and complex operation. By all accounts, Marshall had earned the right to head up the effort, and very much desired the appointment. His superior leadership skills and strategic acumen were unmatched. Yet when Roosevelt asked Marshall whether he would prefer to lead the D-Day invasion or remain on duty in Washington as chief of staff, Marshall demurred. He told the president that whatever his decision, Marshall would "go along with it wholeheartedly. The issue was simply too great for any personal feeling to be involved."

In the end, Roosevelt told Marshall that he "could not sleep at night with you out of the country," and the assignment went to Dwight D. Eisenhower instead. Ike succeeded dramatically, became a national hero, and rode his fame all the way to the White House. Some people might interpret Marshall's actions as a sign of weakness, but nothing was further from the truth.

Indeed, in Marshall's case, his quiet and modest demeanor masked tremendous drive and a will of iron. Thankfully for the free world, his ambition and willpower were not personal or selfish in nature, but directed solely toward the purpose of serving his country by defeating our enemies. He was ruthless in his decision making when the issue of winning the war was at stake.

In his book Good to Great, noted business author Jim Collins describes corporate CEO's who embody this combination of extreme personal humility with great professional determination as Level 5 Leaders. Collins and his team studied companies that made a leap from good results to great results and sustained those levels of performance for at least fifteen years. These companies produced stock returns during those fifteen years that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times.

While Collins expressly sought to avoid a conclusion that these stellar results were due primarily to great leadership ("Ignore the executives," he told his research team), he could not overlook the overwhelming data that proved that in fact Level 5 leadership was key. Every single company on the roster had Level 5 leadership at the time they made the transition from good-to-great.

Collins observes, "Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless. To quickly grasp this concept, think of United States President Abraham Lincoln (one of few Level 5 presidents in United States history), who never let his ego get in the way of his primary ambition for the larger cause of an enduring great nation. Yet those who mistook Mr. Lincoln's personal modesty, shy nature, and awkward manner as signs of weakness found themselves terribly mistaken…"

Collins identifies such CEO's as Darwin Smith, who led Kimberly-Clark from 1971-1991, and Colman Mockler, CEO of Gillette from 1975 to 1991, as classic examples of Level 5 leaders who achieved extraordinary results during their tenures, but who were also always quick to give credit to others (not surprisingly, neither man is a household name today). Collins was "struck by how the good-to-great leaders didn't talk about themselves… It wasn't just false modesty. Those who worked with or wrote about the good-to-great leaders used words like quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious… and so forth."

Finally, in contrast, Collins also found that in two-thirds of the companies against which he compared the good-to-great companies, leaders with enormous egos not only did not perform as well, but frequently "contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company."

Where do you, your boss, and the rest of the leaders in your organization fall on the humility spectrum? Today, the simple truth is that we need more leaders like George Marshall, Darwin Smith, and Colman Mockler-- people who show humility while striving to accomplish great things for the institutions they serve.

Bring Out the Best in the People Around You

The two men could not have been less alike. One was a short, boisterous, cigar-chomping Jew from Brooklyn. The other was a tall, moody, intensely private African-American from Louisiana and Oakland. Yet over time, these two men found their common ground and formed a bond of friendship that became legendary.

Red Auerbach was one of the greatest coaches in the history of the National Basketball Association, and Bill Russell one of the game's all-time best players. Together, they led the Boston Celtics to 11 N.B.A. championships in 13 seasons. As chronicled in Russell's wonderful new book, Red and Me: My Coach, My Lifelong Friend, they became devoted to each other until Auerbach's death in 2006. Perhaps the most outstanding characteristic of these two leaders was their uncanny ability to bring out the best in the people around them.

Bill Russell said of his relationship with Auerbach, "Although we came from different tribes as men, we recognized early on that as professionals we had a common agenda: to win basketball games… Our core philosophies- of how to be men, how to be professionals, how to be friends- were in tune, so we never had to talk about who we were or how to conduct ourselves. We just lived it. Over the next thirteen years, basketball set the stage for our relationship to evolve from caution, to admiration, to trust and respect, to a friendship that lasted a lifetime."

Russell joined the Celtics in 1956 and ultimately became team captain. He was especially noted for his unique ability to bring out the best in his teammates. In a review of Russell's book for the New York Times, former basketball star and U.S. Senator Bill Bradley wrote, "[Russell] had thought about the game and his role in it so much that it was only a matter of learning his teammates' strengths and weaknesses before he was capable of elevating their games. It is a rare player who thinks, 'How can I help my teammate help the team?' Russell and Auerbach understood that in a winning culture, selflessness is just common sense."

Russell's ability to influence the play of his teammates started, very importantly, from the rock solid foundation of his own formidable skills as a player. He was a five-time league M.V.P. and physically gifted with great height and leaping ability. Beyond his obvious athletic skills, he was a true innovator on the basketball court. He focused on defense as the key to a team's morale, in a way that had never been tried before. In an era when players were coached never to leave their feet while playing defense, he became the game's preeminent shot blocker, dominating opposing offenses and forcing them to adjust to his intimidating new tactics.

Russell's sheer competitiveness also intimidated opponents, and won the respect of his teammates. Bradley said, "He wanted to win every matchup, every game, every title. He waged psychological warfare, on and off the court." Because of their high regard for Russell's outstanding ability and fierce desire to win, his teammates were very open to his energetic attempts to push them to improve their own games. He consciously studied the play of every Celtic and willed his teammates to perform to their highest potential. The result was an unprecedented string of championships.

Auerbach, too, appreciated the importance of each individual in the whole grand scheme. Bradley observed, "[Auerbach's] genius was to relate to each player individually. What worked for one player didn't work for all players." Auerbach even handled Russell differently, allowing him to rest during practice once the regular season began for purposes of keeping him fresh for an entire grueling N.B.A. campaign. Russell's teammates did not resent this preferential treatment because they knew, once the game began, no one was more committed to winning than their captain.

As a peer colleague, do you ask yourself Bill Russell's very important question, "How can I help my teammate help the team?" It is the rare person who does this. It starts with one's own skills and performance. Outstanding results engender credibility and respect. From this foundation, it becomes possible to help even the worst performer on the team get better. But the selflessness, motivation, and energy must be there.

As a leader, like Red Auerbach, do you understand that each member of the team needs to be led differently? Do you take time to get to know your people as individuals and to adjust your approach accordingly? Do you work to get the best out of each person on the team, taking into account their unique skills and abilities? Such a model makes life more complicated and requires time and hard work, but outstanding results will follow.

Bill Bradley won championships with the New York Knicks and he recalled the joys of being part of a team, like the Boston Celtics, where people made a concerted effort to bring out the best in each other: "… the bond among players lasts a lifetime… You never forget your teammates' loyalty and how you returned it in full measure, and how that trust and mutual respect allowed you to be a champion."