Management Tip: Thoughts on Leadership

I am vacationing with my family and some close friends in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in an area known as Nantahala. Today I experienced many lessons in humility, for today I volunteered to be an novice captain of a 12-foot river raft with a crew of five. Rodney, an expert captain, led the way in another raft, with a crew of six.

• Everyone in a raft works easier when led by an expert captain.
• Everyone in a raft works harder when led by a novice captain, no matter how well intentioned the captain is, no matter how skilled the others in the raft are.
• The captain has the best view of what lies ahead, everything strategic (although not always everything tactical). Novice captains often forget to look ahead, especially during times of calm.
• The expert captain almost nonchalantly avoids obstacles that to the novice captain appear to require dramatic action.
• The crew can exert valiant effort, yet that does little good if the novice captain does not set the course.
• A novice captain needs a patient crew if he is ever going to become more than a novice.
• The best way to become more than a novice is to get behind an expert captain, observe what he does, and immediately apply what you observe. Follow his example.
• The gentle encouragement of an expert captain speaks ever so clearly to a novice captain who wants to learn and grow.
• A truly expert captain teaches, guides, and encourages the novice captains he trains. No mistake is so great that the expert cannot find room for praise for the novice.
• The expert captain reads the waters and understands where to go and where not to go. The novice plows through, hoping to make progress one way or another.
• The expert captain moves his raft so effortlessly that one begins to wonder why he gets paid so much for doing so little.
• A novice captain exerts a lot of effort - the performance is dramatic - and yet sometimes ends up literally stuck between a rock and a hard place, unable to make progress, not able to move until an expert captain gives him a hand.
• Riding with a novice captain is exciting. Riding with an expert captain can be boring (sometimes boring is good) or - if you choose to take on far greater challenges - even more exciting (and exciting for the right reasons!).

Sometimes the best thing an expert in one field can do is to be a novice in another field for a day - a lesson in humility and better for it.

I hope that these observations might help you be a better expert (raising up novices), a better novice (finding an expert and growing), or a better manager (justifying bringing in the expert captains you need along the way).