How has your military experience shaped your leadership style?

Question

Fran Racioppi · Answer

Great question and thanks for asking it. How has your military experience shaped your leadership style? I think for me, it's a foundational element of my leadership style. The military never sits you down and says, today we're gonna teach you how to be a follower. It doesn't happen. From day one of entering the military, I think even before that, when you go down to the recruiting station, they start talking about leadership. They start talking about what you're gonna learn in the experiences that you're gonna get put in as a leader. So whether you're the entry level, junior enlisted private, you're a young lieutenant in the officer corps, or you're a sergeant major or a general, it's all about leadership from day one. And what the military does is they're constantly putting you in different situations in different parts of the world to solve complex challenges as leaders. Because every person in an organization is a leader and that is so important to understand. Anyone who builds an organization and doesn't treat their people like that is doing a disservice to the organization and their people. Everyone is a leader first and foremost. So that's the number one thing that the military teaches you about leadership. Lead from the front, always. The other thing is accountability, responsibility, and ownership. We have to understand, number one, our responsibility. What do we do here? What do we bring to the table? What's our job? What's our role? What's our contributing factor? That allows us to then take accountability, meaning that we understand the results of our action, good, bad, and different, because our action is based on our responsibility, what we're there and defined to do. When we know what we have to do and we assume our accountability for our actions, good, bad, or indifferent, then we have what's called ownership. And ownership is what allows us to look around the table, build trust in each other, and build great organizations. That's what I learned.

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"How has your military experience shaped your leadership style?"