PLN 47: What the U.S. Army Can Teach Leaders About Self-Leadership

Time to Read: 5 mins 

I don't follow U.S. Army publications. It’s just not the type of leadership content I enjoy.

But this one showed up in the sidebar of something else I was reading, and the title grabbed my attention: Mental Readiness for Future Operating Environments.

It felt like it could be about self-leadership, so I followed my hunch down the rabbit hole.

And I’m so glad I did! It turns out…

The U.S. Army — one of the most hierarchical, command-and-control institutions that exists — is telling its soldiers that centralized command isn't sufficient anymore.

As Major Erin Stone, the Army's own Mental Domain Lead, shares, soldiers need to anticipate being cut off from communication in future combat environments.

When this eventuality happens, they won't have the luxury of waiting for orders; they'll have to regulate themselves, think clearly under pressure, and decide how they want to respond, on their own, in real time.

Now, to be clear, Major Stone didn’t use the term "self-leadership", but that’s exactly what she was describing.

And if an institution built on top-down orders is now saying that approach is no longer enough, then no business or organization should be treating self-leadership as optional either.

🤔 Now, you might be thinking: Okay, Laura, but I’m not leading soldiers into combat. And my team's not getting cut off from communication in a war zone.

Fair. But strip away the uniform and the high stakes, and the pattern still holds. We all get cut off at times, it’s just less dramatic.

I experienced it myself recently. I was on a flight with no wifi when a client fired off an urgent question — one she could've easily solved without me, but held onto until I landed.

And when I shared this article with a colleague, he told me how he’d been stuck in back-to-back meetings all day while his team sat on an important issue. They were qualified to make the call themselves, but they chose to wait for him instead.

Then there’s my client, “Jane,” who used to dread going on vacation (the one thing we should all look forward to!), because her time away was always filled with urgent phone calls from her team. (It was such a stressor that fixing it became one of her coaching goals, but we’ll circle back to that in a minute.)

As the Army article lays out, people have to be capable of thinking, deciding, and steadying themselves without someone standing over their shoulder. That's self-leadership.

But the article doesn't stop with the individual. It argues that real strength comes from an entire team being trained this way, challenging leaders to develop self-leadership in those around them. This is a concept known as SuperLeadership. (Bad name, but important theory, so stay with me!)

Researchers Manz and Sims wrote about it in an Organizational Dynamics paper called Superleadership: Beyond the Myth of Heroic Leadership.

As they share, a leader's strength was never supposed to be measured by their hero status, or what they could do alone. A more accurate and appropriate measure is how capable the people around them become at leading themselves.

In other words… A leader’s job isn’t to have all the answers. It's to build people who don't need to wait for the answers.

Which brings us back to Jane. She knew her team's over-reliance on her was partially of her own making, but she'd been at a loss for how to fix it.

So rather than focusing on her team, we started with her self-leadership, specifically addressing Pillar #1: How You Think. We recalibrated her belief that being needed was what made her a good leader, then integrated that new belief into her actions and motivations.

She started empowering her team to think and take action on their own. She let them make real decisions and gave them room to fumble without rushing in to save the day. She supported them in building their own self-leadership, the same way she'd built hers.

And last month, when Jane and her family loaded the car and headed off for their annual beach vacation, she left behind a team that was fully equipped to function in her absence. The team handled everything beautifully, and Jane finally got the unplugged vacation she'd been longing for and working towards.

That's SuperLeadership in action. And it all started with self-leadership.

💡 Practionable Takeaway

Self-leadership isn't something you build once and move past. It's a daily practice that has to keep evolving as you do... or it gets stale.

The benefits are far and wide, and they're amplified when you cultivate a culture of self-leadership and develop it in everyone you lead. That's what turns self-leadership into SuperLeadership.

So today’s question is simple on the surface, but deeply important in practice:

Are you actively developing self-leadership in others, or are you leaving their development to chance?

Awareness is the first step in the journey. From there, a clear path can be designed.

🎥 Want to Go Deeper? 

If you're ready to start designing that path, rather than hoping your team finds it on their own, that's exactly the kind of work I love doing with leaders.

Let's talk about what building a culture of self-leadership could actually look like for you and your team. You can schedule a call with me here.

To Your Success,

Laura 💜🧡