A lot of you know that I was trained as a combat air controller. We would send our fighters into a situation, knowing that one of the outcomes could be combat.
It doesn’t help to scream in those situations. Primarily, you are providing them with information and sometimes direction in a calm and reasoned manner. If someone hears that you are flustered, it doesn’t help. It makes everyone nervous. If something really out of the ordinary happens, then you let the emotion into your voice. As a controller, you set the level of the conversation. As soon as you start yelling, it is almost impossible to back things back down to calm. You’ve changed the tone and you have to live with it.
In my last Navy tour, I was one of the OOD (Officer of the Deck). Essentially, I ran the bridge of the carrier. I had to balance what we were requesting of the engineers, the course, integrating with air operations, communication, a whole host of things. When you do that, you have a team working with you. People had different styles when dealing with their team. Some people were the ‘stand on top of the hill and shout orders’ type. This is a type I didn’t care for as an initial position, the OOD starting with stress dialed to 11. Don’t get me wrong, some situations called for this, but I always liked to keep it in my back pocket. If you do it wrong, people are afraid to talk to you and you end up crashing the ship into something because of that fear.
I preferred to guide my team. I spent a little more time assessing the new people until I knew I could trust them. Then I let the system work. If something happened that demanded more ‘leader on a hill’ then the team was with me. The tone is set and the process works.
I’ve had bosses that ‘led by abuse’. Their power came from belittling others. They never truly have a team behind them. I think some people think the only way to have power is the use it constantly. They’ve been given the hammer of authority and they come out swinging.
I think true power comes from knowing when not to use it.