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This article brings up some great thoughts about leadership in the digital age and the ramifications of over reliance on it for decision making.
https://medium.com/the-bridge/leadership-with-the-lights-out-afdbeb26d79c
https://medium.com/the-bridge/leadership-with-the-lights-out-afdbeb26d79c
Leadership
Technology
Training
Failure
Posted >1 y ago
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Email provides the advantage to spread the Commanders intent across a large area very quickly however, you cannot replace the effectiveness of face to face communication.
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TSgt Joshua Copeland
CSM Michael J. Uhlig, face to face definitely has to advantage of being able to look someone in the eye and know they truly understand the message!
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1LT William Clardy
TSgt Joshua Copeland, your comment about getting the message eye to eye reminds me of an incident many, many moons ago.
One of our cav scouts had a serious pay problem -- as in not getting any for a few months, if I recall correctly. When another payday came and the young private still had no pay, he was (yet again) dispatched to finance -- only this time the scout section sergeant (who had been a participant in the Southeast Asia War Games) accompanied him.
When a specialist in Finance decided o lean back behind his desk and show absolutely no empathy for our scout's problem, said specialist discovered how fast a scout sergeant could drag him across said desk so that they were looking eye to eye with only an inch or two between their faces while Ed expressed the severity of the problem. Fortunately, a senior Finance NCO was quick to assess the situation and convinced Ed to set down the specialist - and had the specialist vacate the office while the NCOs got the private's pay situation sorted out.
No email could match that encounter for making sure that a message was fully understood...
One of our cav scouts had a serious pay problem -- as in not getting any for a few months, if I recall correctly. When another payday came and the young private still had no pay, he was (yet again) dispatched to finance -- only this time the scout section sergeant (who had been a participant in the Southeast Asia War Games) accompanied him.
When a specialist in Finance decided o lean back behind his desk and show absolutely no empathy for our scout's problem, said specialist discovered how fast a scout sergeant could drag him across said desk so that they were looking eye to eye with only an inch or two between their faces while Ed expressed the severity of the problem. Fortunately, a senior Finance NCO was quick to assess the situation and convinced Ed to set down the specialist - and had the specialist vacate the office while the NCOs got the private's pay situation sorted out.
No email could match that encounter for making sure that a message was fully understood...
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When I worked in the Pentagon, I conducted all my business in person and then sent the email as confirmation and never let the lack of internet stop the work. Now I have to use email as my only souce of communication but my section can continue to work if the network goes down, at least for a day. If it continues too long, we would need to find alternate ways to access our email like work from home or dare I saw set up a wi-if for us all to use. Face to face communication is a skill still needed in the military and some will need to be taught this dying skill.
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Very interesting and true. I think from the tactical level that most have going to more leading through electronic media as opposed to face to face comm. This practice has grown so much that we do it at the operational and strategic levels as well. As is stands now if email goes down on a normal day then no one knows what to do, take that to a higher level and what do those with out communication do?
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TSgt Joshua Copeland
SMSgt (Join to see), I cannot count the number of times I have heard "Email/internet is down, guess we should just go home."
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