Executive Leadership Tenets

Colonel Royal Mortenson

United States Marine Corps

1. Don’t forget the 12 basic tenets of leadership. See previous brief.

2. Have an organizational vision of success. Find it, develop it and stick to it. If you don’t someone else with develop your vision for you.

3. Manage your time. If you don’t, someone else will.

4. Get out of the office every day. Talk to and touch the people that toil every day.

5. Figure out your organizations “center of gravity” (that element or elements that give us the strength to accomplish the main effort) and nurture and care for it every day.

6. Clearly articulate at every opportunity what the main effort is and allocate the resources to ensure success. People must know your priority/priorities. Don’t make people guess what is important.

7. Unless you are charged by your boss to be a sweeping agent of change, look, listen and learn about your organization before you begin making changes. Change for change sake is insulting to those you lead.

8. Remember the art of leadership is getting people to do what you want, but making them think it is their idea. Get buy-in to your vision, build consensus even within your own organization.

9. Like the real-estate joke about location, location, and location. Executive leadership is about environment, environment and environment. Your job is to set an environment where others feel valued and productive.

10. Be consistent in attitude, demeanor and focus. Nothing destroys moral quite like people worrying about what the “flavor of the day” is or what the boss is going to explode about today.

11. Discuss issues with staff and principles whenever possible. Encourage open discussion and debate. Don’t be threatened by disagreement or contrary opinions from your own. It will take time, but if you are honest and consistent, people will learn it is ok to tell the emperor he has no clothes. You want that!

12. Be transparent in your leadership and decision-making style. Make as many decisions in open forums/meetings as possible. This ensures common understanding of the boss’s decision and leaves no room for “whose idea was this” discussions.

13. It is never about you! It is about the mission and the people charged with accomplishing the mission.