Leadership communication principles boomed like a mortar round in the book Fixing Hell by Col. (Ret.) Larry C. James, Ph.D. This is a disturbing, yet memorable, work. When Abu Ghraib was a wasteland, nothing but sand and rocks and run-down buildings, with garbage and raw sewage everywhere you looked, the Army called upon Dr. James to get a fix on fixing things fast.
Were you there? In 2004, the first CNN pictures blasted and bloodied our national psyche as images were brought home to us from Abu Ghraib, showing naked dog piles, an Iraqi prisoner standing with a hangman’s noose around his neck, and K-9 dogs terrorizing detainees. A few apples gone bad in a putrid barrel of human misery?
YOU’VE GOT TO BE THERE
This is the e-mail I sent to Dr. James, who was scheduled to give a workshop I was helping to spearhead, for clinical psychologists in Dayton, Ohio…
Hello Larry:
It was good to have dinner with you a while back. The Dayton Psychological Association Board and membership are looking forward to your workshop.
I was deeply moved while reading your book, Fixing Hell. I truly appreciate the courage you needed to share your leadership principles and life lessons. The discussions about your mother and your return home made me weep. The media descriptions which we see and read are so sterile in comparison….
As a psychologist, you take us all to the basement to sort through our skeletons and attempt to humbly fix what’s broken.
See you at the workshop Friday!
Respectfully yours,
Dennis O’Grady
GO TO THE BASEMENT
Dr. James spent his vital life energy fixing Hell, and then he walked away with the new form of PTSD to boot. He did it by being an emotionally attached leader who was present and accounted for at all times of day and night.
Traditionally, Instigator leaders in the TALK2ME© system have been the status quo. The times have changed. In my book, Talk to Me: Communication Moves to Get Along With Anyone, Dr. James represents the new breed of Empathizer leader. These leaders combine head and heart and use their Emotional I.Q. to fix the impossible.
Col. James, a change-seeking leader who is executing emotional wisdom without being soft, describes the core values of an Empathizer leader to his trainees:
You have to be there. As a leader you need to always remember to be there. Never allow yourself to be a vacant, distant, and emotionally detached leader. Vacant leaders simply aren’t there. You gotta go to the basement. One of the problems in most organizations is that rarely will you find its senior leaders getting down and dirty to the lowest level and looking in every closet and every basement of every building. Why? Number one, it will tell you where the skeletons are, and number two, it will tell you where all the broken crap is hidden. Number three is most important: it will tell your subordinate troops that you have a vested interest in their organization and let them know that they can’t hide anything from you. Remember, your troops will judge you by your deeds, not your words. A leader who stays in the rear will take it in the rear.
EIGHT RULES TO LEAD BY
How do you lead when you’re exhausted, dehydrated, frightened, and smack dab in the middle of the raging fires of Hell and there’s no escape hatch and your life may disappear the next instant?
RULE #1: YOU GOT TO BE THERE
Be available at all times. Be there with your soldiers. Eat at their tables in the chow hall, sleep where they sleep, everything.RULE #2: BE SEEN
When leaders are not seen by their subordinates, they will begin to drift away from following the rules.RULE #3: YOU MUST BE INVOLVED
Be everywhere. Along the way there, talk with and have fun with the lowest-ranking people (privates, secretaries, janitors) you meet. That’s where you will really build morale.RULE #4: BE BOLD
We all love being around a leader who has a big set of balls. Make the right, hard, moral calls. Be bold and lead.RULE #5: BE PASSIONATE
Be passionate in everything you do. Your soldiers who work for you will see it in your eyes, and more importantly, they will feel it in you. Your passion will spread through the rest of your unit like wildfire.RULE #6: BE FUN
Cut up with folks, tell stories, have a good time, laugh. Nobody likes being around a mean, nasty boss.RULE #7: BE ENERGETIC
Do whatever you do with energy, and people will want to be around you. It will be infectious.RULE #8: BE CLEAR
Everyone who works for you must, at all times, know the rules of engagement. Remember, soldiers will do what their leaders allow them to. If you allow it, a soldier will do it.
AN ARMY PSYCHOLOGIST CONFRONTS ABU GHRAIB
That’s what Dr. Larry James learned the hard way, at a dark, hot place once used as Saddam Hussein’s torture chambers in Iraq, on his way home to his loved ones.
Dr. James in now Dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.