"LEADERSHIP NIGHT VISION GOGGLES (NVG'S)"

Night vision goggles (NVG’s) “…give soldiers a crisper image of the battlefield and even allows soldiers to fire their weapons without exposing themselves to enemy fire and boosts a dim, dark scene.” What night vision goggles do for seeing the battlefield, decades of leadership and operational strategic planning and risk ID/mitigation, do for leaders in service to the nation or to corporations. It gives them a crisper image of what is happening and boosts a dim dark scene around them and allows them to execute daily without overly exposing the organization and themselves to danger. 

I certainly do not wish to compare battlefield risks to corporate risk, but merely to point out that military leaders’ years dedicated to serving, build an unconscious competence in their ability see to things and avoid failures and issues that others with lesser experience cannot see. Seeing the unseen and forecasting the unknown are critical skills leaders work to develop over time as they recognize the risks associated with failure can often be catastrophic. For this reason, military leaders take great pains to be lifelong learners, to work to identify risks, mitigate them and see more and see farther. For to not see them, can often mean loss and death. Even with the most honed skills, failure, unfortunately, still happens, of course, but military leaders at all levels, especially the senior levels, work to mitigate failures to ensure our sons and daughters may return home safely. 

Anyone who has had night vision goggles on (NVG’s) has probably had the chance to use them and have seen others within an area, not have them on. It is always a little comical because, when you are wearing the NVG’s you can see people stumbling in the dark, walking with their hands out in front of them to make sure they don’t run into anything, walking around kind of like a tactical “Frankenstein’s Monster.” All the while, you sit in amazement at how clear you can see things, how quickly you can identify hazards in front of you as others, without them, stumble into things you can see, and perhaps may not be able to warn them about. 

The exceptional clarity that NVG’s equip service members with is precisely the same level of clarity that decades of leading, training, team building, and risk mitigation equip leaders with to mitigate “falling into a hole” in mid stride. When leaders leave service these “leadership NVG’s” do not come off, however. As you navigate your way through your role in the civilian sector, you are “seeing” more than others. You may see leaders with impressive titles and “years in the business” with, what they think are “NVG’s” on their heads, yet they stumble through basic leadership and team issues because they do not see the “holes”, they are walking in to just as those service members we spoke of earlier do not see the holes, because they are ill equipped to see them. You may briefly stare in amazement as they fail to correct one leadership issue after another, astonished that they are unable to see the things that you see. Moreover, your attempts to warn them of their missteps may lead to a cautionary, “I know what I am doing, this is not the (Place service of choice here, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard) we know what we’re doing!” They adjust their “NVG’s and plod forward. But wait, as you look at their NVG’s, you seem to notice something, they look, like plastic, and, they seem to have a strange lever on the right side that looks vastly different from any you have seen before…. You ask the leader what he has on his face, and as you ask, you see them for what they really are…Those aren’t NVG, it’s a stinking View Master, and every time they don’t like what they see…they just flip the lever and change the view…..



Of course, I exaggerate for effect, but the essence of what I am saying here is clear, the decades of leading people through various task, missions, and operations have equipped military leaders with these instinctive abilities, honed over time, sharpened over successes, and failures, and placed them in a position to ensure the safety, success, and growth of any team they may serve. Most importantly, I have found that leaders with military backgrounds work daily to improve their leadership abilities and that of their teams to ensure that every leader they serve is equipped with “NVG’s” and makes sure that their leaders never confuse “View masters” with true “NVG’s.” To quote the late, great, John Wooden, “A leader that’s through learning is through.”