John Durfee is an Operation Freedom veteran and a manager for Airsplat, the nation’s largest Airsoft retailer. He recently contacted me about my work and offered to share his insights on what he learned in the military and how it relates to business. I appreciate John for both his contribution as a soldier and his wisdom as a leader. Here is his guest blog:

When I was on my tours of duty in the military, one thing I always found comforting was having our commander on the front lines alongside us. When we were far away from our operating base on extended missions, he made sure we had extra rations and ample water. He also ensured that we were all handling things well – not only physically, but also emotionally. A great leader is many things, and these are a few ideas my commander taught me:

The key is enabling and trust. In a military unit you put your faith in your squad mates, your life is literally in their hands, and vice versa. With that sense of responsibility you don’t want to let anyone down. I try to build that same sense of trust in my office team.

Being a leader gives you a unique perspective. You get to see everything as a whole, and invariably there will be one or two people that stand out from the rest. They get things done a little faster, and they’re always enthusiastic and ready for anything. These are your right hand team members. Next time you have a larger scale project, hand it off to them.

Give a budget. Let them know their resources available and not much else. If you have hardworking individuals, think of them as your ‘squad leaders’ in your army. Give them responsibility, and you’ll be managing more, and directing less.

“To lead an army you must never forget what it feels like to be a soldier on the ground.” A real example would be on my second deployment; I had just been promoted to squad leader in a new group and we needed to do vehicle repairs and maintenance. Instead of just getting the lowest ranking soldiers to do it, I was lying on my back in the dirt changing the oil, getting about as tired and sweaty as the rest of my crew. I would coordinate the efforts, but I would do the work just as much as the next man in my crew.

Accept responsibility. Avoid being the finger pointer as they are the ones when questioned by their superiors about mistakes made will point the finger downwards to their employees. As a manager, you should have been trained those working below you so their mistakes are as much of your fault as it is theirs. If one of my squad members (I was a sergeant) fell asleep during guard duty, I would have to be out there with them pulling the double shift the next night, or doing latrine duty. It’s a strong leader that can admit to mistakes and move forward – it’s the weak one who raises his voice and points the finger.

Thanks, John!

John Miller is the author of QBQ! The Question Behind the Question, Flipping the Switch, and the upcoming Outstanding! … 47 Ways to Make Your Organization Exceptional”  John’s books and ideas are terrific and used by businesses worldwide. John is a longtime friend and lives in the metro Denver area. I first learned about John and his work from appearing on programs with him. One of the things I instantly liked about John is his focus on radical responsibility: he believes in personal and organizational accountability and makes these concepts easy to understand and easy to apply. Blamers and whiners won’t like what John has to say—but they need to hear it.

 You’ll want to take advantage of the resources he has available at his websites www.QBQ.com and www.OutstandingOrganization.com

You and I speak on different topics but share an underlying theme about personal responsibility. Tell us about QBQ! The Question Behind the Question, your bestselling book.

My career in the training and speaking industry began in 1986 when I started selling management, sales, and leadership training to executives. I would then facilitate these sessions, and I began to hear what I would later come to call Incorrect Questions. These are questions like, “Why do we have to go through all this change?” “Who dropped the ball?” and “When is someone going to train me?” When I heard these, I thought, there’s got to be a better question! So in 1994 I coined the phrase The Question Behind the Question (the market shortened it for me to “QBQ”!) and I went out and taught my client groups to instead ask, “How can I adapt to the changing world?” “What can I do to solve the problem?” and “How can I develop myself?” Well, it stuck—clients were actually using the material. It enabled them, in a practical way, to put personal accountability into action. As the content deepened, I realized that organizations benefited from the QBQ! message. QBQ! was helping them know how to eliminate three common traps: Blame, Victim Thinking, and Procrastination. So I went around the country speaking on personal accountability and became known as The Accountability Guy. Then, one day, a client said I should write a book, so I did—QBQ!  And later came Flipping the Switch, which takes QBQ! to the next level, and now Outstanding! will be out in January 2010.

Given the number of people who seem to refuse to be accountable, what can someone who is committed to doing the right and responsible thing do to influence their environment?

Each of us has a choice, we can let the environment influence us—and then we wind up blaming the world around us—or we can do the influencing. In the QBQ! book we teach that “modeling is the most powerful of all teachers”— so we all have the opportunity to demonstrate for others what accountability and responsibility look like. Managers can model it for their staff; parents for their children; coaches for their athletes; pastors for their churches; teachers for their students. Friends can show to friends what personal accountability looks like, too, by using The Question Behind the Question methodology taught in QBQ! and Flipping the Switch. When we stop our own blaming and whining, we make the world around us a better place. Nothing wrong with that!
It is easy to focus on what’s wrong and not working. But what’s right with America today? What’s right in business?

It’s true, there are some ill winds blowing in our country today. Those winds include entitlement thinking, finger-pointing and blaming, and being a victim. People who make $50,000/year went out and bought a half-million dollar home, and when they could no longer pay the mortgage, they blamed everyone from Uncle Joe’s bad advice to Congress’ shenanigans to Wall Street greed to their mortgage company’s lending practices! Sometimes I want to scream WHERE IS THE PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY!? But, the truth is, millions of people in our great country still believe that the accountable path is the higher road and the one to be taken. People in service positions, management roles, and on the frontline still intrinsically understand that we reap what we sow and always will. So it’s still easy to find acts of service and accountability wherever you go. It’s just that the negative examples stand out so much more than the positive ones!
What advice would you give parents about teaching personal accountability to their children?

Right back to modeling—it is the most powerful of all teachers.  If I want my child to learn to manage money well—am I out of debt? If I want my kids to speak kindly—do I? If I want my child to always tell the truth—is that a habit of mine that they can witness? The behavior of children comes back to how they were parented. It’s just that simple. The problem is, too often parents blame Hollywood, schools, churches, and each other for how their kids turn out. It’s all about personal accountability … it’s just as simple as that.

Give me an example of a public figure that “gets it” and exemplifies what you advocate in your books and speeches?

Any person who stands up and tells the truth, admits the mistake, takes ownership for an outcome—these are the people I admire. Sadly, with public people, be they sports celebrities who get caught doing drugs or verbally beating up an official on the sidelines, or a singer who steals the microphone from an unsuspecting young talented award winner, politicians who cheat on their spouse, or executives who drive a company into the ground—excuses are the norm … 99% of the time. Finding a public figure that is willing to demonstrate PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY is one of the hardest things to do. I prefer to talk about Jacob, the Rock Bottom restaurant server who went out of his way to serve me (Chapter One of QBQ!) and people like him in Flipping the Switch and Outstanding!—for they truly are the backbone of this nation. They are the real heroes. Our public personalities could learn a thing or two from them!