UNITED STATES
Load Pad Leadership by Michael Rutledge PART 1
“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He’s the one that gets people to do the greatest things.” —Ronald Reagan
Ag aviation has some of the best people I’ve ever met in my life - passionate, innovative, hardworking and resourceful.
B 36 | agairupdate.com
A thirty-year military career allowed me to learn from some of our nation’s most intuitive leaders and more importantly provided examples of what not to do. Leadership and team building in the military is relatively straightforward because it’s necessary to accomplish the mission; small groups operating in dynamic and highly stressful environments with catastrophic consequences for failure. Sounds like an overly technical description of every day in an average aerial application operation. The military doesn’t always get it right, but they provide doctrinal theories and an architecture to work from until a young soldier develops his or her own leadership style. Our industry provides leadership opportunities at the corporate level to guide and project our positive image outward, but individual operators lead or manage using whatever techniques our previous experiences have taught us. Ag aviation has some of the best people I’ve ever met in my life - passionate, innovative, hard-working and resourceful. I’ve found those who lack these qualities don’t last long. This series is intended to provide various techniques to become a better small group leader, inspire and build strong small teams. I’ve never been a fan of contaminating my beloved industry with the rigid military doctrine I left behind, after all, if it was so star spangled awesome I would’ve stayed in. However, it didn’t take long after my first season as an ag-pilot to realize some very similar parallels between the high intensity, small, special operation units I operated in and what we have to accomplish as ag-operations during the season. We have a very specific mission; treat as many acres as precisely and efficiently as possible in a narrowly defined application period, while preserving all our personnel and equipment to work another day. We don’t historically develop a Leader’s Intent or Company Mission Statement like a corporation, but if we did, I suspect ours would
all say something similar. We just make it happen. We run successful, high grossing businesses without the benefit of mentorship and specialized training corporate and military leaders receive throughout their careers. I attribute the success and durability of our industry to the type of people we attract rather than technology or economic trends. Much like a special operations unit, our impact to national and global dynamics is grossly disproportionate to our numbers. As such, our pilots, loaders, office and support staff have earned our best efforts, if they were in it for a paycheck there’s easier ways to earn one.
“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He’s the one that gets people to do the greatest things.” — Ronald Reagan They’ve enabled our prosperity and deserve our loyalty along with quality and compassionate leadership. I know there’s some eye rolling at the mere thought of leadership training, but there’s a quantitative payoff to be had for embracing the concept; when team members start working for something other than a paycheck, when they feel an employer makes decisions with their best interest in mind, when they’re more concerned with falling short of your expectations rather than fearing your wrath, you’ve earned their trust and loyalty. When that takes place, you’ve developed a team in which everyone is vested and you’ll be shocked at how it positively affects morale, productivity and in the end profitability. Before we learn how to be better, more effective leaders you have to acknowledge what technique you’re currently using. It’s not as ambiguous as it seems. Influencing people can be broken down into two categories to be used as a diagnostic; ➤
