According to John C Maxwell – “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.” I was fortunate to stand on the shoulders of giants, as I led a group at the CIA to hold back the tide of weapons of mass destruction and make this nation and world a safer place. During my time in the CIA, as I walked through many hard core operations leading others, I experienced firsthand how those leadership lessons can be applied to the daily life of a leader.
I am going to let you in on a little secret: one surreptitious method I took as a leader within the CIA was to approach each mission in the manner of James Bond. He always passionately and creatively maximized his skill set, with failure never being an option. Leaders today must learn how to effectively maximize their success, and employees must learn how to be a leader within each assignment they are given. From a higher vantage point, there is no difference between a leader and an employee – both are assigned missions that require a specific and special skill set and the mindset of James Bond, to win.
THE JAMES BOND MINDSET
How did James Bond arrive to a place of cool and calm within the most trying circumstances and challenges? The CIA trains officers at a place lovingly call “The Farm.” The FBI, as we all know has Agents. However, the CIA has Case Officers, sometimes referred to as Operations Officers shortened to Ops Officers or Intelligence Officers shortened to Intel Officers.
THE FARM: A PLACE TO COMMIT EGO SUICIDE
The training at The Farm to become a Case Officer is as arduous as one would expect. The first order of business is to destroy your ego, aka the triggers that hinder or obstruct that cool, calm James Bond mindset, and then slowly build it back up as a skilled intelligence officer. It takes many months, and they have been doing it since the end of World War II.
At the farm, two methods were used to destroy one’s ego:
1. The first is to have red ink bleed over every word of a trainee’s written word. In the intelligence world, everything is done it writing. If it isn’t written, it didn’t happen. If it’s not written in a certain way, it didn’t happen or it’s kicked back with lots of red ink, and the Case Officer-wanna-be has to rewrite it. It’s an arduous task that at times, can take into the wee hours of the morning.
2. The second is to role play, as if the trainee’s life depends on it. So, in other words, practice getting to that place of success for each mission, with failure not being an option. They role play the recruitment cycle SAD R H. This stands for: Spot, Assess, Develop, Recruit, Handle. In a fairly compressed timeframe, trainees go through a series of meetings in which they would recruit an asset to provide information of intelligence value. One example is a trainee, whose target he was assigned to recruit, had his own mission: to make the trainee’s mission hell. The target for recruitment loved to fish and even had a small boat. So, after a few restaurant meetings, where they became best buds, they went fishing at one of the ponds on the farm. After settling into the boat and a bit of casual chit chat, they cast lures into the pond. Every time the instructor heard the trainee take a deep breath and start to talk, he shushed the trainee, as he slowly reeled in his line. The instructor knew what he was doing. His intention was to frustrate the trainee who by this time wanted to drown him. The student succeeded in keeping his ego in check and finished his recruitment pitch onshore.
A great exercise for everyone, to ensure our ego is in check, is to be tested. Maybe each of us should ask if we would pass an ego test? Next time the ego is triggered, the mission for success is to keep it in check and remain calm, as if one’s life depended on it.
COVER ASSES & EATING SHIT (WHEN NEEDED) GAINS YOU VALOR; OPERATING SELFISHLY ENSURES YOU LOSE
Another skill to ensure success is to employ appropriate cover. In short, if you cover the backside of those on your team, and eat s**t when needed, they’ll cover yours.
Contrary to popular belief, it’s not the role of a leader to make himself or herself, or his or her boss or bosses, look good. The single most important role of any leader, in the CIA, is to make his subordinates be successful and protect them from the organization. In civilian terms, “organization” could be translated as “business failure.” So, the protection is from failing as an organization.
LEADERS SHOULD ACT AS A SHIELD
The team had spent about a month working seven days a week with the overseas Stations monitoring a shipment of Weapons of Mass Destructive (WMD) related material in the Middle East, heading to the Mediterranean. It involved working with a foreign service boarding and inspecting the cargo on multiple occasions, working with senior members of multiple foreign intelligence services and the US Military, and maintaining round the clock surveillance on the vessel. The CIA was successful and had the items confiscated and ultimately destroyed.
The next day, the Division Chief informed the interdiction team that another vessel was noted in the Eastern Med and the team may need to be brought in over the weekend. The response bordered on insubordination, but it was delivered politely. “No, sir. The team has been ground to a nub. If anyone needs to come in over the weekend, it will be the chief and he will decide from there.” He accepted that, since he trusted the team leader, and he was taking responsibility, and they went about their business. No one was called in over the weekend. However, the Division Chief shared that anecdote when the team leader’s name was put before the Senior Intelligence Service Panel, not because the team leader was insubordinate, but because he knew how to take care of his people. The team leader was promoted to SIS 1, the equivalent of One Star General.
Leaders have to make their people look good and protect them. The result is it makes the leader look better. Bosses, cover for your employees, and employees, cover for your bosses. The effort will come back with positive results many times over, and ensure the mission for success is accomplished. Leaders, don’t try to make yourself look good, by capitalizing on the work of subordinates. This was one of the biggest failings within the CIA’s leaders.
Leaders understanding your role is the first step in building trust and credibility with your seniors, colleagues, and juniors. Trust is paramount. Establish trust by demonstrating integrity, transparency, and reliability. Your team, staff, and employees need to know that if they do the right thing, even if it involves correcting a mistake, that you will have their back.
AWARNESS OF COMMUNICATION BIAS
The CIA has many diligent hard working officers and staff. One young lady was especially diligent, hardworking and honest to a fault. While normally such honesty is a plus, especially in an organization that requires absolute integrity, leaders need to know when to push back. Intel officers are not accountants, though the ability to handle and account for money is an important part of the job. This young lady had apparently made a mistake that once HQS pointed it out to her she corrected. However, the Mea Culpa cable she wrote documenting the error and her correction amounted to her falling on her sword. The Subject line was: Fraud Committed by Ops Officer. Yikes!! Thankfully, that cable came to a screeching halt on the Deputy Chief’s desk before it was sent to HQS. After about 10 minutes of talking to the young officer, the Subject line was revised to read: Appreciate Assistance in Correcting Accounting. Diplomacy matters.
EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
Effective communications play a pivotal role in implementing any successful leadership strategy. As do clearly conveying expectations, goals, and priorities, and listening to another’s concerns, ideas, and feedback, as well as providing constructive guidance and support. All CIA communications are via cable traffic. Officers and staff use email, but it’s not considered “Official” unless it’s in cable traffic. The first diplomatic cables were linked to real wire. They were transmitted by telegraph on underwater cables that in the 19th century began to connect nations. That is where the term “Cable Traffic” came from.
Leaders of a large station with officers deployed around the world needed to learn how to communicate with each officer. Each leader has a particular communication style and, for effective communications, must learn how to communicate with each officer. Officers, like the rest of us, like to feel connected to one another. The first paragraph of cables that are sent to deployed officers overseas was usually personal. “How is the wife (or husband)? How are the kids? Are they enjoying school? Did they enjoy Christmas?” Because cable traffic, like business writing, tends to be highly impersonal, it was important that the officer felt that the leadership has a personal interest in their wellbeing. These were stand-alone officers that did not go into the Embassy. However, direct supervisors need to learn what each officer needed and that included styles of communication. There was one Chinese lady, deployed somewhere in Asia and she made it abundantly clear that she did not have the time or the interest to read or respond to a personal note at the beginning of a cable. The good news for his supervisor was that he usually wrote the business portion of the cables then went back and added the personal note at the beginning; for her he no longer had to do so. Learn the communication style of each member of your team, to ensure the best relationship possible with each.
And with regard to written communication, one lesson learned was that what is written is not necessarily what is read. Again, what is written is not necessarily what is read. Effective written communication is a hard skill to master. Word choice and proper grammar are absolutely critical to proper written communication.
One of the key elements in Agency writing is PTBUF – Put the Benefits Up Front, aka keep in mind the mission to whom you are writing. Busy Leaders have to read anywhere from 20 to 200 cables every day. The Chief of the Group that monitoring WMD related materials, received a cable from Istanbul. The first two paragraphs of the cable laid out in excruciating detail the traffic challenges of this young officer driving across the Bosporus Bridge to the Asian side of Turkey. The chief has no idea what else the cable said because he quit reading it and moved on. The only traffic he cared about was the trafficking of WMD related material. If you want your operation approved, whether it’s a new product, new sales strategy or new intel source, you need to understand the interests of who you’re writing to.
We all bring a different bias to our communications. This writer was raised on a small farm southwest of Cleveland, Ohio. He is certain to have a different bias than someone who was raised in East LA. When writing to someone, keep their biases in mind.
Effective Personal communication, aka the spoken word, is also critical. CIA Case Officers make their living persuading others through charm, salesmanship, exaggeration, the turn of a phrase and sometimes outright lies. That particular skill is called “case-officering”. Here’s an example of a direct way to handled communicating one’s preference for effective personal communication:
There was an ethnic Indian officer based in Singapore. He was an effective officer and wrote well. He eventually came to the US, so he and the Deputy Chief had a chance to meet. After about 10 minutes of being schmoozed – let’s will leave out the profanity that was leveled at him – the Deputy Chief said, “Stop case-officering me and if you ever do it again, I will kill you.” After a long 10-second pause, the officer picked his jaw up off the floor, sat up, and they continued the conversation. They worked together great!! And the officer never did that again. This style of method of communicating is not recommended to others. The CIA has their own style of operating, and it is recommended that you communicate your preferred method of personal communication within the accepted framework of your organization.
Also, understanding your team’s role and making certain leaders understand their role is a critical component in the success of your organization. Clear communication of this is key.
EMPOWER EACH OTHER BY ENCOURAGING A SWING AT EVERY PITCH
In the intelligence world, there are plenty of opportunities for success and failure. The chief of the group responsible for monitoring WMD related material, had lots of terrific analysts working for him. One such analyst said she had identified a shipment of computer components heading for Iran. She said the components were already enroute, and she didn’t think she could stop them. In the nicest possible way, the chief said that they must swing at every pitch - Get the cables out to every possible transit point. If she needed help getting the cables out the door, she needed to tell the chief, and he would clear the path but they had to be sent now now. By swinging at every pitch, the team will have lots of strikes. But they will also have lots of home runs. The next day she came to the chief’s office and said, we got it and turned it around. A home run for which this analyst received a performance award. She was empowered to fail but enabled and supported to succeed. That is what team members do. You need to put in processes and procedures that will enable your team to hit home runs and then empower them to strike out.
SUCCESS BREEDS SUCCESS
Junior officers, either fresh from their On the Job Training (OJT) tour or fresh from the Farm are the best and most fun to work with. The CIA is excellent at empowering the junior intelligence officers by delegating authority and responsibility, which all organizations should model. We train the officers well and expect them to be able to make decisions in a highly dynamic and subjective environment, with 80% or less of information. Training your people is crucial. Being able to detect surveillance is way more art than science. they teach officers the basics and then, other officers, go through even more advanced surveillance detection training and those officers going to hostile places like Moscow or Beijing receive even more training. They frequently will combine training with the FBI. Some of the missteps by the FBI trainees were hilarious (usually the CIA officers laughing at them) but that is only because being a good, discrete surveillant is much more subjective and difficult than detecting a good discrete surveillant.
There is little to match the energy and enthusiasm of a junior officer when he or she returns from a trip at which he or she ran a successful operation. That does not mean they collected the mother lode of intelligence. A junior officer just returned a trip to Middle East. He was bursting with energy, not because of the intel that he had collected but because he was certain beyond any doubt that the recently recruited asset he was meeting was a fabricator. In the world of intelligence assets, it is just as important to prove an asset is bad as it is to prove the asset is good. As a junior officer, he was empowered to determine, through operational testing, that the asset was good or bad. He was successful. Success breeds success. He had the necessary empowerment, training, resources, and autonomy to carry out his duties effectively. What can you do to help each person you work with be successful? Ask yourself this question regularly to ensure their success and yours. Keep in mind that if you support others, they’ll support you.
NEVER STOP INNOVATING
Let us pull this all together. It’s critical that you train your people, empower your people, set expectations for your people, provide feedback to your people and engender trust in you from your people. It will become clear, with lightning speed, two phrases never to be said in any office or operational space. All businesses need innovation, to stay competitive. So, what were those two phrases: “We have always done it this way.” and “We have never done it this way.” Those two phrases are the death-knell of creativity and innovation.
Again, according to John C Maxwell – “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way. You are now challenged to go the way and show the way, on your way to creating extraordinary teams whether you order a martini shaken, not stirred, or not.”
Jeffrey Sanow is a Former CIA Senior Intelligence Officer, a Global Security Expert, and a Strategic Leadership Speaker. He has a decorated career in critical global operations, and he served in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, working with senior policy makers in the Office of the Vice President and National Security Council to support policies related to preventing the sale, transfer, or acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. Jeffrey Sanow worked extensively in South Asia, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Middle East, and his proficiencies were in leveraging civilian business tools for the strategic execution of intelligence operations, showcasing an innovative approach to addressing complex challenges. Today, he is a respected public speaker with a reputation for impactful storytelling, addressing complex issues across corporate and security industries and bringing a unique blend of intrigue and real-world application to audiences. To learn more visit, www.jeffreyssanow.com, and connect with him on LinkedIn.
