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“FROM THIS DAY on,” he shouted, “words like ‘I,’ ‘me,’ ‘my’ will no longer be in your vocabulary. They will be replaced with words like ‘we,’ ‘together’ and ‘us.’”
This is how it begins.
George’s mind raced. He was completely confident when he decided to go, but now that he was actually there, he felt he had made the biggest mistake of his life. But it didn’t matter now. Any thoughts he had about what he could have done or should have done would be interrupted by someone yelling inches from his face. Any feelings of excitement he may have felt before were instantly replaced by feelings of stress, isolation and helplessness.
George was part of a process that has happened thousands of times before him and will continue countless times after him. A process honed by years of trial and error. The process of transforming someone into a United States Marine.
It starts in the wee hours of the morning when a new group of recruits, tired and disoriented, arrive at one of two boot camps, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast. The recruits are greeted by red-faced drill instructors, their voices permanently hoarse from years of straining their vocal cords, who quickly make it abundantly clear who’s in charge. Here’s a hint: it’s not the recruits.
Thirteen grueling weeks later, each Marine will be given their Eagle, Globe and Anchor pin, the symbol that they have completed the process and earned their place inside the organization. Many will grasp the pin tightly in their fist and feel a pride so intense it will bring them to tears. When they arrived at boot camp, each recruit felt insecure and responsible only for themselves. Upon leaving, they feel confident in their own ability, a commitment to and responsibility for their fellow Marines, and a certainty that their fellow Marines feel the same for them.
This feeling of belonging, of shared values and a deep sense of empathy, dramatically enhances trust, cooperation and problem solving. United States Marines are better equipped to confront external dangers because they fear no danger from each other. They operate in a strong Circle of Safety.
A lion used to prowl about a field in which Four Oxen used to dwell. Many a time he tried to attack them; but whenever he came near they turned their tails to one another, so that whichever way he approached them he was met by the horns of one of them. At last, however, they fell a-quarrelling among themselves, and each went off to pasture alone in a separate corner of the field. Then the Lion attacked them one by one and soon made an end of all four.
—Aesop, sixth century B.C.
MARINE BOOT CAMP is not just about running, jumping, shooting and warfare. Like the skills on our résumés, those skills may be part of the job description, but they are not what make Marines so effective. And though Marines will need to learn those skills, just as we are taught skills to help us in our jobs, those things do not build the trust required for the kind of teamwork and cooperation that gets the job done better than everyone else. Those things are not what make high-performing groups perform so remarkably. The ability of a group of people to do remarkable things hinges on how well those people pull together as a team. And that doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
The world around us is filled with danger. Filled with things trying to make our lives miserable. It’s nothing personal; it’s just the way it is. At any time and from anywhere, there are any number of forces that, without conscience, are working to hinder our success or even kill us. In caveman times, this was literally the case. The lives of early humans were threatened by all sorts of things that could end their time on earth. Things including a lack of resources, a saber-toothed tiger or the weather. Nothing personal, it’s just life. The same is true today—the threats to our survival are constant.
For our modern-day businesses and organizations, the dangers we confront are both real and perceived. Saber-toothed tigers have been replaced by the ups and downs of the stock market that can affect a company’s performance. A new technology could render an older technology or an entire business model obsolete overnight. Our competitors, even if they are not trying to put us out of business, even if they aren’t trying to kill us, are still trying to frustrate our success or steal our customers. And if that’s not enough, the urgency to meet expectations, the strain of capacity and other outside pressures all contribute to the constant threats that a business faces. At all times, these forces work to hinder growth and profitability. These dangers are a constant. We have no control over them, they are never going to go away and that will never change. That’s just the way it is.
There are dangerous forces inside our organizations as well. Unlike the forces outside, the ones inside are variable and are well within our control. Some of the dangers we face are real and can have immediate impact, like layoffs that may follow a bad quarter or an underperforming year. Some of us face the very real threat of losing our livelihoods if we try something new and lose the company some money. Politics also present a constant threat—the fear that others are trying to keep us down so that they may advance their own careers.
Intimidation, humiliation, isolation, feeling dumb, feeling useless and rejection are all stresses we try to avoid inside the organization. But the danger inside is controllable and it should be the goal of leadership to set a culture free of danger from each other. And the way to do that is by giving people a sense of belonging. By offering them a strong culture based on a clear set of human values and beliefs. By giving them the power to make decisions. By offering trust and empathy. By creating a Circle of Safety.
By creating a Circle of Safety around the people in the organization, leadership reduces the threats people feel inside the group, which frees them up to focus more time and energy to protect the organization from the constant dangers outside and seize the big opportunities. Without a Circle of Safety, people are forced to spend too much time and energy protecting themselves from each other.
It is the company we keep, the people around us, who will determine where we invest our energy. The more we trust that the people to the left of us and the people to the right of us have our backs, the better equipped we are to face the constant threats from the outside together. Only when we feel we are in a Circle of Safety will we pull together as a unified team, better able to survive and thrive regardless of the conditions outside.
The Spartans, a warrior society in ancient Greece, were feared and revered for their strength, courage and endurance. The power of the Spartan army did not come from the sharpness of their spears, however; it came from the strength of their shields. Losing one’s shield in battle was considered the single greatest crime a Spartan could commit. “Spartans excuse without penalty the warrior who loses his helmet or breastplate in battle,” writes Steven Pressfield in his account of the Battle of Thermopylae (the battle upon which the movie 300 is based), “but punish the loss of all citizenship rights the man who discards his shield.” And the reason was simple. “A warrior carries helmet and breastplate for his own protection, but his shield for the safety of the whole line.”
Likewise, the strength and endurance of a company does not come from products or services but from how well their people pull together. Every member of the group plays a role in maintaining the Circle of Safety and it is the leader’s role to ensure that they do. This is the primary role of leadership, to look out for those inside their Circle.
Letting someone into an organization is like adopting a child.
As gatekeepers, leaders establish the standards of entry—who should be allowed into the Circle and who should be kept out, who belongs and who doesn’t. Are they letting people in because of their grades in college or where they worked before or because of their character and whether they fit the culture? Letting someone into an organization is like adopting a child and welcoming them into your home. These people will, like everyone else who lives there, have to share in the responsibility of looking after the household and the others who live in it. The standards a leader sets for entry, if based on a clear set of human values, significantly impact people’s sense of belonging and their willingness to pull together and contribute to the team.
Leaders are also responsible for how wide the Circle of Safety extends. When an organization is small, by the nature of its size it is more susceptible to the dangers outside. It is also much simpler to manage the Circle. A small business is often a collection of friends who already know and trust each other. There is little need for bureaucracy to keep those in the Circle safe from internal dangers. As an organization grows, however, the leaders at the top must trust the layers of management to look out for those in their charge. However, when those inside the bureaucracy work primarily to protect themselves, progress slows and the entire organization becomes more susceptible to external threats and pressures. Only when the Circle of Safety surrounds everyone in the organization, and not just a few people or a department or two, are the benefits fully realized.
Weak leaders are the ones who extend the benefits of the Circle of Safety only to their fellow senior executives and a chosen few others. They look out for each other, but they do not offer the same considerations to those outside their “inner circle.” Without the protection of our leaders, everyone outside the inner circle is forced to work alone or in small tribes to protect and advance their own interests. And in so doing, silos form, politics entrench, mistakes are covered up instead of exposed, the spread of information slows and unease soon replaces any sense of cooperation and security.
Strong leaders, in contrast, extend the Circle of Safety to include every single person who works for the organization. Self-preservation is unnecessary and fiefdoms are less able to survive. With clear standards for entry into the Circle and competent layers of leadership that are able to extend the Circle’s perimeter, the stronger and better equipped the organization becomes.
It is easy to know when we are in the Circle of Safety because we can feel it. We feel valued by our colleagues and we feel cared for by our superiors. We become absolutely confident that the leaders of the organization and all those with whom we work are there for us and will do what they can to help us succeed. We become members of the group. We feel like we belong. When we believe that those inside our group, those inside the Circle, will look out for us, it creates an environment for the free exchange of information and effective communication. This is fundamental to driving innovation, preventing problems from escalating and making organizations better equipped to defend themselves from the outside dangers and to seize the opportunities.
Absent a Circle of Safety, paranoia, cynicism and self-interest prevail. The whole purpose of maintaining the Circle of Safety is so that we can invest all our time and energy to guard against the dangers outside. It’s the same reason we lock our doors at night. Not only does feeling safe inside give us peace of mind, but the positive impact on the organization itself is remarkable. When the Circle is strong and that feeling of belonging is ubiquitous, collaboration, trust and innovation result.
This is an important point. We cannot tell people to trust us. We cannot instruct people to come up with big ideas. And we certainly can’t demand that people cooperate. These are always results—the results of feeling safe and trusted among the people with whom we work. When the Circle of Safety is strong, we naturally share ideas, share intelligence and share the burdens of stress. Every single skill and strength we have is amplified to better compete and face the dangers in the world outside and advance the organization’s interests vastly more effectively.
But there’s a twist.
Leaders want to feel safe too. No matter what place we occupy in the pecking order, every single one of us wants to feel like we are valued by the others in the group. If we are having a bad day at work and our performance is suffering, instead of yelling at us, we wish our bosses would ask us, “Are you okay?” And likewise, we as members of the Circle have a responsibility to our leaders—that’s what makes us valuable to them, not our numbers. So when our boss comes down hard on us and we don’t know the reason, it is equally our responsibility to express concern for their well-being. That’s how the Circle of Safety stays strong.
Whether you’re in a leadership role or not, the question is, how safe do you feel where you work?