When I found out I was going back to Darwin to command the 103rd Battery, I was pretty excited about it. I’d served with the battery before, but this time I was going back as the Battery Commander, responsible for around 100 soldiers.

So I took the responsibility pretty seriously. My job was to train these people for war, and there was a very real possibility that some of them would end up deploying.

I started thinking about how I was going to define success during my time in command. The first thing I decided was that, if I had anything to do with it, nobody was going to die under my command. That meant we needed to be very good at what we did, because in our line of work, mistakes could have serious consequences.

From there, I started thinking about what kind of battery I wanted us to become.

The Battery of Choice

Some people believe that when you take over a team, you should spend the first few months observing how things work before you make any changes. There is probably some merit in that advice in certain circumstances, but I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

I wanted us to become what I called the Battery of Choice.

My vision was simple: if the Army needed an individual soldier for a deployment, I wanted them to choose somebody from our battery. If they needed an element, I wanted them to choose ours. If they needed an entire battery, I wanted them to choose 103.

Of course, saying that was easy. The more important question was why anybody would choose us.

When people were deciding who to send on operations, they were going to look for the best and most deserving people. If we genuinely wanted to become the Battery of Choice, we needed to build a team that met that standard.

At first, the whole thing was treated as a bit of a joke. I expected that. One of my favourite military figures, David Hackworth, had a saying about keeping something up until the bitching turned to boasting. So I kept talking about the Battery of Choice.

Eventually, the attitude started to change. The soldiers began spraying “BOC” onto the brown T-shirts they wore underneath their camouflage shirts. They were wearing it as a point of pride.

That was when I knew the idea had started to become theirs as well.

Setting a Standard and Sticking to It

One of the first things I introduced was what we called BC Day, held on the first Monday of every month.

We would start with physical fitness testing in the morning. Between morning tea and lunch, everyone completed a theory test that I called the Essential Knowledge Test, and in the afternoon, we did practical testing.

For the Essential Knowledge Test, I set the pass mark at 90%.

Some of my senior people weren’t particularly impressed with that idea. They came to me and told me I couldn’t do it because the soldiers had already been taught and assessed on this material.

My response was that if they’d already been taught it and knew it, there shouldn’t be a problem. They’d all pass the first time.

I listened to the advice of my senior people on plenty of things, and I told them I would continue to do so, but on this particular issue, I wasn’t going to move.

We ran the first test and half the battery failed. Everyone who failed was told to come back at 16:00 the next day, which was normally knock-off time, with their immediate supervisor and sit the test again.

If they didn’t pass, they came back again.

It took four days to get everybody through.

A Knock on My Office Door

On the final day, I was sitting in my office at about five o’clock when there was a knock on the door.

One of the soldiers came in. He was an older guy who had been at the rank of Bombardier for quite a while. It was unusual for someone at his level to come directly to the Battery Commander, so I knew there was probably a reason he was there.

He gave me a sharp salute and said he needed to tell me something.

He told me that his whole life he’d thought he was a dumb sh*t. He had never believed he could get 90% on a test, but that day he had done it. He said that because I hadn’t given up on him and had made him keep going until he passed, he now believed in himself much more than he had before.

Then he thanked me, saluted and left.

There were no witnesses. It was just a private conversation between the two of us, and when he walked out, I had to admit that I had a little tear in my eye.

I remember sitting there thinking, Geez, I’m onto something here.

That experience reinforced something I’ve carried with me ever since. People are often capable of more than they think they are, and sometimes they need somebody to push them long enough to discover that for themselves. Once they have proved it to themselves, you may find that you don’t need to push them nearly as much anymore.

There is an obvious lesson in there for business owners.

When somebody on your team is struggling, lowering the standard isn’t always the best thing you can do for them. There are times when the better approach is to give them the support they need, make the expectation clear and keep working with them until they discover what they’re actually capable of.

When the Standard Started Producing Results

Over time, the battery started doing extremely well.

One of the moments that really tested our Battery of Choice idea came when 18 positions became available for a rotation to Afghanistan.

There were three batteries involved in the selection process: Headquarters Battery, 101 Battery and 103 Battery. We went into the regimental conference room with the Commanding Officer and started nominating soldiers.

The other batteries would put somebody forward and explain what that soldier had achieved. When it came to me, I could acknowledge that their soldiers were excellent, then put forward one of ours who had achieved those things as well, along with additional evidence of what he’d done.

That kept happening.

The first nine positions went to 103 Battery.

I remember getting to the tenth nomination and the Commanding Officer looking at me. He basically had to say, “No. Not all these positions are going to 103.”

From memory, 13 of the 18 positions eventually went to our battery.

For me, that was the proof that the Battery of Choice idea had become more than something I’d said in an opening speech. When people actually had to choose, our soldiers were being chosen because we had evidence of their performance. They had trained hard and met the standards we’d set.

I should also point out that I don’t take all the credit for what happened during those two years. I had some very good leaders in the battery who supported what we were trying to achieve and helped make it happen.

I’m still very proud of that period of my career.

What Business Owners Can Take From This

When I look back on that experience now, one of the biggest lessons is that leaders can spend too much time worrying about being nice.

People don’t expect their leaders to be nice; they do, however, expect their leaders to be fair and competent, and they want confidence that the person in charge can actually lead the team somewhere worthwhile.

Think about a footy team trying to make the grand final. The players aren’t primarily concerned with whether the coach is the nicest person they’ve ever met. They care whether that coach can develop the team and get them to the grand final.

I think business owners need to remember that.

You have a responsibility to work out what success looks like for your business and your team. Once you’re clear on that, you need to understand the standards required to get there and have the courage to maintain them. There will be times when people push back. There will also be times when somebody doesn’t initially believe they’re capable of meeting the standard.

That’s part of leadership.

We started with an idea of what we wanted to become. We set standards around it, trained hard and kept going when people initially resisted. Eventually, the soldiers themselves took pride in the idea, and when the opportunity came for others to choose who they wanted on deployment, our people were being selected.

For business owners, the circumstances are obviously very different, but the leadership question is worth considering:

Do your people know what winning looks like, and are you leading them towards the standard required to get there?

If you’d like more practical lessons on leading people and building stronger teams, download a free copy of Real Leadership: The Handbook: www.daimienpatterson.com