Chess as a Lesson on Leadership

I would like to share a story.  This was given to me by a friend; it is an excerpt from a report by one of our team who recently attended a training seminar on leadership.

One of the exercises was an event where, within our team (we had our own team of nine for the week), we were split up into three groups. Five, two and two. One group of two was to take on a command role. The other two, as some sort of field generals, the five as some sort of soldiers. The terminology was not used, but I use it here as an example.

The group of five (Soldiers) (The group I was in) was sent to the parking lot where we lead to a huge chessboard right beside the lot. Once there, we were instructed to just stand near the board and await further instructions. There were 9 plastic "cones" on a random selection of squares, on the chessboard. Our facilitator took a position at one end of the board, all of us, at the other end.

The "field generals", was stationed 100 yards from the chessboard (But within sight of us), with a cell phone.

The "commanders" were asked to stay behind in the meeting room in the hotel, with a phone (And we found out later were given instructions for the task).

So the stage was set....

So the five of us stood there. The conversation quickly started off on "what is this all about", "what do we think we have to do", etc. After about two minutes, the conversation quickly turned to skiing (Obviously not started by me), golf, beer, etc. etc. (I said nothing to my teammates but inside I was burning mad as I felt we were wasting valuable time)

Every once in a while, one of the field generals would rush over on his own to us, and looking very stressed stare at the chessboard, not saying one word to us, and would then run back to the other FG. Once they were back together, they would get on a cell phone, talk endlessly (Making funny arm gestures???), then the cycle would be repeated.

On one of the trips over to us, after about 10 minutes of this, I finally asked what the heck are we doing here and what was the "challenge". I, along with the rest of my "buddies", were told "to get to the other end of the board".... That was it....

So after roughly thirty minutes, something happens. The one field general rushed over, told us to stand in specific squares, told us we can move like "Knights" (Two up/back, one over - Or one up/back two over) told one of us where to move too, waited until the facilitator moved (The facilitator could only move like a King), then started flashing arm signals to the other FG, indicating where the Facilitator moved too. At this point, we were only told, "we could not move to where the cones were", and we had to try to get to the other end.

Now it all became clear, the field generals were relaying the moves to each other and the commanders, who must have been sitting in a room, determining the next move.

(It was about now I got a sick feeling in my stomach, and thoughts in my head. Do I Treat my employees this way? Do I keep them in the dark like this? Do I waste their valuable time due to my poor communication skills? Do I treat them like mindless "pawns"? Why is nobody telling me what the objective is? Why the laborious procedure to determine what to do next when the people who can see what needs to be done, are the ones "right there", yet are not involved in the decision making process?)

This went on for about 10-15 minutes...Our team ended up with one piece at the other end, and one captured. We actually (The soldiers) debated about what our next moves should be, in advance of one of our pieces getting taken out, yet stood there like imbeciles as one of our knights (At the direction of our FG) was taken by a king. We allowed this to happen.

It turns out the goal was to get AS MANY of our pieces to the other end of the board, within a time frame. Three of our five pieces, never evened moved. (Sad when as it turns out all the soldiers were chess players - And as it turns out most were engineers)

We then went back into the meeting room and discussed this in detail.

It was interesting to note:

·          The commanders were the ones making all the moves, yet were the ones farthest away for the board (Action), and could not even see the game going on (They even had a schematic of the board, to try and understand who was where, and who should go where next!!!)

·          We as soldiers could not communicate (Nor were asked - Nor asked) to our Commanders, and vice-versa

·          The FG never took the time to educate us Soldiers as to the objective, the intent, the strategy, the rules of engagement, or the timeline - We as soldiers never asked either.

·          The Commanders were only two of a team of nine. The majority of resources were not utilized, and a considerable amount of time was wasted at the front end of this task, as the soldiers were left to idle chit-chat

·          A gross amount of time was wasted developing a detailed top down plan that focused on the traditional hierarchy style mgmt system (Mgmt will tell employees what to do)

·          The communication plan developed was detailed, time consuming, and "one-way"

·          The "plan" did not allow for any communication/engagement/feedback with the most affected, the soldiers

It turns out, had we as a team developed a management style that really followed ACTS (And the ABC's) we would have approached this task with a different mind-set.

One that would have empowered the soldiers (employees) through a fully transparent communication of the objective/goal/intent, and the rules in which one can operate in, the timeline involved, etc. etc.

If we had empowered the soldiers (employees), the one field general would have acted as a coach, while we as soldiers (employees) worked it out. The commanders would have simply been keeping score, ensuring we operated within the rules of engagement (And rewarded success), and the communication/results would have flowed from the bottom up (much quicker), and we would have finished the task, on time, with all our pieces at the other end.

A lesson for all of us as Managers.