Mike Hertzendorf retired from the U.S. Army in October 2018. He spent 29 years as a helicopter pilot, nearly all of it with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, perhaps better known by its nickname Night Stalkers. In 2014, as a colonel, he became the regiment commander.
After Sept. 11, 2001, he spent part of every year in Afghanistan through 2016, with the exception of 2007, and a number of years in Iraq and other places.
In his last years in the Army, he was commander of the Night Stalkers, then chief of staff of the 82nd Airborne Division, and finally deputy to the chief of staff of the Armys 18th Airborne Corps.
The chance to be near family was one draw for moving back to Upstate New York. It also gave him the opportunity to become NUAIRs president and CEO. NUAIR controls the 50-mile corridor between Syracuse and Rome to develop systems for pilot-less craft (drones) to fly beyond visual line of sight.
NUAIR is an acronym for Northeast UAS Airspace Integration Research Alliance Inc. UAS stands for unmanned aerial systems.
Tell me about a time you feel your leadership was tested and how you met that test.
It wasnt one seminal event. You're being tested at every level as you progress in the Army. Obviously, in combat, you're always being tested. The stakes are obviously higher. But, really, the basis for success was no different. You had to establish trust with your subordinates and listen to them and take in a lot of opinions. You show that you're human, just like them, and that you have a positive attitude.
What do you wish you had known about leadership before you became a leader?
The Army does prepare you well through formal education. I think I really got the essence of leadership later on in my career. Even as I was progressing up, I was still concerned a little bit about myself.
The Army is a meritocracy, right? I mean, you have to perform to continue to move up. The work I'm doing for everyone else is going to eventually get me promoted, which gives me the ability to do more work at a higher level.
The danger in that and we all have egos is that you're doing the right things for the right reasons, but you're still thinking about yourself and your own advancement in some way.
It's somewhat of a double-edge sword because it is a meritocracy and yet you're really doing the work it takes to advance for the benefit of the team. How you balance that is a challenge.
As we talk about it, there may have been a seminal event.
There was a point after one specific mission that it really clicked for me. We did something that was very important to the nation. And it made me realize that if my career ended that day, I would be OK. That's very freeing in some respect because you get to that point where you're willing to take on more risk informed risk but you're also willing to truly sacrifice yourself for others. You've achieved some point where continuing to go on to higher rank doesn't really matter,
What was that mission?
It was just a mission. Units like the 160th have been continually engaged every night from 9/11 till today hundreds of thousands of missions night after night in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. It was just a mission, and there have been many more like it, and there'll be many more. So, it's just not important.
What's important is we often don't realize that tonight, last night, tomorrow night, there are still soldiers going down range for our country. After 18 years, it's often forgotten, and it shouldn't be.
Leadership is a lifelong journey, so were you in leadership roles growing up?
I absolutely agree it is lifelong. You're always going to continue to grow as a leader.
I think most of my early roles were as a member of the team. That's where you really learn the basis of leadership being a member of a team.
I played a lot in sports and scouting, but I wasn't the captain of the high school soccer team or anything like that (at Scotia-Glenville High School, class of 1985). But I was a good team player. You cant be a good leader if you are not a good follower.
That really gets to empowerment. We often think about empowerment as a one-way street, that the leader empowers their subordinates. They give them broad guidance. That subordinate feels like: Hey, my boss trusts me. I can take initiative. He's not micromanaging me.
But I think empowerment works two ways. The follower has to look up and say, Hey, you know, what can I do to best support my boss? What can I best do to support the broad efforts of the team?
Being on a team, you learn empowerment both ways. You have to think up. What are the challenges that my boss has? How can I solve one of his or her problems that allows them to continue to look up? At the same time, it'll build trust with me.
Being on teams at early ages builds a lot of characteristics that I think are the basis for leadership.
How does being on a team at an early age build those characteristics?
You have to learn to listen. You have to accept and try to think about the other person's position and why they're doing things and then help them out. Obviously, if there are ways you think things could be done better, you have to be able to approach that person and have a conversation.
Teamwork builds basic communication skills. Your ability to listen, your ability to understand and see things from a different perspective. Those critical skills can be developed in an early age.
Tell me about college and what you studied.
I was a business management major at Ithaca College (Class of 1989). I had always thought about the military. It was the Reagan years, the big buildup years, and theyre offering scholarships. I went off to ROTC basic and earned a scholarship. The Army seemed to be a fit. In ROTC, I was branched aviation and went to flight school for about a year after college.
Tell me about an influential leader in college or early in your career.
Some of my first leaders really had an influence. One was when I got to my first assignment in Korea. His name was CW3 (Chief Warrant Officer 3) Mike Gann. He had been in the Army about 20 years.
Technically, in the rank structure, he was a subordinate. But obviously, thats one of the great challenges in the Army. They pump you out as a second lieutenant. Its your first assignment, and virtually everybody there has more experience in the Army than you do. Thats really where you have to learn to learn.
This warrant officer took me under his wing. He taught me everything about aviation maintenance, training, management, flying. He taught me about leadership and how to lead the warrant officers, how to lead the enlisted, how to communicate with my boss.
He was probably the first, but the Army's business is leadership. Aviation was how I got my job done, but leadership is your business. The Army does a very good job at all levels, formally and informally, training people in leadership.
Every leader's job in the Army is to develop their subordinates. You coach, teach, mentor, and counsel.
You have to really develop your subordinate to take your job. I take that same approach here. You know, a leader's number one job is to develop future leaders.
What's your advice to be effective as a leader?
You have to be willing to listen. You have to be willing to learn. You have to show other people that you care.
You don't need to have all the answers. You need to be able to find them.
I mentioned earlier you need to be team oriented and build that shared consciousness. People talk about situational awareness, situational understanding, but it's really a shared consciousness.
If you look at a lot of the problems today, they're chaotic, complex, dynamic situations. The leader's not going to have all the answers. They're not going to be the technical experts. They have to work as a team with all of the people in the organization to understand the environment, chart a path, and then be able to lead toward a goal.
You have to make sure everybody's moving in the same direction. They have that understanding. That's shared consciousness.
You're the one facilitating the people you serve as a leader. It gets into servant leadership. I think that is important. You have to understand your role is not about the title. It's about the actions. People too often think leadership is that I'm-in-charge-now idea.
There can be a myth, especially about the military, that leadership means barking commands
That could not be further from the truth.
Tell me about that.
I don't know that I ever actually issued a command.
You know, once again, it's really no different than the civilian world. If I walk out the door from this conference room, they know Im the CEO, right?
There's a difference between being in charge and being in control.
Whats the difference?
Being in charge could just be a title. Being in control is having the ability to influence the organization. That could be at any level.
As the leader, you have to garner all those smart people that have their own views, and you all have to look at things through a common lens. Then you have to figure out approaches and Im not saying solutions. We all face problems in today's fast-paced, global, dynamic, volatile world use whatever adjectives you want.
You have to continually evaluate your position and direction. You have to understand the environment. One persons view is not going to be able to fully understand the complexities of the environment. That's where it takes everyone on a team to understand what's out there and to develop those paths.
So, I don't think I ever barked an order, a command.
People knew I was the leader. The leader's responsibility is for mission success. That responsibility is to take care of your soldiers. Taking care of them meant training them so they could survive in combat and progress in their careers. It was not complex, but it was hard.
What qualities do you see in effective leadership, in leaders you admire?
I think the most important leadership characteristic is humility.
A modest view of one's importance.
Leaders are there to serve.
Obviously that humility has to be bounded by confidence.
The other one is kindness and that has to be balanced by toughness.
So, I think it's humility bounded by confidence, kindness bounded by toughness.
There are often times and I loved my soldiers but you love them like a parent. Sometimes you have to make tough calls if they did something wrong.
I generally believe all people are good and want to do good. And when somebody made a mistake, they probably didn't do it from malice. You have to be able to look at them and say: Hey, I know you didn't mean to do this, but here's what happened. How are we going to fix it?
Obviously, there are number of characteristics that at any one time are going to be important. How you communicate. Tact. Loyalty. Perseverance.
I actually think humility is the number one most important leadership characteristic.
What attributes do you see in poor leaders?
People that are self-serving. As a general rule, you have to show your support and that you care about the people youre leading, that you are in it for their good and the greater good of the overall mission.
The one characteristic that will make leaders fail is a feeling of self-importance or arrogance or self-serving. That's just not the point of being a leader. It's to serve others.
John C. Maxwell has great quotes about great leadership. He says: People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
That is absolutely true. When you develop personal relationships with people and this was very much so in the Army that builds trust. Trust is that keystone to leadership.
You can pick numbers of adjectives to describe trust: competence, reliability, motivation, integrity.
People have to believe that you have the ability to do what you say you're going to do, repeatedly for the right reasons in the right way.
I don't think you're going to trust someone if they're not in it for you. Youre not willing to assume personal risk for someone who's not willing to assume personal risk for you. That gets to trust.
It's not hard. It's stuff we learned in kindergarten: Be nice. Be kind. Be humble. Work hard.
What advice do you have for overcoming obstacles and setbacks?
Persistence never quit. I spent the majority of my Army career in a unit whose motto was Night Stalkers Dont Quit. That mentality transfers to all aspects of life. Things will always look better in the morning. Be optimistic, have a great attitude, seek the advice, mentorship, and help of others, and you will create your opportunities.
The weekly CNY Conversation" features Q&A interviews about leadership, success, and innovation. The conversations are condensed and edited. To suggest a leader for a Conversation, contact Stan Linhorst at StanLinhorst@gmail.com. Last week featured Sarah Reckess, director of the Center for Court Innovation.
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Mike Hertzendorf on leadership: The number 1 job is to develop future leaders - syracuse.com