The time-honored approach to growing leaders was to “put people through the chairs.” It is essentially increasing the level of challenges, or more simply, experience. People learn more from doing than from anything else. To me, among federal agencies, the Forest Service is less risk averse than most when it comes to cultivating talent. The agency often took chances on people who senior executives felt showed potential. Not everybody went through the chairs. The rules were informal and, to a greater or lesser degree, unspoken.
The most typical model for developing leaders was to throw people into the deep end of the pool, fish out those that made it across, and dump them into the next pool. It is based on the understanding that leadership is a learned behavior. The problem today is when one person flounders, everyone gulps water. An adverse decision on one National Forest impacts all National Forests.
Forest Supervisors have extraordinary responsibility and authority. They may not develop the national strategy, but they play a pivotal role in carrying out policy and management direction. All 200 million acres of National Forests and Grasslands are under the responsibility of these men and women. Almost two-thirds of the agency’s employees work under them. It is a sought-after position. It has taken me almost 20 years to fully appreciate the job I had, and how extraordinary my professional life has been. I was happy, I just didn’t know it.
Park Superintendents in the National Park Service range from a GS-9 to Senior Executive Service. At each level and location, the job is a little different. The Park Superintendent of Morristown National Historic Site in New Jersey has little in common with the Park Superintendent of Yellowstone. The primary thing in common is the name, Park Superintendent, the person in charge. In the Forest Service, line officers are nearly identical in their responsibilities, though some Forests more complex than others. A District Ranger in Eastern Region 9 has the same responsibilities and a District Ranger in Northern Rockies Region 1. The scenery changes but the job is essentially the same. BLM State Directors may share more in common, but the perceived independence of individual units varies. The District Ranger has more in common with their European counterparts than National Park Service Rangers.
Starting to think about how to grow leaders
A small group of Forest Supervisors came together at Grey Towers in 1992 to think through how to do this and what might be helpful. I had the support of the Deputy Chief for the National Forest System (NFS), and my supervisor in State and Private Forestry (S&PF). The approach was to bring small groups of Forest Supervisors to Grey Towers, submerge them in their history, provide a safe environment, and see if they could learn from one another. If you learned about leadership by doing, can you also learn from what others are doing? We tossed in a little coaching from outside consultants, some “stress reducing activities. Each group had the choice to continue to meet once a year for as many years as desired. The underlying assumption was that peers provide the best support, and leaders do learn from each other’s experience. We did not tell them what to do, nor how to do it. Over time, their relationships to one another strengthened.
For the next 15 years, I listening to more than 100 Forest Supervisors talk with one another about their experience, joys, pain, and uncertainties. It did not seem to matter whether the National Forest was in Florida, Montana, or Alaska. The discussions where in the privacy of The Bait Box, a small building off by itself at Grey Towers. The candor by day three became quite astonishing. The rule was that everything that was said stays in The Bait Box. This required a trust environment. The job can be extremely stressful. I could see individuals slowly let the air out of the balloon. Occasionally, someone let it all out at once. Some thrived on stress and others seemed to retreat into a mental box to protect themselves. Our rule was nobody gets hurt.