Go With the Flow and Find Your Way!: Master the Fine Art of Leadership, Success, and Failure

By B. Martin Lopez

Use reflection as a means to evaluate your situation and gain a new perspective that will thrust you forward to a new opportunity.

—B. Martin Lopez

When you pursue a career path, how often do you think what is required to be a leader, achieve success, and see failure as a positive? As you read this book, you will understand how reflection, perspective, and opportunity are critical in every aspect of your life and how developing into the person you dream of being requires more from you than you think. This book covers important questions that people ask themselves at some point in their lives:

When you become a leader, do you think to yourself, where do I begin?

To achieve success, do you think of what is required to attain it or keep it?

When you fail, do you see the benefits that failure teaches you that success could not?

This book answers these important questions through the stories, examples, and insights that will equip you with a positive understanding that you can achieve your goals with the right mindset. Life has a way of throwing curveballs at us that we just cannot hit; and that is okay when you understand that the negatives and positives we experience shape and mold us into the person we are meant to become. This book is where the rubber meets the road.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638141884

Book preview

Chapter 1

Being a Leader Is Harder Than I Thought

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

My first assignment in the Air Force was at Francis E. Warren AFB, Wyoming, in the summer of 2005. I was a part to the Ninetieth Security Forces Group, assigned to the Ninetieth Missile Security Forces Squadron, the biggest squadron in the group. One day, while working day shift, I was riding with my first supervisor Staff Sergeant King in the missile field. We had many deep conversations about life, the military, and where we wanted our career to go in the future. I thought of a particularly important question I thought he could answer. I asked him, What makes a good leader?

Initially, he tilted his head, took a small pause, then answered, There really isn’t an answer; it’s all trial and error.

This got me thinking, What exactly did he mean? So I asked him, and he gave me a response that I will never forget, "Leadership is all trial and error. You have to apply yourself. Sometimes you will make good decisions, other times you will not. You are still responsible regardless of the outcome."

This hit home for me, and it had a profound effect on my future in the military and other endeavors I have chased. Application is the ultimate means to understanding our effectiveness as a leader. Though we may have a good understanding of what a good leader is, it is still totally subjective. When I would see an issue with certain people in leadership roles, the common thought I would have is, Why are they there? Does anybody else see the problem I am seeing? Some people are not cut out to be leaders, yet they exist. When we look at leadership for what it is, we have to understand the driving force of what it encompasses. Leadership is 75 percent personality. Who we are as an individual will come into our work life. The position we attain, our status, or the promotion we receive does not change us into anything different than what we were before. We are still the same person but with different responsibilities.

When it comes to personality, it is the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s character. When you examine your own personality, you may find openness, calm, assertive, passive, or energetic as qualities you have. We all have a combination of many characteristics that make us who we are. Our personality is what people learn about us by interacting with each other. This how we mesh with people with similar qualities like our opinions and likes or dislikes. The more we interact, the more we learn their personality. The more we learn their personality, the more we know how to speak to them.

The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.

—Jim Rohn

The coolest cat I ever met in the Air Force was Technical Sergeant Castillo. This dude had a plethora of knowledge, and no matter what was thrown at him, he never got flustered, nor did he ever get stuck on an issue that was challenging or complex in nature. When I think about it, I never saw him upset at all. I met him when I worked in Korea, and he was the night-shift flight chief that would relieve my flight (team). Immediately, I noticed his cool and calm demeanor about everything. I would pass on all the events that took place during my shift, and his response was always the same: Yeah, cool, man. We got it from here. I had the pleasure of working with him when I was stationed in Guam, and being the new NCO on flight, I had to find my place when he already had a solid foundation. We worked well together, and I noticed his calm and cool approach to just about everything. That was his personality coming out each time. Whether he was in uniform or out of uniform, his approach was always the same; nothing flustered this guy. I learned a lot when I was around him, but I will be honest; I learned to be cool and calm about the issues I faced too late.

If we see leadership as a whole pie, and 75 percent of it is taken up by our personality, what is the other 25 percent? The 25 percent are the rules, regulations, and guidelines that govern your position. We should also see this as the checks and balances we have when we make decisions at work. The rules and guidelines were created to guide our decisions with the consequences in mind. When an organization operates outside of their guidelines, consequences usually follow. Imagine an airline that is required to operate within the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) guidelines and chooses not to. The choices made by corporate executives that eventually trickle down to the operational side of the airline can have grave consequences if not followed. What they decide can affect other airlines and the travelers who are caught in the middle. Without guidance and rules, we would essentially be able to do whatever we want, and we all know that will not work.

Combining personality with the rules and regulations that govern your position comes down to a few important characteristics: interpretation of the material they are supposed to abide by and the personality of the individual. Combining them both is where you see the power-hungry executive that sees themself as unstoppable. Or the manager who is too timid to correct an employee who is a constant problem at work. This is the applicative mess that can exist when you see both. One of my worst memories of an individual that led with his personality was in Guam. He was a senior NCO, and I was under him one rank. His toxic personality infiltrated his flight, and many of them followed his lead. He was very egotistical, borderline arrogant, and talked like he could make the world bend to his liking. Suddenly, it was common to see troops of lesser ranks going to section heads (higher ranking) demanding answers for things they were not responsible for. This is a no-go. Though the troops can ask anything they want in a professional and respectful manner, the demands of answers and requesting changes was beyond their rank and position.

Great and pure thoughts cannot be deposited in minds accumulated with rubbish.

—Michael Bassey Johnson

In short, they followed their leaders’ personality and how he operated, and expected to get what they wanted, when they wanted it. This caused a big rift in our unit, and many senior NCOs were arguing about the structure of his flight and the impact that it had on the unit. It got so bad that a climate survey addressed him in plain sight about his wrongdoings and how the leadership element was unaware of it. This is an example of how one person’s toxic personality affected not only himself but others that were assigned to him. When the troops go from this assignment to another, they can take the bad habits with them, and that can cause them more issues. Long story short, you have to be careful how you conduct yourself and who is watching.

Speaking of personality, a mentor that I had in Spain was Sgt. Major Gallegos. He was a thirty-year marine with many impressive achievements during his career. He was a part of the Silent Drill Team; he was a drill instructor, and a senior drill instructor. He held the record of most consecutive perfect PT scores in the marines and was deployed for eleven years total in a combat zone. This man walked and the ground trembled with every step he took (figuratively speaking), yet he did not have a problem to make time and ask how you were and if you needed anything.

If you’re not making someone else’s life better, then you’re wasting your time. Your life will become better by making other lives better.

—Will Smith

His humble yet assertive presence won my respect when I first met him. He was stern, but he wanted to listen. What caught my attention about him was not just the characteristics he led with; it was his ability to develop and teach others that he interacted with. I would patrol the base periodically during shift, and everywhere I went I saw him doing something that helped others. He rode a bicycle around base and he drove a bus that picked up marines and took them to different areas of the base; he operated a forklift and showed a new marine how it worked as he chewed him out. He told me that his focus was simple: My job is to develop others and provide them what they need to do the job. He emphasized his statement by being the example. When a marine had a problem, he stopped everything he was doing to help them out. He did this because he had the opportunity to pay what he knew forward to others, and that was to serve and lead at the same time.

I will never forget the lessons he taught me and others around him. He had so much knowledge and wisdom, yet he never spoke about himself or his achievements. He is what we would call in the military high speed and low drag. His professional stance was all about others and not himself. His focus was simple, develop his successors and equip them well. We should strive to do the same with others around us.

SGM Gallegos and TSgt Lopez, Morón Air Base, Spain. Circa May 2014.

Being a leader is not an easy task, and our perspective is important. Perspective leads to new opportunities when we position ourselves to see it. When faced with difficulty, our vision can become clouded, and it can be tough to see. When we step back and let the dust settle, what do you see? You see a clear picture of what is in front of you. Have you ever tried to navigate through the fog? Your speed is significantly slower than what you are used to for a reason—you can’t see everything around you. It can be the same concerning our thought life too. Our thoughts can be clouded by an event that we do not understand. Our focus at the time can be dedicated to understanding how everything went wrong. This is a difficult time for anyone who experiences this because we all want answers, yet we do not always receive them on our timeline. The opportunity in question does not automatically show its face, so it can take time to discover it. The opportunity can be the simplest idea you can find to solve your problem, or it can consist of taking another direction.

When I speak about the opportunity after a failure, I speak in the sense of learning and applying ourselves. We have the opportunity for growth and development when we fail. There are many lessons learned when we open ourselves to receive them. The growth we experience consists of three parts: humility, compassion, and our ability to learn. Humility benefits us when we genuinely acknowledge our mistake and are teachable. I am sure you have heard the expression, It takes a strong person to admit when they are wrong. There is so much truth to this statement that leaders should lead with this principle when they correct their employees. That was always a focus when I managed employees that needed development. Can they admit their fault? If they admitted their fault, I would tend to be more compassionate and often gave them a lesser punishment. When they did not admit their fault, I was more critical of their performance and gave them the punishment that fit the crime (so to speak).

I chose this approach because the need to accept and apply the changes is vital for their development, and without it, they will not be ready for the next step. The principle of compassion comes in the form of caring and connecting with others when we fail and see others fail. When we are successful or gain a new position, promotion, or material success, we tend to be more focused on ourselves. At times, we can forget others around us. When we come off a failure, we can spend more time with others to connect and show compassion. This is the yeah, I’ve been there dialogue we have with others. Our ability to learn is quite simple: successful people learn, adapt, and change. Without it, your successes are numbered.

Everything is hard before it is easy.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Many books from executives, military strategists, and other credible authors have their own definition of leadership. Mine is quite simple: I say there is no definition. As I wrote earlier, it is all trial and error. Trial and error serve an important role in our lives (more than you know). Sports athletes go through training camp after training camp learning different methods or principles to apply to make them better at their position. They are expected to use what they learned before they leave the camp to make them a better player. The combined usage of coaching, critiquing, and application is important for making a good player better. I have yet to meet someone who is an expert at anything they have never tried before as you have to work hard to improve your short comings.

Leaders are responsible for the good calls and the bad ones too. But how do you know when you have made the right decision? Some solutions will come to you naturally, while others will make you feel like you have no clue. Other times the thought of I guess I will choose this one seems to be the best option (especially when you do not have a clue). One way to help shrink the pool of options is to assess what you have readily available to use. What you have is what you have, regardless how abundant or lacking it may be, but it is all you got to work with.

My first experience in a leadership role came early in my military career. I was given the opportunity to be an instructor at Camp Guernsey, Wyoming, in the summer of 2006 with a secondary job of managing the government purchase card (GPC) program. The GPC program was basically a debit card that was used to purchase unit resources, e.g., toilet paper, ATVs, range materials, etc. The program itself wasn’t hard to manage, but balancing instructor duties, teaching classes, and inventorying our logistics that came in was tiring. The transition of being a simple airman looking to fly under the radar quickly turned into the guy the commander spoke to every day. This made me nervous considering I had never managed anything in my life, let alone speaking to the big boss daily. The only thing I knew I could do was to stick to my written guidance and know it inside out.

He who is not every day conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

One day, I was called into my boss’s office with a specific request. He wanted me to purchase a specific item for his boss that was coming for a distinguished visitor tour of our unit. When I asked what it was, he said he wanted a uniform for him to wear while he was on touring our buildings and firing ranges. Naturally, I said, No problem, I’ll get right on it. When I left his office, I started searching for a vendor online who sold our specific uniform, but when I searched, something bothered me about his request. I decided to investigate further into my regulations and seek guidance on this purchase. And what do you know, my suspicions were correct; we could not buy it. This type of purchase would be considered a gift, and by regulation, that was an illegal purchase. After reading the guidance, I had the duty to tell my boss that we could not buy it. In the natural, the two stripes on my sleeve did not compare to the rank on his collar (he was a major), so I was a bit intimidated. Initially, he was very receptive of me coming to him about it, but the tempo slowly changed when I hinted that the uniform purchase was against regulation.

The conversation immediately changed when I told him Sir, by regulation we can’t purchase this because it would be considered a gift, and gifts are not authorized per regulation. My commander initially did not see the problem like I did and that started to make me nervous. I have only been in the military for five minutes compared to him (figuratively speaking) and I’m telling him no.

Though he was a bit displeased, he insisted, Brian, it’s fine. Trust me, this isn’t a big deal. I wanted to believe him, but I knew that if I did not comply with my guidance, I too could get in trouble and potentially lose my job.

So being confident in what I knew was right, I again persisted, Sir, we can’t purchase this. If we do, we could get in trouble in our upcoming audit.

Now my boss is a bit angry. His demeanor instantly changed like he did not want to hear it coming from me. Then the specific order came down. Brian, do what I say—that’s an order.

Now the stakes are high, and to be honest, I knew I was going to piss him off more with what I had to tell him next, but I had to hold my ground. I responded, Sir, if you’re ready to answer for it in our upcoming audit regarding this purchase, then, yes, I will order it. But I strongly recommend that you don’t, especially when your boss will be notified of any wrongdoing during our yearly audit. And that is when the tempo changed again. His boss had a special interest in our unit and a close eye on our operations, and if he saw something was amiss, he would not like it. When it comes to money in any organization, it becomes a serious matter.

Speak up, because the day you don’t speak up for the things that matter to you is the day your freedom truly ends.

—iLikeToQuote.com

Though his attitude had taken a sudden change, I could still sense the disdain he had for me advising against his wishes, but it was necessary. After our exchange of words, my commander agreed with me and realized his error. He asked for a copy of the regulation that governed our purchases for future reference, and I gladly emailed it to him. This situation happens in just about every field of occupation out there. The need to have what you want without listening to the employees can hurt your organization immensely. In all fairness, my boss was very knowledgeable and easy to get along with, but he had a blind spot (we all do at times). He wanted his way regardless of the cost or consequence, and he thought his position could justify the purchase. He viewed his rank or position as good enough to be the approval authority. When faced with this type of issue, as a leader, we must be upfront with the potential outcome. What happens if I purchased it anyways? If I didn’t correct him, would he ask for more items we were not supposed to purchase? This comes with a negative connotation with it, just so you know. It was common at times to have a target on your back from people in leadership positions who hold grudges or a negative view of you not being a team player. Again, this can happen anywhere as doing the right thing comes at a price.

In the end, overseeing something so small required a certain finesse that I never knew I had. The message was important to relay, but the delivery had to be better, and this situation brought it out of me. I had to speak up and say something was wrong in a professional and respectful manner. In all fairness, this was also a save-face moment too. Being the new guy in the military, I didn’t want to get in trouble. This is a goal every military member has when they join the