Know when to break the rule

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What I am passing on to you in this piece reminds me of a story told by Simon Sinek while flying to Florida some years back. Simon said, “How many souls on board? One hundred and twenty-six (126) souls, replied the pilot. The air traffic controller asked. As if we were still traversing the globe in wooden ships with tall masts, the archaic and outmoded terminology referring to the number of people aboard the vessel is a standard question asked when an aircraft declares an in-flight emergency.

“The Florida-bound flight was somewhere over Maryland, at an altitude of 36,000 feet, traveling at about 560 miles per hour, when smoke started to pour into the cockpit. Smoke on board an aircraft is one of the most terrifying emergencies a pilot will ever face. They do not always know the cause of the smoke. They don’t know if there is a fire. They don’t know if emergency is contained or if it is going to spread…and spread out of control quickly. The smoke itself can make seeing or breathing difficult and it is sure to cause panic among the passengers. No matter how you look at it, it is bad. ‘Center, KH209,’ the pilot radioed when he realized the problem. ‘KH209, go ahead,’ replied the controller monitoring the air space. ‘KH209, I need to descend immediately. I cannot maintain altitude,’ was the abrupt call from the pilot.

“But there was a problem. There was another flight, also flying to Florida, 2,000 feet directly below the troubled aircraft. The FAA rules are simple enough: no two aircraft flying en-route may pass each other any closer than 1,000 feet, above or below, or five miles around each other. The rules are there for good reason. Traveling at three quarters the speed of sound, it becomes very difficult to maneuver aircraft without creating a serious risk of collision.

“To make matters worse, the two planes were flying on a narrow route toward their destination. Because of a military exercise that was going on in the area, the airspace was restricted to a narrow band, much like a lane of a highway. And though there were other lanes on this highway, there was other traffic in them at the time. The air traffic controller replied to the pilot’s request to descend immediately, ‘KH209, turn fifteen degrees right and descend. To ensure the safety of one hundred and twenty-six (126) precious people on board, the controller had to break the rules…’”

Knowing when to break the rules is what distinguishes successful and effective leaders from ineffective and unsuccessful ones.

To save lives in leadership, sometimes a leader needs to deliberately break the rules, because rules are made for man, man is not made for the rules. If the controller didn’t break the rules in the story told, 126 precious people would have lost their lives. Rules are meant to preserve lives, they are not meant to destroy them. Every great and effective leader knows and understands this.

A leader is not just occupying a leadership position to obey the rules, he is also in leadership to disobey and break them to impact positively on the lives of those within his sphere of influence. Also, the greatness of a leader comes to the fore when he knows when to break the rules and when to keep them. When a leader keeps the rules when he is supposed to break them, he is going to be a colossal failure in leadership.

Please understand that the rules are not meant to be broken every time, but as a leader, those on your watch trust you to know when to break them and when to obey them. It is better to break rules than for those under your leadership to be broken into pieces! For the umpteenth time, to preserve lives of those under your leadership, it is not wrong to break the rules—each time it is unavoidable.

Taking this issue further a little, we cannot either “trust” rules or technology. We can rely on them to an extent, for sure, but to trust them? No! Trust is a very special human experience, produced by the chemical oxytocin in response to acts performed on our behalf that serve our safety and protection. True trust can only exist among people. And we can only trust others when we know they are actively and consciously concerned about us. A technology, no matter how sophisticated, doesn’t care about us all—it simply reacts to a set of variables. And the rulebook, no matter how comprehensive, cannot consider every eventuality.

As I coast home, on the condition that people are asked to work in a bad culture, one in which leaders do not relinquish and give up control, then the odds of something bad happening go up. People will be more concerned about following the rules out of fear of getting in trouble or losing their jobs than about doing what needs to be done. And when that happens, souls will be lost!

What needs to be done comes before the rules to be obeyed. What needs to be done does not always agree with what the rules say. When this happens in leadership, we deliberately break the rules, so that the precious souls under our care are not lost. Remember, the highest onus of a leader is to preserve souls.

Lastly, a leader needs to develop the required courage to break the rules in order to model a life of integrity for his followers to see and pattern after. It takes courage to break the rules when others are obeying them, against their esteemed values. There are rules that can make a leader compromise his values. When he courageously breaks them, the character of those following his leadership is strengthened to face same challenge in the days to come and ultimately overcome it. Remember, one of the major attributes of a great leader is in knowing when to break the rules and when to obey them. See you where great leaders—who break the rules when they need to—are found.

See you where great leaders are found!

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