By COL Ed Arntson and LTC Erik Miller
“We must strive to become experts in the human dimension. Wars are fought on land, by humans, and we must always work to become better at how we interact with one another to build trust and cohesion.” – GEN (ret.) Vince Brooks.
Your tone as a leader can communicate a wide variety of things: joy, displeasure, confusion, compassion, anger, frustration, and humility. After a combined 43 years in the U.S. Army, it is our assessment that leaders often engage their subordinates with a misguided verbal tone, which can lead to a loss of cohesion and trust in a team. In the opposite case, leaders who do not have a strong enough tone may suffer their team’s loss of confidence. In both instances, the same can be said for a subordinate – or “the led” – and their verbal tone with their boss.
Your verbal tone is a blend of the pitch and intonation in your voice. It conveys your emotions and intent for an engagement, as both the leader and the led. Verbal tone is a window into your mindset for an engagement.
As a leader at any level, your verbal tone is unbelievably important. Your tone sets the stage for the type of engagement you are going to have with your subordinates, and how they may respond. As a subordinate, your tone is just as important as you consistently communicate with your boss.
The Tone Range Fan
The Tone Range Fan (TRF) is a simple tool designed to help leaders engage with their subordinates in a more productive way, and for subordinates to understand their role in receiving feedback or coaching, as well as their engagements with their boss. The TRF helps us visualize our best tone, coaching tone, and compassionate tone. It also offers warning signs of being too harsh or even too soft with our verbal tone.
What is your “best tone?”
Your best tone is the most productive way you can engage with another person. If you are married or in a long-standing serious relationship, this is how we should always engage with our spouse or partner. When we engage with our best tone, we are humble, deferential, curious, and often when engaging with our superiors, well prepared. Humility, both physically and intellectually, is essential to our best tone.
Our physical stance or posture should demonstrate humility towards our superior. We should not stand or sit in a way that would threaten our boss’ physical space. Intellectually, we engage our superiors from a standpoint that we may not have everything right, and they can, with their wisdom and experience, offer additional feedback on a problem. Humility is the cornerstone of our best tone.
Being deferential to our boss is a natural out-pouring of humility, as is curiosity. Intellectual curiosity demonstrates a willingness to accept new ways of analyzing a problem, and in many cases, asking follow-up questions to ensure that you have a complete understanding of your boss’ intent for execution. Lastly, when we engage with our superiors, we are often well-prepared. We have thought about what to say and how to say it. We have data and facts at the ready if required.
The coaching tone.
What is the coaching tone? If you have played a team or individual sport, you are likely familiar with the coaching tone. If you currently serve in the military, you may have heard a higher pitch or stern voice this morning during physical training meant to encourage or provide instruction. A coaching tone is rooted in the desire to help a subordinate improve. The coaching tone should often include many of the same aspects of your best tone, but a leader may be more strict, direct, or instructional in their delivery.
If a subordinate is doing something physically unsafe, your tone may be terse and almost harsh to get your subordinates’ attention and ensure their physical safety. This would fall on the far-right side of the coaching tone, nearing the danger area, but not entering it. On the far left of the coaching tone range fan, a leader may be offering professional feedback to a subordinate from a recent training event. This type of engagement will likely include dialogue between both the leader and the led and may even involve a combined plan of action coming out of it. While the latter example will likely involve more of the four core aspects of your best tone, the former example should never cross into the red danger area where we begin to erode trust and cohesion inside our team.
The coaching area of the range fan is often where the most learning takes place for subordinates. They receive sound professional feedback on their current or past performance, and it is in their best interest to receive it with humility. Resisting coaching in the moment may result in short or long-term friction with your boss. To be clear, there may be times when a leader provides one-way, direct coaching to a subordinate because a subordinate has not met published standards or has disregarded his/her boss’ guidance. This is okay, especially in the military when we are training for combat. These types of engagements, however, can become part of the virtuous cycle that promotes growth for both the leader and the led.
The compassionate tone.
A compassionate tone demonstrates empathy and care for those we lead. Leaders may show compassion in a variety of situations such as the illness of a spouse or the loss of a parent. Demonstrating compassion and having empathy for those that we lead is essential to building trust-based, cohesive teams. Your subordinates should know that you care about them as human beings, and not just because of what they do for your organization.
The worst leaders that we have ever worked for in the Army did not ever demonstrate care or empathy for their subordinates because they are only focused on short-term targets. They were solely focused on the function that person performed for the organization. This can lead to a loss of team cohesion. In cases where leaders can demonstrate empathy, but do not, they lose an opportunity to build a stronger team for the long term.
“The virtuous cycle”
Inside of the TRF, there are two virtuous cycles that occur to help build stronger and more cohesive teams. The first occurs after what I will describe as “hard” coaching. Hard coaching may involve telling a subordinate that they did not meet published standards or that they did not adhere to your intent for a training exercise. This is often a one-way conversation from the leader to the led. However, the virtuous cycle occurs when a leader follows up with a subordinate to discuss what previously happened. Does the subordinate understand why you were disappointed? Why were you, as the leader, frustrated in a particular situation?
Our experience has taught us that what follows in these engagements is what leads to significant growth on the part of the leader and the led. The subordinate, if given the right amount of time, can reflect on what went wrong and provide additional context to their boss. The leader can usually then calmly discuss the core issue at hand and have dialogue with their subordinate about the way forward. Erik and I have had a lot of these discussions over the years, both as a leader and as a subordinate, and they have all made a significant impact on our growth as a leader and as a follower.
The second version of the virtuous cycle occurs when a leader can follow-up with a subordinate after showing compassion to them. Asking follow-up questions about an illness in the family, a physical injury that is healing, or even a difficult work situation demonstrates thoughtfulness and engaged leadership. Like the virtuous cycle that occurs after hard coaching, these engagements also build trust that can strengthen the foundation of any organization.
Danger areas.
There are two areas that both leaders and followers must be keenly aware of and avoid at all costs. The first sits to the right of the ‘coaching’ tone. This tone is our worst tone. This verbal tone can be abrasive and may even cross into personal insults. This tone is often rooted in the overall desire to “be right” instead of “getting it right” for the organization. Intellectual arrogance is often another cornerstone of our worst tone. Intellectual arrogance is driven in large part by the fact that a leaders’ or subordinates’ ideas are the best – and that everyone else’s are the worst.
CPT Herbert Sobel, from the famous TV mini-series Band of Brothers (based on Stephen F. Ambrose’s novel of the same name), is a great example of someone who routinely engaged his subordinates with his worst verbal tone. His engagements were often rooted in sarcasm, the desire to be right, and often crossed into the arena of personal insults. The TV series shows the deleterious effect that CPT Sobel’s overall leadership had on his Infantry Company, leading to an early transition to another billet before the hard fighting of World War II began. CPT Sobel’s leadership, often displayed through his misguided verbal tone, led to a significant loss of cohesion and trust inside his Company.
Another character from the Band of Brothers show, 1LT Norman Dike, provides the opposite example of CPT Sobel. As portrayed in the TV series, 1LT Dike is aloof, mentally disengaged from his Company’s mission, and often simply not present with his men. Dike’s verbal tone, often seen through his engagements with his First Sergeant, Carwood Lipton, clearly show 1LT Dike’s overall weakness as a leader. Dike, like CPT Sobel, changed out of command earlier than expected; in Dike’s case though, he was flat-out relieved during Easy Company’s attack into the German town of Foy for his indecisiveness and poor tactical execution. 1LT Dike’s weak and ineffectual verbal tone, coupled with his lack of physical presence with Easy Company, led to a complete loss of confidence from the other leaders in the company and his superiors.
The real-life examples from the Band of Brothers TV series provide stark examples for the danger areas of the TRF. They can be helpful reminders of leader archetypes, not just in the military, but in many professions. One of my battalion commanders for the last eighteen months, LTC Erik Miller, provides an excellent example of his use of the TRF during a critical engagement with his leaders after an intense tactical situation at the National Training Center (NTC), as well as other factors for leaders and subordinates to consider during engagements.
Practical application of the TRF
A recent example of the range fan comes from our last rotation to the NTC. The brigade had successfully spent the last few days in the Mojave Desert under force-on-force conditions and the stakes were high, but there was still room for mistakes as it was ‘laser tag’ effects to conduct training. We had just transitioned to the live fire portion and were using real ammo, and I was responsible for the main event – the brigade breach.
We had planned, rehearsed, and then rehearsed again. The cavalry squadron had set the conditions and there was the entire might of an Armored Brigade Combat’s Team worth of combat power waiting to pounce. I had reports from my scouts and tank companies that we were on the move. We were just waiting for the forward observers to get in place to spot the live artillery rounds. I asked for an update, as we were still on plan and on time. A few more minutes. The time elapsed and still, not in position. This went on and gradually the meter on my range fan went from green (best) to yellow (coaching) and bordered the red zone as confrontation was inevitable. Eventually the observers got into place, and we conducted a successful simultaneous live fire breach opening two lanes in rapid succession. The brigade poured through and despite being delayed by 45 minutes, we achieved our objectives.
There were immediate repercussions, but after the dust had settled hours later, I had a conversation with the leader responsible for the observers. This is where I was able to use the virtuous cycle and transitioned back to the Compassion Tone. It was a quiet discussion off in the distance away from any other Soldiers. I talked at a pace and volume that gave off more of the ‘disappointed dad’ vibe. We talked about what had gone wrong and what had gone right. The leader had never wanted to fail but had not realized the cascade of missed opportunities we discussed. We also talked through the way forward and repercussions that would be levied. This dramatic turn in tone, paired with empathy helped the leader learn from the event and solidified the trust between us.
Context with tone.
The tone of the leader is important to understand, but there are several other aspects that go into the application of the tone range fan. Just like a range fan for a weapon system is applied to the terrain to ensure safe and effective training, there are other factors to consider for leaders and the led:
- Timing – when to apply the virtuous cycle, after both hard coaching and an empathetic engagement
- Language – what words are used within the tone – flowery/political language all the way to curse words
- Size of the group – is this a meeting, one-on-one counseling or a large formation?
- Relationship with the audience – first interaction or multiple years of experience with each other?
- Location – a casual interaction in passing, a deliberate meeting, or a serious training environment like the National Training Center?
Leaders set the tone
Leaders who consistently engage their subordinates with a compassionate, coaching or their best tone are far more likely to have a strong, cohesive team. Similarly, well-prepared subordinates who engage their bosses with humility and deference are far more likely to earn their boss’ trust, further strengthening the bond between the two. Conversely, leaders and subordinates who engage each other on the far ends of the TRF spectrum can create hostile environments where cohesion dramatically suffers or confidence wanes.
The TRF can serve as a powerful tool for both leaders and subordinates. Erik and I have both had success coaching others using this tool. In several instances, allowing others to visualize their verbal tone on the TRF made career altering, positive differences for those in our formations. When we consistently engage within the appropriate range fans of the TRF, and utilize the virtuous cycle, we will build strong, high-functioning teams that can accomplish incredible things.
A leader’s verbal tone when engaging with their subordinates is critical, as is a subordinates’ tone when interacting with their boss. The Tone Range Fan is a tool designed for the leader and the led at all levels to help you visualize how you are communicating with your team, as well as how your verbal tone is being perceived. Engagements within the Compassionate, Coaching, or best tone areas will lead to building a stronger organizational foundation built on trust and shared understanding. When leaders or subordinates begin to engage outside of the safe areas, organizations may experience a loss of trust, cohesion, or overall confidence. A leader’s use of the virtuous cycle within the TRF can promote building trust and cohesion across the organization and may lead to greater organizational effectiveness.
COL Ed Arntson is a career Infantry officer who has served in the Army for over 23 years. He commanded 3-187 Infantry as a Battalion Commander in the 101st Airborne, and most recently commanded 3rd Brigade (GREYWOLF), 1st Cavalry Division. He currently serves as the Commander of 3rd Security Force Assistance Brigade.
LTC Erik Miller served as a battalion and brigade executive officer in 1st Armored Division and most recently commanded 1-12 CAV in 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. He currently serves as the Division G-3 for 2nd Infantry Division in Korea.
