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Morale – Interactive Essay Lesson A

Hi this is AJ and welcome to this months’ Interactive lesson, part A. In part A I will read aloud an essay an excerpt that means a small part from a book connected to our topic.

Then I will teach you some of the vocabulary, the words, the phrases, the idioms, so you can grow your vocabulary and then in Part B I will ask you questions about the vocabulary, the phrases, the essay, so that you learn more deeply. That’s in Part B, but in Part A now let’s just learn some vocabulary and improve your listening. Here we go.

In order to convince and inspire others to follow and accomplish a mission a leader must be a true believer in the mission. Even when others doubt and question the amount of risk asking, is it worth it? The leader must believe in the greater cause. If a leader does not believe, he or she will not take the risks required to overcome the inevitable challenges necessary to win. And they will not be able to convince others, especially the front line troops who must execute the mission to do so.

Leaders must always operate with the understanding that they are part of something greater than themselves, and their own personal interests. They must impart this understanding to their teams, down to the tactical level operators on the ground. Far more important than training or equipment, a resolute belief in the mission is critical for any team or organization to win and achieve big results.

In many cases, the leader must align his thoughts and vision to that of the mission. Once a leader believes in the mission that belief shines through to those below and above, in the chain of command. Actions and words reflect belief with a clear confidence and selfassuredness that is not possible when belief is in doubt. The challenge comes when that alignment isn’t explicitly clear. When a leader’s confidence breaks, those who are supposed to follow him or her see this and begin to question their own belief in the mission. Every leader must be able to detach from the immediate tactical mission and understand how it fits into strategic goals.

When leaders receive an order that they themselves question and do not understand, they must ask the question why? Why are we being asked to do this? Those leaders must take a step back, deconstruct the situation, analyze the strategic picture and then come to a conclusion. If they cannot determine a satisfactory answer themselves they must ask questions up the chain of command until they understand why. If front line leaders and troops understand why, they can move forward, fully believing in what they are doing.

It is likewise incumbent on senior leaders to take the time to explain and answer the questions of their junior leaders, so that they too can understand why and believe. Whether in the ranks of military units or companies and corporations, the front line troops never have as clear an understanding of the strategic picture as senior leaders might anticipate. It is critical that those senior leaders impart a general understanding of that strategic knowledge, the why, to their troops.

Okay, let’s learn the vocabulary now. This comes from a writer named Jocko Willink, who is a military leader. So back to the beginning, let’s learn some of the phrases.

I’ll go more slowly and you can learn this little by little, piece by piece. From the beginning…

Vocabulary

In order to convince and inspire others to follow and accomplish a mission, a leader must be a true believer in the mission. In order to, convince and inspire – To convince – means to persuade

Inspire – means to excite, to give others enthusiasm

So to do that, leaders want to persuade people to do something. They want to inspire them to follow a mission, but to do that a leader must be a true believer in the mission. This is a little bit of an idiom in English.

To be a true believer– it means you completely, 100% believe something.

Let’s say in religion, let’s say someone’s a Christian. You might say oh, he’s a believer, which gives the idea that they are a Christian. But a true believer it gives the idea that they are a super strong believer, that they completely, 100% support and believe in Christianity.

But it doesn’t have to be religion, it can be any idea, any belief. To be a true believer means to be a very strong believer, so it has this idea of a very, very strong believer.

So, Mr. Willink here is saying that leaders must be true believers. They must be very strong believers in their mission, right, in the organization, in the goals. If you’re not a true believer as a leader, then everyone else can feel it. They can feel it and then you’re not an effective leader.

Even when others doubt and question the amount of risk, asking, is it worth it?

So he’s saying, in some situations others, maybe your followers, maybe your team, maybe people above you, they might question the risk. They might be afraid of risk and they might ask, is it worth it?

To be worth it – means is it necessary? Is it valuable?

So people might start to question, they have a doubt. If there’s some risk or if hard work is necessary, people start to ask, is it worth it? Is it necessary? Is it valuable? They start to have a doubt.

So the leader must believe in the greater cause.

The greater cause – is another little bit of an idiom. The greater cause means the bigger goal, the bigger strategy, the bigger mission, the greater cause. It means the more important cause, the more important mission; more important than just each individual person.

If a leader does not believe, he or she will not take the risks required to overcome the inevitable challenges necessary to win.

Inevitable – means unavoidable, unavoidable. It means 100% they will come.

So he’s saying that to win, to win in business, to do well with your family, in any situation there will be challenges, unavoidable challenges. It means you can’t get around them they always will come, they are inevitable challenges.

And to overcome the challenges, to beat the challenges, you must take risks. It’s necessary to take risks. But, if you don’t believe you will be afraid to take the risks, therefore, you will lose that’s what he’s saying.

And they will not be able to convince others– leaders will not be able to convince others–, especially the front line troops who must execute the mission to do so.

Front line troops – troops means soldiers, fighters. So it might mean actual army people, but we use it also, we use it in business. It just means anybody who’s fighting or doing work on the front line. Front line means right at the very, very front.

So, in the military that’s the guys who are actually shooting the guns and actually fighting the battles. Those are the front line troops. In a business the front line troops are, for example, the salespeople, the customer service people. Again, the employees who are directly connected to customers, right, they’re out on the front line of the business. They’re directly dealing with customers. The management they’re not front line, they’re kind of, not connected to the customers directly, usually. So the front line troops in a business are very, very important. In the Army or the military they’re important. Because, the front line troops execute the mission.

Execute – has a few different meanings, but here the meaning is to do, to perform.

They perform the mission. They do the mission. They’re the ones who actually do the plans.

They actually have to take the action. To execute means to perform, to take action.

Leaders must always operate with the understanding that they are part of something greater than themselves, and their own personal interests. Very important phrase. Leaders must always operate with, again, it just means take action with, perform with, behave with, operate with; the understanding that they are part of something greater than themselves.

So he’s saying that effect leaders focus on the big picture, on the big mission, not just on their own personal desires.

They must impart this understanding to their teams, down to the tactical level operators on the ground.

To impart – means to give, to communicate, to pass on. So they must give, they must communicate this understanding, this bigger picture understanding.

To their teams, down to the tactical level operators, tactical level operators. This is a little bit of a military type phrase. Again, it has the same meaning as front line troops. Operators are just people who do things. An operator is someone who operates, which means someone who takes action, someone who does.

Tactical level – means kind of the short-term, immediate.

In military, but also in business and really in general we have two kinds of ideas… tactical and strategic; tactical and strategic. We’ve learned this before in past VIP lessons. Tactical goals, tactical operations, actions, are focused on the short-term, focused on winning or achieving short-term goals, tactical. Strategic is focused on long-term goals, the big picture.

So far more important than training or equipment, a resolute belief in the mission is critical Resolute –there’s a good word, a resolute belief. Resolute means very strong and determined, determined, committed. A resolute belief is a strong, determined, committed belief. It means you’re not going to quit, you’re not going to change your mind easily; resolute.

So you must have a resolute belief, a strong, determined belief in the mission. It’s critical – meaning it’s very important, critical very important.

Critical for any team or organization to win and achieve big results. In many cases, the leader must align his thoughts and vision to that of the mission.

To align – means to line up, to line up something that’s the direct meaning, to line up.

But, when we talk about beliefs and ideas it means to connect with, to connect with or to be in harmony with. It means they’re working together. So, if you align your thoughts to the mission it means your thoughts and the mission, they line up, they support each other.

They’re in line with each other. It has the idea that they support each other they’re not working against each other.

We can do this with people too. We need to align our team to the goal. It means everybody on the team needs to line up and work in the same direction. Lining up and working towards the goal, not fighting against the goal; align, align with. We often say align with or align to.

Once a leader believes in the mission that belief shines through to those below and above, in the chain of command.

To believe in – its’ the same idea as believe. To believe in means to support, to fully believe something.

That believe shines through – shines through is an idiom – means clearly shows, clearly demonstrates. So the believe clearly shows, clearly demonstrates, is clearly visible to those below and above in the chain of command.

The chain of command, again we use this in business and we use this in the military. Chain of command it’s the ranking, the general’s at the top and under the general maybe there’s a captain and then under a captain a lieutenant. That’s the chain of command, it’s like a chain, there’s someone at the top, someone in the middle, someone at the bottom. You have to go up or down the chain of command. The ones at the top are the big leaders that have the most power. It’s the same in business, you have the CEO at the top and then you have the Vice Presidents maybe and then you have senior managers, junior managers, front line workers. That’s the chain of command.

Actions and words reflect belief with a clear confidence and self-assuredness that is not possible when belief is in doubt.

Self-assuredness – means self-confidence, self-confidence. It’s the same idea.

Assuredness, confidence, same basic meaning.

So, when your actions and words show strong belief then it shows a clear confidence, it shows self-assuredness. It means your belief is not in doubt, nobody doubts your belief.

The challenge comes when that alignment isn’t explicitly clear.

Explicitly – means openly communicated, openly demonstrated. So it has the idea of openly and directly; explicitly.

So he’s saying that as a leader it’s not enough just to believe, you have to show that belief.

You have to directly and openly communicate that belief.

When a leader’s confidence breaks, those who are supposed to follow him or her see this and begin to question their own belief in the mission. If the leader doesn’t believe then everybody else also stops believing. Therefore, every leader must be able to detach from the immediate tactical mission and understand how it fits into strategic goals.

So the leader must be able to detach from – means to disconnect from, detach means disconnect, unconnect, disconnect; disconnect is the correct word.

Detach from the immediate tactical mission – it means the short-term mission, the shortterm goals. And understand how it fits into the strategic goals – the long-term, the big picture. So every leader has to disconnect sometimes from the short-term problems, the short-term goals and understand, how does the short-term fit into the long-term? They have to have a big picture, a strategic vision, very important.

When leaders receive an order that they themselves question and do not understand, they must ask the question why?

You have to understand why. Why are you doing these things? Why are you doing these shortterm actions and goals? Why? Why are we being asked to do this? Those leaders must take a step back- means take a break, take a break. To take a step back is kind of an idiom. It means to take a break, to pause.

They must deconstruct the situation,

Deconstruct – means take apart, take it apart, look at the pieces.

They must analyze the strategic picture

So again, to study, analyze to study the strategic picture, the long-term picture, the longterm situation and then come to a conclusion.

If they cannot determine a satisfactory answer themselves they must ask questions up the chain of command until they understand.

So again, if the leader doesn’t understand the strategy, doesn’t understand why they’re doing things, then the leader needs to ask questions up the chain of command – means ask their boss or bosses, why. Why are we doing this? What’s the purpose?

If front line leaders and troops understand why, they can move forward, fully believing in what they are doing. It is likewise incumbent on senior leaders

Incumbent on – means necessary, it is necessary for senior leaders. It is incumbent on senior leaders. It is required of senior leaders.

It is incumbent on senior leaders to take to take the time and explain the questions of their junior leaders, so that they too can understand why and believe. Whether in the ranks of military units, so in the military, or companies and corporations, the front line troops never have as clear an understanding of the strategic picture as senior leaders might anticipate.

That’s a long one, but what he’s saying is that the senior leaders, the guys at the top, they don’t understand that the people on the front line, they never really understand the strategy, the big picture; they often don’t understand it. So he’s saying the front line troops are never as clear as the leaders might anticipate, might think, might believe, might guess. What this means is that the leaders might guess, they might believe that the workers, the front line workers, the front line troops, they might believe, they might guess that they understand the strategy, they understand why. But, in fact, the front line troops usually don’t understand so much of the strategy. They often don’t understand why they need to do things, so the leader needs to communicate this.

It is critical that those senior leaders impart – again, communicate, pass on, give – a general understanding of that strategic knowledge, the big picture knowledge; the why, to their troops.

To their troops - It means to their workers, to their soldiers, to their fighters.

Okay that is the end of Part A. See you in Part B. I’ll ask you some questions. You’ll learn this vocab, these phrases more deeply.

See you in part B.