Humility is an act of sacrifice for an ideal—a cause greater than oneself. Our Marines deserve leaders who embody this characteristic.
Operations in the Arizona Valley, within the depths of Vietnam's An Hoa Basin, were among the most combat intensive any Marine unit experienced in 1969. The Viet Cong seemed to saturate the entire valley, and every day was a struggle for survival for the Marines of the Fifth Marine Regiment. A courageous, competent first lieutenant and one of his best squad leaders were tasked with clearing a series of spider holes while on a patrol. Suddenly, and most unexpectedly, a Viet Cong soldier appeared from a hole with a grin on his face. The lieutenant instantly killed him with his .45 revolver, but the soldier released a live grenade before he collapsed, and it rolled perilously close to the young squad leader.
Instinctively, the lieutenant pushed his fellow Marine to the ground and covered his comrade with his own body. "He saved my life," this lance corporal recalled more than 20 years later. "He just totally shielded me." First Lieutenant James H. Webb sustained wounds of such severity that he eventually was discharged from the Marine Corps. He earned the Navy Cross for the valor he exhibited in saving his fellow Marine, but never again would he lead Marines in the field.
Webb's sole desire and foremost priority to preserve his squad leader at the potential cost of his own life are a manifestation of the core of the virtue of humility. Webb had no time to weigh the pros and cons, to conduct a wargaming exercise, or to reflect on the long-term personal consequences of his decision—there was only time to act.
This gallant example challenges us with the reality that humility is a virtue of leadership; it confronts us with a mysterious, timeless, and practical principle often ignored in modern instruction concerning the characteristics of the leader. We owe it to our Marines to respond to this challenge by incorporating humility into our performance as leaders. We commit to teaching our young Marine leaders to seek the welfare of our great institution and of others before themselves through our personal examples. We accept the challenge to evaluate the virtue of humility within ourselves. Consequently, we gain a more profound understanding of our capacity to inspire our Marines to succeed in every task they perform.
Our first step is to answer the following fundamental questions: How do I personify the legacy of sacrifice and selfless service through my personal leadership? What am I doing to embody the principles that define my character as a leader of Marines?
Leadership by Example
There is no more sincere method by which leadership can be instructed than through personal example. Leadership is difficult because we must inspire the very best in our Marines. This is a vocation that should not be pursued by the self-righteous or by those more concerned about image than substance. Leaders are committed to improvement by accepting and communicating the truth at all times and at all costs. Humility seeks the truth, subordinates us to our Marines and to our mission, and unites individual Marines into a collective, cohesive organization determined to achieve a cause greater than themselves. Once we understand and apply the virtue of humility, we retain the moral authority to convert civilians into Marines with the primary, unwavering vocation of serving their country. Our leadership contributes to a larger, more penetrating process of transformation during which our Marines become committed to taking care of one another at all times—in peace and in war. They accept the entire range of responsibilities inherent to their chosen profession as servants of the nation they have sworn to protect.
Humility demands much of us—and our Marines—in this process. To teach our Marines to serve the needs of others before themselves can be accomplished only by example. We must consciously decide to empty ourselves of our selfish ambitions. We must refuse to use our position of responsibility to satisfy our personal agenda. Regardless of our rank or position, we must define the needs of our Marines and the responsibilities of our office as our highest professional priorities.
It has been said that there is no imaginable way to measure the good that could be done if we were not concerned about who received the credit. Our view of success should measure the degree to which we improved our Corps' ability to win on the battlefield; ultimately, we must ask ourselves how we nurtured the spirit of the warrior within our Marines. To achieve this noble goal, we must decide to make ourselves constantly available to our Marines. We subordinate personal recognition and self-preservation to the more laudable and lasting ideals of truth and service to Marines and to mission—particularly when faced with a moral dilemma with profound consequences or adversity.
Advocating the demonstration of humility as a necessary virtue of leadership acknowledges our immeasurable effect on the growth of our subordinates. We, as leaders within our Corps, have the potential to calibrate or permanently fix the moral compass of our Marines. Personal crises and communications gaps that evolve in any unit can be resolved when we establish trust, suppress our personal egos, and actively listen to one another. Solid performers will stay in the Marine Corps because they sense their ideas and recommendations are valued and appreciated by the leader who listens and applies proposals vocalized from all ranks.
Once we dedicate our careers to serving our country, our Corps, and our Marines, there is no limit to what we may accomplish. The personal quality of our Marines and the professional competence of our combat units will improve dramatically if our leadership is based on lasting principles centered on truth, justice, and selfless regard for fellow Marines.
The Value of Humility
Humility generally is disregarded in leadership vernacular within our culture and our Marine Corps. This is a result of our failure to explore the value of this virtue, and to study it within the context of character development of great leaders. The Delphic Oracle advised Greek warriors that they must truly "know themselves" to achieve lasting greatness. Humility impels us to know our strengths and limitations.
Throughout the Medieval period, warrior cultures throughout Europe expounded upon the principle of magnanimaris fidei—"of great faith"—to cultivate a knight's spirit of service, obedience, and dedication to mission and master. Robert E. Lee stated emphatically that a man must be able to control himself before being entrusted with the lives of others. Douglas Southall Freeman acknowledges that one of Lee's most powerful traits as a leader was his humility, and notes that "so often did his ambition extend . . . into the realm of the spirit, that he was never satisfied with what he was. Of humility and submission was born a spirit of self-denial that prepared him for the hardships of war." The virtue of humility gave Lee the mental strength to strive constantly for self-improvement, to never be satisfied with his physical and mental qualities as a leader. His ability to renounce his own comfort and safety for the sake of his men and mission stimulated within him and the Confederate Army the stamina to endure the horror and destruction they encountered throughout the Civil War.
Humility hardens our endurance because we are not focused internally—our attention and concern are directed toward our mission, toward thinking through and solving problems, toward making decisions, and toward taking care of the Marines entrusted to our leadership. This is a virtue that must be nurtured over time and practical application. It is not a responsibility we can ignore—developing the character of our Marines is one of our integral duties. The character of the leader will determine how entire units perform in combat; competence, reliability, and trust are absolutely indispensable when lives are placed at risk, and success depends upon the unity of effort and coherence of strategy that come from of the ethos of the leader.
Richard A. Gabriel, in his treatise on ethics and military leadership, To Serve with Honor (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1982), emphasizes numerous distinctive virtues and characteristics innate to a leader in war. These qualities are inherent to developing cohesion and unity of purpose with any command. Such virtues, he argues, must exist among the men and women of the unit before they encounter the shock and horror of the battlefield. The spirit of humility provides the foundation upon which leaders develop the requisite character, competence, and virtue within the hearts of those who follow them into battle.
As Marine officers, we swear an oath of allegiance to our Constitution, to our country, and to our Corps. We become humble stewards poised to provide security to our nation at all costs. The training and welfare of our Marines supersede the importance of our personal comfort and individual desires. We recognize the loyalty we develop within our unit rests upon our collective realization that we all are participating in a unifying act that transcends our individual worth. We recognize ourselves as instruments in pursuit of a higher cause. Loyalty emerges from this self-emptying service to our unit.
When we are called to give of ourselves, we do so without hesitation or expectation of reward. Such sacrifice is possible through humble acknowledgment that our personal needs and desires are inferior to those of our Marines and mission. We offer the ultimate sacrifice during times of war. In peace, we prepare for war through bold critique and honest assessment of capabilities—especially when such evaluations are unpopular and contrary to the desires of our seniors. To do what is right may require we take a lonely stand, despite the potential harm to our careers.
We create a learning climate within our commands that allows our subordinates to challenge our reasoning, policies, or decisions if they feel they are harmful to the unit. We acknowledge our own fallibility, and we allow this realization to nurture an environment tolerant of mistakes and errors. We have the courage to initiate changes and improvements instead of hiding cancerous morale problems that erode the capability of our unit. It requires courage, confidence, and humility to expose ourselves to scrutiny and to correct our actions in light of improved reason or insight. The lack of dissent during the Vietnam War led to failed strategy and military practices that wasted lives. In cultivating a healthy and professional environment in which we may be challenged, we engage in a continuous search for what is truth and what is right. An officer who does not possess the humility to accept respectful dissent lacks courage, common sense, and confidence.
Humility in Action
Lieutenant General Ron Christmas recently related to our Amphibious Warfare School class a story of how his decision to listen to one of his lance corporals during the Battle of Hue City saved his unit from disaster. This junior Marine provided his commanding officer with tactical ingenuity in suppressing an enemy machine-gun position while allowing an entire platoon to safely cross an open road in this urban area. Humility invites leaders to be active listeners. Clearly, we do not have all the answers—but do we have the common sense and humility to admit this? We must listen to opposing information and relevant data from all sources before formulating a judgment and making a decision. Alter a position if new intelligence refutes preconceived notions. Do not force the plan that no longer is relevant, even if it means we may have been wrong. Listen to the wisdom of our subordinates, respect their ideas, and they will believe their leader truly is concerned about what the Marines are thinking.
Jonathan Shay states in Achilles in Vietnam (Touchstone Books, 1995) that a source of great friction and tension within combat units was the unwillingness of some poor leaders to share the hazards and hardships of their men. Leaders never must be displaced from the dangers encountered by their Marines. The bonds of cohesion, esprit de corps, and brotherhood are formed through leaders who humble themselves to accept the possibility of death or serious injury in battle. Authentic humility will motivate the Marines because they believe their leader will share the agony and terror of combat. Sharing these hardships in both peace and war is integral to effective leadership.
The Marine Corps must continue to produce the nation's finest warriors, who will succeed in any battle in any place. Victory will not be possible unless we trust our small-unit leaders to make decisions that may have strategic relevance. Empowerment is the process by which we train and develop our noncommissioned officers to make good decisions under the overwhelming pressures of the future battlefield. The leader who does not possess the humility to decentralize his authority and decision making capabilities fails the small-unit leaders and, ultimately, the Corps. The leader who does not abandon the zero-effects mentality and covets his own power breeds fear and inefficiency. We must allow our Marines to make decisions and mistakes, and to lead without fear of punishment or termination of advancement. Leaders must delegate their authority in order to translate empowerment from a concept into a realistic capability within their command.
Currently, the Marine Corps is engaged in a comprehensive review of our soul and purpose as a warfighting organization. Scrupulous assessment and honest critique are healthy and necessary attributes to any organization that desires to remain relevant and influential in the 21st century. In the midst of fierce combat during World War I, the German Army conducted a similar self-examination. The High Command initiated a series of revisions and concluded that fundamental alterations to existing tactics, technology, and training methodology were required to achieve success on the Western Front. Instant improvement resulted from honest appraisals of deficiencies.
The Marine Corps has reached a critical juncture in its long, impressive history as a combat organization. Brigadier General Thomas S. Jones communicated these sentiments to our Amphibious Warfare School class as recently as January 1999. He also voiced his greatest concern: "the lack of humility" in our culture as a Marine Corps. Our institution, as well as the officers and senior enlisted Marines who govern its legacy, must be more critical and less assuming as we chart our course for the next 10 to 20 years. We must be our own most vociferous and challenging critics. Questions regarding our realistic capabilities must be posed, and intelligent, practical answers must be offered in response to perplexing issues such as adequate sealift for our forward-deployed forces, reliable firepower for Marine forces landing on hostile shores, or actual versus perceived cooperation with the Navy.
What is Operational Maneuver from the Sea, and what do we need to do to translate this concept into a capability? Are we willing to ask the tough questions? More important, are the leaders of the future able to openly question and criticize the Marine Corps for proposing policy without substance, concepts without realistic capability? Humility demands our ingenuity and our integrity, and begs us constantly to search for the truth and to develop the capability through exhaustive analysis, thorough training, and detailed, often painstaking, critique. The Marines we have chosen to serve deserve leaders who exhibit the humility to be honest about what we can and cannot accomplish. Our Corps needs able leaders, prepared to invest themselves in the required effort to solve discrepancies between our advertised missions and our realistic capabilities.
The virtue of humility must be restored and actively demonstrated in our daily practice of leadership. Leaders cultivate strong, lasting bonds of trust and mutual respect within our fighting organizations when we choose to season our decisions with an authentic desire to serve our Marines and our Corps. The cohesion must come from a leader who is focused on keeping Marines alive in war through tough, useful training in peace. Honest assessment and evaluation must replace the self-promoting desire to appease our seniors. Officers must seek "ground truth" regarding our operational capabilities as we seek a refined direction on the 21st century battlefield. A humble leader can ask the unpopular questions, confidently exert leadership toward a worthy goal through honest recognition of his strengths and limitations, and empower his Marines—and the Corps—by demanding of his Marines that which he demands of himself.
Captain Wagner is a recent graduate of the Amphibious Warfare School. He recently served as Executive Officer of Company A, Marine Security Guard Battalion, Frankfurt, Germany, and is a 1991 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.