I did not join the Navy because its core values appealed to me more than did those of the other branches of the armed services. It just worked out that way.
Honor, courage, and commitment: what does the Navy really want us to do with these three words? The skipper of a carrier admonishing his crew to "Show honor, lads! Show courage! Be committed!" while landing jets is not giving helpful advice-certainly not in the same way as giving orders to set a course that will have them landing with the wind on their noses. Yet, to give those orders without attention to the core values also surely is to invite disaster.
Perhaps these values are meant to be held in abeyance until the going gets tough, which it most assuredly will. (If the going does not get tough, you are not seeking challenge and you are in the wrong business.) If these are in fact core values, they are meant to be fundamental, and one ought to know what these words represent-and I do not mean their dictionary definitions. We all know honor when we see it, but to define it in some way that a listener can wrap his brain around it takes more than going to the American Heritage and coming back with "personal integrity maintained without legal or other obligation." This is a start, but when was the last time someone was inspired to be courageous when asked to display "the quality of mind that enables one to face danger with self-possession or confidence"?
We understand these qualities on an intuitive level. Courage = bravery. It means not being afraid. This is not complicated, but so what? They are just words. If someone would tell me how to vanquish fear, then they will have told me something. To do what you must even when you are afraid-now that is something worth considering. Freedom resides in taking a bold course of action. I believe we are delving here into more of an attitudinal courage, rather than the physical sort, and that is where the rubber hits the road. Show me someone who will support an unpopular cause at great personal risk because he knows in his heart it is the right thing, and I will show you someone of courage. This is the person I want to have on my side in a tough situation. Show me someone who knows when to be afraid and when not to, with the courage to act accordingly, and I will show you the skipper of a ship whose crew is wearing Battle Es.
What is commitment? It has to be more than something we learned from our first experiences with team sports. There is not one among us who has not used the word, but what is the difference between strong interest and legitimate commitment? It has to have something to do with not bailing out even when you could bail and no one would blame you. Winston Churchill put it succinctly: "Never give in, never, never, never, never; in nothing, great or small-never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense."
So we have a rough handle on commitment: never giving in except to a concept of honor, another core value. So commitment and honor overlap. What are we to make of that? What is honor? Mario Andretti also thought it had something to do with commitment when he said, "Do it no matter what. If you believe in it, it is something very honorable." No matter what-that is commitment. It is about doing something because you believe in itif you have the courage to believe in it, despite personal cost.
Now we are getting somewhere. Could it be that honor, courage, and commitment have to do with belief? More directly, is honor simply the courage to commit to a belief?
The question becomes interesting when one considers actually displaying the core values, or "walking the walk." It is easy to be committed to what you believe when the stakes are not quite so high, when the pressure is a bit less intense. Doubtless there were some wonderful mission statements and core values on the walls at Enron and Arthur Andersen. Putting these values into regular practice, not just when convenient, is the test. It takes character to do it when it is not so easy.
Character-that is where honor, courage, and commitment intersect, in people of real character, in those who put the values into practice as a way of life, those who will do the right thing when nobody is looking.
All too few of us meet this admittedly high standard. You can get away with a lot when you tuck away those values. Doing so permits you to obtain advantages that, if you were on the other end of the stick, you would not find particularly equitable. Racking up a series of short-term wins like that certainly is easier than putting your shoulder to the wheel.
There are, of course, a few things you will not get away with without character. If you are at all self-aware, for instance, you will not look at yourself in a mirror and respect the guy looking back. Both of those faces will know a fraud has been committed, and you cannot hide a known fact from yourself. You can deny it to the world at the top of your lungs, but that, does not make it any less the case, and deceiving yourself cannot help but lead to a loss of self-respect. Lose that, and you are through as a leader. Your charges will smell it all over you, and we are in a business where you lead with authority or you get out of the way, whatever your level of command. You just cannot give what you do not have in surplus. As General Norman Schwartzkopf said once, "Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy."
We all have seen that kind of character in real leaders, the guys you will follow anywhere, anytime. They have incorporated honor, courage, and commitment to such a degree that each value has become a way of life. If you live that way, you may lose a few in the short run, but you win every time you play.
Petty Officer Miller is assigned to a naval intelligence unit at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. He also works at the Washington Navy Yard with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.