2014 Leadership Essay Contest Honorable Mention
Made possible by the generous support of Dr. J. Phillip London and CACI International
As any Marine officer will tell you, there is no greater privilege or more awesome responsibility than leading Marines in combat. I certainly found that to be the case during my combat tours. After a seven-year span between active duty and returning to the Reserve, I find myself reflecting almost daily about the incredible things my Marines accomplished during our tours. Were we just lucky? How did we build a team that functioned so well amid chaos? How did we adjust to a host of missions, some of which we could not have foreseen? Why did the Marines follow the orders of my squad leaders, and why did they follow me into such an extreme environment of death and destruction?
These are some of the questions I contemplated during the year in which I fought to get back into the Corps. I thought about all the qualities of the effective leaders under whom I had served in combat, and the traits that had made them so effective. As I sought the reasons for which it was easy to absorb these commanders’ intent and make it my own, I returned to a common theme, an attribute they all shared: unselfishness. These leaders would never ask me to do anything that they would not have been willing to do themselves. But it was more than that; their unselfish behavior permeated everything they did. This is what made them so effective and made me want to follow them.
When my return to the Corps was a reality after seven years off active duty, I questioned my reasoning for wanting to return and wondered if I could be effective as a leader in a new environment. At first I had thought that what I missed most were Marines themselves. That was certainly true, since their sense of humor in bad situations and their fortitude are inspiring to no end. But it was more than that. I missed the Marine Corps because it required more of me than I thought I could give. It required me to be a better example for those I led. And to again be part of a mission greater than myself was an honor. I also felt an obligation. Anyone who has ever witnessed an American sacrifice his or her life for our country understands that sentiment. Still, to be effective I knew I needed to take a hard look in the mirror.
Doing the Right Thing Is Not Enough
Ensuring that a decision is made for the correct reasons, free of self-interest, creates a leadership persona that is genuine. Admittedly, during active duty I was blessed to serve with outstanding staff non-commissioned officers . Perhaps I was just smart enough to stay out of the way. Resisting the desire to micromanage is laudable, but laissez-faire leadership is not a style the Marine Corps embraces. A commanding officer must know how to cultivate the components of the unit he or she commands into an optimum performing system. That highly performing team, in turn, pushes the entire unit to success on the battlefield.
To build effective teams, the officer must be brutally honest about the capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses of everyone in the unit, starting with him/herself. An effective team cannot be assembled without an unselfish leader at the helm. For the mission to saturate the unit, every team member must be completely invested. Then esprit de corps is tangible, and becoming technically and tactically proficient, along with every other detail to mission accomplishment on the battlefield, falls naturally into place.
The rigors of peer evaluation endured at Officer Candidate School (OCS) and The Basic School (TBS) helped me develop a keen sense of where I fell in the range of leadership qualities among my peers. In our peer-evaluation process, the opinions of fellow candidates and newly commissioned officers can profoundly impact our careers. How well we are rated on leadership ability by peers can determine what jobs we get and to which duty stations we find ourselves posted. We deal with this evaluation for the better part of a year, but that is where the scrutiny ends with many young officers.
The U.S. Marine Corps is the world’s greatest leadership training environment, and opportunities abound to grow. OCS and TBS provide the outline of traits and qualities needed in a good leader. Certainly, after leading only colleagues in an educational environment, no officer enters the operating forces with the force of a highly effective leadership persona. The foundation may be there, but there is plenty of work to do. Yet many young officers slow their growth or stop it altogether after TBS. Then it becomes a question of desire. Do you want to improve yourself and self-evaluate using the same rigor with which a leader evaluates subordinate leaders?
Leadership Traits Are Not All Equal
The Marine Corps developed the mnemonic “JJ did tie buckle” to help remember what it considers to be the 14 essential attributes for effective leadership: justice, judgment, dependability, initiative, decisiveness, tact, integrity, enthusiasm, bearing, unselfishness, courage, knowledge, loyalty, and endurance. Evaluation sometimes focuses on these traits, but they are not of equal importance in developing a successful persona. The most critical one is unselfishness. It is also the most difficult to cultivate, because it is contrary to our nature as human beings.
We inherently cater to the self, which is why a child does not need to be taught to hoard his toys. That instinct comes quite naturally. Teaching a child to share can be a challenging task. As we mature, we understand how to behave more civilly and to care for others. But the penchant for self-preservation and to act in self-interest remains. We can do the right thing for the wrong reasons, and over time we may become blind to how our selfishness affects us.
Eventually, an officer will be faced with an important decision in which the outcome necessary for mission accomplishment is in conflict with some element of self-interest. It is the rare individual who can look into the mirror and see himself the way the world sees him. Yet to be truly effective and build highly effective combat teams, a leader must aggressively fight selfishness within his unit and, most important, within himself.
Unselfishness Binds Our Principles
The 11 Marine Corps leadership principles follow naturally from unselfishness. Like the 14 traits listed above, they serve as a foundation for the creation of an effective leadership persona. The principles are: know yourself and seek self-improvement; be technically and tactically proficient; know your Marines and look out for their welfare; keep your Marines informed; set the example; ensure that the task is understood, supervised, and accomplished; train your Marines and sailors as a team; make sound and timely decisions; develop a sense of responsibility among your subordinates; employ your command within its capabilities; and seek responsibilities and take responsibility.
These principles guide the young leader, but, they are not intended as a mere laundry list. That is, just because you are technically and tactically proficient and you pay lip-service to looking out for the welfare of your troops, this does not mean you are well on your way to building a team and becoming a highly effective leader. Commanders should examine themselves and work to develop unselfishness, after which the principles will follow. Making better use of them is a measurement of effectiveness, and a highly developed leadership persona results in the manifestation of all of them.
A close examination of these 11 principles shows that unselfishness is needed in all cases. Setting the example, knowing oneself, and seeking self-improvement are cornerstones to uncovering selfishness. Seeking responsibility and looking out for the welfare of one’s troops are prime examples of the behavior of an altruistic leader. Such a person does not hesitate to accept blame for a poor decision, remedy the error, and carry on with the mission. When the unit begins to believe in its leader, it starts to transform into a team in which communication flows, responsibility is embraced throughout, tasks are understood and carried out in accordance with capabilities, and missions are accomplished.
Let Mentors Help
Because it is difficult, if not impossible, to consistently evaluate one’s own motives, finding a mentor is an excellent way to get feedback, and Marine officers are rarely shy about giving advice. I have observed young officers gravitate with relative ease, and either formally or informally, toward senior members who seem to make decisions unselfishly.
I had such an opportunity immediately upon reporting to my first duty station in March 2003. I met Captain Nick Kalt when he was a senior first lieutenant. Having rushed to Camp Pendleton, southern California, from Military Occupation School in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, I was eager to participate in the imminent invasion of Iraq. I actually felt desperate to deploy and join the fight. Captain Kalt was the only officer left in the battalion when I arrived. He had been with the Remain Behind Element (RBE) when the battalion had raced off to Kuwait. Tumbleweeds blew through the battalion area as I drove up, and I was devastated when the command staff advised me, via satellite phone from Kuwait, that I would be serving with the RBE. To say my attitude was poor would be a tremendous understatement. I was furious.
I had committed to the Marine Corps immediately after 11 September 2001 and was in the first class to OCS. I had studied and learned how to command Marines in combat, and now I was being left behind! At the time it was widely believed that combat in Afghanistan was nearly complete, and now I was going to miss the fight in Iraq. The icing on the cake came a couple weeks later, when I was advised that Captain Kalt and I would be serving as casualty assistance calls officers (CACOs). This assignment meant we would be making next-of-kin notification to the families of Marines killed and seriously wounded in action. It also meant we would be working at length with these families during the extended process following such an event. This was when I hit the roof in anger. I had not been trained for CACO duty and, furthermore, I was not interested in undertaking that mission.
But even as I indulged in self-pity, I became keenly aware of the fact that Captain Kalt was in the same situation. He had been part of the unit longer than I, and he should have been even more miserable. But he calmly, even enthusiastically, embraced the difficult CACO mission and that of running the RBE. During my first two weeks at the battalion, I heard both a corporal and a master sergeant say the same thing about Captain Kalt: “I’d follow that man anywhere.” I took note, and Captain Kalt’s attitude made me feel guilty about my selfishness. I asked him why he wasn’t bitter, and he quickly replied that the mission of a CACO is exactly what “taking care of your Marines” is all about. When a Marine sacrificed his life for our country, it was our duty to take care of his family to the best of our ability.
Captain Kalt became my mentor. Later we both would deploy and lead Marines in combat. The months I spent with him in the RBE proved to be the best leadership training a young officer could hope to find. Sometimes opportunities to grow find you, and you need to seize them.
When I heard that Captain Kalt had been shot by an enemy combatant while leading his Marines during the Second Battle of Fallujah, I was not surprised to learn that he had been the only Marine wounded. I knew he would have been in front of his team, leading them through the dangerous fight. I would have expected nothing less from the man who taught me so much about unselfish leadership.
Just as all leadership traits are not of equal importance, not all officers are blessed with the same natural abilities. But it matters not how officers improve their ability to lead. War is a struggle between two opposing wills. Perhaps the most important battle that military leaders fight is the one within themselves. It is the rare leader, such as my friend and mentor Captain Kalt, who seems effortlessly to integrate unselfishness into everything he does, every decision he makes. The rest of us just have to keep working on it.
Captain Donovan is a member of 2d Civil Affairs Group in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. In his civilian employment, he serves as a criminal investigator assigned to the Washington, DC, Counter-Proliferation Investigations Center in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He holds an MS in criminal justice and undergraduate degrees in psychology and criminal justice.