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Still, having been raised by the Greatest Generation, by two parents who had served in World War II, and subsequently shaped by more than four decades in the Marine Corps, I considered government service to be both honor and duty. In my view, when the President asks you to do something, you don’t play Hamlet on the wall, wringing your hands. To quote a great American athletic company’s slogan, you “just do it.” So long as you are prepared, you say yes.
The Marines teach you, above all, how to adapt, improvise, and overcome. But they expect you to have done your homework, to have mastered your profession.
The Marines’ military excellence does not suffocate intellectual freedom or substitute regimented thinking for imaginative solutions. They know their doctrine, often derived from lessons learned in combat and written in blood, but refuse to let that turn into dogma.
In any organization, it’s all about selecting the right team. The two qualities I was taught to value most in selecting others for promotion or critical roles were initiative and aggressiveness.
“We don’t get to choose when we die,” he said. “But we do choose how we meet death.”
You make mistakes, or life knocks you down; either way, you get up and get on with it. You deal with life. You don’t whine about it.
In the process, Richland became a solidly middle-class town, without enclaves of wealth or poverty. Our community of seventeen thousand engineers, technicians, construction workers, and merchants had been shaped by the trials of the Depression and World War II—hardworking, civic-minded, family-oriented, and patriotic. Nobody threw their weight around. Years later, I read the epitaph on Jackie Robinson’s tombstone: “A life is not important except in its impact on other lives.” That sentiment captured the credo of the generation that raised me.
I could read on my own at a much faster rate. Instead of a television, at home we had a well-stocked home library. I devoured books—Treasure Island, Captains Courageous, The Last of the Mohicans, The Call of the Wild, The Swiss Family Robinson….Hemingway was my favorite author, followed closely by Faulkner and Fitzgerald. Reading about the Lewis and Clark expedition, I was fascinated that they had canoed on the Columbia River and had passed through our neighborhood.
He was in jail, but his spirit wasn’t. From that wayward philosopher I learned that no matter what happened, I wasn’t a victim; I made my own choices how to respond. You don’t always control your circumstances, but you can always control your response. The
Every Marine is first and foremost a rifleman and must qualify on the rifle range. Lieutenants learn that everything they will go on to do in the Corps, no matter the rank or the job, relates back to the private who is attacking the enemy. This initiation and common socialization has a strong impact on the Marine Corps, permeating every facet of its warfighting ethos.
2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, where most of the key leaders had spent years fighting in rice paddies, mountains, and jungles. They knew their stuff. Far from being standoffish because they had seen combat, they were tough and friendly, and they readily shared their combat knowledge. I didn’t have to earn their support; it was mine to lose, not to gain.
Were you physically fit? Were you tactically sound? Could you call in artillery fire? Could you adapt quickly to change? Did your platoon respond to you? Could you lead by example? You had to be as tough as your troops, who weren’t concerned with how many books you’d read. I tried to work out with the most physically fit and learn from the most tactically cunning.
He reiterated that some in the platoon weren’t up to Marine standards and that if I wanted my troops to follow me, I had to be as tough as my toughest men.
could have written up formal charges. Instead I took him to First Sergeant Mata, the senior NCO (noncommissioned officer) in our company. As a second lieutenant, I outranked him, but that was only a formality. The company first sergeant guided us young officers. He told me to return to my platoon—he would take care of the matter.
“That shitbird,” he said a few days later, “is no longer in our Corps, Lieutenant.” Boom. The man was gone. Packed up and shipped out. Every lieutenant needs a First Sergeant Mata, a man with twenty-five years of experience and a hundred friends at other duty stations. Where did the malcontent go? Who cared; he was out. He was representative of the challenges junior officers faced in those days, and such summary dismissals of bad actors were necessary for dealing with the turbulent times. The Marine Corps would not lower its standards. Called “expeditious discharge,” it was a critical policy
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You tell the story about an incident early in your career when a malcontent marine was a real detriment to the morale of your team and a Sargeant got rid of him. That must have made a big impression on you. What were the lessons you took from that?
Fence-sitters quickly got the message and straightened up. Why? Because there are few fates worse than public rejection and summary dismissal. Everyone needs a friend, a purpose, and a chance to belong to something greater than themselves. No one wants to be cast aside as worthless.
And what I learned about the complexities of amphibious operations on numerous shipboard deployments in the Pacific and Indian Oceans would pay off enormously in the future.
You had both a curiosity to learn and an ability to label lessons. How did you develop those traits and why are they so important for servant leadership?
In my first dozen years in the Marines, I commanded two platoons and two companies, deploying to thirteen countries on a half dozen ships. Everywhere we sailed, at every landing and every exercise in foreign countries, I was introduced to the enormous value of allies.
These and more showed me the irreplaceable benefit of learning from others.
He urged me to expand my horizons, and I adopted that same mentoring technique throughout my career.
We seldom felt our country was united behind us on a war footing, and we identified principally with one another. We shared what F. Scott Fitzgerald called “riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.”
How does a leader foster that “wow each other first” attitude do that they’re a bit insulated from caustic criticism from the outside, without becoming embittered, with a chip on their shoulder toward the public?
The first is competence. Be brilliant in the basics. Don’t dabble in your job; you must master it. That applies at every level as you advance. Analyze yourself. Identify weaknesses and improve yourself. If you’re not running three miles in eighteen minutes, work out more; if you’re not a good listener, discipline yourself; if you’re not swift at calling in artillery fire, rehearse. Your troops are counting on you. Of course you’ll screw up sometimes; don’t dwell on that.
Read history, but study a few battles in depth. Learning from others’ mistakes is far smarter than putting your own lads in body bags.
Second, caring.
Show no favoritism. Value initiative and aggressiveness above all. It’s easier to pull the reins back than to push a timid soul forward. Consistently maintain a social and personal distance, remembering that there is a line you must not cross. But you should come as close to that line as possible—without surrendering one ounce of your authority. You are not their friend. You are their coach and commander, rewarding the qualities essential to battlefield victory.
Third, conviction. This is harder and deeper than physical courage. Your peers are the first to know what you will stand for and, more important, what you won’t stand for. Your troops catch on fast. State your flat-ass rules and stick to them. They shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. At the same time, leaven your professional passion with personal humility and compassion for your troops. Remember: As an officer, you need to win only one battle—for the hearts of your troops. Win their hearts and they will win the fights.
Competence, caring, and conviction combine to form a fundamental element—shaping the fighting spirit of your troops. Leadership means reaching the souls of your troops, instilling a sense of commitment and purpose in the face of challenges so severe that they cannot be put into words.
How the mission was to be accomplished was left up to me, but it was clear that I was to deliver results.
I love this statement. For all the jargon we use about leadership, we expect leaders to execute. What are the keys to really being good at getting things done through others?
The Marine philosophy is to recruit for attitude and train for skills.
Marines believe that attitude is a weapon system. We searched for intangible character traits: a quest for adventure, a desire to serve with the elite, and the intention to be in top physical condition. The strenuous task of the recruiter was to find young men and women with the right stuff to send to boot camp. There, the drill instructors worked their magic to turn recruits into Marines.
“You and I,” I said to each recruiter, “have a clear goal: four recruits a month who can graduate from boot camp. Anything you need from me, I’ll get you. We will succeed as a team, with all hands pulling their weight.”
I had learned in the fleet that in harmonious, effective units, everyone owns the unit mission. If you as the commander define the mission as your responsibility, you have already failed. It was our mission, never my mission. The thirty-eight recruiters were my subordinate commanders. “Command and control,” the phrase so commonly used to describe leadership inside and outside the military, is inaccurate. In the Corps, I was taught to use the concept of “command and feedback.” You don’t control your subordinate commanders’ every move; you clearly state your intent and unleash their initiative.
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It’s all about clear goals and effective coaching. At the Portland headquarters, I was blessed with two first-rate young officers. My twenty-four-year-old operations officer was action-oriented and sharp enough to do my job. With the small headquarters staff implementing my intent and orchestrating the team according to my vision, I spent most of every month out coaching my recruiters. I traveled so much that hotel desk clerks from Pocatello, Idaho, to Honolulu called me by my first name.
The judge who sent me to jail as a nineteen-year-old taught me a lesson, but he didn’t ruin my future. There’s a huge difference between making a mistake and letting that mistake define you, carrying a bad attitude through life. When I was informed about the rejection for a waiver, I called in my staff.
I told the man, “You can be a quitter or you can be a Marine. But you can’t be both.” I busted him and ended his career.
Partial commitment changes everything—it reduces the sense that the mission comes first. From
Soon the team was hitting its stride, and for thirty-nine months it was rated the top recruiting station in the western district. Most of my recruiters received meritorious promotions or commendations. They had learned the art of persuasion, according to the Marine Corps training program for recruiters. They were able to find common ground, even with those high school teachers for whom anti-Vietnam sentiment had blossomed into anti-military attitudes. For me, the education I’d received in the skills of persuasive leadership would prove critical to my effectiveness.
Beyond that, for the rest of my career, I aggressively delegated tasks to the lowest capable level. I made sure missions were clearly understood. Ethics and honesty held everyone to the same standard.
This showed me that this approach could unleash subordinate initiative in any organization.
Because I was held to a rigorous quantitative standard, I learned to value clear output goals.
On the other hand, achieving those quantitative results depended upon qualitative skills that defied mere mathematical evaluation. I was the coach for those on the front lines, and I had to understand their problems, their strengths and weaknesses, and how they could improve. None of that was quantitative. Finally, I understood what President Eisenhower had passed on. “I’ll tell you what leadership is,” he said. “It’s persuasion and conciliation and education and patience. It’s long, slow, tough work. That’s the only kind of leadership I know.”
Before I knew it, I’d spent eighteen years deploying around the globe and reached the rank of lieutenant colonel, and, by early 1990, I was commanding the 1st Battalion of the 7th Marine Regiment, or 1/7.
I wanted a bias for action, and to bring out the initiative in all hands. I would make do with what I had, and not waste time whining about what I didn’t have.
My primary objective in the demanding, unforgiving mountain terrain was to build small-unit leaders focused on brilliance in the basics. Small units of a dozen men operating together, facing conditions that demanded every ounce of physical strength, bred trust in one another. Day by day, I saw my squads physically harden, develop tighter bonds, and grow in confidence as we built from the ground up.
After a month together, I knew the strengths and weaknesses of my company commanders. One, a former enlisted artillery observer in Vietnam, was mature and cool. I would use him as my reliable point man. Another
“Jim,” Colonel Fulford said, “get your battalion back here.” “Sir,” I said, “we’re stepping off for a fifty-mile trek. I’ll arrive on base in about four days.” There was silence on the phone as the colonel contemplated being saddled with the least astute battalion commander in the Marine Corps. “I expect your advance party here by morning,” he said. “Everyone else tomorrow. And you may want to read a newspaper. We’re going to war.” I’d just received a blunt education about any unit commander’s role as the sentinel for his unit: You cannot allow your unit to be caught flat-footed. Don’t be
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If a team bogged down or took heavy casualties, I would flank the enemy using another team. Strangers don’t fight well together, and it’s a precept with me not to reorganize in combat. I wanted the members of every team to know one another so well that they could predict each other’s reactions.
He assumed your professionalism was equal to his. His quiet confidence and competence were infectious throughout the regiment, which was called Task Force Ripper.
Fulford left me confident that once the battle began, I wasn’t expected to call back for instructions. Use your aggressive initiative according to his intent.
sure that your training is so hard and varied that it removes complacency and creates muscle memory—instinctive reflexes—within a mind disciplined to identify and react to the unexpected.
