Stewardship and Commitment[1]
The West Point honor code is a cornerstone to the character development of the Corps of Cadets. The code says that “A cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do”. The Corps generally understands the importance of character within a leader who does not lie, cheat or steal, but they struggle to understand why it is so important to not tolerate a fellow cadet when they observe one of their own who has violated the code.
The answer why the “no-toleration” clause is in there is simple. When substandard behavior goes uncorrected, it becomes the new standard and as a result, the leader and the organization’s effectiveness fall. And if follow-on behavior again fails to meet this new lower standard and continues to go uncorrected, the leader and the organization’s effectiveness drops even further. When this happens, it creates an eroding cycle of sub-standard behavior until it bottoms-out and crashes.
Leaders establish and maintain standards, and they do so in many ways but none are as effective as living these standards in their own personal example. Leaders establish and maintain standards in the skills their members must meet in order to accomplish their mission, and they establish and maintain standards in the values and principles expected of the organization’s members. The latter establishes the culture necessary for successful skills performance which results in mission accomplishment. Quite simply, whenever we tolerate below-standard performance, whether in task execution or values adherence, we put mission accomplishment at risk.
There is a great book that documents this eroding cycle of failing to correct sub-standard behavior in both task accomplishment and unit values, called “Black Hearts,” written by Jim Frederick. “Black Hearts” is about an infantry platoon in the 101st Infantry Division (Air Assault) in Iraq during the 2005-6 timeframe. Assigned to a hostile area outside of Baghdad, this platoon had toxic leadership that led to abusive behavior and mistreatment of Iraqis by platoon members. Higher commands hardly ever visited, and when they did, they failed to even notice or simply “looked the other way.” The platoon’s increasingly abusive behavior was tolerated by platoon leadership to the point that their behavior ultimately resulted in the rape and murder of an Iraqi family, where the soldiers burned the house down to cover their crime.
All of this could have been avoided with the right leadership. But if leaders are absent, or if they look the other way and tolerate behavior contrary to the unit’s values, then this behavior becomes the new norm. This is why character development leadership models must have a “no-tolerance” clause in their honor codes.
This is also an issue of trust. The three most critical components to a leader of character in the profession of arms are character, competence and commitment. The reason they’re so important is the necessity to build trust between leaders and their subordinates, between leaders and their supervisors, and between the institution and its client – the American people. A violation of trust is the kiss of death in effective leadership.
It is worth noting that “commitment” is included as one of the three critical components simply because leaders establish and maintain standards, and are committed to maintain them.
As I am certain many of you who are reading this have been on a number of extended year or longer combat deployments, I - and I’m sure you - have noticed increasingly high-risk behavior that would begin to occur around the 4th or 5th month of the deployment. Units would normally become increasingly proficient in their mission tasks, but once life on the operational bases becomes increasingly routine, soldiers were injured, and in some cases killed, by safety accidents at increasing rates and they would normally peak around the mid-deployment timeframe. Soldiers would crash vehicles, have negligent discharges with their weapons that often caused injury or fatality, cut themselves fooling with their knives, and fall to other unsafe acts.
What led to these injuries in almost every case, was an increase in complacency, accompanied by cutting corners in performance standards. In other words, complacency led to increased risk of injury. But what accelerated the number of incidents were that in almost every case, a supervisor observed the pattern of sub-standard behavior and looked the other way and failed to make the necessary corrections. As a result, many of these injuries and deaths could have easily been prevented if leaders recognized and addressed the erosion of standards.
On the contrary, at around the 7th or 8th month of the year-long deployment, safety injuries and/or deaths would almost evaporate. Normally at around 2/3rds of the way into the deployment, everyone knew they were soon going home, and everyone wanted to be sure they and their subordinates were on the plane going home! So, enforcement of standards once again was in the forefront of a leader’s priorities.
But it makes the point. Leaders establish and maintain standards. Maintenance of standards is a commitment to mission accomplishment. And when the mission is accomplished within the values of the institution, trust is built.
In trying to understand the reluctance leaders may have in making corrections when it is easier to just look the other way and pretend you did not see the below-standard activity, I have found that many leaders are sensitive to ridicule and reprisal they may receive from other members of the command – whether subordinates, peers or colleagues. A lot of this reprisal is enabled by social media anonymity, by people who would never criticize in public when they can hide behind an anonymous social media name. But this is where “duty” kicks in. Regardless of what the social media cesspool will say, leaders must always do the right thing, the harder right, meaning they will care enough to confront and make the correction and maintain the standard.
Character, competence and commitment -- three critical components necessary to build a culture of excellence and honor. Most of us understand right away why character and competence are important in building this culture, and the commitment portion is often overlooked or not viewed in the same manner. Nothing can be further from the truth. There is nothing that can destroy the trust of an organization faster than when one of its members is allowed to be a part of the organization while displaying behavior inconsistent with the organization’s values and standards. When that occurs, the individual must be corrected and brought back within the parameters of acceptable behavior. If not, that person can drag others into a similar behavior pattern, bring discredit to themselves and to the organization.
“A cadet will not lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do”. The hardest part of that code is the “no-tolerance” portion. I would maintain, it is also the most important part of the code. And it not only applies to cadets at West Point, commitment to the performance standards and values of an institution is the responsibility of every leader.
[1] This is a continuation of my previous blog, “Stewardship – The Commitment to the Organization’s Standards”, https://www.robertcaslen.com/blog/stewardship-the-commitment-to-the-organizations-standards