Military Officer Leadership at the Organizational Level

Essay – Crucible Experience

The word “crucible” refers to a trial or an ordeal-by-fire for the individual or organization involved. It is an experience which is life-changing and forever alters the perspective of the people who must endure it. Over the course of my military service, like all soldiers, I have had several watershed or crucible events which have defined me as a person. Although crucible experiences may test our mettle, I believe from my personal experience that they are necessary to grow and develop as a leader. Future leaders can and must benefit from classroom training and theory, but ultimately leadership is a skill that can only be learned in practice.

I can still recall the crucible, defining opportunity of working as the Deputy G-1 for the Army National Guard 59th Aviation Troop Command. I had never worked at that level. It was an honor and I viewed the prospect with great eagerness. Naturally, I understood the positive impact it could have on my career. It would allow me to work directly with the brigade commander and his staff. But the prospect was also exciting from a learning perspective. I sought to gain a broader understanding of why and how decisions were made which impacted subordinates.

As a result of the experience, I gained insight into the perspective of key leaders and their personalities by attending staff briefings. Not all that I witnessed was positive. In fact, it soon became abundantly clear that there was a great deal of stagnation in many people’s approaches to common problems. Although I realized I still had much to learn, I did have the benefit of being an outsider, and many aspects of the organization’s standard operating procedures and dominant paradigms were inefficient but had become accepted as “business as usual.”

This underlined the fact that not all crucible experiences, at least not initially, are positive ones, and sometimes it is necessary to have a shake-up in the leadership’s perspective for an organization to be open, dynamic, and responsive to the environment. My conclusion was that the organization lacked confident leadership, disciplined soldiers, and an environment designed to develop the next generation of strong and innovative leaders. Although what I witnessed was negative, it was instructive in illustrating to me what I did not, rather than what I did, wish to emulate.

The clearest example of the toxic leadership culture that I witnessed was when it was revealed that the G-1 had taken advantage of the brigade commander’s trust and inattentiveness. Knowing the established routine of the commander, the G-1 provided the brigade commander with a stack of documents to sign and gave him a brief synopsis of documents that required his signature. Amongst those documents were appointment orders for several critical decisions, including promoting the G-1. Given that the order was located in a relatively dense, obscure paragraph, there was evidently hope that the fine print would be ignored.