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Leadership Lessons from West Point: Building Stronger Leaders Edited by Major Doug Crandall
 Excerpt from Leadership Lessons from West Point: Building Stronger Leaders Chapter 3: YOU MUST LEAD YOURSELF FIRST Greg Hastings Each of the three stories here that span my recent leadership journey, from my freshman to senior years at West Point, takes place at a different level of responsibility, and each has helped me become a more effective leader as I head out into the Army. These stories, the ones I have grown from, are typical and serve as a window into the world of leadership development that is the U.S. Military Academy. Take Responsibility for Your Own Actions I learned my first lesson about leadership while still a freshman at the Academy, happy and proud of where I was but also miserable most of the time—by design. West Point first-year students are called plebes, from the Latin word plebeian, referring to the lowest class. So I was at the bottom of the rank structure, performing extra duties like delivering newspapers, cleaning the common areas, and setting the mess hall tables before each meal. But I knew and expected all of this before I showed up, and I soon was able to perform all these duties with my focus on the future, when I would be an upperclassman and, eventually, a graduate of West Point and an Army officer. A common release for plebes was spirit mission. We were able to do things in the name of “spirit” that would never be allowed otherwise—for example, carrying cadet commanders away from formations on our shoulders, temporarily taking necessary uniform items (like a hat) from exchange cadets from other academies, and attacking the mascots of other cadet companies. The height of this spirit came during Army-Navy Week, when classes were deliberately light, Army pride was high, and artifacts of spirit were everywhere. The dozen or so Navy midshipmen attending West Point for the semester were victims of constant, good-natured harassment, but they were also the perpetrators of their own Navy spirit missions. In the days leading up to the famous Army-Navy college football game (December of my plebe year), the signs of a stirring rivalry were everywhere. Posters dotted the campus, and the uniform for the week, typically a gray class uniform, included a “Beat Navy” spirit shirt and our camouflage battle dress uniform. On Thursday night, the corps of cadets ate dinner in the mess hall and watched spirit videos—short, creative clips, many of them parodies of popular commercials—about the upcoming victory. After dinner, all four thousand cadets marched over to the athletic fields to enjoy a bonfire, the centerpiece of which was a boat symbolizing Navy. When some upperclassmen approached a few other plebes and me about a spirit mission, we were excited. But when we learned that the plan was to trash the room of a midshipman, we plebes were hesitant. “Don’t worry,” we were told, “as long as there’s an upperclassman involved, you guys won’t get in trouble.” That night, well after our required curfew of 11:30 P.M., a third-year cadet, Sergeant White, assembled the team. In the morning hours, we gathered the tools for the mission and went over the plan. We looked over the buckets of Gatorade, old cartons of milk, and cans of foam shaving cream, and we rehearsed the teams’ sneaking into a barracks room. Quietly we scrambled up the stairs to the room of our target: a Navy midshipman on a semester exchange. A few floors up, the teams got into position, supplies were passed out, and we swung the door open. As planned, I moved in with a sophomore, each of us carrying a bucket of cold Gatorade. When we were both standing over the midshipman’s bed, we flashed a look to the others waiting in the hallway. They were in position, so the sophomore counted to three, emphatically but silently, and we dumped almost five gallons of sports drink on the sleeping “Squid” (the cadets’ perjorative term for those from the Naval Academy). Immediately we leaped out of the room. As I cleared the door, a plebe on either side pierced two cans of shaving cream and tossed both in the room. Foam shaving cream sprays out in all directions when a new can is pierced, and these two shaving cream bombs worked perfectly. The final cadets on the spirit mission tossed spoiled milk cartons in the room, and we were off. Our security, guarding the hallway in both directions, collapsed in, and we all ran downstairs, splitting up and taking circuitous routes to our rooms just in case the midshipman jumped up and followed us. Back in my room, I laid down in my bed and tried to calm down. After all, there was one more day of classes to get through, then a full weekend in New Jersey at the game. I was thinking about the free weekend that we were about to enjoy away from West Point when I heard a knock on my door. No one is supposed to be up at 3:00 A.M., so I knew something was up. I opened the door to see Sergeant White, who had led the spirit mission. “We have to go see the CO [the commander, a senior cadet in charge of the company]. Right now.” We were soon standing at attention while the CO yelled. Apparently the victim of our spirit mission and his roommate woke up furious and called the central guard room to let them know what happened. A series of telephone calls ended with our CO, who knew some of his cadets were planning a spirit mission, although he did not know the details. He went to the room of Sergeant White and asked him if we had trashed the room in question. This cadet had no choice but to answer truthfully. At other schools or in other organizations, an individual might be tempted not to admit to an offense so quickly, but under the cadet Honor Code, which states that “a cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do,” denial was not an option. Had we all chosen to deny our involvement, I am sure we would have gotten away with it, but no one even considered lying to avoid the potential trouble that followed. I was surprised to be standing at attention in the lineup that morning because I was, after all, only a plebe. My earlier concerns were relieved when the upperclassmen told us they were responsible for the mission, and we had nothing to worry about. “If anyone gets in trouble, it will be me,” I recalled Sergeant White telling us. And now that he was in trouble, he did try to spare us. But the CO was furious, and he was not letting anyone off the hook. The problem was our choice of spirit mission. The missions are supposed to be approved by the CO or higher to ensure that they are appropriate and harmless. Our spirit mission, in hindsight, was neither. The combination of Gatorade, shaving cream, and milk is not harmless when it splashes on a desk full of electronic equipment and a suitcase full of uniforms and civilian clothes. We realized the damage we caused as we spent most of the remaining time before breakfast formation cleaning the room that took so little time to destroy. With the room cleaned and clothes in the laundry, we were back on the CO’s wall. Again Sergeant White argued, “The plebes were just following my orders. Let them go.” The CO did not see it that way, nor did the tactical officer (TAC), a commissioned officer who oversees and is legally responsible for our company (the cadets at West Point are divided into 32 equal companies, each with about 125 cadets). Despite thinking we were protected from any punishment by plebeian ignorance, we were now facing the same consequences as the upperclassmen who had convinced us to participate. That morning, we had to face the TAC in a formal meeting, and she took away our weekend privileges. So instead of enjoying a weekend away from West Point celebrating the Army-Navy Game, we would spend most of it in our rooms on call for various duties. Sergeant White knew he could get in trouble for this mission, but he was furious that the plebes were also punished. Spending that weekend with White and the other participants in the spirit mission, I also grew upset. After all, I was just a plebe; I had not known any better when I participated in this mission. The final punishment consisted of marching for several hours each weekend, the standard West Point punishment. This meant that I could not participate in athletics on the weekends (I was on the mountaineering team). At the end of a team meeting shortly after the incident, I spoke to the coach. I was sure to mention how innocent I was and how I had been wrongly punished just for being a follower. He listened intently but unsympathetically. I knew there was a chance he could cut me from the team because my trouble represented the team poorly. As he listened and occasionally asked questions, getting cut seemed to become more of a possibility. When I finished, the coach sat back and asked me one question: “Did you do anything wrong?” At first I was upset. The coach was clearly taking the side of the officers, who did not understand what it was like for plebes (or so I thought) who were accustomed to following orders all the time. I thought about his question and tried to answer in a way that would convince him to go easy on me. I explained how we had not thought through the spirit mission and how badly we all felt when we saw the damage as we cleaned the room. But I also explained that when I expressed initial doubt about participating, the upperclassmen urged us on. As plebes, we figured that was just the way things happened—that during Army-Navy Week, you get the Navy midshipmen however you can. We just did what we were told, I explained, trying to make the case. It was not as if we had thought it up and led the spirit mission. This last statement seemed to bother the coach. He looked at me, thinking about what I had just said. Under his gaze, I questioned whether I really was innocent in this whole mess. After a long pause, he told me one of the more important things I have learned in my development as a leader: “You may not have been in charge of the spirit mission, but you were in charge of yourself. It doesn’t matter how high or low you are in the chain of command. You are always a leader because, if no one else, you are a leader of one: yourself.” My initial reaction to the coach’s words was anger and defiance, but I had a lot of time during the following weekends to think about what I had done and what he had told me. As I marched back and forth, I considered the coach’s words. I realized that I was not responsible for that spirit mission, but I was responsible for my own actions. For my part, I deserved the punishment I was serving. I was grateful to the coach for passing that lesson on to me. I was also sorry for my classmates, whose perspectives on the issue did not change as mine did. They continued to feel victimized and bitter about their punishment. Although it was a difficult way to learn it, I learned a fundamental skill as leader: leading yourself. Great Leaders Also Need to Be Great Followers I learned another important leadership lesson almost two years later, when I was spending my summer at West Point leading thirty-eight new cadets through cadet basic training. New cadets are incoming first-year students who are undergoing basic training over the summer; only after they complete cadet basic training are they accepted into the corps and earn the title “cadet.” I was in charge of a platoon of these new cadets: four squads of about ten each. Each squad had a squad leader (also juniors). There were forty-two people under me, and throughout the basic training, I worked alongside and in front of them eighteen or more hours a day. There were several levels of cadets above me, but the cadet I worked closest with was the first sergeant, who was one level above me in the chain of command. I knew First Sergeant Miller before that summer, and we were classmates and roommates for the training. Although we had not been good friends, we worked together well. Cadet basic training is different from regular Army basic training in several ways. First, new cadets are taught a lot about West Point, in addition to learning basic soldier skills such as marksmanship and working as a team. Second, it is run entirely by cadets, with oversight from regular Army personnel. This is a big responsibility and a great opportunity for the upperclass cadets in charge of the new cadets, but inevitably things do not always run smoothly. Having spent two years at the Academy, I understood that cadets in leadership positions are learning and therefore will make mistakes, but it was still frustrating to see mistakes made, especially because the new cadets were often the ones to suffer. They were often small things, like time lines or incorrect packing lists. But there was one mistake that bothered me the most. One day we had to get to one of the training sites that required a long, hard march. This march was nothing extraordinary for the cadre or even some of the older or stronger new cadets, but some of the new cadets struggled to climb the West Point hills with a full rucksack on their backs. It took a lot of effort from everyone in the platoon just to get to that training site. We arrived a few minutes late and with one sprained ankle, so by the time we marched in, the soldiers at the site were upset. They took me aside and explained the importance of arriving on time, and they asked why we were carrying rucksacks. I had been told we needed them, but I was informed that no one else brought rucksacks to that site and someone must have been wrong. The march up to that training site benefited my platoon because it challenged them, but it also cost them training time because we were late and one new cadet spent some time on crutches after twisting his ankle under the weight of the apparently unnecessary rucksack. I was sure to let my superiors know about my dissatisfaction. A few days later, we were preparing to ride the trucks out to another training site. Most mornings built in a few minutes after physical training for everyone to change, shower, and clean their rooms before coming back outside for breakfast formation. This particular morning had a tighter schedule because after physical training, everyone had to prepare their training gear and arrive back downstairs to meet the trucks. We would ride the trucks out and eat breakfast at the training site. I released my platoon with specific instructions, and I gave them fifteen minutes to be back in formation, showered and with the proper gear. I hurried upstairs after them to shower myself and beat them back to the formation area. On my way, the first sergeant informed me of a change. “Everyone is going to have to wear camo [camouflage face paint].” “Are you serious?” I replied angrily. “We’re leaving in five minutes. My guys are already on their way downstairs. No one told them anything about camo, and it takes them ten minutes to do it right.” “Well, we have five minutes, and everyone has to camo up,” the first sergeant explained patiently. “Look, we can’t do it. There’s no way every new cadet can accomplish that and still make it to the trucks on time.” I was bordering on insubordination, but I thought I had to be honest. Besides, he was a classmate of mine I knew well, so I had some latitude with him. “Hey,” he was angry now. “I’ve got three other platoons who are working on it right now. You’re the only platoon sergeant wasting time arguing with me. It’s not my decision; if it was, I’d change it. But it has to get done, so get it done.” I knew it was not his decision, and I knew that arguing with him would not change the decision. I gave up and told my four squad leaders about the change. They were just as angry with me as I was with the first sergeant, but we were able to get all the new cadets down to formation on time, with some type of camouflage paint on their faces, necks, and hands. The first sergeant gave us a few extra minutes to finish the camo before departing on the trucks, as the other three platoons were struggling as well. By the time we arrived at the site and finished breakfast, everyone’s frustration from the camo paint issue had melted away, and we got on with the training. As basic training continued, there were more miscommunications and mistakes. I met each one with as much opposition as was appropriate, but I was often dismissed in the same way as I had been during the argument over camo paint. I thought I was protecting my subordinates by sticking up for them. I did not want them to have to suffer unnecessarily for someone else’s mistakes. First Sergeant Miller and I were sitting in the room one night, and we started talking about all these changes that come down the chain of command. I explained that for the person making the change, it is just a decision: he tells his two or three subordinates, who pass it down to their subordinates. For most of the chain of command, that decision requires them only to follow the change themselves and pass the message along. But at the lowest level, platoon sergeants and squad leaders have to ensure that every new cadet understands and follows the new guidance. This can be time consuming, because new cadets have not been around long enough to know how to react to the change. For example, when one of the cadet leaders decided we would wear camouflage, they just told their subordinates and then put on some camo. But the squad leaders had to apply their own camo, then instruct and inspect the camo application of eight to ten new cadets, all at the last minute. “But you argue with me as if I make these changes. I don’t. They are made several levels above you and me. And you can’t go argue with the leader several levels up the way you argue with me.” “Well, somebody up there doesn’t understand the effect of these last-minute changes,” I complained. “You’re missing the point. Whether they do or not, you still have to follow orders. You still have to follow my orders. It doesn’t matter where those orders originated.” I saw his point but did not want to concede. “Look,” he continued, “I have four platoon sergeants, and you’re one of them. The other three will take orders, and if they’re bad, they might sigh or moan, but they turn around and get it done. You will stay there and argue with me. I’m almost afraid to give you bad news because of the reaction you will have.” Now the first sergeant’s point was sinking in. With all that arguing and complaining, I was not the honest but effective subordinate I wanted to be; I was just a pain. My platoon was the best in the company, there was no doubt. I had been an effective leader—but a terrible follower. My first sergeant helped me realize that focusing on the welfare of my subordinates limited my effectiveness in the chain of command. I finally fully understood the role of followership, a role that I was currently teaching the new cadets. I also gained an understanding of the duality of leaders as followers. One Person Can Make a Difference and Lead Successfully I learned a third leadership lesson during my senior year at West Point. All cadets fit into the military hierarchy and fulfill jobs through all four years at West Point. As a senior, I held a staff job as the physical development officer: I was responsible for all of the physical requirements of the cadets in my company. Because my company (one of thirty-two in the corps of cadets) had the highest average score on the physical fitness tests for the past three semesters, I saw it as my job to maintain that preeminence. Early in the fall semester, I began preparing for the Army physical fitness test, a test that everyone takes a few months into the semester. I held voluntary—and even some mandatory—workouts in the mornings, evenings, and on weekends. I even held a practice fitness test to get a good idea of our average and to identify what each individual needed to work on. The BrewDawgs (my company’s nickname) had been at the top physically for most of my time there. But as cadets graduate and new ones come in, a company’s identity can change, and I worried that the BrewDawgs were losing their emphasis on physical training. As classes started, attendance at workouts dropped off drastically. The scores from the practice test were pretty low, and I rarely saw people working out on their own. The worst part was that no one else seemed to care that we were about to lose our title as the top physical company. I talked to the whole company almost every day when we were all together at lunch formation. I went door to door in the evenings to get people to join us for push-ups and sit-ups in the hallway (the whole company, roughly thirty cadets from each of the four classes, lives in the same dormitory-style hallway). These techniques would work, but the effects were individual and temporary. As the fitness test neared, I worried about the outcome for my company. I saw the problem as one of motivation. I did not know what the reason was, but the company as a whole did not seem to have the same level of motivation as in previous years to pass the fitness test—let alone to score the maximum points of three hundred out of three hundred. I set goals for the company that the chain of command agreed with, but I do not think all the cadets shared the same goals. And if they did not share those goals, then they would not be motivated to achieve them. So I tried to find a way to align all of the BrewDawgs’ physical goals with those I had already set. I thought back to an instructor of mine who had told me how he had set goals for his platoon when he was a junior officer. (A clear advantage of taking academic classes with military officers as instructors is the way they can relate material to our future jobs in the Army.) The instructor I was thinking about got sidetracked one day into a discussion of platoon goals. He told us that he put up posters around the platoon area. At first the soldiers laughed at and even mocked the posters, but eventually they grew so accustomed to seeing them that they accepted the goals. Months later, the posters were still up, and this officer asked his men what some of their goals were. To his surprise and delight, many responded with the goals on the posters. He even witnessed a soldier from a different platoon come through their area, read the posters, and start mocking them in the same way his soldiers had only months before. This time, though, his soldiers defended the goals as their own. Those results sounded dramatic, but I needed something to elicit change in the next six weeks. Time to prepare for the fitness test was running short, but if the BrewDawgs started working, they could still bring their scores up significantly. I went through my own books and notes and searched the Internet for motivation. After an evening of searching, I had several quotes and sayings that I organized on several fliers: “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” (the motto of Steve Prefontaine, former American record holder and distance-running cult hero) “The more you sweat in peacetime, the less you bleed in war.” (a Chinese proverb) “Someone who wants to kill you worked out today.” (my favorite, because it is such an ominous reminder) In all, I created sixteen different fliers, each one containing the words “WORKOUT! BREWDAWGS.” Many also contained the company goal, the workout schedule for the voluntary workouts I held, and the date of the fitness test. I printed out two or three copies of each flier and posted them on the walls around our company area. By the time I was done, there was one flier about every ten feet and several in each of the bathrooms: no one in the company could miss them. Some people saw them that first night, but most did not see the fliers until the next morning. I did not know what to expect, but I was pleased that I got everyone’s attention. The BrewDawgs were at least reading them, and they were reminded several times a day of the goal for the company average. For the most part, people were amused by the sayings, especially one story about a gazelle outrunning a lion and a lion outrunning a gazelle, resulting in a moral that “no matter who you are, you better be running.” People outside my company heard about them and were repeating some of the sayings that were less well known. Just as in my instructor’s story, the BrewDawgs were having fun with the signs, but I did not know if that would turn out to be good or bad. A week went by, and talk about the fliers died down. There were not any more people at the workouts or signs of an increased emphasis on physical training (PT). With another week for preparation gone, I decided to get more aggressive. I put up new posters, each one with the goal for the company average and a few extra words—for example: “Don’t let the team down.” “BrewDawgs—Building a PT dynasty.” I put out fewer posters for this week, but people still walked around to make sure they read all of them. I noticed some new faces at the workouts that week, and I encouraged those BrewDawgs to bring more people out. When I went door to door, cadets were already making their way to the hallway for the evening workout. In the afternoons, more people were leaving with towels to go to the gym or coming back from a run. And those who were working out encouraged others to do so. For the first time, it felt as if I was not the only one in the company urging physical training. And when I asked people what they were going to score on the fitness test, it was no longer an uneasy “I don’t know” but a more confident, “Definitely over 270, maybe 300” (out of 300). The increase in physical training could, of course, be credited to several different factors. Maybe some cadets had planned to wait until the test approached, or maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see. I asked around to be sure. Many cadets credited the fliers, especially some of the harsher ones, like, “Don’t let the team down,” with motivating them to prepare for the fitness test. And when the test finally came, the BrewDawgs were ready. Although we did not maintain our previous rating as the top physical company, we were close behind the highest average, and we scored significantly higher than in the practice test at the start of the semester. I had been struggling to find a way to motivate my company and maintain physical fitness as a top priority. When other methods failed, posting these messages around the company area worked. A side conversation with an instructor years ago had sparked an experiment that helped me achieve important goals for my company. Before this experience, I would have doubted the potential impact that one individual can have on an organization. Three Great Leadership Lessons West Point allows the maximum opportunity for cadets to learn about leadership at any time, anywhere. My first leadership lesson taught me that I had made a mistake as a plebe, and I almost missed that lesson. But a coach provided me with a piece of advice that taught me leadership at the lowest level. As I continued to grow as a leader, I had an opportunity to lead a platoon of about forty. And although I looked out for their best interests, I neglected the other part of my responsibilities in my chain of command, and a conversation with a classmate—a peer—led me to a lesson about the dual roles of leaders. And finally, near the end of my time as a cadet, I was able to influence a 120-person company, helping to align the company goals to those identified by the leaders. Through the change I witnessed and the ensuing performance of the company, I learned the impact one person can have on an organization. These were significant lessons in my cadet career and ones that I learned in ways unique to West Point. It is important for leaders to focus on growing and developing. While attending the military Academy, my job was to prepare to lead soldiers in the U.S. Army. But all leaders, young or old, experienced or not, share the task of bettering themselves. The privilege to lead must be continually earned; this field is one where perfection is never achieved but always sought. The overall West Point leadership lesson is for leaders to continue to learn. ©2006 Jossey-Bass All Rights Reserved Customer Reviews Write your own online review. Find Items On Similar Subjects  The Leadership Lessons of the U.S. Navy SEALS
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