Generally Speaking

by Claudia J. Kennedy

  “Oh, my.” I didn't know we had any of those in the battalion.

  Command Sergeant Major Gant smiled. “Well, that's no stranger than some of you who kneel at an altar and drink wine and think that it's the blood of God.”

  The couple did in fact serve their seventy-two-hour shift. And they did not perform any bizarre rituals in the operations area. Over the coming months, Gant and I sometimes discussed this issue. From his close contact with the troops, he knew that the Army was drawing recruits from a cultural base much more diverse than I had known as a junior officer. Although the mainstream Christian majority still prevailed in the United States, there was a significant number of nontraditional denominations and sects represented in our battalion, ranging from Mormons and Jews to Muslims to that Wicca couple. Our moral distinction from the Soviet Bloc lay in the fact that we did not impose beliefs either directly or indirectly on our soldiers. It was not my job as a commander to ask my soldiers about their religion. It was my responsibility to work hard for our mission and their welfare every day. Command Sergeant Major Gant taught me that being judgmental was not the same as being moral and ethical. Gant was moral, but not judgmental. It was a lesson I've never forgotten.

  When I commanded a recruiting battalion in San Antonio, Texas, between 1988 and 1990, my sergeant major, Glenn Tutor, was probably the most dedicated soldier I've ever served with. From him and the other recruiters I learned that soldiers, no matter how mentally exhausted or physically depleted, will keep working when their leaders work with them. It was amazing what we could accomplish when we believed in our mission and never gave up.

  This was a time of great rebuilding for the Army, after Major General Max Thurman had revamped the recruiting command and the enlistment standards had been raised throughout the U.S. military. Patriotism was flourishing nationwide, the economy was slowing down, and young people were drawn to the military. But processing potential enlistees was a far more difficult matter than simply shuffling paperwork. Enlistment standards were high. Recruits had to pass a battery of mental and physical examinations, and undergo thorough criminal background checks. Because soldiers had the option of choosing their guaranteed training specialties and in some cases locations of assignment, the recruiting offices had to coordinate enlistments with the dates of Basic and Advanced Individual Training and specialized military schools. At the same time, the Army needed large numbers of soldiers in the Infantry, Artillery, and Armor, and we offered recruits to those branches generous enlistment bonuses.

  So the ostensibly straightforward task of running a recruiting battalion became a series of Daily Performance Reviews in which we tracked the work of every recruiter and recruiting station. It was during these intense sessions that Sergeant Major Tutor showed me the example of leadership by participation.

  As the hour for our conference calls to headquarters approached, I'd often think, We'll never pull this off. There'd be too many unfinished medical clearances, school record and criminal background checks, and enlistment options. But Sergeant Major Tutor would sit at his desk methodically manning his own phone while he rallied the troops around him. “What are you going to do to get that background check?” he'd ask, prodding a first sergeant. “Who are you going to call at the El Paso police to get that criminal clearance?” he'd urge another NCO. Throughout these busy days and nights, the sergeant major worked alongside his soldiers. Meals were Dunkin' Donuts and Whataburgers. Given his relentless dedication, we nearly always made our mission goal. And as battalion sergeant major, Glenn Tutor mentored the first sergeants who led recruiting stations in other cities, spreading the same ethos of unyielding dedication: No matter how hopeless the situation seemed, you keep on working and your soldiers will follow you.

  As Stedman Graham says in his insightful book Teens Can Make It Happen (which I recommend to parents and teenagers alike), “It is always too early to quit.”

  Since I've left the Army, people often ask what assignment gave me the most satisfaction. They're surprised when I say commanding a recruiting battalion in San Antonio during the late 1980s. But the fact is, it was the hardest job I ever had as a soldier and the one from which I derived the most professional fulfillment. We were building the new Army with well-qualified, dedicated young recruits, many of whom went on to help bring us victory in the Gulf War and serve our country so well under such difficult circumstances in the Balkans.

  And once more, I learned from a veteran NCO the true meaning of a leader's duty.

  The noncommissioned officers I served with were not the only valuable mentors who shaped me as a military leader. I also benefited from an unexpected form of peer mentoring when I attended the Military Intelligence Officer Advance Course (MIOAC) at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. As I processed into the course, it became obvious that I was entering unknown territory. Many of the young captains around me in the long lines easily exchanged incomprehensible Intelligence acronyms, swapping stories from their recent days in the field.

  Then one of the captains, Jack Varnado, introduced himself. “I've never been in MI before,” I confided. “I think I'm going to be lost in this course.”

  “You'll be okay,” Jack Varnado said confidently. “I'll make sure of that.”

  And he was true to his word. Although he couldn't disrupt the normal flow of classroom activity, Jack always made sure to meet me at my desk during each break to thoroughly explain the material. This selfless act made me feel included. As the curriculum became more complex, Jack was always there to offer help when I needed it. Two months into the course, I was able to stand alone, but wouldn't have done so well had Jack Varnado not mentored me.

  He was only one of a number of African-American men officers I've known in my career who stepped forward to mentor their women peers. Perhaps these men detected their women colleagues' sense of isolation and more readily understood the awkward position of a minority person entering a group. This ethos of camaraderie always evoked my loyalty to the Army.

  To me, one lesson of this experience is that there is a difference between mentoring and serving as a role model. A successful woman officer or civilian executive might well become a role model for younger women, but this does not mean she shouldn't also mentor men. Too often, however, people think they can only mentor someone of their own race or gender. But I believe the profession of the two people involved in the mentoring partnership transcends other aspects of identity.

  Equally, some people feel their mentoring responsibility is narrowly constricted within the vertical professional ladder of those who work for them—those whom they rate in the military. But many take a broader view. As the years progressed, I always kept my eye out for promising younger officers in other units I encountered and engaged them in discussions whenever I could to assess their talents. When I had identified one of these “bright bulbs,” I'd pass her or his name on to one of my peers who might be scouting for new talent, or I'd call the sergeant major of the unit to which the promising young officer had been assigned to alert that NCO they had a real potential leader arriving. I would always preface my comments by saying, “He or she doesn't know I'm calling.” While senior officers must never get directly involved in the actual assignment process, it is appropriate to share with one's colleagues the names of exceptional leaders who are headed their way.

  It's important to stress that the mentoring relationship is not one of a senior person pulling strings to place a favorite junior in a position of advantage. During recent years, it has seemed that perhaps we overpromoted the concept of senior-to-junior mentoring, so that some people saw it as an automatic entrée to career advancement. In fact, this form of patronage is no longer possible, given the Army's promotion and assignment system. So it would often be more appropriate for junior officers and NCOs to cultivate networks of low-risk, high-trust peers with whom they could share career ideas, professional reading, or school material for mutual advancement. The same pattern should prevail in the civilian workplace. Riding to high executive
rank on your mentor's coattails without proving your own merit does little credit to either the senior or the junior person and generally causes irreparable damage to the organization's effectiveness and morale. Again, mentoring is not analogous with favoritism.

  I also believe the essence of successful senior-to-junior mentoring is the senior person correctly assessing the junior's strengths and weaknesses and giving key practical advice at the appropriate time rather than diffuse and unfocused feel-good pep talks.

  For me, one of the most critical—but unlikely—of these mentors was Colonel Charles Black, my commander at Pyongtaek, Korea, in 1976. The Prince of Darkness had developed a leadership style that involved emulating the stress of wartime, pushing us harder than we thought we could endure to accomplish our mission. By being such a demanding taskmaster, he forced us all to improve our performance and he forged us into a tightly knit team. Other leaders might well have achieved similar results through less draconian methods. But it was obvious that, despite his bluster, Colonel Black cared deeply about his officers. During the Korean War in the early 1950s, he had seen firsthand what lack of readiness meant: dead American soldiers and lost battles. He was determined that his command would be trained and ready to face war again in Korea twenty-five years later.

  Colonel Black had been carefully observing my performance as his executive officer, a young captain who worked hard and rarely merited one of his truly blistering verbal reprimands. I was very pleased when he endorsed Lieutenant Colonel Runyon's recommendation that I apply for the Junior Officer Cryptologic Career Program (JOCCP) at the National Security Agency. This was exactly the type of timely practical advice a senior mentor can deliver that has a pivotal effect on the junior person's future.

  My relationship with Colonel Black was formal, respectful, and distant. This was his style with all of us. Yet his interest in my future and the specific mentoring he delivered eventually proved to be one of the decisive turning points in my career. This is an important factor to consider: Although mentoring often involves friendly personal interaction, it is not a requirement. In the case of Colonel Black and myself, for example, mutual respect and the good of the service replaced emotion.

  While at the National Security Agency, I also learned that senior-to-junior mentoring need not require a close professional relationship as I had had with Colonel Black. My assignment to the JOCCP put me in the Agency's A Group. I found the work both professionally intriguing and personally fulfilling, by far the most engrossing assignment I'd had so far in my Army career. As the time approached for me to leave the Agency, I approached Joe Amato, head of the A Group.

  “Mr. Amato,” I said, “I'm considering resigning from the Army and applying to the NSA as a civilian.”

  He had been a distant supervisor with whom I'd had little direct contact. But like all good senior executives, he had learned as much as he could about those in A Group. And he probably knew more about the aspirations of young captains than they did themselves.

  First, he explained, the NSA was not hiring any new people in operations, but if I wished he would check in the logistics division of the Agency. Then he looked at me thoughtfully. “If you decide to come into NSA,” he said in an even tone, “you'll be settling down and making a career here. But are you really ready for the Army adventure to end?”

  I thought of the thousands of Agency commuters who filled the vast parking lots each day, week in, week out, never leaving this immense facility during their careers. Was that what I truly wanted? Thinking about this question, the answer became clear. The next time we spoke, I told Mr. Amato, “I guess I do want more travel and adventure in my life. And the best way to get that is in the Army.”

  Before I'd met with him I had interviewed for a civilian job at the Veterans Administration, and even a position with a real estate agency. But his precisely focused questions had made me realize my true preference was to remain in the Army for at least twenty years.

  Even though I was just one of several junior military officers working in his area, Joe Amato had insightfully analyzed the dynamics of my personal and career options and gave me critical advice that caused me to focus my thinking clearly on those options. I took that advice and stayed in the Army. About the time we last spoke about my future plans, I learned I had been promoted to major ahead of my peer group.

  When I was a junior officer, Colonel Black spontaneously acted as my mentor, and I later requested specific career advice from Joe Amato at NSA, which kept me from leaving the Army prematurely. Since then, I've often thought about the sensitive mentoring relationship that exists between a younger person and an older, more senior officer or executive. Although it might be appropriate for young people to ask for specific advice, they should never approach their seniors and request that they become their mentors. This is the prerogative of the older, more experienced person. Giving a few words of advice is easy; actually mentoring—guiding a younger person over a long period of his or her career—is a significant, time-consuming task that only the busy senior officer or executive can choose to do.

  And, in the Army, offering good, honest career advice to colleagues is part of the culture. We all learn to share openly in order to be as strong a team as possible. But I know from civilian friends that this is far from true in the private workplace where people are often individually competitive.

  That being said, I still must emphasize the difference between the challenge of mentoring and the task of giving specific advice. After I was promoted to general officer, friends and colleagues continued to refer young officers to me for professional advice. Whenever the questions were focused and specific, I gladly shared my knowledge and opinion. But I also found that occasionally people went too far to seek me out as if I were some kind of a good-luck talisman who would somehow charm their careers. One example of this was a field-grade officer, a complete stranger, serving in a branch other than Military Intelligence, who had been referred to me by her commander when her questions about advancement became too persistent. She began to inundate me with e-mails and handwritten letters requesting that I “mentor” her. In one message, she blatantly asked: “How can I become a general like you?” Asking it signaled to me that she was an unlikely general officer prospect. Gender is not a sufficient reason for developing this sort of professional relationship.

  I certainly believe in giving women and ethnic minorities the equal opportunity to advance that I enjoyed, but I do not feel that gender or ethnic identity automatically entitles a person to a mentoring conduit to any senior officer of their group.

  Sometimes mentoring involves being frank, even bursting someone's illusions. I particularly remember a lieutenant colonel with whom I had been casually acquainted who called me when I was assigned as the J-2 intelligence officer to FORSCOM (Forces Command) at Fort McPherson in Atlanta to say a board on which I had served had passed him over for promotion to full colonel. I had reviewed over a thousand files and could not remember his.

  “I can't understand why I wasn't promoted,” he said. “I have a flawless record. Maybe you can help explain what happened.”

  I didn't know the officer well, but he had sincerely requested advice, so I wanted to help him. “All right,” I said. “Next time I'm in D.C. I'll come see you and review your file.”

  I went to an office in the Pentagon where he had the microfiche containing his Officer Efficiency Reports and a microfiche reader. Reading his file, I immediately saw that his record was definitely not unflawed as he believed and that one of his reports as a battalion commander put him directly in the “center of the mass,” in the middle of his peer group. Given the Army's current rating system, he had what was called a “2 block,” while those promoted to colonel had mostly “1 block” ratings. Yet this officer thought his cumulative OERs were unflawed, mainly because he'd always been promoted in the past and because he had no basis for comparing his record to those of others and seeing truly excellent reports. And it was clear that he believed it was
virtually automatic for him to continue this progress and be promoted to full colonel.

  I remembered advice I'd received from Command Sergeant Major Raymond McKnight before taking over my recruiting battalion in San Antonio.

  “Training is important to the unit, ma'am,” he'd said, “but honest counseling is essential to the individual soldier. It's the only time people learn their strengths and weaknesses.”

  It was now time to tell this lieutenant colonel frankly that his record was not flawless and that he was unlikely to be promoted. To his great credit, he listened intently as I pointed out the weak points in his OERs and suggested areas where he should concentrate to improve his future performance. I'm happy to report that he was in fact promoted to full colonel the next year, an outcome that might not have occurred had he not sought specific advice, had I not been frank with that advice, and had he not been willing to listen and act.

  Since then, the Army has changed its OER. Under the new system, only 49 percent of those rated are admitted to the top block, now referred to as “above center of mass.” All officers know exactly where they stand after each rating. Some people feel this might discourage those who do not do well, but I believe it is in the best interest of the rated officers to understand their position in their peer group. And this information becomes especially important as officers reach field-grade rank and must decide between continuing in the Army after twenty years and seeking a civilian career. In effect, the new OER allows the Army itself to act in the role of the honest mentor that I filled with the lieutenant colonel who had been passed over for promotion.

  Immediately after the Gulf War, the Army underwent one of the biggest downsizings in history, cutting active component soldiers from over 800,000 to 500,000. I was the commander of a Military Intelligence brigade at Kunia, Hawaii, when one of my best young officers, Major Howard Phelps, sought my advice about a dilemma he was facing. There would be an Army-wide Reduction in Force (RIF) to pare down the number of majors going before the lieutenant colonel promotion board. But Howard had received an unfavorable OER earlier in his career that prevented him from attending Command and General Staff College (CGSC). Although he had been successful in having that OER removed from his personnel file, he did not know if he would be reconsidered to attend CGSC, a virtual requirement for promotion to lieutenant colonel. Now he had to decide whether to take advantage of an “early out” the Army was offering officers as part of the downsizing. This program would entail a substantial incentive, which would provide Howard and his young family more than a year's living expenses while he found a civilian job and reestablished himself.