by Myke Cole
“I was thinking,” McGrath’s voice was low, “that the operational commander had given me a task.”
“I’m sorry, ME3, is BM1 Pervez a Gunner’s Mate?” Oliver asked.
McGrath folded his hands on the table and looked down at them. “No, ma’am.”
“And are you not a Maritime Enforcement Specialist 3rd Class Petty Officer, and this team’s weapons and tactics expert?”
“I am,” McGrath answered.
“Then why on earth are you deferring to a fire decision from a woman whose expertise is flying small boats? Especially when Chief expressed reservations?”
McGrath kept his eyes down and didn’t answer.
“MK3, are you ever going to stand up for yourself? Or are you content to take BM1’s sniping all day long? Chief clearly isn’t wading in there to put the kibosch on that shit, were you waiting for me to do it?”
“Now hold on, ma’am–” Chief began.
“No, you hold on,” Oliver interrupted him. “Getting out of the way of your people is a fine leadership skill and I meant it when I commended you for it. But you wouldn’t have to be getting out of the way if you hadn’t let things get away from you. You’ve been in longer than any of us. You know damn well that you aren’t on this crew to be friends with anyone.
“Why do you think I have all of us bunking up together? Do you think it’s because I like it? Because I think it somehow builds character? No. It’s because from the second I met you all together I knew that this was going to be the heart of the problem. I’ve got four top-of-the-line thoroughbreds here, and all of you are trying to run out front. But that’s not how we win this thing, people. We cross the finish line together, all at the same time, or not at all.”
The silence as she finished was total. She looked at each of the crew, but their eyes were fixed firmly down at their hands, their laps, anywhere but at her. Oliver let the silence drag out, swallowing to stop herself from babbling to fill it. She’d made her point. It would either be enough, or it wouldn’t.
At last, Chief cleared his throat, and all eyes snapped to him.
“Yes, Chief?” Oliver asked. “You want to tell me what you think?”
“I think,” Chief stood, picking up his cover from where he’d left it on the table, “that maybe it’s time for me to retire. By your leave ma’am?” He jerked his head toward the hatch leading back into the facility.
Oliver nodded, letting him go. She’d pushed them all far enough for one day.
CHAPTER 9
It can be tempting to run in guns-blazing when you see a problem. Leaders, by their very nature, tend to be proactive personalities that want to address problems quickly. But the ability to sit with discomfort can be one of the most important skills a leader can develop. Developing strong teams means accepting their faults, and understanding that sometimes people change slowly. Relentless, gradual pressure is often more effective than bringing the hammer down. Judging when to do which, of course, is the hard part.
HARVARD LEADERSHIP CERTIFICATE COURSE MANUAL
CHAPTER 3. MANAGING DYSFUNCTIONAL TEAMS
“This,” Oliver splashed the Widow Jane into the tumbler, sloshing a tiny bit over the side, “is completely fucked.”
“Don’t let it get to you.” Ho crossed his arms over his narrow chest and leaned against the wardrobe. After the tension of the meeting, Oliver had decided to let the contubernium pretense drop for a moment, and give the crew some space while she and Ho conferred in her stateroom.
“It is not getting to me,” Oliver groused, paused. “Why do you think it’s getting to me? Because I cursed? I curse all the time.”
“Because you spilled on your desk.” Ho gestured to the tiny dots of bourbon still glinting from the reflective plastic surface. “You never spill, and if by some miracle you do, you sure as hell don’t let it sit there.”
Oliver stared at the glass. “Holy shit. You’re right. Am I drinking too much?”
Ho smiled. “I won’t let you fall, boss. You’ve uprooted your whole life and carted your ass all the way to the Moon to take over a training mission in the hopes that it’ll have the welcome side-effect of preventing the first lunar war. You’re entitled to a drink now and then.”
“Fuck,” Oliver pushed the tumbler away, then fetched it back. “Keep an eye on me, Wen.”
“Always, boss.”
“Chief walking out… I’ll admit that threw me.”
Ho nodded. “Me too.”
“But we have got to fix this shit. I have seen this problem a hundred times before when I was running TRACEN Yorktown. And it’s the worst kind of problem. It’s easy when you’re just dealing with fuckups. They know they’re fuckups. And every fuckup wants to do better, deep down. But virtuosos are the fucking worst, Wen. They all think they’re God’s gift to the service and that if things would just run their way… you know? Problem children, individually brilliant, unable to get out of their own way. And of course that’s the situation here. It couldn’t possibly be easy, now could it?”
Ho laughed. “You’ll figure it out, boss.”
“You know, it was like this with Adam when he was little. Alice developed… She wasn’t a kid genius. She just wanted to make Tom and I happy. Tom, mostly. But Adam, that kid was so much smarter than anyone around him. By the time he was eight I couldn’t help him with his math homework anymore, and I’m an astronaut. Sort of.”
“It’s post SpaceX, boss. Everyone’s an astronaut.”
Oliver took a sip of the whiskey and pointed a finger at him over the top of the glass. “Don’t you fucking ruin this for me, Wen.”
“So, what did you do with Adam? I assume he refused to obey you?”
“Christ, everything was a negotiation. From bedtime to every bite of food. But I somehow managed to raise that boy, and turn him into a…”
“A tech baron who never calls his mom.”
“At least he’s not selling his ass for drugs.”
“Yet.”
The word caught Oliver mid-sip and she almost spit the liquor out as the laughter bubbled up her throat. “Gah! That burns, Wen. I am racking my brain trying to remember how I did it, but it was so long ago it’s like it happened to someone else. My kids are all grown up, but yours are still little.”
“They are,” Ho said, “and they’re both like Adam was.”
“How do you handle them?”
Ho was quiet for a moment. “Well, I’d caution you against treating skilled adults like kids, but I tell them to play nice and when they don’t, I punish them. I take away privileges, or I make them do extra chores.”
“Incentive training.”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“Here’s the problem,” she gestured at him with her tumbler, “it’s that it’s an exercise. These are real world coasties, they live for the job, Wen.”
Ho thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I can see that.”
Oliver blinked. “You’re agreeing with me? Who are you and what have you done with Wen Ho?”
“Look, boss, running TRACEN Yorktown was a dream gig for me. I loved being there, but I wasn’t blind to what it was doing to you. I watched you… wither, even as you ran the hell out of that place.”
“You said I produced the best crop of boarding teams the guard has ever seen.”
“And I meant it. You absolutely did, but it cost you. You’re a natural-born leader and an outstanding teacher, boss, but you’re also an operator first and foremost. You joined up to actually do the job. Do it in the worst conditions on the roughest shifts with the hardest cases life had to throw at you. That’s what made you amazing. Ironically, I think it’s what made you a great teacher, too.”
Oliver felt her cheeks flush at the praise. “Thanks.”
“The job, the real job of getting out on the water and saving lives is what made you great, ma’am. But it’s also what made you motivated. And after that was gone…”
He looked embarrassed as he tr
ailed off.
“Ah, it’s OK, Wen,” Oliver said, “you can say it. After I was no longer in the field, it was Tom’s ghost that kept me going. I worked hard to avoid facing that he was gone, and I also worked hard because the work felt like I was keeping him alive somehow. Because it was a shred of the life we’d had together.”
“Not just that, boss. You were bereft. Adam drifted away, and then – bam. Alice to the Moon. That was the real blow. I think a part of you was always hoping you’d find a way to get back to her.”
“Or that she’d strike it rich and come back to me. I didn’t have anyone to… take care of except my students. And that wasn’t enough. Yeah, Alice was a big piece. And also… because I just didn’t know what else to do.”
“I’d say that’s about right,” Ho said. “But now you do know what else to do. You’re here to do it.”
“We have to get them on the job, Wen. The real job.”
Ho blinked. “We’re supposed to be prepping them for a game show.”
But as soon as she said the words, Oliver felt the flush creeping up the back of her neck, burning at the base of her skull with a certainty she knew from experience was useless to resist. This was the right call, she knew it in her bones. “Christ, I need to take my own advice. I said it in my change-of-command speech, Wen. We’re all hurting over Lacus Doloris. We get past that by doing the job, by remembering why we signed up to do it in the first place. No exercise, no matter how significant, is going to convey that. These people aren’t going to gel in a simulator. They have to be running ops.”
Ho was silent.
“You think I’m wrong?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Ho said, “Admiral Allen isn’t going to like that. You have less than two months to train this crew for a contest and you’re proposing… not training them.”
“No,” Oliver said. “I’m proposing training them differently. I’m proposing training them correctly. Wen, I nearly died locked behind that desk in TRACEN. I nearly wasted away. That’s what we’re doing to these people here. There isn’t anything wrong with their skill. We just saw that firsthand. The problem is their morale. This is how we fix it. I know it is.”
Ho was silent for a long time, and when he finally opened his mouth to answer, the door chime sounded. Ho went to get it, stepping aside to admit Chief. “Ma’am, I know you’ve got your contubernium thing, but I was hoping we could have a word, just the two of us.”
Oliver exchanged glances with Ho, then nodded. “Sure thing, Chief. Wen, I’ll see you in a bit.”
Ho nodded and stepped out, closing the door behind him.
“I just wanted to apologize, ma’am,” Chief said, “for earlier. I got upset, and I shouldn’t have.”
“We all get hot from time to time, Chief. I pushed you all pretty hard there, and I’m not surprised it ruffled some feathers. But I appreciate you coming around to let me know.”
“That’s kind of you, ma’am. I just… Well, I wanted to let you know that as the senior NCO on the team, I feel like their performance is my responsibility. So that whole shitshow was my fault, and I want you to know I’m going to be working doubletime to get it fixed.”
Oliver waved the statement away. “This team is going to rise or fall together. It’s all of our responsibility, and that includes me, too. And this is nothing that we can’t get fixed. I appreciate the accountability, Chief, but you’re not responsible. Well, not any more than any of us are.”
She expected him to turn and go at that, but he only stood, looking at his feet. “Respectfully, ma’am, that’s not how I feel. And I wanted to say that to you… that I do feel responsible.”
The realization rose suddenly in her gut. “You’re not talking about the team.”
Chief shrugged. “I just wanted to say… I never got to say to your face, with just the two of us, that I’m sorry.”
Oliver was suddenly two people. One wanted to burst into tears and hug this hard-bitten man who was standing before her wringing his hands like a schoolboy. The other part wanted to smack him. This was over and done, she had made it clear to all of them again and again and again… Easy there, Widow Jane. You’re not the only one who lost Tom, remember that.
She took a moment to gather her thoughts, leaned across her desk, propping herself up on her fists. “Chief, I am only saying this one more time. You are not responsible. This self-indulgence isn’t helping anyone. Not me, not you, and certainly not Tom, Kariawasm, or Flecha. And you are also not responsible for how this whole team performs. On a mission, operational rank trumps organizational rank. And on a small boat, the coxs’un is king.”
She fought a moment of panic as she finished. Had she pushed him too hard again? Should she have been gentler? If he really does retire what am I going to do? I can’t replace him with another NCO this crew doesn’t know at this stage. We’ll be sunk. She watched Chief’s face, utterly without guile, the emotions plain. Pride and grief warred with duty across his heavy brows, his hard mouth. At long last, Oliver could see his chin coming up, his eyes focusing as duty won out.
“You’re right, ma’am, but it’s the coxs’un that’s the problem,” he said. “Pervez is out of control. When it was Kariawasm, we were a well-oiled machine, but after Doloris…” he looked stricken, “…it just isn’t the same. I’m not sure she has the right temperament to do this.”
Oliver swallowed her anger and disappointment. You’re better than this, Chief. “I believe there’s nothing wrong with Pervez that, working together, we can’t fix. I need you to believe that, too.”
Chief sighed, nodded. “I hope you’re right.”
“I am right. Look, Pervez isn’t Kariawasm, and she never will be. It’s time we stopped asking everyone to labor under the shadow of the dead. I think we should upgrade boats to the rhino, Chief. I think the symbolism of that move is important.”
Chief’s eyes snapped up, trembling. He took a long, deep breath before he answered.
“Ma’am, with respect, I don’t think it’s a good call.”
“You’ve made that clear, Chief, but rhino is a technically better boat.”
“Not so much better that it’s worth putting Pervez out of her element.”
“Oh, horseshit, Chief. You know as well as I do that Pervez is good enough that she’d fly the hell out of a tin can with only three days to qualify on it if you asked her to. This is about honoring the dead for you. And I’m not proposing we don’t do that, I’m just saying we don’t have to labor in their shadow. I think that’s part of Pervez’s problem, trying to live up to that expectation.”
“Please, ma’am,” Chief said, “don’t ask us to do this. It matters to this crew.”
“Matters to this crew or matters to you, Chief?” Oliver asked.
Chief shook his head. “You heard Pervez’s objections. Look, ma’am, it’s your ship. If you order me to mothball the longhorn and put us in a rhino, then that’s what I’ll do. Are those your orders?”
He looked up, and Oliver could see the wash of grief and anger behind his eyes. She had seen the same look when he’d gotten up from the table just a little while ago. When he’d threatened to retire. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. It was hard to repeat those words to herself, to feel like they mattered when the clock was ticking away toward Boarding Action, but they had never failed her before.
“No, Chief,” she said finally. “We’ll stay in the longhorn for now.”
Oliver had the flag mess converted for her contubernium – the small round table reserved for her and her staff replaced by a long rectangular one big enough to accommodate the whole team. She pointedly made sure that no chairs were placed at either end, and that those ends were marked with black and yellow – CRIME SCENE – DO NOT CROSS tape she had Ho requisition from the logs officer. The crowd in the mess were polite enough not to stare directly, but she caught the sidelong glances and could overhear the whispered conversations. That’s OK, let them talk. I was sent here to win this, and the
whole command has to be on board with that.
She was already at the table as the crew arrived, filled their trays and sat silently. Okonkwo smiled at her and gave her a polite dip of his head. Chief smiled as well, but made no attempt at conversation. McGrath was blank-faced as always, and Pervez sullen and petulant. Oliver almost started eating before she noticed Okonkwo bowing his head in prayer. Pervez rolled her eyes and was about to lift her fork to her mouth when a glare from Oliver caught her up short. She set it down and looked at the table until he was finished.
“How’s everyone doing?” Oliver asked as they set to work on their food. “Anything interesting happen on watch duty?”
“No, ma’am,” they all answered in unison, not looking up.
“That’s surprising,” Oliver said. “We had at least one SAR alarm every day in Yorktown, and that’s in the middle of nowhere, relatively-speaking.”
“Yorktown’s not nowhere,” Ho offered. He’s trying, at least.
“In terms of shipping traffic it is, compared to say, New York or Baltimore. Surely we have more traffic out here so close to the Chinese EEZ.”
Heads remained down, forks continued moving. Silence.
Oliver bit back her frustration and crossed her arms over her chest. “All right. Out with it.”
That brought the heads up, but did not get mouths moving.
“What’s going on, guys?” Oliver asked. “We had a bad day. Teams have bad days.”
“I think you’re right, ma’am,” Pervez said, her tone just barely respectful, “maybe we’ve ‘lost touch with the mission.’ Maybe we need to ‘honor our lost loved ones.’”
Alice had briefly gone through what Tom had called ‘her independent phase’ when she was sixteen. She’d tried sassing Oliver then a few times, with limited success, until Oliver had finally dropped the hammer and put a stop to it. Pervez sounded so much like the adolescent Alice that Oliver had to swallow the urge to laugh.