This week’s guest post is from LTC Rick Black, currently a history professor at West Point. Would you like to start a conversation with us that may spark a transformation? Please don’t hesitate to reach out to write a guest post, comment, share, like, or begin a mentorship relationship based upon what you find here with MilitaryMentors.org!
The older folks among us may remember the old Schoolhouse Rock ditty entitled “I’m Just a Bill.” The premise was a bill pending in Congress who hoped to grow up to become a law one day. The thirty second song walked you through the process that “Bill” needed to follow to become a law. By now, I’m sure you’re humming the tune if you ever saw it in the first place. For those that have no clue what I’m talking about, do yourself a favor and run to Google, watch the clip, and then come back to this essay.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about the phrase “I’m just a _____.” What do we really mean when we use that phrase, or other similar phrases? A dictionary gives us several definitions for the word “just,” but some have more relevance in this context than others. For our discussion here, this one works best: an adverb meaning “only or merely.”
Does it mean something different coming from a senior leader as opposed to a brand new Private? Why do we so often and so quickly marginalize ourselves and our accomplishments by using this phrase? How many times have you heard a general officer say, “I’m just a plain old country boy who has had great fortune to advance as far as I have” when asked about the reasons for their success? What about the theater commander who begins a reply to a question about strategy with “I’m just a simple infantryman, but here’s what I think,” or some similar response? Do we have a right to expect a little more than “I’m just…” from our most senior leaders? If so, why should we have different expectations at the company grade level? Let’s focus at the platoon level for rest of this essay.
How many times have you heard someone ask a junior officer “what do you do?” As an example of the most direct answer, they could reply “I’m a platoon leader in Bravo Battery.” But, if they say “I’m just a platoon leader,” what does that reveal? Do they have some lack of pride in their position, or their ability to perform in that position? Does that answer indicate some attempt to distance themselves from decisions made by their superiors, or perhaps insulate themselves from a negative unit reputation?
Some might say that “I’m just …” shows humility on the part of the speaker. While humility is certainly a desirable trait for leaders at all levels, I don’t see this as an example of humility. More often, I see this as a case of some lack of confidence. These answers are crutches that too many leaders use to offer mitigation where they need none. Most importantly “I’m just…” represents a self-imposed limit on our capabilities. We would not tolerate such limits in other contexts, why do we allow it in this case, or accept it from our subordinates?
If we view “I’m just…” as the parent phrase, the children might include “I’m only…” or “I’m not____.” We can think of cousin-like crutches such as “I’m not the smartest guy, but…,” or “I’m no genius, but…” Why would we ever expect a platoon leader to be a genius? In fact, we should expect platoon leaders NOT to arrive with a genius level of intellect about their job. We should expect them to make mistakes, we want them to learn by experience. For sure, some mistakes are worse than others, but the platoon leader who never makes a mistake probably did not get much done either.
I wish I could say that some sage counselor had shared this bit of advice with me twenty years ago, and that I’ve looked up to that person ever since. In reality though, it did not happen that way. Many wise people, starting with my parents and continuing on with teachers and Army leaders, have encouraged me along the way. Many of those encouragements had an element of “do not limit yourself,” but I do not remember any of them focusing on the explicit manner of self-limiting that I’m talking about in this essay. This is a thought I’ve come to far more recently in my role as a teacher, counselor, and mentor to cadets at the United States Military Academy.
The seeds of the thought popped on to my radar from time to time as I listened to cadets talk about their classes, academic assignments, summer details, duty positions, etc. The “aha” moment for me came in talking to one specific cadet with whom I had worked closely for three semesters. This young man found himself just short of the GPA needed to remain what West Point considers “academically proficient” at the end of each of the two most recent semesters, and he was sitting in my office talking about how to get out of that hole in the current term. I should say that he had also run into some trouble in the conduct and discipline lane. Taken alone, his conduct issues were not serious enough to warrant significant trouble, but when combined with the academic trouble, he had highlighted himself as a cadet that the administration could easily choose to separate from the Academy.
That day in my office we talked about a range of specific actions he needed to take to improve his standing across all of these areas. We talked about going in to see instructors for additional instruction (known as “AI” in West Point jargon) in his weakest subjects. We walked through his calendar to identify choke points with multiple assignments due within a short period of each other. We even mapped out some timelines for completing those projects, using a backwards planning approach. At the end of all that, I shifted gears briefly, and almost as an afterthought, by asking him what chain of command position he held for the semester. His answer of “oh sir, I’m just a squad leader” became the eureka moment for me on this topic! Perhaps more so than I had intended, my frustration became very evident as I exclaimed “what do you mean you’re just a squad leader?” I went on to explain, in a little more calm approach that a cadet in his circumstance could not afford to view anything as “just…” I tried to connect some dots for him that to that point he apparently viewed as completely separate points on the canvas that makes up every day at West Point. When I explained how people evaluate him using a whole person concept, rather than considering only one element of his performance (academic, physical, military, or character), it started to click for him.
By the end of our conversation, he started to realize that if he viewed his job as “just a squad leader,” he was missing the many chances available to him to show his chain of command a different view of his talents and skills that perhaps they had not seen before. If he looked at squad leader as a challenge instead of just a list of tasks to check off, he could show them his true capabilities. Most importantly he came to understand that his “just a squad leader” mentality limited himself far more than the limits that others either imposed on him or assumed about him. As I think back over my own life and Army career, perhaps someone did try to have this same conversation with me. Maybe I just did not get what they said at the time. Maybe I was not in the right frame of mind to receive what they tried to transmit.
So, how do we improve ourselves and our organizations? First, we must become and remain more conscious of our crutch words or phrases, and endeavor to reduce and eliminate them from our speech. Second, we have to challenge our subordinates when they employ similar crutches. Finally, each of us should take full advantage of the authority of our position. Do not look at “take advantage of” in a negative way, rather look at in the very positive sense. Platoon leaders have an extraordinary amount of authority for the health, welfare, and employment of their platoons; they are NOT now, nor have they ever been “just a platoon leader!” The same is true for each of us in our current position. Do not settle for, nor accept anything less.