Importance of Mentorship in an Empathetic Leader

Dr. MSG Dwayne Chaney is a native of Houston, TX currently serving active duty in the United States Army as the Program Manager and Equal Opportunity Advisor for the Network Enterprise Technology Command, at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. He has served as the Senior Information Tech, Information Management Officer for the entire Eastern Atlantic and Midwestern region for the U.S. Army. Dr. Chaney has served nine months in Iraq working as the Team Chief for a Command Post Node Team alongside the US Special Forces and Iraqi Army General.

Leadership is not a simple construct to solve for the average person. Every individual that you lead and work with has many complexities such as personalities, morals, values, life experiences, hopes, and fears (McDougall, 2019). Good leaders take the opportunity to look deeper into their subordinate’s persona. Understanding all those complexities will give a leader a wider perspective on dealing with subordinates beyond the surface level. Paying close attention to verbal and nonverbal cues and asking tough questions to better understand the feelings of individuals (McDougall, 2019) establishes the basis of trust between the leader and subordinate. This type of leader has honed in on the skill of empathy, an extremely important yet misunderstood element of leadership. More professions have inserted empathy as a practice however, the U.S. military more so, the Army has failed at and or avoided adapting the important skill of empathy within its doctrine. Adaptation of empathy in leadership comes at a price because highly regimented organizations such as the Army are hugely impacted as mission-focused organizations. Many times, leaders who lead with empathy are faced with many obstacles, and resistance from senior-level leadership as the leader attempts to lead with empathy.

The Army preaches the importance of Soldier welfare; however, senior leaders seem to forget that concept of leadership approach since it is mission driven.

Often a private’s introduction to Army leadership consists of stern, cold, and formal interactions. The military is a difficult and unforgiving business that involves death and destruction, so an aversion to risk and failure is an expected byproduct (Trimailo, 2017). The Department of Defense, Congress pressures the Army to endure specific missions in the public eye, which can drive leaders to micromanage subordinates which; often leads to leadership failure and poor decision-making (Trimailo, 2017). Historically, the Army has placed emphasis on compliance; ADP 6-22 establishes and describes the Army profession and the associated ethics that serve as the basis for a shared professional identity (Department of the Army, 2019)

However, the stoic culture of military organizations is not the only way to view it. The complexities of being a stern and formal leader can be counteracted by properly learning Soldiers at the surface level through empathy. “Empathy is not sympathy; it doesn’t mean that you need to rub (your Soldiers’) bellies and ask them how they feel every morning” (McDougall, 2019, p. 30). In the military current major depression among the ranks is estimated at “12% and nearly 40% of active-duty service members report having at least one physician-diagnosed chronic physical health condition” (Dunbar et al., 2022, p. 287). “In the military, mental health stigma derives from the misperception that a service member should be deficit-free to engage in combat; a person with depression often fears they may be ridiculed and perceived as weak” (Medical News Today, 2022).

These statistics of depression are deeply rooted in a few factors (deployments, military life stressors, constant relocations). Empathetic leaders have the keen ability to lean in on being a rock of support for these Soldiers who are suffering from extreme bouts of depression. Understanding what they are going through based on personal experiences and stories of others offers a unique ability to extend to them different resources such as a behavioral health therapist that will assist them in getting back to some type of normalcy. Even a listening ear can go a long way as a leader lead with an understanding of their situation. It is the responsibility of the leader to protect the Soldier from missions that can feed into further depressions while still accomplishing tasks assigned to the teams. The leader must be innovative and navigate senior level leadership mission’s intent to assist the Soldier from downward spiraling which can affect the formation negatively if he or she does not get the necessary help needed.

Mentorship, a lost art in the military, can assist in the mitigation of issues in support of subordinates’ and their well-being. The Army defines mentorship as the developmental relationship that is shared between a person of greater experience and someone with less experience. I believe that mentorship involves more than just this developmental experience from a person of greater experiences. Building upon a bi-lateral relationship between mentor and mentee is important in gaining trust through open communication and dialogue. Competency plays a vital role in the bi-lateral relationship, because a mentee ultimately wants to gain valuable tools of success to place in their rucksack for future experiences. This can be called experiential learning. Mentorship can assist in the development of good leadership, helping to unpack layers of issues in a subordinate because of gained trust and bilateral relationships.

Mentors naturally have the characteristics of an empathetic leader, so this becomes a crucial development of trust amongst a mentee. As stated above mental health is a major factor in lack of personnel readiness. Peeling back the onion as a mentor can help alleviate issues and teach young leaders how to look for spiraling signs that show up in individuals.

References

Department of the Army. (2019). Army leadership and the profession (ADP 6-22). https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN20039-ADP_6-22-001-WEB-0.pdf

McDougall, J., (2019). Empathetic leadership: Understanding the human domain. Military Review, November-December, 28–34. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/ND-19/McDougall-Empathetic-Leadership.pdf

Trimailo, T. (2017). Epic fail: Why leaders must fail to ultimately succeed. Military Review: The Professional Journal of the U.S. Army, November-December, 95–99. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/Epic-Fail-Why-Leaders-Must-Fail.pdf