Leading from the Front

In Search of a Compass Point

The following guest post was provided by Harry Lloyd Hopkins, the pseudonym of a United States Army officer and career professional. The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not reflect those of the Department of the Army or the Deparment of Defense, Barney the Dinosaur, or Captain Kangaroo. Anyone else is free chicken.

Truth in Advertising: I am not without fault — especially as a young company grade officer (CGO). At a certain point during my first deployment, I made a conscious decision to do better. I have not always succeeded — but I am trying.

I will state it more bluntly than the authors of the recent U.S. Army War College study on lying among the ranks: There are *systemic failures* in honor that we (across the branches) must address. I will focus on several Army issues, as I cannot adequately speak for the other services.

• The “LDRSHIP” model is inherently flawed. The Army developed the model in the 1990’s based on comments from raters/senior raters who stated they did not understand what the Army wanted them to say when considering whether an individual’s service had been “honorable.” Rather than taking the time and effort to mentor people, we reduced “honorable service” to a mnemonic-based checklist. Rather than asking leaders to use their judgment in providing a qualitative assessment, we gave them an algorithm for analysis and required quantitative data points (this stems from much deeper issues that will require a full essay or two to address… Maybe I will get around to it, eventually.).
• As others have pointed out, self-preservation and self-promotion (probably the same thing in the current environment) are a strong consideration in these situations. Nobody wants to be seen as a failure when the service is taking steps to cut forces and has proven it is looking for any instance of failure to use as a reason (e.g. the un-masking of restricted file documents to provide discriminators for the Officer Separation Boards). Since “everyone is doing it,” it is easy to follow suit.
• Officers do not understand their authority and responsibility, leading to the prevailing “Yes-man” culture we have today. The oath we take is to the Constitution of the United States, and it is that entity that provides the authority of our commission. Few even try to understand the gravity of that fact. In an example near and dear to my heart, I once refused to follow an instruction from my rater and senior rater unless they would sign a written statement acknowledging that I had informed them of the specific statutes that the action would violate and acknowledging that they accept full responsibility for those violations. In response, I was informed that I lacked “loyalty” to my unit (stated in such a way that I should expect it to be reflected on my upcoming OER); additionally, during an OER counseling he brought up the point again in the context of “duty” in stating, “You are just a MAJ. When a LTC or COL tells you to do something, stop asking so many questions and just do it.”
• At the highest levels, we not only condone but *instruct* people to act dishonorably. The Army Security Cooperation Planner’s Course literally instructs students to take specific actions in an attempt to circumvent US Law: “We can’t technically train foreign forces with Title 10. If you want to train foreign forces, you have to say you are really training your forces to conduct training, and that the training the foreign forces are receiving is a residual effect. Never use ‘Big-T’ Training; always use ‘little-t’ training. And never hand out training certificates.” If an example this blatant exists at this level in approved curriculum, it is not likely to be an isolated event.

I am deeply saddened (and sickened at a few examples) at how far we have come down the slippery slope as I read some of the examples from recent LTs/CPTs — and I do not see any end in sight for how far we will fall if we don’t start seriously addressing these failures as an organization.