For Essays Guru M4D2 Responses

Jon,

Diversity in military leadership has changed quite a bit since I joined the Army in 1982. The Army had already started changing from a mostly male dominated organization to opening more positions for females. The cultural differences that I faced during basic training was the few Hispanic soldiers in my platoon which I believe was only three. The females were in a separate training unit we could see each other but were not allowed to speak or interact with each other. I still remember the old cadence’s we sang while marching most of which had a lot of sexual references.

 After basic I entered AIT in a field were females were allowed to work but we still had a very limited number of females, racial, or ethnicity differences in our Army soldiers. But our military was training many other soldiers from Europe and the Middle East.  Here I had the opportunity to see firsthand how different cultures sometimes can’t get along. We had soldiers from Saudi Arabia and Iran attending this school and they were not allowed to be in the same class rooms together because they did not care about American laws they hated each other and would try to kill each other if given the chance. Shortly after I got to this school a couple of serious incidents occurred, and not just there, the President ordered all Iranians out of the country. I also got my first introduction with the Muslim faith, we had a First Sergeant who wore a turban and did not cut his hair or shave. I spoke to him several times and learned a few things about him and the culture he came from. The one thing he made very clear was he had a great love for our country and he appreciated and respected our culture and religions. 

So feel that my experiences in the Army have been a great learning experience and I have expanded my understanding of diversity better than I would have in just a civilian job. Diversity in military leadership has changed drastically since I first entered the Army especially in officer positions. During the different big pushes to make these changes in the Army there was resentment because they set percentage goals to meet at different ranks. Many officers felt they got left behind because these percentages had to be met with females, blacks, and the latest Hispanics. Personally I have not seen many officers who were promoted to meet these goals who were not truly exceptional officers. The added diversity has been an asset to the Army every time they increased their numbers of diverse cultures and people.

References

My personal experiences from 30+ years in the Army.

Jared,

Understanding what it takes to become an effective leader in our diverse military is one of the hardest things we expect military leaders to be able to do.  There are so many ways the people that comprise our nation's military are different it would be impossible to list every possible kind of person who shares membership in the armed forces of the United States of America.  If we divide my unit by age and sex, we have young men, middle-aged men, and aged men; we have young women, not as young women, and a few older women.  Divided by race we have African-Americans, Latinos, Caucasians, Asians, or by job, we have pilots, navigators, weapons officers, language analysts, signals analysts, commissioned officers, non-commissioned officers, instructors, evaluators, students, bookkeepers, program managers, civilians, and systems engineers. If we take into consideration the family structure, we are all mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, adopted children, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, cousins, grand-children and great grand-children.  Alternatively, from our sexual orientation, we are hetero sexual, homosexual, transsexual, bisexual, monogamous, polygamous, polyamorous, and others.  There are so many ways that we are diverse, but the best leaders can take all of these different people and leverage their differences to generate the best products. 

According to Chin, Desormeaux, & Sawyer, “Attention to diversity is about valuing differences between groups and inclusion of all groups.”  Leaders must be able to see and value the differences between the groups of people they lead, and they must work to build a culture that includes them at all levels of the organization.  Mitchell et al. describe it this way, “Leader inclusiveness is directed toward encouraging and valuing the different viewpoints of diverse members within team interactions, and has significant potential to overcome barriers to interprofessional team performance”.  This type of environment will encourage and value the different viewpoints of each group within their units, which will ultimately lead to better productivity, and more success.   

My current unit is a good example of how a collaborative environment should be fostered from the top down, and how that can change the output of a group dramatically.  My previous unit commander did not do a very good job of nurturing an environment of mutual respect.  He had policies of openness, but in practice, he created an exclusive club within the organization.

                An example of this was his open door policy.  He always talked about having an open door policy, but refused to hold meetings with anyone but officers.  If an enlisted member tried to come to him with any problem, he would gently guide them to their commanding officer, and have the officer deal with them.  Only if the commanding officer was unable to help, then he would meet with the commanding officer to discuss the enlisted member’s situation. 

The environment was stifled within the unit because of this.  There was no communication between the various groups of the organization, and as a result, the enlisted members (language analysts, signals analysts, systems engineers, management operators) felt they were always competing (for scarce resources – available airplanes, fuel, flight time) against the groups of officers (pilots, navigators, weapons officers, intelligence officers) who held a distinct advantage with our commander.  As a result, our unit’s mission suffered.  At the end of his tour, the unit was between 9-12 months behind the training schedule on the enlisted side.

My unit had a change of command about 10 months ago, and since then, there have been some dramatic changes.  Within the first week after taking command, my commander called all of the officer and enlisted leaders from each section into a meeting, but also invited anyone who was interested to attend as well.  In the meeting, they discussed to state of each section, and the commander sought out the needs of each group.  He also opened the floor up to anyone who felt there were other unmentioned needs that should also be addressed.  Since then, more meetings continue to be held, and more than 50 changes have been implemented with about 90% of them being successful.  As a result, the unit is on pace to completely erase the 9-12 month training backlog by August of this year (15 months after our change of command). 

I work in the commander’s action group.  I worked for 12 months under the old commander, and have worked for 10 months under the new commander.  Under the previous commander, I never had any one-on-one meetings with him, despite him needing me to personally handle some matters for him (the task was passed down to me by my section commander, an officer).  With my current commander, I see him almost daily, and 2-3 times per week, he comes to our office, and sits, and asks how things are going in our personal lives.  He never leaves without asking us if we need his help accomplishing anything, and telling us that he really appreciates the work we do.

I think what my new commander has done most effectively is he has been able to help each member, and group within the unit buy into his vision for mission accomplishment.  He has shown impartiality toward the various groups that comprise the organization, and this has led to more collaboration between the groups.  The end result has been not only improved morale and esprit d’ corps, but much more efficient training and a sense of contribution to mission accomplishment throughout the unit.

References

Chin, J., Desormeaux, L., & Sawyer, K. (2016). Making way for paradigms of diversity leadership. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice And Research, 68(1), 49-71. doi:10.1037/cpb0000051

Mitchell, R., Boyle, B., Parker, V., Giles, M., Chiang, V., & Joyce, P. (2015). Managing Inclusiveness and Diversity in Teams: How Leader Inclusiveness Affects Performance through Status and Team Identity. Human Resource Management, 54(2), 217-239. doi:10.1002/hrm.21658