Does Doing The Right Thing Get You Where You Want To Be?

Special Forces candidate on the land navigation course

Every leader has experienced failure. We try to achieve some goal and we do not achieve it. We try to develop some new thing and it doesn’t work. We want to get the job, or the promotion and it is given to someone else.

Experiencing failure is so common that it is hardly the mark of a bad leader. But what happens when the failure isn’t related to your team, or your vision, or even your career? Is it possible to achieve your goal only to discover that you have failed wholly and spectacularly?

The framework we use to define achievement or failure is important because it allows us to define our terms. Through what timeframe or lens do we use to determine an outcome? And while I have failed many times as a leader I don’t consider any past failure as a blight on my person or stain on my reputation. You get unlucky, or out-played, or out-coached.

You accept responsibility, you learn, you grow, you get better. Real failure isn’t any of those things. Real failure is when you don’t fully live up to who you are and what you believe. No one else in the world may ever know it. But the loss is profound.

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The summer of 2003 in Iraq was a fairly peaceful time, all things considered. In Baghdad, reliable electricity was a problem because the transmission lines kept being stolen to sell for scrap copper, but the looting had died down and roadside bombs, or IEDs, had not yet entered the country in significant numbers. There was a sense of aimlessness for combat units with no combat to be found. Privately, I worried that my contribution to the war would be inconsequential, or that I would be at the wrong place and miss it. As if the war was a summer concert that I could “attend” and maybe pick up a new t-shirt. Looking back with the benefit of age and experience I was a typical dumbass young man trying to prove himself to…whomever you try to prove yourself to. I was seeking some event in which I could demonstrate my courage and unmistakable manliness.

In the absence of any better idea, I began focusing the team on the list of high value targets (HVTs). This list was commonly called the black list and it included former regime knuckleheads and any known terrorists operating in Iraq. I honestly have no idea how the list was generated but they gave me a deck of cards that had the faces of the “most wanted” so we started looking for them. Hide and seek with Green Berets.

Hide and seek with Green Berets.

After letting my team know what I wanted to do, it did not take them long to begin identifying the possible location of multiple HVTs throughout Baghdad and central Iraq. As the information developed, I began planning missions that would allow us to capture these targets in their homes or wherever they were hiding and turn them in to the military interrogators located at the Baghdad International Airport. But every mission I submitted for approval was denied. No explanations were given. Just a flat denial. This was unusual for my group. I would have expected to get some questions or feedback prior to being told no.

I traveled to the Green Zone to talk with my boss and try to understand what I needed to do in order to get my missions approved. He told me that at our headquarters there was simply no appetite for risk. He went on to tell me that every time I submitted a plan, called a CONOP (a concept of operations) to detain someone that it would be denied. However, if I told them that I was conducting an area patrol in a certain part of Baghdad and I just happened to see someone on the black list that I could only be expected to detain the HVT.

As he finished talking I stared at him for a long moment without speaking. He was telling me that I could do whatever I wanted as long as I wrote up the operation in a way that seemed less risky. I thanked him for his time and traveled back into the city to our team house. By the time I arrived I had made my decision. I gave the team instructions to finalize our coordination to begin operations to detain HVTs. We went out the next afternoon to detain an HVT living near our neighborhood of Al Kindi. We knocked on his door and asked if he was there.

And at this point let me just say that I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted from an operational standpoint – which is bad. Your team cannot possibly accomplish what you want if you can’t verbalize what it is. Unless they just get lucky. This “mission” to capture the former Iraqi Air Force Commander (a global force to be sure) in his tighty whities did not go smoothly or quickly. We did, however, manage to capture him without getting anyone killed. So, for the purpose of this discussion let’s just pretend it went perfectly and move on.

Your team cannot possibly accomplish what you want if you can’t verbalize what it is.

We drove the old man to my commander’s house with some cockamamie story about how the former general was “acting suspiciously” and so we had to bring him in. I was expecting to be admonished for such an obviously bullshit story. Like the face your dog makes when you walk into your house and find dog poop on your rug. That’s the look I had on my face. My head was down, ready to get spanked. But instead…nothing. We processed him as a detainee and turned him over to whomever wanted to talk to the Iraqi Air Force Commander from 1987 and we drove home.

This started a series of operations that we unilaterally planned and conducted. As time went by, the team’s performance continued to improve and we began to be recognized as a strong ODA. It stopped bothering me that I was so obviously using deception to carry out unapproved missions. The highlight was when the team developed information on the location of the former commander of the Special Republican Guard, the Queen of Hearts. We conducted a sophisticated operation to detain the HVT without implicating our source but then the guy (our source) got spooked and decided to get drunk so it turned into an episode of the keystone cops. But we caught the guy and gave each other high fives all the way to drop him off at the detention facility. I told my bosses that I was just patrolling the streets of Baghdad and I kept bumping into HVTs. What was I supposed to do, let them go? Gee whiz, we were the luckiest team in Iraq.

Gee whiz, we were the luckiest team in Iraq.

I experienced some disturbing and frightening events during my first tour in Iraq. Leading a team in an environment in which men are deliberately trying to commit violent to each other can result in serious psychological scars. But the thing that bothers me most about that time in my life is my shocking sense of flexible morality. That somehow because I believed I was doing “the right thing” it was ok that I was quite simply lying to my commander. And I made the decision to violate my own beliefs so casually. I drove the 5 minutes from company headquarters to my team house and decided that I would begin telling lies in order to get what I wanted. What happens to the rest of a value system if telling the truth is no longer an absolute? Without honesty, my personal values became more and more elastic as I stretched them to fit around and accommodate my justification to be dishonest.

Living in line with your values is to accept reality. When I follow my principle of honesty my life supports reality and I receive the value of this principle. Essentially, being honest always pays off. By denying my personal value of honesty, I denied the value I receive from being honest. Dishonest means denying reality, denying truth. In my false reality I was leading a strong team that was working diligently and professionally to make a difference in Iraq. In reality I was a scumbag Army officer lying on an official report. I thought my false reality would allow me to enjoy the accolades of success but in reality I was ashamed of compromising my integrity to achieve results.

I’m extremely fortunate that I didn’t get someone on my team killed and that I didn’t get fired. What I didn’t know was that there was a debate about the nature of the mission for Special Forces in Iraq. The missions the team actually completed (as opposed to what I said we were doing) represented one part of this debate and my unauthorized campaign against HVTs had supporters at different levels of my organization. I was even given a planning template that, if I followed, would allow me to get my future CONOPs approved.

I got lucky.

To widen our lens a little, understanding who you are and what you believe extends well past honesty. The larger construct containing the principle of honesty is morality. Morality can be simply defined as principles which guide behavior between right and wrong, or good and bad. Morality’s purpose, whether a leader or not, is to allow you to live as a human being consistent with your beliefs. When serving as a leader, however, this purpose extends beyond yourself to encompass your team or organization. The morality of a leader allows the entire team to enjoy the value of performing work and earning rewards. These accolades, well earned, point to and reinforce the morality and principles of every team member. Everyone associated with a team operating with a high sense of morality sees the reward of living a principled life, thus further expanding the influence of a moral leader.

As leaders we spend time on developing a vision for our team. Unlocking team potential with a unifying purpose. But there is a first step to understanding what you want to do and why you want to do it – you need to know who you are and what you believe in. Your personal values are the only currency you have as a leader, whether in combat or in the cubicle farm. I’m not a hippie so I won’t tell you that you need to go on a “journey of self-discovery” but you better make time for introspection and decide what kind of human being you are going to be from now until the end. The good news is that it doesn’t matter how you’ve been living until now. Maybe you rationalized a poor decision and drifted from your own sense of self like I did, or perhaps you’ve just never taken the time to codify your core values. The exercise goes well past the academic. You will not be worth following until you know who you are. Your values lay the foundation for your team and will impact the entire organization.

After that it’s simple. You wake up every day, plant your feet, and move forward with a purpose.