10/28/2019 0 Comments A Personal Leadership Failure StoryIt turns out, we are all not perfect and we do make mistakes, and here is one of my more glaring leadership mistakes. It has to do with planning and quitting on my team while deployed to Al Asad Iraq. Here is the back story.
As the Navy and USMC moved out of Al Asad in Western Iraq, the US Army moved in. The west, an open desert with a few cities, had been tamed. The towns of Hit, Ramadi, and towns along the Jordanian and Syrian borders had been quite for some time. So the Department of Defense, tasked a mixed task force, one company of UH60 Blackhawk and one company of AH-64 Apaches, to conduct security and transportation operations in the area. The task of leading this thrown together band of misfits went to an Apache Major. The authority and command and control structure was weird. He would "lead" us in all day to day operations, but our Blackhawk Battalion Commander, stationed some 120 miles away, would still be the final say and approval for missions. Time came for annual gunnery qualifications. An army regulatory requirement yearly, but definitely different when stationed in theater versus at home. At home, there was a dedicated range and targets, varying terrain to qualify the gunners from stationary, on the go and in flight. In Iraq, this was a check the block. A big flat desert with an old bombed out Iraqi tank to shoot at, not nearly the same. But alas, regulations are regulations and we would conduct our qualifications. Here in the lied the difference, what a Blackhawk unit does, throwing some small arms machine gun rounds down range from your door gunners is vastly different than what an Apache does, armed with missiles, rockets, and 30mm machine gun. Here your pilots are conducting the major part of their mission, become effective weapons of destruction. With Blackhawks on the other hand, our crew chiefs manning small caliber machine guns was made for self-defense. Now don't get me wrong, I love a well-organized and effective gunnery range for the crew dogs. They can be a difference maker and be a great last resort in support of infantry on the ground. However, again, these "ranges" in Iraq were far from effective and well planned. I was tasked with the planning and coordination and to give the brief to the Apache Major. It was pretty simple. We would start at a hover, call for the engagement, conduct movement forward at a certain heading then circle back and conduct the pass by. After one door gunner was "qualified" (we really had no way of confirming other than our instructor crew chiefs saying, "the looked effective on the target," we would repeat the same for the other crew chief. All seemed simple, or so I thought. I pretty much gave this brief to the Major and expected little push back, because he really gave us much and trusted us since he was not very familiar with lift operations. Boy was I wrong, I struck a chord with the hole chest bumping, machismo gunnery thing with a man whose whole mission was to blow things up. He wanted a powerpoint presentation, range fans, engagement start and stop lines, etc, etc. Man, we were shooting at an old tank in the middle of the desert, in a war zone, with nothing around. I tried to reason with him, but he wasn't having it. I decided I would show him the hard way, if he didn't want common sense to prevail, all our crew chiefs would become unqualified and be grounded, therefore, we wouldn't be able to fly and conduct our mission. All Western Iraq air lift support would cease to exist. My boss, who was stuck at another base because of bad weather, finally returned and asked about the progress. He had already known about the progress it turns out from talking to the Major, but he wanted my story. After listening to me vent, he recommended I get the crew chief instructor more involved and let him help plan. So as I sat down and talked with the instructor, he was more than happy at the opportunity to show his abilities. Here, I was taking for granted the work I felt was extra and not empowering someone else the opportunity to grow his career. Boy did I feel like an idiot. Needless to say, the instructor put together a detailed plan that went above and beyond the briefing requirements. The Major was satisfied, the instructor had proven himself, and the team could go out and execute the gunnery and ensure we could conduct combat missions in the future. Pretty simple. My boss was a great leader, he handled the situation above perfectly by listening and recommending. And afterwards, he was honest, he said, "You hit resistance and quit, which could have cost the team." He was right again! The moral to this leadership failure story is: 1- Listen and guide, like my boss did for me 2- Don't ever quit, continue to find ways to get your pitch effectively across 3- Empower, you don't have to do everything yourself 4- And plan, always have a plan for everything, it may seem simple operationally, but it could have a strategic impact!
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