Being a leader in the Army and not just any unit in the Army but when you are in combat arms units like the Infantry sometimes you play the Father role in a soldier’s life. Leadership itself is defined “as a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal.” (Northouse p.5 2013) A Presidential Candidate once said, “the poor and stupid fight this countries war.” You don’t know how right he was! Now it depends on your definition of poor and stupid? Poor in the military can be defined as lower middle-class to people that was living on the streets. Now stupid is a little harder to define. I was considered both poor and stupid because I joined the Army instead of going to college after High School. My family had no money to send me to school, I didn’t have the grades for any type of scholarship, and I basically didn’t want to go to college. I was working at the airport in Houston and making some money but it was a dead end job, which is NOT good when you are 18 years old so the Military seemed to be the logical choice. Of course people started telling, “how stupid I was for joining the Army while the US was trying to figure out what to do with the conflict in Bosnia.” A person does not join the Military for the money because in 1995 I was making $371 a month as a Private. There is something else that drives a person to join; maybe a love for country, a family tradition, or maybe a person is just looking for a way out of whatever situation they find themselves in at the time.
Once I was in the Army, I found myself placed with many different people who were coming from the same situation and all different types of backgrounds. I found myself integrated with these different people as I worked my way through the ranks and became a sergeant and was given my own team to look after. I was assigned eight guys which all of them came from different backgrounds and cultures.
It was even difficult for me as a leader to find myself catering to such different backgrounds and cultures which I had more soldiers. I mean I had one soldier from Jamaica, two soldiers the South, one from the north, one from Compton LA, one came from a pretty wealthy background, one came from a very dirt poor backwoods family, and one alone who just drifted everywhere and found himself in the Army when he was old enough. So as you can see at a very vast background of people I dealt with. Out of the eight soldiers I had right before we were given orders for the invasion of Iraq I was assigned five of these guys who were all of the age of 18. These guys have never really left home they just kind of went to school for small jobs they’re in town and started to serve their country.
We deployed to the Iraq war kicked off and we found ourselves parked outside of Baghdad at night before we pushed into the city and it was very clear and kind of cool night one of my soldiers the one that was from Compton LA started opening himself up to me and started telling me more about his background. He never really open himself up to me before he was a very skinny black kid who thought he was harder than a coffin nail because he grew up on the streets of Compton and thought he could fight his way out of anything. He had joined the Army to become a supply clerk but he got caught up with his girlfriend who worked a local McDonald’s in the two of them came up with a scheme to steal money from the safe and use it at their disposal. Only problem is they got caught and when he went before the judge the judge found that he was our enlisted in the Army just waiting to go the judge told the recruiters that instead of him being a supply clerk he needed to be more of an infantryman and maybe he’d learned a lesson in life and grow up. As he was telling me the story is attitude really change as he began to tell me how he never wanted to go back home because the only thing left back there for him is trouble. He thought because the street you grew up on that it only made sense to fight the people who grew up on the street next to him when in reality there’s actually nothing even fight about it just drugs and money. His eyes were open to the world and he confessed to me that I was more of a father to him than his own ever was in that really made me feel good that he wanted to do something else bigger and better with his life.
That’s why when you’re in a service it’s very important for you to have a good leader who is there for you because you spent so much time with each other that you do take on the father role. In the Style Approach I found myself being in the Team Management approach because this style realize on “a strong emphasis on both tasks and interpersonal relationships.” (Northouse p.81 2013)For me that was my pleasure that was my honor to be there for my soldiers.
References:
Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice (6th Ed) Los Angeles, Ca: Sage Publications.