Until recently (with the creation of Space Force), the United States Coast Guard (USCG) could boast that not only has it maintained its fleet longer than the U.S. Navy, but that it was the smallest branch of the U.S. Military. Despite this, the service has a diverse and expansive mission set ranging from “Ports, Waterways & Coastal Security,” “Search and Rescue,” “Maritime Environmental Protection,” and maintaining the nations entire “Aid to Navigation” system (United States Coast Guard, n.d.). The Coast Guards success at these endeavors happens because of a cultural approach to leadership that adheres to an extremely flexible chain of command, which grants young service members with extraordinary “positional power” (Northouse, 2021, p. 55) not often found in the larger branches of the military.
Northouse (2021) defines position power as “the power a person derives from a particular office or rank in a formal organizational system” (p. 55). In the military, this is reflected in the normal chain of command. Officers have more authority over enlisted service members, and even amongst the enlisted and officer core, those that have served longer than others and have attend ranks of higher position have more authority than those of lower positions. This military hierarchy is traditionally extremely strict and authoritarian out of a historically proven necessity. In times of conflict and emergencies decisions, actions are accomplished quicker and with less reservation, if there is one person in charge giving orders that subordinates can conduct quickly and with little confusion. In a service as large as the Navy, this is manageable because there are enough leadership positions to manage a large base of subordinates. In a service that has less than 50,000 service members like the Coast Guard, the branch would be unable to meet the large and varied mission set Congress charges it with.
To address this reality, the USCG allows junior members to hold positions of authority necessary for mission execution, provided they have completed on the job training, received the recommendation by oral board of peers, and finally certification from their unit’s Commander to do so. For instance, Search and Rescue missions are usually executed by crewmembers onboard a Coast Guard small boat. These crews usually consist of a Coxswain (boat driver/ mission commander), a boat engineer (special crew member with knowledge of the boat’s mechanical systems), and a certified crewmember (the most basic small boat qualification). On a Coast Guard small boat, the Coxswain is granted by their unit commander, the final authority on all things that happened on the boat. The Coxswain decides how to safely navigate and operate the boat, will give helm and crew commands to his crewmembers, and are often the on scene commander for missions in which they have multiple assets from multiple agencies during Search and Rescue missions, regardless of the rank of any other member on their own small boat.
This is an extraordinary amount of power and authority for a position that can be held by someone who possibly may be less than a year old to the organization. By allowing junior members to prove themselves through the qualification process and hold these sorts of positional power, the Coast Guard is able to extend the versatility of its work force. Additionally, members like me who turn their service into a 20 year career, gain valuable experience that they are expected to use not only in the rest of the career, but to pass down to junior members joining the service, creating a culture of mentorship, nurturing the next generation of Coast Guard leaders.
References
Northouse, P. G. (2021). Leadership: Theory & Practice (9 ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc.
United States Coast Guard. (n.d.). Missions. Retrieved from www.history.uscg.mil: https://www.history.uscg.mil/Home/Missions/