Thursday, May 31, 2007

Everything I Need to Know I Learned in…Basic Training, Part 1

A conversation I had the other day reminded me of something that my drill sergeants would occasionally tell us in Basic Training: If you want to succeed in your military career, do those things which are being taught to you here.

For the uninitiated: Basic Combat Training is the Initial Entrance Training that every enlisted soldier, sailor, airmen and marine entering service is required to go through in the United States and other militaries around the world. It is a process that breaks down portions of a recruit’s personality removing traits that are not constructive to being part of a force entrusted with securing the peace of a freedom-loving nation and building that personality back up into one that prepares a full-fledged combat-ready soldier, sailor, airman or marine to serve.

In his book The Ultimate Basic Training Guidebook, Sergeant Michael Volkin outlines traits that a new recruit should have going into Basic Training:

1. Patience: Pressure is a first-order force to an individual in Basic Training. Pressure from drill sergeants and other cadre, pressure from fellow recruits, and pressure from yourself to name just a few. Just like in the business environment, everyone has a shared purpose: Whether that is to see the business go forward or to learn basic rifle marksmanship, patience is paramount in ensuring that you don’t lose your temper and detract from the necessary goals being accomplished.

2. Stamina: Basic Training time is longer than usual. Time passes by at a gruesomely slow pace throughout the days, weeks, and months of this Initial Entrance Training. My Basic Training Company had 180 graduating individuals after about a handful dropped out; my platoon had 60 soldiers, my squad had 16 troops, my room had 8: After a few weeks you’ve gone through the “who are you, where do you come from,” so on and so forth, and informed everyone about yourself. From there stamina is necessary to make it through the long periods of waiting (“hurry up and wait” was invented by the military) to the stamina necessary to endure the physical and psychological conditions of the entire experience. Methods of coping with the tension are necessary to help you make it through.

3. Honesty: It is the best policy. People lie to hide things or distort situations to make them seem better to others, themselves, or both. Relationships built around honesty are the best and the strongest over time—especially when it comes to your battle buddies in basic training. Furthermore, being caught in a lie by a drill sergeant will only go to degrade any confidence your leaders have in you. Honesty is absolutely the best policy and the only policy.

4. Submissiveness: Leaders need to learn how to follow as much as they need to be able to lead. Basic Training has no room for recruits with egos and entrenched pride. As it is in life as in Basic Training, if you are far too stubborn with your ego and pride someone else—in the case of Basic Training this means a drill sergeant—will do it for you.

5. Generosity: In Basic Training you will not succeed without some help from your battle buddies. In life you will not succeed without some help from your friends, your colleagues and others in your life. It is a principle that has existed in texts from multiple sources from multiple perspectives throughout all of recorded history: What comes around goes around.

In the next post in this set I’ll go over those pieces of wisdom-for-success that are learned through the experience in Basic Training.





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