Lieutenant Haofeng Liu, U.S. Marine Corps
The U.S. Marine Corps recently added empathy as its 15th leadership trait. A lot of rumbling followed the news. I heard Marines asking, “What role does empathy play in a society of warfighters like Marine Corps? We’re trained to kill people, not to listen to their feelings.”
That line of protest misunderstands what empathy is, and why it is such a valuable trait for leaders in the Marine Corps.
A Matter of Understanding
Many of the stories that instructors and senior officers told during Marine officer training at The Basic School centered around their first leadership challenges. I spent a significant amount of time wondering what my first such challenge as a lieutenant would be, when it would arise, and how I would deal with it.
I did not have to wait long.
Less than two weeks after I checked into my first unit, I was in Twentynine Palms participating in an integrated training exercise. One of my Marines was new to the unit, but I was already receiving reports of his general disrespect and selfishness, and his bad attitude toward his non-commissioned officers. I brushed it aside at first, thinking this was an expression of the growing pains he was experiencing while trying to integrate with a new unit. But the reports kept coming in, and I soon was forced to confront my first big decision as a second lieutenant: How do I deal with this Marine?
No comments:
Post a Comment