If you want to be the best, you've got to train like the best.

There is a common refrain heard today that America is in the midst of a leadership crisis.  I have touched upon this topic in a previous blog post (see "The End of Leadership").  My wife and I recently attended the 2018 Warren Bennis Leadership Experience at the University of Cincinnati.  The two guest speakers this year were David Gergen (former White House advisor, CNN Senior Political Analyst, writer, and Harvard Professor) and Doris Kearns Goodwin (who has written several biographies of former U.S. Presidents, including one of my all-time favorites, Team of Rivals and most recently a book on leadership called, Leadership in Turbulent Times).  Both speakers were fantastic, and both speakers touched upon this crisis of leadership.  When asked why this was the case, Gergen talked about the fact that so many of our past leaders in both politics and government came from the military.  Unfortunately, or so he claimed, this is no longer the case.  Ms. Kearns Goodwin agreed with him.  The military does a great job of training men and women to become leaders.

Did you know that twenty-six of our U.S. Presidents served in the military (26/44, or nearly 60%)?  Currently, there are 80 members of the U.S. House of Representatives who have served in the military - that's almost 20% of all the Representatives in Congress!  There are 24 Senators who have served in the military (24/100, or 24%).  Compare that to the fact that in the early 1970's, nearly 3/4 of the members of Congress were veterans of our armed forces.  So, while the number of veterans in Congress is down compared to the past (Gergen was correct), the relative percentage of our government leaders who are veterans is still much higher than the percentage of Americans who have served in the military (as a point of fact, based on the most recent 2010 Census, only 7% of Americans have served in the military).  The military is an excellent proving ground for leadership.

My experience in the military was fantastic - the opportunities for leadership, even at the earliest stages of my career, were incredibly valuable to me, both personally and professionally.  However, I wanted to know more about this connection between military service and leadership.  What does the military do differently to educate and train leaders?  I decided to go directly to the source, and I turned to some of the most elite military units in the world.

I just finished reading a series of books by the ex-Navy SEAL and former CIA officer, Dick Couch.  While some of his stories are fiction, the ones that I read were non-fiction books on the selection and training process for Navy SEALs (The Warrior Elite and The Finishing School), the U.S. Army Rangers (Sua Sponte), and the U.S. Army Special Forces, commonly known as the Green Berets (Chosen Soldier).  He also wrote a non-fiction book on the U.S. Marine Special Forces Unit, but I have not read that one yet.

The U.S. Navy SEALs, U.S. Army Rangers, and Green Berets are arguably the best trained military units in the world, and the long and arduous process that sailors and soldiers go through to join these units are legendary.  I was particularly interested in learning about the selection process (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, or BUDS for the SEALs, Ranger School and the Ranger Assessment and Selection, or RASP for the U.S. Army 75th Ranger Regiment, and the Special Forces Qualification course, or Q course for the Green Berets).

Two points caught my immediate attention.  First, the military invests an incredible amount of time and resources in training these elite commando units.  For example, it takes a little over a year for a sailor to become a U.S. Navy SEAL, and that doesn't include the initial "boot camp" training that all sailors go through or the 8 weeks that most sailors spend in Navy Special Warfare Preparatory School.   After graduating from BUD/S (24 weeks), sailors go through airborne training (3 weeks) and SEAL Qualification Training (26 weeks).  Only then does a sailor get to pin on the coveted Navy Special Warfare badge and truly become a "U.S. Navy SEAL."  Soldiers who want to join either the 75th Ranger Regiment or the Green Berets also have a long and arduous training process.  It takes a really long time to become a Navy SEAL, Ranger, or Green Beret!

I get it - it takes a long time to become a doctor, a nurse, or an allied health professional too.  But the second point that caught my attention was how much time the military spends on training AFTER their sailors and soldiers join these elite units.  For example, all of the soldiers reaching a certain rank have to go through additional leadership training - there is special platoon leader and company commander training for officers (and more after that as they continue to advance in rank) or squad leader, unit NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer), First Sergeant, and Master Sergeant training for enlisted ranks.  Please note that the military continues to invest this much time in training, even during war time!  Consider also that all of these sailors and soldiers receive their training from their peers in their same elite units.  So, even when our military needs sailors and soldiers on the front lines to fight, they continue to invest time and precious resources to train leadership.

It really does bring to mind the old adage, "If you want to be the best, you've got to train like the best."  Maybe our current crisis in leadership is due to the fact that our government and business leaders are no longer coming from the military as frequently as they did in the past.  Regardless, I think there is certainly a lot that those of us in health care can learn from the military on how they train their everyday workforce and their leaders.  More to come...