Tap Code

About halfway through my first year of medical school, I applied for and received a commission in the United States Navy as part of the Uniformed Services Health Professions Scholarship program.  That summer, I attended what is known as Officer Indoctrination School (OIS) at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island.  OIS basically teaches physicians, nurses, lawyers, chaplains, and similar non-staff corps officers the basics of being an officer in the Navy - it's affectionately known as "Knife and Fork" school.  In addition to learning how to march and wear a uniform, I also learned how to sail a boat and became certified in scuba diving (the small boat sailing and scuba diving was on my own time, which perhaps gives you some idea of why OIS is called "Knife and Fork" school.

One of the highlights of my time at OIS was a special guest speaker that came to give us a lecture - he had been lecturing at the Naval War College, which is also in Newport.  It's been over 25 years ago, but I remember the lecture in vivid detail.  The speaker was Vice Admiral James Stockdale, a U.S. Navy fighter pilot, former Prisoner of War in Vietnam, and a winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor.  Admiral Stockdale finished his military career as President of the Naval War College.  He was an amazing man.

Admiral Stockdale told us about his time as a Prisoner of War at the infamous Hanoi Hilton.  He talked about being tortured repeatedly.  He talked about something that management guru Jim Collins subsequently has called the "Stockdale Paradox" in his book, Good to Great.  He told Collins:

I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.

The "Stockdale Paradox" boils down to this:

You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

Stockdale also talked to my OIS class about how he and his fellow POW's communicated with the use of something called the Tap Code.  The "Tap Code" is a way to encode a message on a letter-by-letter basis, which is transmitted by tapping the walls or metal bars inside a cell:

Each letter is shown on a 5x5 square - the first number of taps indicates the row and the second number of taps indicates the column.  So, two taps followed by three taps would be the letter H.  The letter K is left out of the 5x5 square - two C's were used in place of the letter K.

At times, the prisoners were unable to communicate by tapping.  They used coughs and sniffs in these situations.  As Steven Southwick and Dennis Charney write in "Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life's Greatest Challenges", 1 was a sniff, 2 was a cough, 3 was a clearing of the throat, 4 was a hack, and 5 was a spit.  With this method, the letter H was a cough followed by a clearing of the throat.

For these prisoners, the "Tap Code" was all about maintaining a connection with another human being.  It's what kept them going through it all.  Through this human connection, the POW's were able to keep a chain of command and maintain their morale.  Human connection meant survival.

Admiral Stockdale, writing in A Vietnam Experience said:

When you are alone and afraid and feel that your culture is slipping away, even though you are hanging onto your memories...hanging on with your fingernails as best you can, and in spite of your efforts, still see the bottom of the barrel coming up to meet you, and realize how thin and fragmented our veneer of culture is, you suddenly know the truth that we all can become animals when cast adrift and tormented for a mere matter of months.  It is then that you start having some very warm thoughts about the only life-preserver within reach - that human mind, that human heart next door...[when people ask] ""What kept you going?  What was your highest value?"  My answer is: "The man next door."

Human connection.  It's incredibly important, of course.  Several clinical studies have consistently shown that a small social network or lack of emotional support is associated with a three-fold increase in subsequent cardiac events in patients who have suffered their first heart attack, a two- to three-fold increase in future coronary artery disease among otherwise healthy patients.  Social support - having friends and families to rely upon - may, in fact, have just as strong of an impact (in this case, a positive benefit) on overall life expectancy as obesity, cigarette smoking, hypertension, or lack of exercise (in these cases, a negative effect).  Emotional support can help improve outcomes for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, or even cancer.

One of the things that new leaders are never quite prepared for is being alone.  Every leader experiences it.  And we are not always prepared for it.  As William Shakespeare said in his play. Henry IV, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."  It's been talked about many times - if you don't believe it, just Google "Loneliness" and "Leadership."  The important thing for all leaders is to do whatever they need to do to maintain that human connection.  Find colleagues outside of your current work setting that you can share stories or bounce ideas off of each other.  Find a mentor - and use that mentor.  Better yet, be a mentor to someone else.  It's so very important.  Maintain a human connection.  Figure out your version of the "Tap Code."