Again, and nothing more than my personal opinion at this point based on my career. And I think in this particular case a reference to when I was a Commanding Officer of the aircraft group at Camp Pendleton. It is Germaine. We had ten squadrons within the air group, about 4,000 Marines and each unit had a respect for their individual lineage, their own heritage. In those-- that respect for each individual unit, many of them inherited, had to be respected. From somebody who was overseeing ten disparate organizations within one large group. However, everybody needed to understand the over arching mantra, the over-arching ethos within the group. And really what we did was build upon the ethos of the Marine Corp as a large institution. Uncompromising pursuit of excellence. 100% personal, individual and collective responsibility and accountability. Again, we get back to being open, honest and communicate. Those were critical things. You could run a fine line between trying to, at sometimes I've found myself instigating friendly competition between two units for the sake of driving them to perhaps a higher level of performance than they may have thought that they were capable of. There were other times when I felt like I was trying to throttle everybody back a little bit because people were getting out ahead, and in the process may have been hurting their units and the overall group as a larger group. So it was a balancing perspective throughout. And I think the thing that allowed me to be successful at a squadron command level, but also later on as a group commander. Is that I started off on day one with everybody in the squadron, to start with the squadron. 350 Marines, I started with a personal 45 minute to an hour. A presentation made by myself to the groups. I went with the enlisted marines first, then the staff Non-Commissioned Officers second, and the Warrant Officers and Commissioned Officers third. Gave them the identical presentation where they knew exactly where I was coming from, exactly what I expected of them, and exactly what they could expect of me. And again, it was open, honest communication showing them that I had, demonstrating to them that I had compassion for they and their families. Laying down the law, letting them know exactly what was required of them in order for them to be individually and collectively successful. That model worked exceptionally well at the squadron level, with only 350 folks under my command. Much more difficult when we got to the group level and we had somewhere between 4 and 5,000 depending upon who was deployed at the time and not. But, I actually did use the exact same model and had all the enlisted Marines, in every squadron, all ten squadrons broken out. I think I ended u giving 30 different presentations for the enlisted Marines, the staff Non-Commissioned Officers in each squadron, and then the Commissioned Officers in each squadron. But at the end of the day, everybody knew exactly what, as I would say what ticked Patty off and they avoided doing those things that ticked Patty off. They knew what I expected of them. They knew what to expect of me. I told them that I would never, ever lie to them. And that the well-being of their families was paramount in my focus of concern. And at the end of the day, if awards and rewards are a testament to how successful we were, each of the individual squadrons attained a great deal more awards than at any other time in the history of that air group. So I felt that, that open honest communication up front. Setting the standard and then holding people to that standard was absolutely critical to have an ultimately successful individuals, squadrons and the entire group. A great example would be in a 2000, when was it?. 2003 I was the Operations Officer for 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. And we were sitting in a, abandoned Kuwaiti commando camp, about 30 miles from the boarder of Iraq, and we were planning the initial invasion into Iraq. Which occurred in March of 2003. And as you can well imagine, our host nation, the Kuwaitis have significantly different cultures than the American culture. And among the American military, the Marine Corps has a significantly different culture. Then the rest of the U.S. military. And so trying to deal with our allies, which were multinational, both from the Arab nations, the Gulf nations, the Brits, the French, the Italians, the Spanish, the Polls, and then our hosts in Kuwait. If we came into every single conversation with seeing things from the U.S., or the U.S. Marine Corp, perspective we were doomed. You just can't get there from here. And a great case in point is that our Kuwaiti hosts. We would set up a meeting, the meeting never started on time. And that drives people who are anal about punctuality crazy, but it was a cultural thing for them. They don't want to just show up in a meeting and get right into the topics. They actually want to socialize, get to know people, relax, drink some tea, and then get around to addressing the issues. Something that was very foreign to us. And we learned by trial and error. Initially we tried to press our American Marine culture on our foreign hosts. And that didn't work so well until we realized that we needed to back off a little bit, relax a little bit, socialize a little bit, drink some tea. Smoke a cigarette even though you don't smoke and just enjoy the company. And then we can get down to the issues that were facing us as a common group. Again very, very different when we would go interface with our British brethren or the Spanish military or the poles, and then we have a different language difficulties to overcome. So I guess my takeaway from that would be don't get so enamored with your own culture that you completely are ignorant or unwilling to respect the culture of others. Especially if you're in their country you need to be immersed in their culture to understand them. And at least take the time to try to understand hem so that you can communicate better, build that trust, develop those relationship. And from there, anything can be solved. I can speak from a very recent experience with this, because my son calls me at least two or three times a week to ask my advice when dealing with his fiancee. And after having been married for 38 years, and having much scar tissue, I just gave him some advice to take the emotion out of the situation. Assess the facts. Try to argue from a position of logic and treat the other individual with the utmost respect at all times. And having said that it needed to be completely clear to him that that is not going to guarantee a win. If you're out for a win you're probably looking at the wrong alternate goal. It should be to figure out what the issue is, address the issue, come to a consensus between the two warring parties, if you will. And then move forward together to craft a solution, not to try to keep score with the other person and years later stick it in their ear when It comes up as an ancillary part to another argument, at a point. So I haven't had to deal with my daughter in this respect, she has taken, throughout the years she has taken really, really good notes of all the counseling that I've given my son. And as I've told people in the past, my son is running at a full sprint through the mind-field of life, and my daughter just watches where he steps on mines and avoids the mines. And had a much calmer upbringing than my son's. But I think that that would hold true for anybody. Just take the emotion out of it. Look at the facts, analyze things, and then try to figure out a way that both sides can come together. Or, all sides in a particular arrangement. And, come together and craft a solution that is gonna have the consensus of the group. And, it may not be a perfect solution for one, or more parties in the situation. But it's a lot better than the current situation. The hardest thing for me is to take the emotion out of it. Nine times out of ten I just want to go off and that's the wrong thing to do 99.9% of the time.
