What is my calling? Have you ever asked yourself that? For me, it is leadership development and I try to apply it to every job that I have in the Army. It may seem like second nature to apply leadership development to every job in the Army, but sometimes it can be a stretch. For example, staff jobs can give you tunnel vision to the point where you're focused so much on the next brief to prepare or the next operation to plan that you lose sight of developing the subordinate leaders around you. I used to fool myself into thinking that I wasn't influencing anyone around me in terms of leadership development because everyone was simply stuck in the staff vacuum focusing on their own thing. However, after a while I realized that as an officer, you are a leader 100% of the time regardless of your job. The rank on an officer's chest means that Soldiers are looking at him to set the example at all times. It doesn't matter if you're a LT making coffee for the battalion S3 or a CPT writing an operation order, Soldiers around you still see you as a leader. I sometimes doubted this fact until I heard Soldiers complain about a lack of standards with a various staff officers. This meant that there was still a higher standard they expected from these officers although they were not in official leadership positions. It's up to an officer to find the opportunities, which may be few and far between, to create more leaders by developing those around him.
So fast forward to my current job as a military science instructor at West Point. This seems like a no brainer in terms of having a chance to develop future leaders. However, a 55 minute class period is not a whole lot of time to cover the class material of warning orders, operations orders, tactics, doctrine, etc., This means that actually talking about leadership development seldom happens in the classroom unless I take less time to teach the required material. As my time management improves, I hope to take 5-10 minutes each class to talk about leadership in general...but I'm not there yet. In order to answer my calling in this job, I have found that there are many opportunities to work with cadets outside of the classroom. These are the opportunities to talk to them about what to expect in the Army and why their development at West Point is so important. These are the moments that give me purpose in this job. Teaching military science is great and the cadets need that knowledge as a future officer, but my true passion is helping them develop as leaders. It is music to my ears to hear a cadet talk about ways he can improve as a leader and then see him start to apply the changes to his daily routine. Or to see the look on a cadet's face when the light bulb turns on and he gets excited about a leadership technique or training event to try with his subordinates.
There are times when I may feel beaten down or mentally spent during a day, but it's small events like those above that put a spring back in my step. While finding my calling may vary in difficulty depending on the job, I just have to look for the opportunities. This is what keeps me going in the Army.
