Military Review English Edition September-October 2014 | Page 60
Now all you recruities [sic] what’s drafted to-day,
You shut up your rag-box an’ ‘ark to my lay,
An’ I’ll sing you a soldier as far as I may:
A soldier what’s fit for a soldier.
—Rudyard Kipling
T
oday’s Army is well on its way to codifying
a professional military ethic (PME) that
will define our service and ensure that we
retain our nation’s trust, but a difficulty remains in
translating this high ideal to the individual soldier.1
Discussions in the past have often highlighted a
need to successfully articulate and decipher the
PME from our learning institutions to the frontline
“strategic corporal” in order to have an impact on our
organizational success.2 The implied transformation
from citizens into soldiers into ethical leaders will
take place in a multitude of forums from institutional settings to professional mentorship, and this
article cannot cover them all. Instead, let us turn our
focus to one of the most readily adapted rituals we
have in our service.
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Friday afternoons across the Army, commanders and their senior NCOs face their formations in
the perfect setting for a discussion of the PME—the
weekend safety brief. Sadly, because of a long-standing
practice, the large majority of these opportunities end
up wasted as leaders attempt to check the block with
unmemorable maxims for soldiers’ immediate behavior.
This usually comes in the form of a list of things soldiers should do and things soldiers should avoid. This
custom could accomplish much more if we designed it
to focus beyond this simple formality and began to shift
soldiers closer to a commitment to the Army values
using memorable engagement.
Adopting a model of transformational stories from
recent business literature will provide leaders with a
method that allows them to truly engage soldiers in
discussions about the PME while continuing to attack
the immediate concerns that the weekend safety brief
should address. In lieu of the customary mode for these
safety briefings, this article details a better technique for
ensuring a lasting impact on our soldiers. That method is
to communicate a vision through memorable stories.
September-October 2014 MILITARY REVIEW