By Major John McRae

Years ago when I was in company command, my First Sergeant and I would meet new soldiers to provide our respective philosophies and expectations. I served nearly two and a half years in command and conducted many of these sessions. By the time I turned over the company to the next commander, I had narrowed my key points. I framed my command philosophy in terms of the familiar seven Army Values: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage. These standards are taught to all soldiers from day one, are easily understood, and are applicable to junior and senior soldiers alike. I eventually honed my remarks down to a series of reflections on the penultimate one: Integrity. Ultimately, all other aspects of what we do must flow from integrity or we as leaders and organizations are certain to fail.

General Raymond Odierno, the 38^th Army Chief of Staff, has returned time and again to the thematic element of trust as the bedrock of the Army profession. He holds that trust is a precursor to the ability to get anything done in such a large and diffuse organization, saying, “You have to rely on [fellow soldiers] undeniably. You have to be there for each other in the most stringent of conditions. You have to believe that they will be there for you at the most important times. You have to work as a team and that trust must be built over time, and it must be earned.” All crucial points honed over a long period of service spent studying the human rather than the technological or systems-based domains.

I would respectfully add one underlying assumption to GEN Odierno’s vision: That though trust is of critical importance, it is innately predicated on integrity. Put another way, integrity is fundamentally how and why trust happens among any group of professionals, military or otherwise.

Integrity must be first, last, and always, lest we become unmoored from the fundamental dictums of how our military operates. We are not a “results at any cost” organization…in the moral domain, integrity bears the weight of a division…

“Black Hearts”

Jim Frederick’s Black Hearts: One Platoon’s Descent into Madness in Iraq’s Triangle of Death, provides an excellent illustration. It explores the story of a platoon of soldiers from the 101^st Airborne Division launched into a difficult set of circumstances during the pre-surge violence and uncertainty gripping the country in late 2005. After casualties mounted in the unit, its NCO leadership began ignoring or incentivizing more aggressive tactics and procedures, even giving tacit approval to the cover up of criminal behavior.

Over time, a kind of perverted trust began to unite the unit’s soldiers and leaders, emboldening bad behavior, and eventually slipping into an outright “us against them” mentality with respect to all Iraqis. This defiant but warped manifestation of unit cohesion no doubt brought some measure of comfort to junior soldiers constantly fearing for their lives, but completely undermined the tenets of the “hearts and minds” campaign they were supposed to be pursuing. Conditions continued to degrade until the unit more resembled a team of vicious mercenaries than American soldiers, ultimately leading to one of the worst chapters on the ground in the Iraq War.

The complete jettisoning of integrity in favor of self-preservation led to preemptive displays of violence and, ultimately, indiscriminate killing. Rules of Engagement were completely ignored as a matter of course. In fact, the brutal murder of an entire Iraqi family committed and covered up by a faction of the unit may still be a secret were it not for the courageous actions of another soldier who came forward to his superiors with the details. Thankfully the soldier-a moral outlier-had the courage to violate the malignant form of trust that had formed, standing alone as the only member of the team still bound by the fundamental value of integrity.

Values Inversion

Somehow, under the stress of combat, the virtue of trust within this platoon and immediate loyalty to the small unit over Army, mission, or moral code had grown exponentially large relative to any other concern, finally obscuring all other points of the moral compass for every soldier—save one. For a military commonly engaged in the throes of violence, this rapid “inversion of values” while under fire cannot be ignored.

The subjugation of integrity is not a concern only in combat. From a Hollywood-like scenario featuring a group of elite Army Rangers working together to rob a bank, to the tight cohesion in a department on a Navy destroyer who would rather fudge inspection details than let down a favored but failing lieutenant commander, to an Army company collectively ignoring rules on the handling of detainees as de facto unit practice, to drill sergeants who use false trust to take advantage of trainees, value inversion is a challenge for a wide variety of leaders and units.

Sadly, these sorts of scenarios continue to play out in ever more distressing ways. All portend troubling variations on the subordination of integrity in favor of quid pro quo, transactional, or personality-based rewards systems. Despite the U.S. military’s standing as the premiere leader development organization on the planet, the moral fundamentals of character among teammates cannot always be assumed. Thus, leaders must be prepared to step in, step up, and, when necessary, undertake fundamental organizational change built on a common understanding of integrity, rather than merely riding out a tour and doing business “like it’s always been done.”

Integrity is the Foundation

As a commander, I spoke of integrity because it was what I defined as the moral fulcrum. I felt it would either put my unit at the highest risk for failure or would enable its success. I felt that it was something that really could be inculcated with time, example, and oversight.

Since leaving command, I have never lost sight of how essential integrity is to all we do as leaders. I do not think I am alone in believing that this core element of leadership should not end with one’s tenure in command. Integrity is no less fundamental when asking a company of infantrymen to follow you into the breach than when speaking truth to power on a moral issue within a headquarters staff. Therefore it cannot be something surrendered along with the guidon at change of command.

Integrity must be first, last, and always, lest we become unmoored from the fundamental dictums of how our military operates. We are not a “results at any cost” organization. The U.S. military achieves victory every day in ways not immediately perceived on the battlefield, and in the moral domain, integrity bears the weight of a division of tanks.

[Photo: Flickr CC: Courtney]

Army Major John McRae is a student at the Naval War College’s College of Naval Command and Staff. He previously served as Executive Officer to the Army National Guard G-3, the Engineer Force Manager for the Army National Guard’s total Engineer force, and the Aide de Camp to the First Army Deputy Commanding General. He holds a Master’s degree in Management from Webster University and is a Master’s candidate in International Relations through the University of Oklahoma. The views expressed in this piece are his own and do not necessarily reflect DoD policy.