13-04-2010, 09:27 PM
In re: this incident and posts #70 and 71:
I am tempted to look at this issue as an organizational development conundrum in terms of both training and leadership, two areas in which I have done some significant work.
No, I haven’t been in combat.
I did a brief stint as a wannabe Green Beret – Boy Scouts with M-1’s and blanks in 1966 -- but then my college roommate [a Christian conscientious objector] and my old high school English teacher [“Today we shall have naming of parts”] (who shunned me when I showed up in his domain dressed in jump boot and black beret), brought me to my senses before I could put myself into an untenable personal and moral position in which others would surely place me in an irretrievable one.
Keith’s insights are valid and we must acknowledge the vet’s persona and experience even, as in another distant example, they retain anger and turn it on adolescents arrested for protesting in Senator’s offices. Even reading Jonathan Shay’s works on war and PTSD, or Keegan’s “The Face of Battle”, cannot convey the reality. One can only try to be at one with one’s own experience and reality.
But, in an attempt to glean what I could from the development of soldiers in order to develop more effectively trained emergency responders, I have delved into the subject, ranging across topics of performance psychology, cognitive studies, sports psychology et al to learn how one can draw from within -- or from within another -- the best that is there. Hitting home runs, tactically seeing how to manage a mass casualty incident, and soldiering have some things in common.
“Success depends on how effectively we can rapidly sort through, understand, assimilate and act on the most important bits (or "golden nuggets") of information within the vast quantities of data and information that are available to us in that moment.”
This has been termed “situational awareness” or “tactical decision-making under stress”, two areas of intense US military funded research. Early events causing this inquiry were the collision of two jumbo aircraft on the runway at an airport in the Azores, and the incident involving the USS Vincennes. Vast quantities of formal studies followed, were boiled down, and were folded into military training.
“If we function within a stressful technical or operational setting, such as a command or operations center of some sort, we have the added input (both information and “noise”) of phone, fax, e-mail, various alarms, radios on multiple frequencies covering multiple agencies, as well perhaps as a wide range of data that is available from an array of computers, dials, gauges and technical sensors.” Situation awareness requirements will vary, however, depending on a host of variables such as weather, temperature, lighting, surface or terrain variables, our strategic plan, and the nature of our “opponent”.
The addition of automation and “intelligent systems” frequently exacerbate the problem, rather than help it. It is the human integration and interpretation that is the key component of situation awareness (SA). The goal is to make good decisions that depend on having a good grasp of the true picture of the situation. Mica Endsley, the guru of SA, uses the PCP acronym: perception, comprehension, projection. Further research and development in the topic brings you to a sport psychologist’s examination of “the four types of attention”, and Boyd’s OODA loop, and its use in “free play” by the US Marines (and USAF Academy rugby teams). Simulation-based training (another area of some person interest and expertise) lends other methods for training. This is discussed in the attached “Psychology of Strategy” (an MS Word document).
James Loehr compared military and sport toughening models in his books:
Toughness Training for Life, James E. Loehr, Ed.D., Plume/Penguin, New York 1993, as well as The New Toughness Training for Sports: Mental. Emotional and Physical Conditioning from One of the World's Premier Sports Psychologists, James E. Loehr, Ed.D., Dutton Books, New York 1994.
Here I summarize that comparison:
Undisciplined, immature, unfocused and fearful teenagers are transformed, in an 8-week period, into soldiers that can undertake 20 mile hikes carrying 60-100 pounds of gear, overcome a wide variety of obstacles, and conquer their ultimate fear. The techniques involved in this remarkable conversion have been refined over thousands of years. Studying this approach might yield important insights.
The first place we might look is at the process of marching. Even today, when soldiers don't march into battle, they march because marching is for between battles. Marching develops and demonstrates an attitude that shows no weakness, no deviation, no fatigue, no negativism, no fear. What you see when you see a military unit in drill or on the march is precision, unit synchronization, decisive clean movement, total focus, confidence, and positive energy. Even the breathing is synchronized to movement. Marching is practice for being decisive, looking strong and acting confidently (regardless of feelings); it requires discipline, sustained concentration, and poise (all of which are essential elements in conquering emotions, especially the fear of death). The next time you observe an athletic competition, observe how the athletes walk into competition; watch their body language at the moments in the gaps between competitive movement.
Further inquiry into soldier-making reveals the following effective elements:
1. A strict code concerning how one acts and behaves, especially under stress (head, chin and shoulders up, with quick and decisive response to commands).
2. No visible sign of weakness or negative emotion is permitted. (No matter how you feel, this is the way you act.)
3. Regular exposure to high levels of physical training as well as mental and
emotional stress (courtesy of the obnoxious drill instructor) to accelerate the toughening process. (The more elite the unit, the higher the stress.)
4. Precise control, regulation and requirement of cycles of sleeping, eating,
drinking and rest, with mandatory meals.
5. A rigorous physical fitness program, including aerobic, anaerobic and
strength training.
6. An enforced schedule of trained recovery, including the items in #4, as well as regularly-scheduled R&R.
Some of the undesirable features of this military training system are:
1. The stripping of personal identity and its replacement with group identity. (Where this happens in civilian life (gangs and cults), it usually indicates low self-esteem.)
2. Military values, beliefs and skills have little application in civilian life.
3. Blind adherence to authority is rarely appropriate outside the military.
4. Mental and emotional inflexibility and rigidity are severely limiting. Even on the battlefield, and in any emergency situation, inflexible thinking leads straight to disaster.
5. An acquired dislike for physical training, and/or intense mental and emotional stress, is a common result of the pain and boredom of the process, although others adopt a pattern of fitness that they follow for life.
One approach used in military training was presented at the 19th Annual Springfield College Department of Psychology Conference in June 2002 ("Winning in Sport and Life") by Dave Czesniuk, a performance enhancement instructor at West Point. Dave's job was to prepare a team of volunteers (admittedly a group with high abilities, motivation and previous success) to compete in the annual Sandhurst event.
Named after Great Britain's equivalent to West Point (and always won by a team of soldiers from Sandhurst, who prepare year round), the event is scored by team only and requires nine teammates to traverse five miles over rugged terrain as fast as possible while undertaking a series of challenges or skill stations that include (among others): marksmanship; the setup, use and takedown of technical gear; rappelling down a cliff and over a river; and working together to get all nine team members over an 8-foot wall without using any aids.
The team gets very limited opportunities to "scrimmage" the event; team
members are, of course, also involved in athletics, other military training, and an intense curriculum of study. Dave described participation in the event as similar to belonging to a club at another college; success was based entirely on what the individuals brought to the attempt.
Training consisted of physical fitness and limited work in each of the skill stations, but Dave's primary role was to meet with each individual to establish and create an audio CD training tool. The audio tool consisted of each volunteer reading a script, out loud and in his own voice. (The brain, of course, responds much more effectively to one's own voice.)
The "script" described, in detail, each key moment of the entire event as well as the role that individual would play in the complex interaction with his teammates at each skill station. The script also utilized goal statements, affirmations and cues specific to the individual and his role.
[The above was taken from the chapter on "Inner Game Coaching Techniques" in my compendium entitled "Summon The Magic".]
There are numerous other sources of similar research and instruction on the development of superlative performance, among them Tim Gallwey’s series. But to look at this issue as an exercise in organizational development is to sanctify it… to say it is worthy of research and study and improvement. For me, that was a road not taken.
I think we need to simply understand that, whether they were mindful or not, whether they embraced the “attitude” of the mission or not, they did what they were sent there to do.
A bit of dialogue from the movie “Glory”:
Col. Montgomery: [ordering the burning of Darien, Georgia] Prepare your men to light torches!
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: I will not!
Col. Montgomery: That is an order!
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: An immoral order, and by the Articles of War, I am not bound to follow it!
Col. Montgomery: Then, you can explain that at your court-martial... after your men are placed under my command!
I am tempted to look at this issue as an organizational development conundrum in terms of both training and leadership, two areas in which I have done some significant work.
No, I haven’t been in combat.
I did a brief stint as a wannabe Green Beret – Boy Scouts with M-1’s and blanks in 1966 -- but then my college roommate [a Christian conscientious objector] and my old high school English teacher [“Today we shall have naming of parts”] (who shunned me when I showed up in his domain dressed in jump boot and black beret), brought me to my senses before I could put myself into an untenable personal and moral position in which others would surely place me in an irretrievable one.
Keith’s insights are valid and we must acknowledge the vet’s persona and experience even, as in another distant example, they retain anger and turn it on adolescents arrested for protesting in Senator’s offices. Even reading Jonathan Shay’s works on war and PTSD, or Keegan’s “The Face of Battle”, cannot convey the reality. One can only try to be at one with one’s own experience and reality.
But, in an attempt to glean what I could from the development of soldiers in order to develop more effectively trained emergency responders, I have delved into the subject, ranging across topics of performance psychology, cognitive studies, sports psychology et al to learn how one can draw from within -- or from within another -- the best that is there. Hitting home runs, tactically seeing how to manage a mass casualty incident, and soldiering have some things in common.
“Success depends on how effectively we can rapidly sort through, understand, assimilate and act on the most important bits (or "golden nuggets") of information within the vast quantities of data and information that are available to us in that moment.”
This has been termed “situational awareness” or “tactical decision-making under stress”, two areas of intense US military funded research. Early events causing this inquiry were the collision of two jumbo aircraft on the runway at an airport in the Azores, and the incident involving the USS Vincennes. Vast quantities of formal studies followed, were boiled down, and were folded into military training.
“If we function within a stressful technical or operational setting, such as a command or operations center of some sort, we have the added input (both information and “noise”) of phone, fax, e-mail, various alarms, radios on multiple frequencies covering multiple agencies, as well perhaps as a wide range of data that is available from an array of computers, dials, gauges and technical sensors.” Situation awareness requirements will vary, however, depending on a host of variables such as weather, temperature, lighting, surface or terrain variables, our strategic plan, and the nature of our “opponent”.
The addition of automation and “intelligent systems” frequently exacerbate the problem, rather than help it. It is the human integration and interpretation that is the key component of situation awareness (SA). The goal is to make good decisions that depend on having a good grasp of the true picture of the situation. Mica Endsley, the guru of SA, uses the PCP acronym: perception, comprehension, projection. Further research and development in the topic brings you to a sport psychologist’s examination of “the four types of attention”, and Boyd’s OODA loop, and its use in “free play” by the US Marines (and USAF Academy rugby teams). Simulation-based training (another area of some person interest and expertise) lends other methods for training. This is discussed in the attached “Psychology of Strategy” (an MS Word document).
James Loehr compared military and sport toughening models in his books:
Toughness Training for Life, James E. Loehr, Ed.D., Plume/Penguin, New York 1993, as well as The New Toughness Training for Sports: Mental. Emotional and Physical Conditioning from One of the World's Premier Sports Psychologists, James E. Loehr, Ed.D., Dutton Books, New York 1994.
Here I summarize that comparison:
Undisciplined, immature, unfocused and fearful teenagers are transformed, in an 8-week period, into soldiers that can undertake 20 mile hikes carrying 60-100 pounds of gear, overcome a wide variety of obstacles, and conquer their ultimate fear. The techniques involved in this remarkable conversion have been refined over thousands of years. Studying this approach might yield important insights.
The first place we might look is at the process of marching. Even today, when soldiers don't march into battle, they march because marching is for between battles. Marching develops and demonstrates an attitude that shows no weakness, no deviation, no fatigue, no negativism, no fear. What you see when you see a military unit in drill or on the march is precision, unit synchronization, decisive clean movement, total focus, confidence, and positive energy. Even the breathing is synchronized to movement. Marching is practice for being decisive, looking strong and acting confidently (regardless of feelings); it requires discipline, sustained concentration, and poise (all of which are essential elements in conquering emotions, especially the fear of death). The next time you observe an athletic competition, observe how the athletes walk into competition; watch their body language at the moments in the gaps between competitive movement.
Further inquiry into soldier-making reveals the following effective elements:
1. A strict code concerning how one acts and behaves, especially under stress (head, chin and shoulders up, with quick and decisive response to commands).
2. No visible sign of weakness or negative emotion is permitted. (No matter how you feel, this is the way you act.)
3. Regular exposure to high levels of physical training as well as mental and
emotional stress (courtesy of the obnoxious drill instructor) to accelerate the toughening process. (The more elite the unit, the higher the stress.)
4. Precise control, regulation and requirement of cycles of sleeping, eating,
drinking and rest, with mandatory meals.
5. A rigorous physical fitness program, including aerobic, anaerobic and
strength training.
6. An enforced schedule of trained recovery, including the items in #4, as well as regularly-scheduled R&R.
Some of the undesirable features of this military training system are:
1. The stripping of personal identity and its replacement with group identity. (Where this happens in civilian life (gangs and cults), it usually indicates low self-esteem.)
2. Military values, beliefs and skills have little application in civilian life.
3. Blind adherence to authority is rarely appropriate outside the military.
4. Mental and emotional inflexibility and rigidity are severely limiting. Even on the battlefield, and in any emergency situation, inflexible thinking leads straight to disaster.
5. An acquired dislike for physical training, and/or intense mental and emotional stress, is a common result of the pain and boredom of the process, although others adopt a pattern of fitness that they follow for life.
One approach used in military training was presented at the 19th Annual Springfield College Department of Psychology Conference in June 2002 ("Winning in Sport and Life") by Dave Czesniuk, a performance enhancement instructor at West Point. Dave's job was to prepare a team of volunteers (admittedly a group with high abilities, motivation and previous success) to compete in the annual Sandhurst event.
Named after Great Britain's equivalent to West Point (and always won by a team of soldiers from Sandhurst, who prepare year round), the event is scored by team only and requires nine teammates to traverse five miles over rugged terrain as fast as possible while undertaking a series of challenges or skill stations that include (among others): marksmanship; the setup, use and takedown of technical gear; rappelling down a cliff and over a river; and working together to get all nine team members over an 8-foot wall without using any aids.
The team gets very limited opportunities to "scrimmage" the event; team
members are, of course, also involved in athletics, other military training, and an intense curriculum of study. Dave described participation in the event as similar to belonging to a club at another college; success was based entirely on what the individuals brought to the attempt.
Training consisted of physical fitness and limited work in each of the skill stations, but Dave's primary role was to meet with each individual to establish and create an audio CD training tool. The audio tool consisted of each volunteer reading a script, out loud and in his own voice. (The brain, of course, responds much more effectively to one's own voice.)
The "script" described, in detail, each key moment of the entire event as well as the role that individual would play in the complex interaction with his teammates at each skill station. The script also utilized goal statements, affirmations and cues specific to the individual and his role.
[The above was taken from the chapter on "Inner Game Coaching Techniques" in my compendium entitled "Summon The Magic".]
There are numerous other sources of similar research and instruction on the development of superlative performance, among them Tim Gallwey’s series. But to look at this issue as an exercise in organizational development is to sanctify it… to say it is worthy of research and study and improvement. For me, that was a road not taken.
I think we need to simply understand that, whether they were mindful or not, whether they embraced the “attitude” of the mission or not, they did what they were sent there to do.
A bit of dialogue from the movie “Glory”:
Col. Montgomery: [ordering the burning of Darien, Georgia] Prepare your men to light torches!
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: I will not!
Col. Montgomery: That is an order!
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: An immoral order, and by the Articles of War, I am not bound to follow it!
Col. Montgomery: Then, you can explain that at your court-martial... after your men are placed under my command!
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"