Nosce Te Ipsum (Veteran Voices)

Dialogue between military members and the civilian workforce is different, to say the least. I think that early on in my experience transitioning, I had to learn how to dial it back a bit in terms of directiveness, in terms of using jargon and other terms that people just may not be familiar with.

I think that it's particularly a challenge in team leadership settings because we're used to a certain way of doing things and a certain way of holding people accountable and leading on issues. It's different in the civilian environment, in that you have to often understand where people are at on a much more personal level. And you have to really get invested in knowing your team in a way that allows you to have those tough conversations later on down the line when issues arise, instead of spot correcting or being sort of overly directive about things as they move along.

I think the best thing that I did in my transition to learning how to do this kind of stuff was listening to leaders on my team, listening to leaders that I worked with and how they talked to people, and picking their brains and trying to emulate that, and trying to find people who are successful at communicating and learning from them, and even following up, asking them, hey, what happened back there? How did you think about that? Is that a thing that you think I could improve on?

Constantly soliciting feedback is another thing that I have found incredibly useful. About every two or three weeks, I think it's been useful for me to reach out to my manager, to reach out to other people on the team and say, how am I doing? We had this project back here. How did it go? What could I do better? How could I improve?

Showing that kind of humility, showing that kind of candor I think is incredibly useful to getting good feedback. It shows people you're serious about improving, that you really want to do better. And I have found, so far, that in every environment I've been in with civilian leaders on teams, they value it a lot. They really value it a lot. And that's a different kind of approach to working with a team than I experienced in the military.

What I found that has been really helpful is asking friends and people I respect to critique me on what I could do better and how I could interact with others better. Because, again, it's a process, especially, I think, if you're coming from like ground side and you're just used to being around all your boys all day, and now you've got to sit in a classroom with a whole bunch of different age of students and different genders and things like that from all different walks of life. You're going to offend someone very quickly.

But to learn how to talk like that, I think you start by observing your surroundings. You observe your surroundings. You take in how everyone else is kind of talking. And it doesn't mean that you become like everyone else. But you do have to become situationally aware and actually apply what it is you're seeing to yourself.

The best way to do that is to gain some friendships, ask, hey, how am I doing? How could I do this better? I'm explosive. My emotions are explosive. When I get ticked off, I'm just done. You can't just go off on people here either.

So that's been one of the best things. And I know I've said it a couple of times, but finding a mentor is just gold. Finding someone who really wants to see you succeed, who you can trust to say, I'm struggling in this area. I do emotionally explode, or, I would just keep offending people, and I'm not invited to these conversations, or, I feel really awkward in these conversations, that's someone who can be extremely invaluable to you.