SPAIN06052023Audio

Dean: [00:00:00] Welcome to Inside West Point, Ideas That Impact. I'm Brigadier General Shane Reeves, the Dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Through a series of discussions, we will show you a different side of West Point where we will make even our most complex initiatives accessible to broad audiences and give you an inside view to our cross-disciplinary work, which is being applied throughout the world.

Today's episode features the impactful work being done by Colonel Everett Spain and the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership. Colonel Spain is a professor and head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at West Point. [00:00:36] He's served in a variety of positions and earned numerous prestigious awards for his performance and leadership.

I can't list them all, but a few highlights include service as a platoon leader and staff officer. where he was a member of the winning team of the 82nd Airborne Division's Best Ranger Competition. He also served as a captain in Germany, where he deployed his company on the initial NATO deployment into Kosovo, after which they were recognized with the Ischner Award, given annually to the outstanding engineer company in the United States Army.

During 2007 8, Everett was the aide de camp for the commander, Multinational Force Iraq, during what is known as the surge. He also served [00:01:12] as a White House Fellow during the Bush and Obama administrations transition year. And from 2009 to 11, Everett was the commanding officer of the United States Army Garrison Schweinfurt in Germany.

Everett has a Doctor of Business Administration in Management from Harvard Business School, a Master of Business Administration from Duke University's Fuqua school and a bachelor of science in environmental engineering from West Point. Everett, thanks for being here this morning.

Col Spain: You're welcome, sir I'll give you 20 later for that intro.

Dean: I Appreciate it. so we're gonna talk about a number of things today, but really. The title is about developing and retaining good leaders.

Okay. And you've [00:01:48] done some fascinating work on this for a number of years. And we'll talk about, specifically what you have done. But what drove you just to, generally speaking, to start thinking about leadership and retaining leadership, assessing leadership, getting the right people, maybe overlooking talent?

I mean, just generally, what got you into this, work?

Col Spain: I appreciate the question. When I was a second lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division, I had two battalion commanders in my first two and a half years. The first one was very [00:02:24] uninspiring. He would never come with us to physical training.

It was clear he was focused on his own career. He wasn't good with or really have a deep love for soldiers and non commissioned officers. And then about six months later, a second battalion commander came in. His name was Bo Temple. He was about five foot six, didn't have a ranger tab, which was pretty unusual for a senior leader in 82nd at the time.

But I tell you what, he loved the Army. He loved NCOs, he loved soldiers, he loved officers. [00:03:00] When he was off duty, he wore 82nd Airborne Division socks. With his top siders, looked kind of dorky, but he just inspired all of us that he was all in. When you saw him, he was always smiling and providing energy. He had high standards and expected excellence from all of us.

But wow, you just wanted to be like Colonel Bo Temple. The more senior officers in our, lieutenants in our unit gave them the nickname of the Bone Crusher. In a positive way. And we'd say the Bone Crusher's coming and everyone would get excited. So, one of them took energy, one of them provided energy and a great example.

[00:03:36] And I came to, to understand that that first battalion commander for a lieutenant, for me at least, Was the

Dean: army. . First off. How as a lieutenant or a young soldier your whole world Is is that battalion or squadron and how impactful that person can be?

on retaining talent or contributing to developing talent. My first battalion commander, my first squadron commander, very similar. Very, very inspirational. Made the job very fun. Exciting. We enjoyed it. It didn't feel as if it was work. You felt like you were part of something important. Was this Black Horse?

It was a Black Horse 11th [00:04:12] ACR. And 111 ACR. And as a result, And I couldn't have the, I don't have like the specific data, but so many of the lieutenants and captains that were there when I was a brand new lieutenant stayed in the army till 25, 30 years and would run into them. And I think it was really that first culture that that was developed that made them excited about a future in the profession of arms.

So we'll come back to the battalion conversation, but you took that inspiration and then you started to. to focus some of your academic energy into that. And so what, what published works I would ask, [00:04:48] are you most, you've done a lot, but what are you most proud of? And why?

Col Spain: I actually hope that's what's coming next. I'm grateful to have four cooking right now for publication. One of them we call Leaders Grading Leaders. Myself, Colonel Kate Conkey, Colonel Lolita Burrell, Dr.

Joel Cartwright are Thank you. Looking at how a leader evaluates another leader. For example, at West Point, everyone has a job every semester in the summer. And most of those jobs have both a leadership and a followership component. For the upper classes, our sophomores, [00:05:24] juniors, and seniors, that job is mostly leadership, right?

For example, sophomores are team leaders. Typically, juniors are squad leaders. Seniors can be platoon leaders or company commanders. Everyone has a job, and they're being evaluated A through F at West Point. But we're wondering how do you evaluate those folks. There's a one paragraph description of what a great leader is according to like an A grade and a B grade and a C grade for an average and maybe a substandard leader in some of the cadet documents.

It's very well written. We're really interested in what are people really grading, right? So we've done 25 interviews. We've already coded them all. Fifteen of them, or [00:06:00] sixteen, were with cadets. Nine of them were with tactical NCOs and tactical officers who also give ratings. The cadets both receive and give ratings.

And they talk about, hey, what is it when you see excellent leadership or you assign an A? What is it when you see a little bit below average leadership when you assign a C? And we're finding some really interesting results. We hope to have it published soon. Is it personal performance? Is it their subordinates performance?

Is it relationship you have with the graders? Is it their effort? Is it their attitude? Is it their, if they volunteer? What is it? So, stay tuned. That one's coming. That's

Dean: [00:06:36] interesting. How much of it also is driven by the individual giving the grade? And what their biases are? And bias not in a, in a derogatory way, but what you're talking about.

Are they a relationship individual? Or are they a merit based person or is it both? I mean, that, that's pretty interesting.

Col Spain: One, one dynamic we did, we did in the article is for our 16 or so cadets, we had half of them from the bottom 20 percent of their, of the average military grade. In other words, their job grading, their leadership grade, and half of them in the top 20 percent of their leadership grade by random.

And they don't know they're in these groups when they're being interviewed. We're asking them the same question. So we're hoping to get at what you're talking about, sir. And that is seeing how [00:07:12] different leaders. Based on what their own identity is, and their own experience, how they see others.

Dean: Interesting. What are the, very briefly, what are the other, works that you have coming out here very soon?

Col Spain: So, you've seen a lot of articles in the military over the last 15 years. Or maybe, I'll call them op eds about, are the best and brightest officers staying in or getting out of the military?

So, myself, Andy Farina Colonel Andy Farina, NBS now, Dr. Eric Lynn, a six year West Point faculty, now at Oberlin College , are in the second R& R revise and resubmit, called, Are the Best and Brightest West Pointers Getting In, or Getting Out, or Staying in the [00:07:48] Army?

So, we, we took 13 years of West Point cohorts, all of them. We operationalize what it means to be best and brightest. And then we measure those against retention patterns compared to their average performing classmate. And, stay tuned sports fans, we have the answer. Hopefully coming out soon. At a publication near you.

Dean: I'm looking forward to it. I'm going to wait by.

Col Spain: Myself and Lisa Korneman Joel Cartwright and Travis Tillman are working on right now. It's called Workplace Social Belonging. I'm a believer as you are. A lot of our teammates is that [00:08:24] we should all be able to bring ourselves to work, feel like we belong, our talents leveraged, invested in, held to high standards, and just be part of the team.

And we feel that way, frankly, professionally and personally. We can't really separate those perfectly, so our team has developed, is working on developing a 20 question scale where when done, it'll be validated so a leader can survey their formation and see if they feel like they belong or not.

It's, there's been sense of belonging surveys out there, but never one focused on the workplace. And out of our family and friends, that's where we spend most of our lives. [00:09:00] So we're really excited to have this finished. We've already collected, I think, Close to 400 survey responses about helping us validate the survey, and we're really excited to get it out there and published.

So, this one is getting ready to be submitted for, for publication.

Dean: That will be interesting, and I know we'll, we'll see what the results are when you really think about some of the tensions that are, that are permeating through our society. Sure. And trying to create an environment where there's a lot of, there's belonging means that intuitively you have to be willing to be able to respect and appreciate people who disagree with you. Sure. And be okay with that. So that will be, that'll be [00:09:36] interesting.

Yeah. Alright, so let me read you a quote. It's a, it's a quote that you cited but it's also from an individual who I hold in high regard from Secretary of Defense, at the time, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

And in addressing a class of West Point Cadets in 2011, he asked bluntly, and here's the quote, How can the Army break up the institutional concrete, its bureaucratic rigidity in its assignments and promotion processes, in order to retain, challenge, and inspire its best, brightest, and most battle tested young officers to lead the service in the future?

The question was, he said, the greatest challenge facing your army, and frankly, [00:10:12] my main worry. And so he wrote that in 2011. Now, you recently published a, what is considered a very popular paper in the U. S. Army War College Journal of Parameters, titled, The Battalion Commander Effect. So, before going into the details of the paper, I, I really saw some, some parallels between what Secretary Gates asked in 2011, and where we are now 12 years later.

And the work that you're doing, it looks as if the work you were doing was somewhat trying to address his very concern. Is that true?

Col Spain: So, it's upon us as the more senior folks in the Army to ensure we put the [00:10:48] best leaders as possible in charge of our formations. As you say a lot, sir, the future is very dynamic.

It's unpredictable. Therefore, we need wonderfully educated, deep character based. Strong, caring, competent leaders to win our future nation's wars and defend our nation's cause of freedom here and abroad. So when you think about putting these leaders in front of formation, there's two parts of it, right?

There's making sure you have the people at the time you need them. And we're talking about battalion commanders, it would be 18 years later after commissioning. And you have them raise their hand because in the Army right now, command is a[00:11:24] voluntary activity within the Army. Right. You can stay in the army and choose not to come in.

Dean: A lot of people may not realize that. So, let me just, let me rephrase that. So, if I am a the number one lieutenant colonel at the 101st, I can say thank you, but I would, I'd choose not to be, to compete for battalion

Col Spain: command. Yes, sir. As of today, you have to raise your hand and opt into the process.

of competing to become a battalion commander. While, while I'll say the intent behind that is good, and the simple, oversimplified version of [00:12:00] that is, hey, we only want people to command that want to be commanders. And for a million reasons, that holds a lot of water. But if you look deeper, you, you might sense that a lot of people are opting out of commands for other reasons other than not wanting to command.

And I would argue most of them that don't opt in are for those reasons. Some of those reasons are you're already selected for, let's use the battalion commander level. You're already selected for lieutenant colonel to be even eligible. So there's no transactional incentive to do so. You don't get additional rank.

You don't get additional pay. [00:12:36] And in fact, you'll probably have more stress and likely deploy. Now, There are certainly some benefits of this that are not, maybe not transactional. That is, it's a privilege to lead soldiers in formations. It's a privilege to be in command and have that authority and over others and over maybe, you're more likely to be at the nation's decisive point, which is just a treat and a privilege and an honor.

But transactionally, there's not a lot there. And at the same time, when family members you probably have high school age children, are very likely to. You might have a spouse with a certification that doesn't transfer. Well, and if you enter that battalion command [00:13:12] portal, or you say, I'm, I'm, I'm willing to compete, which we want our people to do, make no mistake, I want everyone to volunteer, actually.

I think that's in their best interest and the Army's and our nation's. But if you raise your hand, you enter that portal, all of a sudden, you have no idea, if selected, where you'll be in a year and a half. Now, we're doing a little better with it because now we just went to the one to N preference list.

And one to N means you get to list every one of your 200 possible battalion commands in priority order. Whereas last year and before, you could only list them in buckets. It could never communicate your actual order. Like, you maybe want to be near aging parents in Sacramento, California. Now you can pick all the [00:13:48] Fort Lewis Battalions, Sacramento Recruiting District, Northern California Engineer District, all together, which clearly communicates you need to be there near your aging parents, right, before you couldn't do that.

So that's getting better. But I had a lieutenant colonel talk to me, or actually it was a colonel talking to me the other day from the soldiers he mentors, and he said, Yeah, Everett, if you opt into battalion command, it's an honor and it's awesome, but it's also five years of pain for your family. I was like, how's that?

He said, well, the first part's obvious. It's, it's hard work, long hours, unpredictable. But like I said before, you don't know where you're going to be. So that [00:14:24] deployment for that location is a mystery. Whereas if you don't opt in serve now, you can one to one match at a certain post. You have more control if you don't opt in.

The second thing is after you command, there's three years expected of you. When you're in these former battalion command jobs, you have a war college zone in there. So you could have two to three moves. In the three years subsequent to battalion command. And those are just really painful years at a critical time in your family with high school age kids and working spouse probably with a certification by now that may be, not be state transferable.

So we just need to work really hard at finding ways to ensure people want to opt in so we get that great [00:15:00] talent there.

Dean: That's, so there's a lot to unpack there. And so let me back up a little bit. What drew you to studying battalion commanders and you're calling the battalion command effect, is it?

As you're saying these things in my head, I'm thinking, yep. Oh, yeah. Right. Like the timing is Yes, sir. Right at the point when you're probably at the highest level of personal stress, in terms of responsibilities, whether it's aging parents, whether it's kids in high school, whether it's a spouse's job maybe, maybe you yourself are ready to not move three times in a six year period, those type of things.

Give me a summary of what one of the most significant findings from the paper that you drew?

Col Spain: Sure, there are a [00:15:36] few. This is an empirical paper that took over 250 battalions, 1700 battalion commanders and 36, 000 lieutenants. So we took all we could. It wasn't a random sample. We just basically identified the battalions and went from there to match who the lieutenants were and who the lieutenant colonels were in those units. And we did. statistical regression to show whether the battalion commander variable was statistically significant at predicting that lieutenant's decision to stay in.

So, we can show empirically now with above a ninety, ninety five [00:16:12] percent confidence interval, I believe ninety nine, but I'll just say ninety five for now that that battalion commander is significant on that decision. So yes, battalion commanders matter. Now some matter to the, for the positive. Like my second battalion commander some matter for the negative probably like my first battalion commander Some don't matter because they might be just quote average but on average battalion commanders make an impact on that lieutenant's decision The second key thing we found was if you identified a high potential lieutenant's and there's lots of ways to do that but we identified about one third of all these officers and characterized them as high [00:16:48] potential due to a Due to some things that we can prove that These high potential officers, it matters more who their battalion commander was.

So a battalion commander has even more influence on the high potential officers. So if you, if you think about it, when you're a battalion commander, you should still lead assertively. You should do all the things you're going to do. And just realize, in addition, the context that you're the role model for those lieutenants.

Your professional life and your personal life, potentially, internally, they're asking themselves, Do I want to become... Lieutenant Colonel Reeves. [00:17:24]

Dean: Do you think battalion commanders understand that, the impact they have on those lieutenants?

Col Spain: I don't know. I would assume that there are some officers that do.

And many that think, hey, I'm here to train these lieutenants, which in fact they are. They should also remember they're there to role model for those lieutenants. And part of that equals giving that, those lieutenants someone to look up to and to want to be like.

Dean: And inspire. Absolutely. Inspire those lieutenants.

So, flipping this from obviously the, the [00:18:00] battalion commanders, this will have dramatic impact I'm, I'm guessing on young officers. And also in terms of establishing cultures. So how do you see this type of work maybe being used outside the Army? Being used to just talk about leadership in a more generic way at any organization?

Col Spain: Sure, we, myself and our, my two co authors, Gautam Mukunda, a professor at Harvard. We hope this would be, have some external validity and be useful in Conoco or IBM or Walmart or wherever someone's working. Just the idea that I'm a [00:18:36] leader, my example matters to my subordinates beyond just how they do that week or that day, but also whether they intend to stay in my organization.

And if any organization can retain great talent, they're going to have a sustainable competitive advantage all day long. That takes on a, existential context for us in the Army, of course.

Dean: Yeah, that's, that is exactly right. So how would you relate this to your work as a senior advisor to the Army Talent Management Task Force?

And before I even ask that question, can you just give a quick summary of what the Army Talent Management Task Force is and some of the things you've been doing with it? And then how [00:19:12] this, great article will inform some of those things. Oh, I

Col Spain: appreciate it, sir. So the Army Talent Management Task Force, was formed about 10, 12 years ago by that chief of staff of the army.

I forget who it was at the time, but it really got hyper, a hyper drive and a jet boost under general James McConville, his first year in the seat. And he had been come up a different route than most chiefs. He had been the G one in the army, the head personnel officer, head talent officer for the army.

And he took a then pretty senior. One star named Brigadier General J. P. McGee [00:19:48] and asked him to really focus on, hey, if our main competitors are China and Russia, with China, we certainly can't compete on population. We may not be able to compete on economy after, who knows how many, 10, 20 years from now, at least.

So we need to compete on people as our core. So we asked General McGee to, hey, can we transform our industrial age in very. Bureaucratic, but structured and very effective for many years, personnel system. Can we transform it into something that keep us in front of innovation for years and build the best [00:20:24] talent?

Before we even know even how to quantify that, he said, Hey, here, instead of, I don't want you to do a 10% change, jp, what I want you to do is a 10 x change to our personnel system. So we just unleash them as an organization that's external to two of our great organizations, army G one. And Army Human Resource Command as a little innovation cell that had some independence and had the Chief's backing.

In the personnel world, when, you know, I study and I've written about leading change.

Whenever someone leads change, there are different levels of resistance. There's organizational resistance, there's team resistance, and there's individual [00:21:00] resistance. Change is a threat to how things were done in the past, which is threatening to whoever designed that system, and whoever has some power and authority in that system.

So it's always seen as taking someone's power, even though that may have nothing to do with the intent. It's just reorganizing how we're doing things. And so that person may feel offended and dig in and go personal on it. So yes, it could. If, if we want to innovate and be a people first army, including staying ahead of our competition, both known and unknown, it's got to be a spot where you [00:21:36] can take prudent risk as a leader and be backed up by your chain of command in the systems.

Dean: So, let me push on a couple of things on, on this. Is it possible the pendulum could swing too far? Or maybe there's a a belief in something that isn't playing out. So I'll give you an example. You mentioned earlier the number of, the ability to...

And, and that might be problematic that maybe some of our most talented are not doing that, and maybe they're concerned about all these external things that we talked about, whether those are personal things or, or timing in life, but is it [00:22:12] also possible that the process itself may discourage talented people from saying, I don't want to participate, and then the 2nd, the 2nd thing I was thinking as you were talking is for example, maybe I can.

Move in and out of your groups, but realistically the type of person that is normally in the army You're your type A's are not gonna really that's not gonna be something They're gonna want to do because they're not gonna look to their peers and say I'm gonna be happy with them being promoted as I sit in this position.

I mean, so there's a couple of things I'm trying to see how these [00:22:48] of how these are playing out when the rubber meets the road.

Col Spain: Hey, sir. You're right on target Anytime you have a talent screening process, if you're not very careful, you're going to lose qualified candidates from opting into that system.

If you look at West Point Admissions, we've got a very complicated system. I've been on the admissions committee for years, and that may be a different conversation, but every part of that application is well meaning and has a purpose. But cumulatively, if you look at that system, we're three times as hard to apply to West Point as it is to Harvard University.

[00:23:24] Therefore, we're losing wonderful candidates just through the complexity and the extent of the system they have to go through. So it's not, it's not different from the Battalion Commander Assessment Program and its, and its sister programs. So that's another reason we have to ensure to keep the Army a fun place for Battalion Commanders, a meaningful place for Battalion Commanders, for their families.

Dean: As we move into this era of competition, certain things are our advantages and certain things are disadvantages.

We may have to be, we, we will be an expeditionary army over [00:24:00] long distances, and the advantage we have is our people. And we have to create certain skill sets in those individuals. Critical thinking comfortability and ambiguity understanding how to, to deal with, the grayness and fogginess of warfare Sure.

Character work on, so here, underlying character. But one of the, the most important characteristics is being willing to take risk. And so how do you incentivize taking risk if this is in the back of an individual's mind?

Col Spain: Well, when you want something to happen, you have to role model it.

You have to incentivize it both. directly and indirectly, right? I appreciate you pushing [00:24:36] West Point to innovate and all of us, including myself, to innovate and rewarding it for doing so. But guys like you and I have to underwrite risk when it fails as well, right?

Dean: Yeah. Okay. What inspired you to take on your current lines of research?

Col Spain: So, you talked about innovation. Well, for me, in my role, if I can present a new idea in writing, that can trigger some significant conversation which can lead to some significant innovation.

Research is actually all about innovation. You can only publish something if it adds to the body of knowledge. Yeah. Right? Whether it be a science or social sciences or [00:25:12] humanities. We don't write reviews necessarily on what other people did. We create New knowledge. So research is all about innovation.

The faster we can do it, the faster we can innovate. And some other things about research I've learned through the years is research is really hard because you have to write something down and you can't go back and say what I really meant was. Or did you consider this? Or here's a defense against an attack on that idea.

It's got to be so good that it stands on its own. It's really hard to do and that's a fun challenge to try to get to. Also an idea doesn't really exist unless it's published somewhere, if you think about it. It's got a lifespan that makes it evaporate unless it's been [00:25:48] published, and that idea is always out there.

Also, it's fun to try to publish in peer reviewed. Now, a peer reviewed journal typically means that idea is sourced. Take your, your name and, and institutional affiliation is stripped off it. It's sent to two to three experts in that field. They comment on it and say, yes, it's worth publishing or it's not, or challenge you to make it better before they make that consideration.

And if you publish in a peer reviewed journal or book, that means the idea is solid. It doesn't mean it's a perfect idea, but it means it's solid and it's passed a certain level of scrutiny, which really says that innovation is worth thinking about. tried to publish in what we call open access journals.

[00:26:24] So a lot of scholarly journals charge practitioners to read them. So I've tried to, thankfully all Department of Defense related academic journals. are open access, because the Department of Defense belongs to the country, and it's great. America's citizens owns the Department of Defense, and they get to read all of our stuff automatically.

So, I've been focusing on open access journals that people can read, because I want the sergeant and the captain and the colonel to be able to see my stuff. Another cool couple things about research and innovation is a little bit of immortality. Yeah, I'm a person of faith, but in this world, it gives you immortality in that your ideas [00:27:00] last forever.

Right. And therefore you last forever if you publish it. That's really kind of fun. Another thing is that it locks you in that immortality with people you love. All my co authors are people I care deeply about. I've been able to co publish and welcome onto my projects as people did for me early in my career.

Fifteen West Point junior faculty or so. And you get to spend time with them. You get to bat ideas with them. You get to try to improve the world with them. And then you're published together forever. So it ties me to people I love. And that's been a real treat in innovating through research.

Dean: A couple [00:27:36] of thoughts on that. First off thank you. This is exactly what we ask of our senior faculty and our junior faculty, but develop the junior faculty work with the junior faculty, but also provide thought that is going to contribute to. To the broader academic community and I think it's one of the reasons you're starting to see more and more West Point thought of as the intellectual center of the U. S. Army because we do have so much wonderful research and scholarship coming out of the academy. And that's also, thank you, because this feeds right into our, our academic year theme of innovation, technology, and the future of national defense. [00:28:12] And we take that seriously because we do think innovation is directly contributing, or directly connected to our ability to, to fight and win, not just in the future battlefield, but like now.

And when we talk about innovation, innovation is oftentimes only thought through a technology component. But innovation means so many different things. And you're doing that just as you talk about some of the work that you're doing. So how about a, not a battalion commander, someone who was not a battalion commander, but an army leader that influenced you the most and why? Yeah.

Col Spain: Sure, a, sir, one of them was Command Sergeant Major Todd Burnett.

He was Command [00:28:48] Sergeant Major 20th Engineer Brigade. Also, I think, the U. S. Army Engineer School. Then he was Command Sergeant Major U. S. Corps of Cadets. And we got to be close when we were in Iraq during the service. And he would look at me and others and say, Sir, talking about soldiers, talking about our relationship with soldiers, leaders.

He'd say, Sir, You got to care that much and he put his hands as far wide as he could reach on both ends just to create a big like two yard, three yard stick long. You got to care that much, sir, about your soldiers. So that stuck with me forever. You know, a couple of cadets inspire me, or many cadets. Thomas Moore and Levi [00:29:24] Bell, both rising seniors at West Point. KSL are the key summer leaders. In other words, they volunteered to lead in high places at West Point, even though leading your peers here, as we talked about, is not the easiest thing to do.

They volunteered to put themselves in that crucible. They helped lead the Elevation Initiative, a club I sponsor for people that want extra leader development. And when they have... Just three weeks ago, we were in a session together, and Levi and Thomas are asking, Hey, Not what do you want to get out of West Point, but what are you going to give back to West Point?

I mean, these are cadets with so many demands on their time talking about giving more. These are things that are [00:30:00] hard for 40 year olds to think about, and here they are, 20 and doing so. And Levi's having them talk about the most developmental moment they ever did, the other cadets there. And while he's doing so, he's having another group of cadets evaluate and make them better speakers at the same time.

I mean, these guys are just incredible. They're just incredible.

Dean: So the the cadets undoubtedly are why we're all here, but they're also something that You know, energizes and renews us every single day. You know, just recently we had a graduation and we had all these, we had got to watch those thousand young men and women throw their hats in the air and take that oath of [00:30:36] office and it makes you feel really, really good about yourself.

And so we have the, we have a great privilege of being here sitting on the academic board and and you lead one of the most impactful departments at the premier leadership institution. You happen to be. The head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership. Where you focus on preparing cadets for the challenges that they'll face leading soldiers as you, as you just laid out.

So, what has your research that's been focused on higher level commands revealed that would be of immediate use to these junior leaders that are going into the Army? I mean, one of them obviously would [00:31:12] be your battalion commander is going to matter and that's going to be your world. But, but what else do you think?

directly impacts them as they walk out the door?

Col Spain: No, I appreciate that, sir. Good question. First of all, leadership is not necessarily related to rank. It's related to how much you care. You care about your country. You care about the army. You care about your soldiers. The second thing is Colonel Todd Woodruff and I recently published a an article called the apply strategic leadership process.

So we teach this course on strategic leadership to our In our Eisenhower program, our one year master's we partnered with Columbia [00:31:48] University with, and Todd and I have the privilege of teaching in that. And so, as part of the strategic leadership course, we looked for a theory to put in our In our readings for how to lead strategically.

And you know what? We couldn't find one At least it was simple enough for for us to understand. So he said hey, let's write one then Yeah, so he wrote a four step theory that's good for leaders leading strategically and no matter what level of a leader you are You're a strategic leader both in the context of your leadership matters you know if you're all alone in in Syria or wherever in a patrol base and [00:32:24] You are the America's, you are America's point of contact with whatever's going on.

It's just so impactful. But also it's strategic in that you're building leaders for tomorrow. Those privates, one of them is going to be the Sergeant Major of the Army. You know, your, your sergeants are going to be your next first sergeants. When you're a company commander, your lieutenants are going to lead battalions.

So you're just inspiring them and it helps you to look into the future with strategic leadership is really what it is. How do I lead my organization so a year from now it's where I want it to be?

Dean: This is quite interesting. So you're, this is, this is not something I would think the Army would have talked about.

[00:33:00] Let's say just a few years ago, which is expecting our lieutenants to not just be tactically proficient and be able to lead their, their platoons or their formations, but we expect them to be strategic in their thinking. And that's revolutionary to some extent. Why do you think that's important for a lieutenant to be thinking strategically?

Col Spain: Well, it's integrating a couple of things we've already talked about, sir. One of them is a comment I've made a couple of times to be at the nation's decisive point. And that was actually said by General Retired Scotty Miller former commander of the Delta Force and then commander of the four star level overseas and the [00:33:36] reality is any officer can be at that spot and they usually can't predict they're going to be there and they have to be prepared to do so.

Right? The, being at the end of a cell phone's camera, right, makes that even more likely with the advent of social media, etc. So, A U. S. platoon doing the right thing and making a hard decision under stress can have a very different effect than the opposite, right? A platoon doing what you would consider to be not a right thing at a, at a very important time in our, in our nation's history.

It can be blown up and taken out of context or characterization, but [00:34:12] it still, we're expected as leaders to be competent and have character. And that character should transcend our formation. That's why. officers are so, are so needed by our army. We're all responsible, but that's the biggest thing we provide.

So, absolutely, sir. You just, we have to have our lieutenants thinking strategically. And it's fun for them too. It enables them to stretch their minds and push.

Dean: You discussed character. What are some ways that you think, not just junior officers, but any officer, or really anybody, can start to help develop their character?

Col Spain: Hey, sir. Thanks [00:34:48] for that question. A recent paper that I, that I hope is interesting to the, to the army is, is called the Leaky Character Reservoir. Why senior officers sometimes fail in character. And so in it, Colonel Katie Matthew of BSNL and recently retired Colonel Andrew Hagemaster, also BSNL, our department at West Point.

We, we look at character in a different way than it's been looked at before. If you think about, sir, this is a rhetorical question. When was the last time someone developed your character? Right? You're a general officer. If I ask myself that, it's not very often. And it's not because [00:35:24] people don't care about me.

But that's just not something in our culture that we develop senior officers character. And behind that is probably an implicit assumption that people's character... It's a little bit like radioactivity. It lasts forever. It never goes away, right? So any

Dean: sort of Or it's static. It gets static. Like at some point your character's

Col Spain: set and that's it.

Crystallized, right? And crystallized in a way that's high enough, right? That's high or strong enough. So that's an assumption we just turn over and we say we, we're gonna choose not to believe that assumption and assume that character has a half life and to do so we created this visual model of inside each of us is a character reservoir.

And [00:36:00] inside that character reservoir it's influenced, your starting level before you come in the army is influenced by your personality and upbringing. And then within the army, characters being poured in and leaking out based on your experiences both at and away from work. If those, that's not a really distinct boundary, but let's just say you understand what that is.

And so, The issue becomes in when you have a, a high stress character issue that you should rise to the occasional one, but there's a lot of reasons why, why you could fail. Do you have enough of a character built up in your VAD at that moment to make that decision? That's the model. Of course it's oversimplified, but it's a [00:36:36] visual to help us understand.

Our point of, of adding to the body of knowledge, we hope, is to conceptualize that model with leaks in it that you can never fully block. Yeah. Okay. You could slow it down the leaks a little bit, but they're always going to be there. There's things in the body of knowledge called ethical fading ethical fatigue, et cetera, to back these up.

The bottom line is we all under stress and over time leak in character. Therefore, back to your question, sir, we should pour in character both to ourselves and others at a rate higher than any potential of that leaking out. Right? How do you do that? [00:37:12] Hang around other people with high character because you know the old adage, we become like the people we hang around.

Mentor people in character directly, not just technical stuff for your organization, at all ranks, right? Read books on people with character. Take courses on character. Study and reflect on your own character. So all these things are ways you can invest in your own character and others under the concept of, if you don't pour in when they need it, it won't be there.

Dean: And I think that might be perhaps the most, the most important thing that we do at West Point. We talk about the academic program, the physical program, the military program, but [00:37:48] underlying all that is a foundation of character. And all those things can influence character, and your character can influence how you behave in all those.

But our expectation when an officer walks out of West Point is that they demonstrate that character that you just described. So... What do you hope your impact is on the Army broadly when, when eventually it's time for you to walk away from service?

Col Spain: A friend of mine described it as your dash. You know, if you, if you look at a tombstone in a cemetery and we've got a really neat cemetery here at West Point that there's some legends in there.

You know, you have a birth date and uh, and an end date. We're all gonna pass and you have a dash [00:38:24] and, and it was Colonel Joel Buff. He said, Everett and others, make sure your dash matters, right? To get at this question. I'm not sure individual legacy matters. You know, I already talked about being someone immortal.

It sounds kind of it through research and that sounds a little bit selfish. Maybe that is or a little bit vain. Maybe that is at the same time. I I want to push and hope that I'm more humble and say, I'm not sure.

That I need to be known for anything or I need to be remembered or any of that. That's not exactly what you asked. But just for what it's worth, I hope to be a positive [00:39:00] impact on the Army and others around me while I'm here. But I'm not sure it's about me and I'm focused on, hey, here's my legacy on others.

I hope to come to work every day and do good. To put my, my country and others before myself and my family before myself. Work as hard as I can for, for those, those teammates and call it a day. I study leadership as a lot of people do, and, and it's gotten, the basics have gotten simpler, right?

If you coach football, sir, I know you coached football for years and you played yourself, but it's just blocking and tackling, right? It's just blocking and tackling. The fundamentals are the [00:39:36] fundamentals. And for leadership, the two fundamentals I've seen are to show individual concern for others and to have high expectations and confidence in others and your unit.

Those two things, if, if I can model those day in and day out, I'll feel like maybe my dash mattered, and whether I'm given credit for it or deserve credit for it, it's not really important. It's

Dean: interesting, as you just were saying, I had two, two individuals come to mind General Martin Dempsey is known for telling Lieutenants when asked for advice to what do I do when I become a [00:40:12] platoon leader?

He said make sure it matters. Make sure what you do matters as a platoon leader. Let's talk about your department a bit.

Because one of the things I'm extremely proud of, and I know you are too, is Our junior faculty and just, it's really amazing who those individuals are and what we expect from them. So can you just give us a taste of some of the impactful research going on in your department ?

Col Spain: Yes, sir. I mean, really interesting stuff. So Dr. Erika Rivera studies trust in machines. And if you think about what's trust, and she's a professor of engineering psychology. What's engineering psychology? Engineering psychology is... The interaction [00:40:48] between man and machine. What's an example of that? Well, maybe how to design better your iPhone interface.

But that's not relevant these days at all. How to design a F 22 cockpit. So it's more easy to fly for the pilot to take full advantage of those capabilities of the aircraft. Those type of things. Very relevant. She's got lots of, her and the engineering psychology team, Colonel Burrell and others have lots of cadets involved in research about trust in machines.

What's trust? Trust in a machine means, will I use this machine if I have other options? Is it, so for example, if I get a robot dog that I want to go, if I'm on the equivalent of a front line, and I [00:41:24] want that robot dog to go with a camera to go sense out where the enemy positions are, I've got lots of ways I can try to figure that out.

Am I going to put that robot, am I going to go through the effort of bringing that dog with me, a robot dog. Set it up, send it out, and believe what it has tells me back. Right? That's trust. And we can think about it on all of our equipment. Do you put it in your backpack because you trust you'll need it and it'll work for you or not?

Right? And so she studies. That's really interesting. Autonomous vehicles, driving it, do you trust it in a way that you'll use it? And what are the nuances there? We're studying followership. Our PL 300 team, Colonel Kate Conkey and Major Scott Newsom, Lieutenant [00:42:00] Colonel Cherebo, and are studying followership. And, you know, there's not much in the literature about followership. There's tons on leadership, but to have a great organization, you gotta have people who are great leaders and followers that we talked about before.

And what's great followership mean? Let's, and they're, they're figuring that out for us, and could push our army a little bit in a good way. So, those are just some of the things. There's great research all up and down the hallway. Dr. Morton Ender maybe the top military sociologist in the nation. He's got a book coming out on military families and spouses, and how this the last 20 years has affected them, and that'll inform leaders to make better [00:42:36] decisions in the future, and learn what we can from both the good and the not great stuff.

Dean: It's interesting how much fun that is to have all those talented individuals in the same hall, butting into each other, and that dynamic creates such... Great ideas. It's great. So let me segway , what's a book you recommend aspiring leaders read?

Col Spain: A couple. One is called Alpha. It's about Navy SEAL, former Navy SEAL, Eddie Gallagher.

Mmm. I would read it. It's got all kinds of important, it's a real story about the importance of... the character in the leadership of junior [00:43:12] officers. And it also has a lot to do with civil military relations at the end of the book, serve with, you know, our last year's academic thing. Yeah. That's just, just a powerful story that is informative for all officers and especially our, our junior grade officers.

What was the other one you said you had? Oh, yes sir. Another one's called Lead From the Heart by Mark Crowley. It's a little bit, it's just fun, but it's a great book on just the fundamentals of leadership that I just love.

Dean: What is the biggest difference at the Academy from when you were a cadet?

Col Spain: Well, I'll tell you one thing that hasn't changed, sir. That's the indoor obstacle

course [00:43:48] test. It's still there. I get when they're competing for it. You see cadets cheering for each other. It's a little, it's, you know, it's a three minute microcosm of West Point. If you look at it, I just love it. I don't know if you know that was formed after World War II by some veterans to say, this is how combat was in the cities of Europe.

You know, and, and it was put into place and it's lasted a day and it's just awesome. Overcoming obstacles, physical challenge just wonderful.

Dean: This has been a lot of fun. Thank you, sir. We could, I could go all day. This is, we'll do round two. We'll do round two,

please be sure to tune in to the [00:44:24] Inside West Point Ideas to Impact podcast next month. Remember you can find this podcast as well as the other podcast journals and books hosted or published by the West Point Press. at westpointpress. com. So until next time.