“Mr. Amato,” I said, “I'm considering resigning from the Army and applying to the NSA as a civilian.”
He had been a distant supervisor with whom I'd had little direct contact. But like all good senior executives, he had learned as much as he could about those in A Group. And he probably knew more about the aspirations of young captains than they did themselves.
First, he explained, the NSA was not hiring any new people in operations, but if I wished he would check in the logistics division of the Agency. Then he looked at me thoughtfully. “If you decide to come into NSA,” he said in an even tone, “you'll be settling down and making a career here. But are you really ready for the Army adventure to end?”
I thought of the thousands of Agency commuters who filled the vast parking lots each day, week in, week out, never leaving this immense facility during their careers. Was that what I truly wanted? Thinking about this question, the answer became clear. The next time we spoke, I told Mr. Amato, “I guess I do want more travel and adventure in my life. And the best way to get that is in the Army.”
Before I'd met with him I had interviewed for a civilian job at the Veterans Administration, and even a position with a real estate agency. But his precisely focused questions had made me realize my true preference was to remain in the Army for at least twenty years.
Even though I was just one of several junior military officers working in his area, Joe Amato had insightfully analyzed the dynamics of my personal and career options and gave me critical advice that caused me to focus my thinking clearly on those options. I took that advice and stayed in the Army. About the time we last spoke about my future plans, I learned I had been promoted to major ahead of my peer group.
When I was a junior officer, Colonel Black spontaneously acted as my mentor, and I later requested specific career advice from Joe Amato at NSA, which kept me from leaving the Army prematurely. Since then, I've often thought about the sensitive mentoring relationship that exists between a younger person and an older, more senior officer or executive. Although it might be appropriate for young people to ask for specific advice, they should never approach their seniors and request that they become their mentors. This is the prerogative of the older, more experienced person. Giving a few words of advice is easy; actually mentoring—guiding a younger person over a long period of his or her career—is a significant, time-consuming task that only the busy senior officer or executive can choose to do.
And, in the Army, offering good, honest career advice to colleagues is part of the culture. We all learn to share openly in order to be as strong a team as possible. But I know from civilian friends that this is far from true in the private workplace where people are often individually competitive.
That being said, I still must emphasize the difference between the challenge of mentoring and the task of giving specific advice. After I was promoted to general officer, friends and colleagues continued to refer young officers to me for professional advice. Whenever the questions were focused and specific, I gladly shared my knowledge and opinion. But I also found that occasionally people went too far to seek me out as if I were some kind of a good-luck talisman who would somehow charm their careers. One example of this was a field-grade officer, a complete stranger, serving in a branch other than Military Intelligence, who had been referred to me by her commander when her questions about advancement became too persistent. She began to inundate me with e-mails and handwritten letters requesting that I “mentor” her. In one message, she blatantly asked: “How can I become a general like you?” Asking it signaled to me that she was an unlikely general officer prospect. Gender is not a sufficient reason for developing this sort of professional relationship.
I certainly believe in giving women and ethnic minorities the equal opportunity to advance that I enjoyed, but I do not feel that gender or ethnic identity automatically entitles a person to a mentoring conduit to any senior officer of their group.
Sometimes mentoring involves being frank, even bursting someone's illusions. I particularly remember a lieutenant colonel with whom I had been casually acquainted who called me when I was assigned as the J-2 intelligence officer to FORSCOM (Forces Command) at Fort McPherson in Atlanta to say a board on which I had served had passed him over for promotion to full colonel. I had reviewed over a thousand files and could not remember his.
“I can't understand why I wasn't promoted,” he said. “I have a flawless record. Maybe you can help explain what happened.”
I didn't know the officer well, but he had sincerely requested advice, so I wanted to help him. “All right,” I said. “Next time I'm in D.C. I'll come see you and review your file.”
I went to an office in the Pentagon where he had the microfiche containing his Officer Efficiency Reports and a microfiche reader. Reading his file, I immediately saw that his record was definitely not unflawed as he believed and that one of his reports as a battalion commander put him directly in the “center of the mass,” in the middle of his peer group. Given the Army's current rating system, he had what was called a “2 block,” while those promoted to colonel had mostly “1 block” ratings. Yet this officer thought his cumulative OERs were unflawed, mainly because he'd always been promoted in the past and because he had no basis for comparing his record to those of others and seeing truly excellent reports. And it was clear that he believed it was virtually automatic for him to continue this progress and be promoted to full colonel.
I remembered advice I'd received from Command Sergeant Major Raymond McKnight before taking over my recruiting battalion in San Antonio.
“Training is important to the unit, ma'am,” he'd said, “but honest counseling is essential to the individual soldier. It's the only time people learn their strengths and weaknesses.”
It was now time to tell this lieutenant colonel frankly that his record was not flawless and that he was unlikely to be promoted. To his great credit, he listened intently as I pointed out the weak points in his OERs and suggested areas where he should concentrate to improve his future performance. I'm happy to report that he was in fact promoted to full colonel the next year, an outcome that might not have occurred had he not sought specific advice, had I not been frank with that advice, and had he not been willing to listen and act.
Since then, the Army has changed its OER. Under the new system, only 49 percent of those rated are admitted to the top block, now referred to as “above center of mass.” All officers know exactly where they stand after each rating. Some people feel this might discourage those who do not do well, but I believe it is in the best interest of the rated officers to understand their position in their peer group. And this information becomes especially important as officers reach field-grade rank and must decide between continuing in the Army after twenty years and seeking a civilian career. In effect, the new OER allows the Army itself to act in the role of the honest mentor that I filled with the lieutenant colonel who had been passed over for promotion.
Immediately after the Gulf War, the Army underwent one of the biggest downsizings in history, cutting active component soldiers from over 800,000 to 500,000. I was the commander of a Military Intelligence brigade at Kunia, Hawaii, when one of my best young officers, Major Howard Phelps, sought my advice about a dilemma he was facing. There would be an Army-wide Reduction in Force (RIF) to pare down the number of majors going before the lieutenant colonel promotion board. But Howard had received an unfavorable OER earlier in his career that prevented him from attending Command and General Staff College (CGSC). Although he had been successful in having that OER removed from his personnel file, he did not know if he would be reconsidered to attend CGSC, a virtual requirement for promotion to lieutenant colonel. Now he had to decide whether to take advantage of an “early out” the Army was offering officers as part of the downsizing. This program would entail a substantial incentive, which would provide Howard and his young family more than a year's living expenses while he found a civilian job and reestablished himself.
The crux of his dilemma was that if he waited to see whether he was selected for CGSC, he might still be ordered to leave the Army under the mandatory RIF and lose the generous voluntary early-termination incentive.
“So, Colonel,” Howard said, “this is my choice: Get out now with the money or stay and risk having to leave anyway, but without the money.”
He was naturally tense discussing this subject, and I needed to understand more about his background and his family and the context in which he would make the decision. I learned his father had been in the Air Force, a fact of which he was very proud. Howard and his wife, Mary Ellen, were very happy with Army life. He loved his work and wanted to be a career officer more than anything. But that prospect did not look good. He had already been passed over for lieutenant colonel once due to that Officer Efficiency Report, and his assignment officer had encouraged him to leave the Army now and not risk being caught in the RIF.
Finally, I said to Howard, “Let's stop analyzing this by trying to
predict
the future. Instead, why don't we try to calculate your degree of comfort with each possible outcome? Then we'll work to
create
the future you want.”
At the end of our discussion he decided that he loved the Army and definitely wanted to stay, so it would be irrational to “volunteer” to leave just to add comfort to the less-desired outcome, acquiring more money for the transition to civilian life. He said that he wanted to stay in the Army strongly enough that it was worth the risk of losing the incentive money.
After Howard left my office, I realized I had used the lessons I had learned when trying to sort out my future as a young captain at the Military Intelligence Officer Advance Course to help clarify this young officer's future career.
The sequel to this episode is that Howard Phelps escaped the RIF, was selected to attend the Command and General Staff College, and was promoted to lieutenant colonel and to colonel. He served as the senior operations officer at the Kunia Brigade, commanded a battalion, and completed the Army War College. Colonel Phelps currently holds an important position at the Battle Lab at Fort Huachuca, a part of the Training and Doctrine Command. He and his family remain deeply committed to the Army and to Army life. And we are very fortunate to have him.
In 1993, after I was selected to the rank of brigadier general, I was assigned as the senior intelligence officer at FORSCOM, one of the largest commands in the Army. I came to the assignment from the strategic side of intelligence and lacked the direct tactical intelligence experience (battalion S-2, division G-2) with the combat arms that my instructors had predicted was an absolute requirement for advancement in my profession so many years before at Fort Huachuca.
So, almost as soon as I took up my new assignment, my commander, General Dennis J. Reimer, became a mentor and began sending me to visit as many tactical Intelligence units at our command's combat divisions and corps as possible. Within six months, I was familiar with the intelligence operations at Forts Benning, Bragg, Lewis, Hood, Stewart, and Campbell. I was on Temporary Duty so much that I often missed senior staff meetings back at Fort McPherson. And when I did manage to attend, General Reimer always ribbed me, “Kennedy, Kennedy. I know I've seen you somewhere before. Don't you work for me?”
One of the truly exciting aspects of my job was the chance to observe the Army's computerized Battle Command Training Program operation that uses simulations to replicate combat operations. As I observed the busy staff of officers and NCOs, which included a large percentage of women, sitting at their consoles and making decisions under tight deadlines, I recalled with a tinge of irony the cynical advisor I'd conferred with in 1976 at Fort Huachuca who had told me there would never be a future for women in the Army until all the male chauvinist pigs like him were gone.
In his own way, he too had been a mentor.
To me the important lesson for women is not to believe all those like him who would diminish our potential. Certainly the odds were against me. In fact, the probability of Second Lieutenant Claudia Kennedy of 1969 becoming a brigadier general in 1993 had been zero. But who has to believe the odds? Every one of us, woman or man, of every race, ethnicity, or religion, represents an individual variable of unlimited potential.
Self-Discipline
W
hen I retired from the U.S. Army in the summer of 2000, women comprised approximately 15 percent of the total force. They served in every branch and in every Military Occupational Specialty except those involving direct ground combat. Women aviators fly both fixed-wing aircraft and a wide variety of helicopters. In both the Panama operation and in the Gulf War, women helicopter pilots and aircrew flew hazardous combat missions, often in extremely adverse weather. Army women continue to fly and operate heavy equipment under difficult operational conditions in the Balkans and the Persian Gulf today. In my own branch, Military Intelligence, women NCOs and officers are now routinely assigned on the tactical level and increasingly serve as battalion S-2 and division G-2 intelligence officers.
Although still a distinct minority, the proportion of senior women NCOs and commissioned officers is steadily increasing. There are currently fewer than thirty women general officers in the Army (Active, Reserve, and National Guard). Unfortunately, the “bench” of replacements, that is, the women colonels with brigade command and War College experience, is too thin to guarantee a steady progression of qualified women into the ranks of general officer. But to continue the sports analogy, the junior varsity looks especially promising. For twenty years, West Point has produced outstanding women graduates, as have our college and university ROTC programs. With competition between men and women fair and open, women have more than held their own in the progression from company-grade to field-grade officer.