A Leader’s Lesson: Once you go to War, everything else is easy!

Submitted by DaneikCorp on Tue, 03/17/2009 - 03:44.

General Leadership/Management

In this depressed economy, there is suffering nearly everywhere you look. I have friends whose income is dependent on commissions who complain to me almost daily about their slump in sales these days. I have a friend who lost her job because the company couldn’t justify her salary anymore. I have another friend who went from real estate agent to fish market worker because he needs the salary to feed his family. And many others I know have expressed their fear of losing their jobs in multiple other industries.

Even my own household has been hit. My wife lost her job teaching with virtually no explanation as to why, and it affects the family of course because she was the second half of a two part income, and we are supporting a 5 year old child. But even with all of this going on around us, those of us who have been to Iraq and Afghanistan, some going and returning multiple times, since 2001 have a special view of the situation. Most of us are affected by the events around us, but there isn’t a serious fear or pressure associated with those events.

And here is the reason for that lack of pressure – once you’ve been to WAR, everything else is easy! And the lesson we have learned out there on the battlefield is: Stress is a condition of perspective!

Establishing a foothold in a country that is a warzone is stressful enough. You walk everywhere with your weapon ready to shoot. You are under the constant advice of your Commander to “Always be vigilant against potential threats – even among those native soldiers and translators you work with – you work with them, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that you are friends.” And you are away from your family and friends, in harm’s way, and you live with the constant knowledge that you volunteered to be in the military!

That’s enough stress, but then throw in 13 hours of the enemy shooting directly at you and you shooting back. Throw in a ten day walk through the mountains with few supplies and the eminent threat of having to engage the enemy at every turn. Throw in those Soldiers supporting the main mission with ammunition and supply runs out to the forward lines to simply keep their buddies alive. When combat operations become the “every day”, and you don’t know whether you or any of the other men and women in your unit will return home to the loved ones left back across the ocean, then you have the very definition of stress.

Your outlook on life changes after that. Financial danger becomes far less stressful. Every job becomes somewhat trivial. It is the look in your wife’s and baby’s eyes when you walk in the door that matter. It is your son’s laugh while he rides a two-wheeler on his own for the first time that matters. Good Leaders find ways to prepare themselves and their teams to cope with job (and life) stresses with a well-developed sense of perspective.