WHY “BECAUSE THOSE ARE THE ORDERS” IS A BAD REASON
Reading time: 6 minutes
Introduction
“Because those are the orders (from above)” is probably the worst reason you can give for carrying out an order. It makes no difference whether you are justifying an order of your own or one from your superior.
Let me show you why that is, and what you can do about it, using one example.
Break Contact and Assault Drills
It was day three of the training bivouac.
Our platoon was training break contact and assault drills: attacking an enemy or breaking away from him by bounding overwatch.
A few years earlier I had the privilege of being trained by extremely experienced leaders, and as a squad leader I was keen to pass that knowledge on to my men.
So we started rehearsing the evening before and made fast progress.
On a bivouac, a certain tiredness and sluggishness tends to creep into the soldiers by day three at the latest. This time the men were motivated, awake and switched on the whole way through, because the training was dynamic and tactically demanding.
So far, so good.
We carried on with the training the next day and could see early on that it was going to pay off.
Tactically Sound?
We were almost finished when our platoon leader called all the squad leaders together.
“We have to change the training. X, Y and Z are out. From now on the squad leader does ABC himself. Fix the shortfalls.”
Now I was the one losing motivation.
The general regulation does not go into much detail on this training subject and deliberately leaves room to adapt the small stuff. Now I was supposed to change procedures that had already proven themselves with a lot of units and that, from where I stood, made the most tactical sense.
So I went back to my training group, gathered the men around me and told them this:
“We have to change the procedure a little. We have done a good job and the drills look clean. Now it is about bringing the procedure to the same standard as the other squads. Because once you are attached to a different squad, every move still has to sit and everyone has to know the commands. So I am going to show you the changes now.”
I showed the men the new procedure without letting on that I preferred certain parts of the “old” one. After a few run-throughs everything sat, and the training paid off.
I could just as easily have said: “We have to change our procedures. I do not know why. It is stupid, because our tactics are clearly better. But those are the orders.”
But two things would have happened:
- The men’s motivation would have dropped, because I gave them no reason and no purpose for the change.
- I would have undermined my superior’s standing as a leader, because I obviously was not behind his decision.
The Lesson:
This was never about which procedure was better or who was right.
The platoon leader certainly had a sound reason for his decision. But that moment was neither the right time nor the right place for a discussion.
The details of this procedure, and why something is done the way it is, can be talked through calmly and at the right moment, and that will clear up plenty of misunderstandings.
But when I pass an order on to the men in the field as their leader, I have to stand behind that order. It is my duty to explain to them as well as I can why we are doing it this way, so they do not lose their trust. Even when I am maybe not 100% behind the order myself.
If my leader and I see things differently, I raise it at the right opportunity and in the right tone, that is my duty too. In front of the men, though, the leadership has to present one united front no matter what.
Proportionality:
Of course there are also situations where an order is simply carried out because those are the orders.
Examples: a lack of discipline, things the soldier knows perfectly well and gets wrong out of sloppiness, or a tight spot where it simply has to happen fast.
A leader should also never have to justify or explain himself, because he is the one in command.
That is exactly why it matters so much to build the men’s trust in their leader, so that they follow him for more than his rank and the regulations behind it.
Good luck out there!
Shughart
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P.S.: Special thanks go to Oliver Bender (Tyrosize) for the outstanding photo.