My team and I realized we had to change the mind-set of the recruits and my staff. Every new recruit, as well as the officers and drill instructors who made up my staff, learned that she was capable in every way—from running to leadership to shooting—and that we expected her to excel. As we trained differently, we saw improvement in all of those areas.
But we also needed to make life better for my drill instructors and company-grade officers. We did not have enough women—a product of senior leadership stealing women away to act as typists, even if they didn't have that skill set, as well as of drill instructors getting pregnant to get out of a stressful duty. That meant longer hours for the women, more 24-hour shifts for the women, and more stress for the women.
That stress, mixed in with an isolated culture, led to bad behavior, including scaring recruits until they peed their pants, or not allowing new drill instructors to drink water in August in South Carolina. We addressed the bad behavior, of course, but we also combated the stress with everything from reorganized duty schedules to yoga classes within the battalion.
I felt like things were going well. I had great interactions with my Marines. Culture within the battalion improved. Abuse decreased. The recruits? They didn't know any better—each fresh group knew only the new training and new attitude, so we could make change quickly.
However, change is hard—even good change. Books have been written about it, because it's hard. You can't expect big changes to happen in an organization and for everyone to be happy. Sometimes it's hard to recognize that the change is good; sometimes people simply become set in their ways; and, sometimes, people believe everybody should be subjected to the same kind of nonsense they dealt with as a young person. You see that in fraternities that embrace hazing as a rite of passage, in military units that believe it's the only way to prove strength, and in career women who believe everyone should have it as hard as they did.
That's a fallacy. The goal, as a society, is evolution. As we work to improve teamwork and respect and integrity, we have to ensure that our Marines (and co-workers and service members and kids) trust each other. There's no trust in abuse.
Not all of my Marines wanted change—particularly in two companies with a history of abuse. In those companies, the training results across the board were lower in every category than the other company's results.
Still, many of my Marines worked hard, and our numbers improved—especially on the rifle range. Some officers took charge of their drill instructors, and we saw magical things happen in their companies: Culture improved; mentoring increased; training became fun.
But.
I clashed with my boss. We clashed over emails; we clashed in person; and we clashed when my officers claimed I was being too hard on them when I demanded that we make things better for their drill instructors and their recruits. Officers were in charge of enlisted Marines; drill instructors are enlisted Marines; drill instructors were in charge of recruits. All of them reported to me, and I, as a lieutenant colonel, reported to a colonel who was responsible for my battalion, as well as three other battalions.
All of this resistance is to be expected in any unit, and, I suspect, any business that is going through a sea change. If your leadership supports you, you can work through the bumps. If they don't—if there's a need to maintain the status quo from the top—then you're staring failure straight in the face from the beginning and may not even know it.
Throughout my whole year-long tour, I felt as if my boss were harboring a grudge. He never said anything directly, and it was impossible for me to figure out what, in his eyes, I was doing wrong. Improving physical-fitness scores? Training harder on the rifle range? Expecting my Marines to be ethical? If he believed I was being too tough on them or that I was overstepping boundaries, he never said so. Everything felt passive-aggressive. He would purse his lips hard, and his face would go totally scarlet—he fumed like a whistling teakettle. But he never said, “This is why I'm angry.” He certainly never counseled me or wrote anything down.
The best that I could figure was that he didn't want the women to do better. He didn't want the friction that comes with forcing change.
I thought making the female Marines stronger would make the Corps stronger, and I assumed that I would have support up and down and sideways through the chain of command.
I was wrong.
In my case, the need to maintain the status quo came from much higher up than my boss. That said, I believe our relationship was simply a personality clash that, timing-wise, worked out in his favor. In fact, throughout my tour, the higher-ups at the recruit depot told me to keep doing what I was doing and to just wait him out. His tour was to end one year after I arrived at Parris Island.
But there were problems that had to be addressed immediately, that couldn't wait months until my boss left town. I had a company commander who regularly cried in front of her Marines. She came into my office twice, in tears, to quit, because she didn't get along with her first sergeant. The first sergeant also tried to quit—because she didn't get along with her company commander. These were grown women. A drill instructor was admitted as an in-patient for alcohol abuse caused by the pressure of bad leadership. Another drill instructor punched someone who outranked her, in front of new recruits. And my executive officer—my second-in-command—responded to a negative job review by encouraging gossip about me within the battalion.
Again, that's typically just stuff people deal with, especially if they're making change to try to address exactly that kind of behavior. And, typically,
