I gave a class on behavior modification and supplied my officers with some tools they could use to ensure that they recognized and rewarded great performance and held their Marines accountable when they didn't meet standards. I asked that they handle problems at the local level. This could mean encouraging recruits to talk to their buddies about things that were causing issues, such as poor personal hygiene or needing to practice push-ups to do well on the fitness test. It could also involve a company commander having direct talks with her Marines about bullying before this behavior resulted in complaints at my level.
During the off-site training, we also talked about relational aggression, which is when you try to affect how other people see someone. You might spread rumors, make fun of someone, or expound upon a person's faults. We talked about cyber-bullying—harassing someone online—because some of my DIs were notorious for bashing members of the battalion on social media.
We conducted these classes in April because I worried about the cases of bullying and abuse that existed before I arrived. But we did this also because, in the five or six months since I had arrived, I had seen how it had played out in November and Papa Companies.
Our changes were coming along and evolving and growing, but it's hard to change the culture overnight. I wanted commanders to be able to quickly identify bad behavior so they could take more of a leadership role to address it at their levels before things exploded and I had to step in. Pretty much everyone needed to have a clear idea of what Mean Girls syndrome looked like: The DIs were abusing recruits. The DIs were abusing each other. The recruits were abusing recruits.
I didn't know what Mean Girls syndrome was until I arrived at Parris Island. Prior to my tour at Fourth Battalion, I had mostly worked with men. Until I started doing research, I didn't realize there was a name for it—I just knew what it felt like. As I worked with my company commanders, I saw firsthand how individual leader personalities could shape the dynamic in their units. Papa Company had an overly aggressive first sergeant who tended to ride roughshod over the company commander. In her view, a drill instructor who said she was sick or injured was weak. The same was true for November Company. Without a strong company commander who took full ownership of her role as the leader of the unit, strong enlisted Marines took over. This didn't always spell disaster, but when the leadership influence was negative, we ended up with suicidal drill instructors locked up in the mental ward of Beaufort Memorial. This is not hyperbole. It is something that had recently happened, and I was devastated about it.
Mean Girls syndrome had been a problem in Fourth Battalion for years.
But rather than being addressed by regimental command, the men just assumed that women can't get along. They assumed that this was only what could be expected of women.
Mean Girls syndrome is not an easy thing to fix—or even to recognize, especially if you've never worked in an all-women staff before. Sixth-grade teachers can spot it instantly, but I never would have expected to see Mean Girls or Queen Bee syndrome in grown-ups.
In my case, I had several things working against my battalion.
First, we had this culture of enlisted Marines running roughshod over officers, so there was no oversight.
Second, we had both officers and enlisted Marines who didn't want change. Some of the officers resented the change because it meant more work for them. Some of the senior enlisted Marines resented the change because it represented a loss of power or status for them.
Third, I had some problem company commanders: One never wanted to be at Fourth Battalion to begin with, and another wanted to go to her soccer practices and games at 4:30 every afternoon and spend her day planning her wedding to an officer in one of the male training battalions.
Fourth, I had an executive officer who encouraged my Marines to complain about me to her, after I counseled her about not doing her job. (I learned this secondhand at the time, and then through statements from the Marines during the investigation.)
And, fifth, my boss appeared to encourage all of the disgruntled folks to bypass the chain of command and go directly to him to complain about me.
That last issue was, of course, the most important. Everything else could, and should, have been addressed immediately, simply by virtue of how the Marine Corps works. We have a rank structure. When an officer who outranks you tells you to do something, you do it. You don't smart off, you don't give the CO the hand before rushing out to do pull-ups, and you don't encourage the people who serve under you to mouth off about their direct boss.
In the military, the chain of command is sacred. You don't jump over it; you go step-by-step through it. When you're having an issue, you go to the person in charge of you, unless they are the perceived problem. But, even then, there are tools like request mast to ensure that complaints can be heard and remedied within the chain of command.
My boss should have had my back on this, even if he didn't like me. People lose rank for talking back to higher-ranking officers. People get written up for going outside their chains of command. Can you imagine how not operating that
