Again, she hadn't been held accountable in the past, and, again, she didn't much like it when I came in and laid out my expectations.
She was a major, so one rank below me. We did not see eye-to-eye on any leadership issues. None. And, as XO, she did not keep me updated about the budget or ensure that maintenance problems were resolved. As with XOs in the rest of the Marine Corps, when she talked to my Marines, I expected her to echo my command philosophy.
I laid out my expectations. She ignored them. We didn't have a friendly relationship, because I did not respect her. I thought she was a terrible officer. And she clearly hated me.
Still, we tried to be professional—at least, face-to-face.
It was harder to control what she did when I wasn't standing there.
At first, I just thought she was odd. I knew some of my Marines saw her as unprofessional and almost comical—but not in a she-makes-me-laugh-over-a-beer way. For example, she once asked the recruits during an inspection, “If you could be any animal, what would you be?” Most officers would go with questions about training or what might the recruit like about Fourth Battalion or what is the recruit's biggest challenge—questions that are relevant to a recruit's time at Parris Island, not flippant questions that make both the role of the XO and the training seem trite.
Because of her demeanor and lack of communication skills, the regimental staff did not permit her to escort official visitors to the depot for the first six months she was at Parris Island.
I could work with that—we all have our tics.
But I absolutely could not abide her going behind my back.
Unfortunately, she developed a pattern of going to the regimental XO and CO to complain about me—a fact I learned later from both the investigation and conversations with Colonel Haas.
I believe she spearheaded the effort to discredit my leadership.1 If Colonel Haas thought I had been a poor leader, he certainly could have sat me down and told me so. He could have done as I did with my officers, and worked to mentor me. Instead, I found that he fostered a culture of gossip and back-stabbing.2
This kind of behavior was what my predecessor had warned me about. I should have paid heed.
In this sense, my XO acted as the catalyst by encouraging people to talk about me.3 The company commanders from both Papa and November Companies would go to her to complain, and, instead of asking them if they were doing what they needed to do to lead their companies, my XO would say something like, “I know she's mean. I don't agree with how she leads.”
I think she was more concerned with being liked than with being an XO.
Are you sensing a trend?
There were so many ways she could have handled this. She could have said, “You know, there might be some validity to your concerns. I'll talk with her about what I'm hearing.”
She could have said, “You know, that's what commanding officers do—they demand hard work. And our numbers are improving, and that's something to be excited about.”
She could have said, “You know, let's see what we can do on your end so that you feel you're better meeting her requirements. Then, you might not feel so much stress, and you might not feel like she's being mean to you.”
But she simply did not do the job of an XO—or anything else, as far as I could tell.
I never would have told my company commanders that the XO dropped the ball pretty regularly in her duties or that she failed tasks. I see now that my inability to talk about her failures with my captains made it easier for her to present herself as a good officer open-heartedly listening to their complaints. But genuinely good officers don't address complaints the way she did—even if they think their higher-ups could be doing a better job.
Ultimately, it hurt the people she purportedly tried to help.
As I mentored November Company's first CO (the one whom I ultimately fired) to improve the culture within her company and help her become a stronger leader, my XO invited her into her office to talk—but not, it would seem, to support her by backing up the mentoring work we had done.4
As I see it, the XO was like a snake hissing in the ears of those she identified as people she could influence and sway to her side. As I pushed to meet new standards and worked with my Marines to try to bring about accountability, I simply didn't see what she was up to. I didn't expect it, and I was much more excited about the things that were going well.
When she began to feel the heat for not supervising her Marines, Papa Company's commander also began to vent to the XO about me. She and the XO would compare notes about how mean I was. Papa Company's CO claimed that I had treated her unfairly. This all came out in the command investigation about my leadership. In her statement, the XO said she was working with the officers in my battalion to help them better manage my mood swings and unpredictability.
I was not displaying mood swings and behaving unpredictability. I was setting expectations and demanding accountability: Meet this standard. Do your job.
The major (XO) should have understood her role as second-in-command and mentor. Instead, both she and the Papa Company CO were mad because I had asked them to do more work after the fistfight between the sergeant and the staff sergeant. I asked for training logs and counseling statements for the staff sergeant. There were none. I held them accountable.
Ergo, I'm “mean.”
In the meantime, the tide was starting to turn in November Company because of the new company commander and new first sergeant. But Papa Company kept
