I knew the results would be different.
“That's not what I wanted,” he told me. “You're not taking responsibility. You're not being accountable. You're not listening.”
In other words, it's nobody's fault but my own. I understood this to mean that he would never have my back. I could be nice or be mean, or lead or give up, and the results would all be the same: A couple of Marines would complain, and Colonel Haas would continue to try to fire me.
I went back to my battalion. I talked to my sergeant major.
“I'm at a loss here,” I said. “I don't know what to do.”
She tried to talk me down, to let me know I wasn't crazy or mean or a bad leader or any of the things I was being told. I depended on her to tell me if she disagreed with the way I handled things or if she thought there were a better way. She was as devastated about the chaos in the battalion as I was, because we knew that in presenting ourselves as a leadership team, it was a potential indictment of her leadership as well as mine if the assertions in the survey were true.
But I trusted my sergeant major with my life. There had been times when we didn't see things eye-to-eye, but we would sit in my office and talk through our different perspectives. Sometimes we compromised, and sometimes she changed my perspective. We always talked before I ever made a decision, and I considered her to be my trusted adviser who had never done me wrong. I knew that if she thought I was screwing up, she would tell me.
But she said that she didn't see it either.
My sergeant major said she thought I needed to ensure I had a mediator present whenever I had to meet with Colonel Haas.
Earlier, in March, we also concluded that I needed to reach out to the depot sergeant major, who happened to be a woman, for a sanity check. I started by apologizing for a long email, and then I spelled out everything.
“I really need some help and am not sure where I can turn,” I wrote. “I am having significant issues with Colonel Haas that are affecting the welfare of my battalion, particularly pertaining to officer standing and his assessment of my leadership…. I am absolutely convinced that they are grounded in gender bias.”
I explained that I had received no help in trying to address staffing issues, and that when I asked for backup on Marines behaving badly, I simply received an eye roll. I told her that I couldn't get maintenance problems addressed—that four of my Marines didn't have heat in their barracks rooms for three months—that we had no company-level executive officers, so my company commanders couldn't get a break, and that we had no replacement for my headquarters company commander.
These were things, I felt, that would help improve command climate. But I told her Colonel Haas had called me into his office to tell me he was worried about the command-climate survey and my approachability. He told me nothing more, so I could not defend myself.
“I feel like I am in a hopeless situation,” I wrote. “We basically have no commander-commander relationship.”
He had never attended a single training event with me to observe my interactions with my Marines. He knew only what was reported to him secondhand and through the command-climate survey.
Two days after my meeting with Colonel Haas, I told her, I received a phone call from a fellow battalion commander saying that a few of my Marines planned to make anonymous complaints to the inspector general about me, something that Colonel Haas had also warned me about. In my email, I told the depot sergeant major that was fine—that I felt the process is fair and that there would always be complaints. But I was angry that, while my battalion sergeant major and I talked every day about command climate, Colonel Haas heard a few complaints and took it as gospel. I believed that, in his mind, I was already guilty.
I told her about the work my sergeant major and I had done, and that our Marines often told us things were better than they had been in years. I told her of the problems Colonel Haas and I had had in not seeing things the same way.
“I knew coming to Fourth Battalion would be challenging,” I wrote, “but I had no idea that the biggest struggle I would have would be in being considered credible and capable by my boss.”
I hit “send,” and I held my breath.
She got back to me within half an hour.
“Thank you for sharing this with me,” she wrote. “I want to help.”
“I'll find you today and share some interesting, but more importantly, helpful news for your end state.”
“If you read just one thing from this message, please know that YOU are not alone in this fight. Hang in there.”
Her response was very much the same as the commanding general: We see it. We know what's happening. Keep doing what you're doing.
Once again, I thought, “I'm not crazy. I just need to get through this.”
She sent a second email asking about staffing and the response I had received when I asked for help, and asked me if I would consider men in my battalion, saying there had been men there when she was a recruit.
Yes! Of course! If they're the ones with experience, we want
