 |
| U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker stands next to his wife Audrey. Source. |
CHAMP’s 2019 Got My Six campaign invites you to recognize those who’ve got your back. Social support and gratitude are two critical but often overlooked components of human performance. No one gets to where they are alone. By acknowledging and being grateful to those who support you in all areas of life—at school, work, or home—you can continue to optimize your performance in many different ways.
LTG Eric Schoomaker, USA (Ret) recently shared what Got My Six means to him. As the 42nd Army Surgeon General and Former Commanding General for the U.S. Army Medical Command and Emeritus Professor, Department of Military and Emergency Medicine at the F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine at USUHS, Dr. Schoomaker offered some unique insights.
Stephanie: What does it mean to you when someone has your six?
LTG Schoomaker: For someone to “have your six” comes from a common expression used by ground, air, and maritime combatants—even law enforcement—that you’re being protected in vulnerable areas. If one’s position is theoretically viewed from above as a clock face, then the direction one is looking or moving forward is 12 o’clock; your outstretched right hand is 3 o’clock, your outstretched left hand is 9 o’clock and your back is 6 o’clock. Without vision in the rear and an inability to react quickly to threats from the rear, your “six” represents the most vulnerable place from which a threat might come. It’s a vital blind spot.
So, one’s “six” is all of those areas of our personality, the current condition of our emotional, financial, physical, spiritual, and social lives—and perhaps even the projected path we’re on with this regard—that we cannot fully know, protect, or strengthen. Our family, friends, colleagues, health promoters, caregivers, spiritual advisors, and others “have our six” when they invest in our well-being by helping us better understand and defend against these vulnerabilities.
Stephanie: As a health professional and a leader in health education, can you describe how strong relationships can impact both physical and mental health?
LTG Schoomaker: We’ve known for some time that strong social and family relationships greatly affect physical health. Perhaps there’s no more powerful example of this than the non-random, all-cause early death of surviving spouses in long-standing marriages following the death of the first spouse. Since there’s no single cause of illness or disease that takes the surviving spouse soon after the loss of their loved one, there might be multiple reasons for the observation. Grief might well impact the spouses’ immune system, promote stress-induced cardiovascular disease, reduce nutritional well-being, and affect many other possible health protectors. It’s also clear that grief, depression, and even suicide are the direct result of the loss of crucial relationships—most often, important people in our lives but even meaningful jobs and careers, such as a life in uniform.
Complete well-being rests upon the strength of a multi-domain group of important factors such as your physical, intellectual, emotional, financial, spiritual, and social lives. (This is shown in DoD’s “Total Force Fitness” framework.) Social relationships are a major element of this group. You realize your optimal potential in your work and play when you’re closely connected to those with whom you share love and respect, a common set of goals or a mission, or a sense of shared meaning. These important relationships come in all shapes and sizes from our immediate and extended families to our dearest friends, work and service colleagues, pets, and sports teammates. Warfighters don’t risk their lives and fight for themselves or abstract concepts; they fight for their wingmen, shipmates, fellow Marines, battle buddies, and loved ones. (A thoughtful description of this is in the book Goodbye Darkness by historian and writer William Manchester—a biographical account of his experiences as a young Marine in the Pacific Theatre during WWII that left him with post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] and troubling demons well into his later years.)
Stephanie: Through your work, you’ve seen and worked with probably thousands of Military Service Members. How do strong social ties impact performance in the field?
LTG Schoomaker: Strong social ties with the members of one’s unit are among the most important predictors of unit success. When this can’t be achieved, bad things can happen. For example, the long duration of the Vietnam war coupled with recurrent year-long deployments and a reliance upon drafted inductees led the Army to abandon the regimental system and sacrifice a strong identification with one’s unit. One-each replacements that rotated in and out of a unit became the rule. Individual and unit performance was seriously eroded.
One of the most important goals of a command team is to build strong ties within the unit and foster a heavy reliance of each member upon others in the unit and trust in one’s fellow soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, or Coasties. One enlightened senior commander and mentor taught me that a good measure of whether I was focusing on what was important was “whether I knew my soldiers by the sound of their voices in the dark.”
Stephanie: Can you share a time when someone had your six, and it had a profound impact on you or the outcome of a situation?
LTG Schoomaker: The number of times when close family, friends, fellow soldier-medics, and colleagues have “had my six” is almost too numerous to count. Certainly prominent among these have been the countless times my wife and children have provided essential support to me. My wife, Audrey, and I were married for the last 25 years of my career in uniform. We moved 14 times during that period, including two moves back and forth across the Atlantic to Germany, the latter with 3 preschool and school-age children. (Four of our moves were made after remaining at our assignment for only one year or less.) Audrey made two of those moves virtually unassisted because I had moved ahead of her and the family on short notice 3–5 months earlier. She understood the importance of the work we did for the nation while maintaining her focus on raising our children in a safe, intellectually challenging, spiritually rich, and emotionally secure home environment. What still amazes me is that our children—now in their 20s and in college and graduate schools—understood that their complete growth and development was our first priority. They knew that if my wife’s and my career plans damaged them in some fundamental way, we would have ultimately failed in our life work. They worked hard to excel in school, keep themselves fit and healthy, form good friendships, and provide support in their own ways for their mom and dad. They “had my six.”
In my professional life, I was blessed with enormously talented colleagues, senior enlisted advisors, subordinate commanders, senior civilians, and staff. We had a spoken expectation—not unspoken but rather well-articulated—that their main responsibility was to ensure mission success. They knew if I had an idea or contemplated a course of action that would threaten the mission, erode unit morale, or bring dishonor upon the unit, Army Medical Department, Army, or the DoD, they were required to speak up or alert me in some fashion. They couldn’t use my rank or status as a commander as an excuse for denying me their best ideas and even reservations about my ideas.
“Selfless service” is too often defined as a willingness to place the mission or safety of others ahead of one’s own physical well-being—even to the point of sacrificing one’s life. In my opinion, this is far too narrow a definition. Selfless service more often is minimizing one’s personal emotional comfort or bravely confronting one’s fear of criticism by ensuring their senior leaders don’t lead the organization astray by speaking up. My CSMs, Chiefs of Staff, principal staff officers, and countless doctors, nurses, administrators, and others were my guides for well-reasoned, logical decisions that weighed risks and placed the mission first. They always “had my six.”
Stephanie: What are some ways a leader can show they have their team’s six?
LTG Schoomaker: A leader can have their team’s six by accepting responsibility when their team fails and by giving the team credit when it succeeds. A leader also can communicate they’re there to take the heat when errors are made if team members have taken well-understood risks in good faith, and that they’ll be recognized and rewarded when they succeed. In addition, a leader never asks their team to make personal sacrifices that they as leaders wouldn’t make—and haven’t made—themselves. Leaders also provide all the necessary means for their team to be well-trained, optimally protected physically, emotionally, and spiritually—before they’re asked to perform the tough duties that Military Service Members, military medical units, and military families must perform.
Stephanie: It can be easy to overlook all the different ways people show support for one another. Can you share some examples of how small gestures can make a big difference?
LTG Schoomaker: One of the key insights that every manager and leader must learn is what motivates their people and attend to this highly individual, particular “currency.” I learned early that not everyone comes to work or makes personal and professional sacrifices for the same reason…and certainly not always for what motivates me! As a physician, I had to learn that my goals to relieve human suffering, heal, promote comprehensive growth, and relieve pain weren’t shared by all. Some people work purely for material rewards (for example, income), some for prestige (awards, publications, national recognition, etc.), and some to gain the respect of those from whom they seek approval, including parents. Others simply want to keep their e-mail in-boxes empty by moving stuff from the in-box to the out-box.
Most of those with whom I’ve been privileged to work do so for the respect of their peers. They seek a validation that they’re a valued member of a team that’s doing meaningful things. That can be as simple as a pat on the back, an “attaboy” e-mail, a cup of coffee, a certificate of achievement, or a public mention at a townhall meeting or in a newsletter.
Many years and commands ago, I wanted to provide a simple reward to a mixed workforce of civilians, military of all ranks, contractors, and volunteers by awarding a coupon for a free cup of coffee of their choice from the coffee bar in the hospital. I printed up the coupons as a “Commander’s Cup o’ Joe.” The coffee bar management signed each of the numbered coupons (so they couldn’t be counterfeited) and collected my money up front. I could then pass them out in the hallways when I saw something noteworthy or include them in a note of thanks, etc.
I returned with more money to buy more coupons after I exhausted the first round of 100. I asked how the program was going: Were they satisfied they weren’t being cheated or abused by my program? The coffee bar was very happy with the program. Not only did it serve as a form of advertisement for them, but very few of the first 100 had been redeemed. I learned most recipients kept the coupons and put them under their desk protectors or tacked them to their walls! They treasured appreciation from the commander more than the free coffee.
Stephanie: What’s the best quote, saying, or advice you’ve received or heard about having someone’s six?
LTG Schoomaker: We care for our patients by caring for the people who care for our patients. When you “have the six” of your colleagues, teammates, unit, lab, service, department, or organization, you ensure they achieve the meaningful work we need to have performed. And they’re sure to “have your six.”
---------- About the Author ----------
Stephanie Van Arsdale, of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, is a Program Manager for the Consortium for Health and Military Performance (CHAMP) at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS).Disclosure: The opinions and assertions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of USUHS or DoD. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or policies of The Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc. Mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. The author has no financial interests or relationships to disclose.
