Humility

There is a very strange thing about national slavery. It is inevitable that you will come across Sergeant Majors, and you will meet many and will probably work with at least one of them. There are all sorts of Sergeant Majors, but they can more or less be squeezed, even despite the massive thoracic bulge some of them work hard to maintain, into two categories. On one hand, you have the really lazy ones who barely capable of an ounce of leadership, are lazy and are as inflexible as the points of view of a fossilised fundamentalist on the possibility of the Big Band Theory. On the other hand you have the fatherly types, patient yet stern, they understand what you’re going through and are more than willing to pull their weight when necessary. The following story involves a Brigade Sergeant Major and he falls in the latter category.

It was my last field exercise, and it had already been quite an experience, especially for an office boy logistician. For one, it was my first time experiencing rain during a field exercise, first time freeing a pangolin that had become entangled in a camouflage net, first time camouflaging, rather redundantly, a rather large command post and meeting a one-star in person and the first time I collided with a dump-truck and lost. Well I met a few that day and even more higher-ups, but it’s irrelevant. The most striking event was sweating side by side the Sergeant Major as we tore down camp on the last night of the exercise.

We had returned to base camp earlier than the rest of the group who were still packing up at another area. ‘We’ being the Brigade Sergeant Major, the Regimental Quartermaster, the Logistics Warrant Officer, myself and a two of my men. We sat down for a few cups of stale coffee, and relax after completing most of the exercise, and after a while it was somehow silently decided that camp would be torn down. The next time I knew, I was standing next to Sergeant Major dismantling tents and keeping the folding benches and tables. We joined him wordlessly, without command or invitation.

It was the kind of situation where for some odd reason, you wanted to help out voluntarily, and if you knew the many terms of endearment we have for conscription, to help out voluntarily is rather alien. Of course there was the incentive of returning to camp earlier than planned, enjoying a nice shower and being clean for the first time in 3 days. There was no bossing around or ordering, just three warrant officers and three bottom feeders tearing down the camp for the simple reason of giving the returning storemen a break.

You see, the Sergeant Major is a former special forces operator, a trained Navy Seal, complete with a master level in all the airbourne badges and probably many other skills as well, just that his uniform didn’t have space to put all of them. Furthermore, he was the second highest ranking soldier in the entire brigade, as there wasn’t a 2IC to the brigade Commanding Officer. So you can imagine, he was no small fish and he certainly didn’t have to do a grunt’s work.

I know this doesn’t sound very spectacular or out of this world, or contain any form of heroics at all (all soldiering stories should contain a part where someone dies, just for the effect), except when I rescued the poor pangolin from almost certain death, but I was very impressed. That was a show of true leadership.

Being a leader is not about simply standing around telling people to do things while watching them perform your orders, it is about inspiring others to get in and do the same work with you. To do the former is to rule with fear, and more oft than not, you will end up losing your humanity. It gets the work done, but in the process, you lose more than you will ever gain. Instead, should you approach your duty with a little humility, you will go a long way. Certainly, you will need to maintain some distance between you and your inferiors, and many other things, and with most things, a fine balance must be struck. However, you can always have humility.

Humility is what reminds you who is really working for whom. As the superior, it is easy to be awash with power, having so many souls under your command, at your mercy. Yet, this could not be so far from the truth-- which is that leaders don’t just have inferiors under them, but they are actually working for their inferiors. There is that responsibility and obligation to provide proper direction and guidance to the inferiors in any aspect of work, as well as to continually shovel coal into their engine to keep their fires burning. It is paramount to remember that while leaders are very important to any project, group or assembly of people, their importance is solely dependent on there being a project, group or assembly of people. Leaders serve their people.

Furthermore, it would be somewhat coincidental to note that earlier aforementioned category of Sergeant Majors, the ones who are lazy and inflexible are usually the ones trapped in a rank, slowly mining their way to the top, whereas the latter are the ones who usually soar. To throw out a mere theory, it may simply be in their humility. With humility, there is recognition of that one is no as large as their egos present themselves, and also the recognition that one does not know everything. It is with this knowledge that allows one to learn, and to learn is a most important skill. No one can have full knowledge of everything, even the most experienced Sergeant Major cannot possible possess all prerequisite information to run a camp ideally. It is, and this is somewhat more prevalent in the service, often a case of trial and error. With humility you can learn from error, and you are willing to take feedback and steps to improve, and improve you will.

This is what I saw in Sergeant Major as he untied canvas from superstructure, and it is a clear reminder of the scope of the role that I play in life. Leadership is more than just a position or a title, but a very large responsibility and a call to serve. Sooner or later, everyone is called to be a leader, whether in an official manner or just as the head of the household, what are you doing to be a good leader?