But Veterans who lead teams - or lead entire businesses - in the civilian world sometimes have to adjust their leadership style and mentality. "You can't treat them like you're a drill sergeant," as one retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and business engagement adviser reminded the Pathfinder Labs team as we picked up our latest batch of interns for the coming term. They are in their late-teens to early-twenties, bright-eyed, and eager to do well just like Privates fresh from Basic Training, but that's where the similarities end.
To help out, we came up with a few dos and don'ts for fellow small business owners, Veterans who are put in charge of new interns, and managers of those Veterans who may be in their first civilian leadership roles since leaving the service:
Veterans Assigned to be New Leaders:
- Do: Be patient about tasks and explain in detail. This might be the intern's first experience outside of the classroom, and unlike Basic/Boot the training they have may not be standardized. Explain how your company does a process and check with them to make sure they are following the right techniques for the first few iterations.
- Do: Remember your skills for developing training - Set clear and achievable objectives in a crawl-walk-run format. Interns are rarely there for longer than a few months but are used to exams and other "checks on learning," so you need to make sure there is some sort of tangible product they can learn from, even if they only get through the crawl-walk phases.
- Do: Watch your mouth - and not just for offensive words. You are a professional now, and you are influencing these interns on how to be professional as well. Set them up for success with the language used in your career field, and keep it clean. All of the military jargon is lost on those who are coming into a career without military training, so they won't understand you anyway if you use acronyms or military references.
- Don't: Focus on arbitrary corrective actions as a teaching method. No one is doing push-ups as a learning point, unless you work in a gym. If someone needs retraining, it's more like a rifle range with a review of the fundamentals until they get it right.
Managers of Veterans Assigned to Leadership Roles:
- Do: Set aside some one-on-one prep time on the role, regardless of if the Veteran was an officer, a platoon sergeant, or has other experience. Leading a squad is very different from leading a finance team, and you want to make sure the Veteran has a clear training path.
- Do: Conduct or encourage a leadership style assessment. Different people in and out of the military have different leadership styles, so this is a good rule no matter what to understand how your rising leaders are going to train others. This will also give you better perspective on feedback collected from interns or new hires, as sometimes conflicts can be resolved through understanding how the person tends to lead and if that is being received well.
- Do: Collect feedback on training early and often from all parties. Military personnel are not always asked their opinion while in the service, so it may take a request or two to get something useful but is worth asking. This will let you see how they are trained when they are on-boarded to your company, and by giving direct feedback such as what they liked or didn't like about their instruction you are helping them identify new leadership techniques.
- Don't: Talk about the military as a primary attribute of your new leader, or why they got a leadership role. Reintegration is all about combining skills and mentality, and Veterans should be earning their stripes in your company through merit, training, and achievement. Assuring the person they are receiving a team because they are doing well in their new field will help with cementing confidence and provide a reminder that the leadership process "on the outside" of the service is a little different than it is inside.
These lists contain just a few of the reminders we have to share about adjusting to - and helping others adjust to - a civilian career. Leading others in a civilian position can be a great motivation technique in making personal and professional adjustments, and eager-to-learn interns can be the perfect team to train.