Inside Out Culture

What's behind the persistent cultural issues in the armed forces?

• Inside Out Culture • Season 1 • Episode 24

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Armed forces around the world have a reputation for combatant, often toxic, cultures. There is often an ‘old fashioned’ view that this is just how the military is.

This week on the Inside Out Culture podcast we ask whether that's true or not. We look below the surface of the media stories to determine whether the armed forces are any differently - culturally - than any other organisation.

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Join us as we reveal strategies to close the gap and craft a workplace where values are not just spoken, but lived and breathed, paving the way for a more authentic and engaging organisational culture.

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Colin:

Welcome to the Inside Out Culture Podcast, where we look at insides of working culture and provide ideas, insights and actions for you to take on the outside. I'm Colin Ellis.

Cath:

And I'm Cath Bishop, and in each episode we'll examine a different question or a different organization, and we'll use case studies, research and our own insights and experiences to help you change the way things get done in your world.

Colin:

We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please like, subscribe and, of course, let us know what you think.

Cath:

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Inside Out Culture podcast. Today we're going to be looking at why there are such persistent cultural issues in the armed forces and my goodness, you just have to put that into Google. And there are such persistent cultural issues in the armed forces and, my goodness, you just have to put that into Google and there are endless articles, reviews, cases so many, colin, you've been digging into some of the research around this. There's a lot.

Colin:

Yeah, there is a lot, Cath. I mean, I think in the last year alone we've had the Red Arrows submarines, the Irish Army that was in the news last year the Ministry of Defence I read a story about a leader's behaviour in the US Navy as well at the start of the year and it's not one single thing. Um, I think that you know you mentioned persistent. It is, and, but it's different things. I think I think that's the. That's the worrying thing. But I, but I, you know, one of the things we want to get into today is what might some of those uh, root causes be? I remember you know that I read about the irish defense force and everything. Everything that I've read is is from the actual reviews that have been produced. It's not allegations, it's actually the insights from the reviews that were actually produced. A lot of misogyny, Cath, which I think we'll talk a little bit about.

Colin:

But the Irish Defence Force senior officers, you know had been alerted to the changes that required and then just didn't do it.

Colin:

You know we've talked at length on the podcast about organisations such as the Met Police who had been alerted to issues time and time and time and time again but just never brought about the change that was actually required in order to create, you know, kind of a safe fibre of workplace where actually people could just come and do their jobs. I think often we see the military in a slightly different light. I think we think of them as machines, as robots. Sometimes, I think, you know, I think there's a very you know, for someone like myself, brought up in the 80s, there's a full metal jacket approach to the military, when they're just human beings in a variety of different roles, all trying to do their jobs, whatever they may be in different ways. But certainly, as I was, you know, reading a lot of these reports, and again, I don't I don't want to tar every area of the military with this brush, but there are persistent issues that bring about toxicity.

Cath:

Yeah, I think I was struck by the number of reviews and yet the lack of progress over time. As you say, it's a very it's continued repeating itself. And so that's interesting, isn't it? Because at least they're opening themselves up to reviews, and reviews highlight some fairly horrific stories of bullying, of misogyny, racism, and then we just get another review six months later. So there's something for me in terms of the leadership prioritization of this, or even the leadership competence of understanding what deep cultural change looks like.

Cath:

So I think there is sometimes an approach of we'll root out, we'll find someone to, and you know the kind of what we say about ourselves and our forces, that we want to be inclusive, and you know all of that language is there, but the actual lived experience is very different and you need to get in between that gap to think about what are the moments when we're not living what we've said we should be doing, and how is that being enabled in the environment? So I think also, they look for let's try and blame somebody and then we can move on, rather than you know as we talked about yeah, the Met Police are definite echoes what's in the environment that allows people to behave like this? Because I also think that's very shocking sometimes that you know some of the examples a lot are around misogyny. These are people who've got mothers and sisters and daughters and I don't think they'd be behaving like that at home. So what's happened in this environment that's actually enabled this other way of operating to feel like the norm and to actually feel essential in order to fit in.

Cath:

And I think there are particular pressures here to the military in terms of the pressure of the job and the need to be really tight and cohesive, and perhaps that feels then a difficult space to bring diversity into, because what they previously built cohesion around have been different principles of actually we look all the same, we're all men and you know, and that gives us, you know, our trust comes from that and you're almost having to, you know, create a different philosophy of what trust looks like now. Uh, because it doesn't look the same, could actually be as deep or deeper, but that's quite a deep air. You know you're needing to work at a deeper level than is probably written about, talked about in meetings and in the office, you know, or out on the march, and so for me there's a kind of competence amongst leaders that seems to be really lacking in this area.

Colin:

Yeah, I agree. I think for the military possibly more than any other profession that I can think of and that I've researched has been the greatest level of change over the last 10 to 15 years. As you mentioned, they're historically male dominated and I think those kinds of environments can kind of foster hyper-masculinity, sexism. There's a real emphasis on toughness, on suppressing emotions, on following orders, and I'm not necessarily saying that's wrong, but if you think about how the world has moved on in the last 10 to 15 years and you think about the pressure that's being applied to military leaders to change, often without the education of not only how to change but also how to create inclusive workplaces whilst not compromising the values, morals that they've kind of been instilled with from their own training, I think that must be a really tough ask. It must be really hard for them to kind of move away from what has been traditional thinking for many, many years into a different mode, and it's required. I'm not saying for one minute that they shouldn't do it, it's absolutely required. But I do wonder how much support, how much training, how much education they've been given.

Colin:

And this is something that we talked about almost in our very first podcast, Cath, where we talked about the fact that why don't leaders understand culture and the fact that we don't really educate people. And you know, what I've read in the military very much speaks to a lack. But especially in the military, is when someone's found to behave inappropriately, they receive a censure and then we're told that they're going on some kind of behavior training or that they've been sent on a diversity and inclusion course. And again, it's not that it's wrong, but it's not the education that's required in order that they can better understand how to create a safe, respectful workplace that embodies the morals and the discipline that's required in the military. But people feel safe to come to day in, day out and do the best that they can.

Cath:

So that's right. If you sort of send, try and send the problem away, try and fix it somewhere else and then come back again, that doesn't work because the environment you're in hasn't changed. Even if you come back with some different ideas, you probably haven't got the skills to have a conversation really, or the people sitting in that environment, they haven't been on the course either. So, yeah, I agree, what's really important is to increase that competence around conversations, sort of almost like facilitation skills to be discussing some really uncomfortable issues and to be able to, you know, challenge some of those stereotypes and to kind of call out the language. That can be very. You know, the banter can be very damaging and you know, if you're not really got that sort of competence to do that, then you're, you just go with it, especially if you're in the in group and if you're in the out group, well, you've got no one's going to listen to you and you'll only be excluded further. So I think, yeah, that's yeah, an understanding and education around what. What is culture and how is it shaped and how do we each play a role each day to keep it where it is or to change it in a different direction. Yeah, I was thinking that also, the impact of tradition is potentially greater here than elsewhere. I was thinking it's a sort of performance high pressure environment, if you like, because of the stakes of what they could be involved in. And you could say pressure is very high in sport, pressure is very high in business.

Cath:

But I think both those worlds, whilst also with as we've discussed many cultural challenges, I still think there's a sense of change because they have, you know, sport looks different and there's a sort of the public watch it close up. Yeah, we watch athletes doing their thing in the, you know, the Olympics or, you know, in a football match, whereas we don't really see the military at work. So there isn't that sort of transparency in a way. And I think also, you know organisational life, business life, that there there are, um, you know, ways within the organization that are evolving, sometimes not brilliantly but sometimes better, in terms of whistleblowing or openness, or you know, again, leaders coming in defining a purpose in a different way. So it feels like there isn't as much kind of impetus towards change and towards saying, you know, what got us here can't get us there, one of those drivers in sport that would be very useful, I think for the military to think about more.

Cath:

What do you think are the things that, yeah, what would you advise in some of these situations? What do we need to see kind of more of? There was a big review by Boston Consulting Group just last year saying culture change is crucial because it's the only way you're going to be able to address the talent gap. So what would you be advising them to to do?

Colin:

Yeah, so I worked with a branch of the Australian Defence Force two years ago, so just after the COVID restrictions were lifted. Cath and I spent a day with senior leaders in this particular area, educating them on what culture actually is, which you'd be amazed just how people didn't understand the dynamics of that. Obviously, in the military there's very strict hierarchy and, interestingly, in the pre-conversations that I had with the leaders of that particular division, we talked about what I couldn't talk about, if that makes sense. So it was very, very strict, like here's the things that you can't mention, here's the things that you can't talk about. And they were particularly without compromise in my non-disclosure agreement. They were particularly things around hierarchy, around certain cultural norms that existed, and I very much focused on what it meant to build an inclusive team culture. So particular things that I talked about.

Colin:

There's a stigma around mental health, about soft versus tough, those kinds of things, a suck it up mentality. I don't think that's unique to the Australian Defence Force, know, like if you're feeling tired, you have to suck it up and you have to get on with it and and do it again. You know, one of the issues that came up was a kind of desensitization to violence and then and then how that was projected in the day-to-day life of the military, even if you were working in, let's's say, as an example, things like communications, near-field communications or on-field communications. It was kind of this this is what you have to go through. And yet there was no sense of okay, well, how do we build some resilience into our team such that we make sure that we're there for each other? How do we make sure that we understand what behaviors are relevant for the world that we live in today that still embody the military values that we expect? And I think that was one of the biggest issues that I observed whilst working with that particular team. There was an understanding that in their private lives and in the world that they kind of inhabit now, these are the behaviors that are acceptable and these behaviors that aren't acceptable. And yet when they came into the role, whatever it might be, it was almost like it was a different set of rules and you know people were really uncomfortable with the fact that. I'll give you an example One person gave an example where a leader, you know, kind of verbally abused and he used those words.

Colin:

He said I felt verbally abused. He was just like, but when I walked away I'm like that's normal, that's what happens here. He was like, but it was only afterwards he reflected he's like why are we still behaving in that way? So I think that was. You know, certainly that's one of the big things that came out was there was this sense of the behaviors were relatively old fashioned for what they needed to be right now and did nothing really to kind of project a sense of modernity or a sense of what the military needed to become, and that there were certain people who were holding onto the status quo, almost like well, you know, that's what I was brought up in, that's what I'm comfortable with, that's what I need to create moving forward.

Cath:

I think there's a quite a tight, there's a sort of time lag in terms of I feel like they know what, that they need to change and they kind of know some of it. But then it's bringing it into sort of daily life, because I think sometimes when they're making operational changes you sort of swing around, you know I'll have less helicopters here and we've got them over here, and stuff moves, whereas I think because you can't sort of mandate it in the same way they try and mandate it and that doesn't really work that they're not necessarily as aware of what they're role modeling and the impact of their language and the impact of hierarchy. So I think a huge thing is about listening across ranks and that is something that actually in that Boston Consulting Group review last year, they talk about as being really important. For if you want to attract talent and new young people, coming in the hierarchy is so stifling and at the top they literally don't know what's going on.

Cath:

They're so far removed from the reality of all these examples that then come out, which sometimes they're generally shocked about not always, but you know, I think at times there's that real distance because of this respect for hierarchy and I think, as you see, that gets broken down in other parts of society, because it can be quite damaging, and you can't afford to be that far away. And so I think rethinking hierarchy is interesting. Now, actually, at the same time, in the operational world, they're having to rethink hierarchy because they need to move in a much faster way. The enemy is not sort of one homogenous grouping necessarily. You know again, whoever it is you're fighting may be operating in a much looser way, not with one leader, not with a huge hierarchy, and that's one of the things, isn't it? That is talked about in Team of Teams by the American general whose name's just gone out my head.

Colin:

Stanley McChrystal.

Cath:

Stanley McChrystal where they just in Iraq. He was in charge of the forces there. You know they were too slow if they waited for intelligence in one part of the machine to go up the chain and back down to where it was needed, and so that sort of has started the beginning of more kind of fluid people not just being in one rigid part of an army for all the time. So I'm an intelligence officer, I'm a, you know, something else on the frontline over here. I'm something else where actually we need to mix people across units so you don't have these sort of non-inclusive cultures in whatever role you're in. And starting to break down some of that, I think you know more women are frankly needed in senior roles and that would be a huge help. I can't see how they can move forward without it. That doesn't seem to be happening, I guess because women aren't staying in enough numbers for long enough. But I think there are huge barriers to the women who are trying to do that and there's something about that kind of, that kind of yeah, a listening. We often see cultural reviews enable us to listen to different stories and we've got to keep hearing those stories, not just when the reviewers come in but for those to be kind of circulating all the time. So there's, you know, there's a sense that they are changing and yet they're not changing fast enough with the culture.

Cath:

I think you know the other sort of piece that is out there and known is, you know, in order to manage PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder there's a need for much greater focus, moving away from the machismo, from the tough it out approach, to enabling soldiers, anybody in any role who's seen kind of pressure and difficult situations in hostile environments, to be able to tell their story, to be able to make sense of it, to be able to open up about difficult things they've seen.

Cath:

So again, they have that knowledge and in certain places are definitely using that, but it's almost, it's not mainstreamed that perhaps we need that, you know, actually as part of how we operate when we're not in the pressure situations out in the field, but actually we need to be more mindful about the experiences we're having and how we're treating each other, just in a in a training situation. So for me there's that there's a real kind of gap between knowing and doing, because they do have the knowledge of the need to be different, they've plenty, but there are some real barriers and, you know, come back to that sort of leadership piece, really to putting this as the number one priority, and actually this will then facilitate to do the other things you think your priorities are in a much more effective way.

Colin:

Yeah. So Stanley McChrystal, one of my favorite quotes in his book, where he talked about his own behavior and talked about his responsibility as a leader and he said my most powerful instrument of communication was my own behavior. Bad examples resonate even more powerfully than good ones. And he said you know great quote. Yeah, he said it's my responsibility to put forward the good ones so that people can see that I'm role modeling it.

Colin:

When I worked with the defense force and it was a female leader that I worked with who recognized that she was one of very few and it was her responsibility to lead change, not wait on the sidelines for it to happen. And one of the things that we discussed at length was emotional intelligence, Cath, because there was a sense that emotional intelligence was somehow soft and we've talked about this in the past and we've talked about the language that people use around emotional intelligence that somehow emotionally intelligent people would compromise military operations when, of course, the reverse is true, and all of the research shows that the reverse is true. When, of course, the reverse is true, and all of the research shows that the reverse is true that actually emotionally intelligent people, what they demonstrate is mental toughness, mental agility, and they're able to build strong relationships, they're able to listen empathetically, they're able to build kind of strength, not only internally but externally too. And you know, one of the things that I was challenged on was this concept of discipline, and I particularly remember the instance and somebody said, well, okay, well, isn't it just an opportunity to dress sloppily? You know, we've got these real strong cultural norms about dress and discipline.

Colin:

On the contrary, it's like if you fundamentally understand who you are and you understand the kind of person that you need to be, and you're involved in the definition of how we run our kind of business or division on a day-to-day basis, you're 100% invested in that and you bring your best self to that. And it was almost a surprise. It was like, oh, we just assumed that this was all kind of new age stuff. I'm like it's not new age stuff. You know, the research around emotional intelligence has been around since 2001. And really what it speaks to is that mental toughness, that mental agility, and actually when we build teams that are emotionally intelligent, we are way more likely to achieve any goal that we might have, regardless of where you work in the military in the same way that you do with any other organization.

Cath:

I think you really put your finger there on the mindset shift that's required, that somehow this is soft and they're all about hard doing things that are tough, and they've seen the research but they haven't somehow quite shifted their beliefs that, but they haven't somehow quite shifted their beliefs that. You know, what does that require? That requires them to kind of see consistently, kind of more evidence of how this is working. They need to be trying it out, they need to be, you know, held accountable for this. It needs to be in itself a goal, not a sort of optional extra. You could try around the edges, but this is fundamentally how we need to do things in order to be better at jobs. It's not an inclusive culture for the sake of an inclusive culture, although that is a great and worthy thing. It is in order to, you know, be able to do our jobs better, to be able to be much more smart, because I think, again, you get this uniformity that you know we start to say the same things to fit in, and that's really dangerous because, again, they need to be very agile in their thinking. They're kind of got a lot of challenges coming at them, particularly if they're in the field, so you don't want everybody to look the same and come up with the same solutions. And you know, matthew Syed, in his brilliant book Rebel Ideas, starts off talking about how the CIA made vital mistakes around understanding the danger of things leading up to 9-11 and Osama bin Laden sitting in his cave and they sort of dismissed that because they'd all come up through this sort of Western Ivy League education and hadn't understood the really powerful symbolism that was coming from his message, that was actually empowering people to rise up, and they just thought it was very unsophisticated. And so you know, he sort of talks about the danger of us all thinking the same and then we're sort of individually clever but collectively stupid. And so it's really important for the army to be able to, for all the armed forces to be able to do their jobs well, to have a real cognitive diversity and the ability to speak up, to speak against groupthink, to speak against the status quo, and therefore the leaders to be enhancing those voices, looking for those voices, inviting those voices.

Cath:

I am having a few flashbacks to when I was working as a diplomat, quite often in situations close with the military. You know, on one hand I absolutely admired their incredible commitment and, yeah, unbelievable sort of dedication, working, you know whatever hours required, real professionalism. But there was still, yeah, a real sort of lack of sophistication in some of those areas you've highlighted. And I was known as the woman in the consulate. You know, when there were issues with sort of you know in Basra with terrible, uh terrible violence against women in the street and the need to respond to this, it was getting reported a lot in the UK, it was sort of, well, it's how do we do anything about the women in Basra? Let's go and ask that woman in the consulate because she'll know about it, because she's a woman.

Cath:

I do remember some things like that kind of thinking. My goodness, this is not going to help us move forward, this kind of thinking and the need. Therefore, we're sort of smart in a limited way and we've got to be just broaden the thinking. And that would require all of these again incredible educational establishments, defence academies where they're thinking strategically broader, defence academies where they're thinking strategically broader. I wonder if they're also doing enough to have that sort of emotional breadth, that relational sophistication and the ability to sort of connect in different ways. Once you've got your more sophisticated strategy, yeah, you've got to bring it to life through a hopefully increasingly diverse set of people around you. So I think yeah, there are some real challenges that still sit out there that this persistence shows that there are some skills missing, some understanding missing, some impact missing about what deep cultural change really requires.

Colin:

And it probably means Cath as well a challenge to some of those traditions and the rituals which you mentioned at the top of the show which are held in such high esteem. I think you know that many of those ceremonies kind of reinforce existing power structures, you know kind of rank based events and seating arrangements and saluting and all of these kind of things. And you know I again I want to be clear here. What we're not saying is all of that goes out the window. What we're saying is you need to, what the military needs to do is kind of look at the way that it sets up those rituals and set, because every culture has its rituals, right, um, but it's incumbent upon every organization to look at, look at those rituals and say does it enhance and does it create the kind of culture that we need to become? And you know you rent. You rightly mentioned diversity there, but it's not just about gender, it's about cognitive diversity as well as.

Cath:

Yeah, absolutely, yeah, where are?

Colin:

those pockets of ideas, where are those pockets of creativity that can really help us to become something that we're not right now? And I feel that the military, specifically, are very reticent to look outside themselves. They're very keen sometimes and a lot of the reviews said this they're keen to protect the hierarchy, they're keen to protect some of those power structures that exist right now. Hannah, we're looking after our own, and that was a key barrier to change.

Cath:

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, power structures are huge, aren't they? Because that's inherent in the hierarchy it's built in and that is really blocking, I think, a lot of this change, as you say, and, yeah, you have to take a step back, don't you say what and who is our culture serving? And it's evolution again. It's about saying where do we want to get to. I think of Owen Eastwood and his building the story. It's almost like we have this great tradition, although let's face it that we can clearly see times where it hasn't been completely. It's not all good. How do we evolve into the next chapter? And it's almost that reluctance to say it's part of a story. What's's the next tradition that we're building here? Rather than just clinging onto an old one, you know, like clinging onto a rock in the sea, how do we want to consciously, together now evolve that and develop those traditions? So, yes, fascinating, isn't it?

Colin:

Yeah.

Cath:

Right, we've got to that point, so we need to kind of think about what are our? So what's from today that we can learn by taking a quick deep dive into these persistent cultural issues? So we're going to say what's our action? What are we going to get curious about, what can we uncover? And these are questions that we could then apply into all of our own workplaces as well. So what's our action? What should we do?

Colin:

well. So what's our action? What should we do? Well, I think you should get rid of the old fashioned behaviors that are no longer relevant. If I'm being brutally frank, when I read some of the research and some of the things that people have done, the behaviors that are on show are no longer relevant and they need to go. I think that's the action there, definitely.

Cath:

Yeah, absolutely Identify them. And yeah, if they are no longer serving you, Definitely yeah, absolutely Identify them.

Cath:

And yeah, if they are no longer serving you, time to move on from them, yeah. So, in terms of curiosity, I think getting curious about how you can maintain things that you might need, like discipline and structure, which are an armed forces would need, and combine those things in a culture of emotional intelligence and respect. So it's both, and rather than thinking it's either. Or how do we create a culture that can maintain discipline and structure alongside emotional intelligence and respect?

Colin:

Yeah, and it's absolutely 100% doable. It's not in the too hard basket. It's something that can be done. And then I think the last thing people should uncover is whether hierarchy and power, as we mentioned at the end, are the root cause of your culture issues. Do you have some, I guess, legacy ways of thinking and working that might be holding back the evolution of your culture?

Cath:

And understanding the impact of hierarchy and power is perhaps the place to start there. Of course, this is really an area where leaders are the ones who have most power to change that. But just starting to understand that impact of hierarchy and power and how does it play out in your workplace in everyday sorts of ways, not just the organogram, what does that mean in process, I think really helps us to uncover how culture operates in our workplaces.

Colin:

What a fascinating conversation, Cath. Thank you so much. Look forward to the next one.

Cath:

Great to chat. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to today's Inside Out Culture.

Colin:

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Cath Bishop

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Colin D Ellis

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