More than a Discharge Book: Recent Episodes
Dan Milberg
Narrated by Dan Milberg (warning: Aussie accent), More than a Discharge Book is for anybody who has served or is serving in uniform. If you've done basic training in any armed forces you have been indoctrinated to work and think differently to civilians. After years in this environment, it's normal to get Joining Instructions for new postings, do Readiness Training for deployments, and wear a patch on your arm that tells people your job. On the flipside, it's abnormal to walk into the civilian environment and do things like write a resume, get phone-screened by a recruiter, or confidently talk about yourself and how you can fill a vacant job. This audiobook is designed to help anticipate discharge and plan for what's ahead.
This is the last chapter of the book, but we could really carry-on forever talking about "what's different when we discharge?" That's because there really isn't any cardboard cutout for discharging, everybody's experience is different. But what we can acknowledge as being standard, though, is our need to change. We all leave a military workplace for a non-military workplace; we leave the known for the unknown. Which is kind of similar to how we felt when we enlisted, it was all unknown territory. We might have had some idea of what it was going to be like, but the stories we hear and the movies we watch only scratch the surface of what it's like to spend a career in uniform. If we think about it, the mental picture we all had about the military when we enlisted is the same idea that civilians have of veterans after we discharge. It can be hard for us to remember what that picture looks like, especially after serving for a minimum of 4 years.
If we leave the armed forces with the same vulnerability that we entered it with, we can have faith that we will navigate the unknown well-enough to succeed. The vulnerability I am talking about is that feeling we all experienced at the start of our careers. It's how we felt in Recruit School, standing formed-up in the cold on the parade ground, in the pitch-black dark at 0500, with zero knowledge of what was going to happen to us. It's a feeling of being completely open to whatever comes our way and trusting that we are capable enough to work out any tough situation that hits us.
This is the same feeling we need to embrace when we discharge, but there are a couple of major differences: (1) we don't have a lot of the securities that we get while in uniform that allow us to be amenable to change, and (2) we don't endure the struggle of our new environment with others. This is the hardest part and it's what makes discharging even more vulnerable than enlisting. Most of us will discharge alone. We will do it with little help, limited guidance, and no instruction. This sees many of us awkwardly celebrating our last day in uniform without being prepared to enter another civilian job or career.
So how do we fix that? We can do stuff that prepares us for discharge, and should do it well-before our walk out date. What stuff? Anything that helps us get better acquainted with the civilian workforce. Many of us might need to work on things like talking about ourselves and our resume, others might need to get better at understanding civilian industry vocabulary, and some will need to get a handle on how to interact with colleagues in a lower-risk work environment. There's a lot of stuff that's new and it will feel weird or different at the beginning.
The best thing we can do while we're still wearing the uniform is to surround ourselves with the people and environment that we are looking to transition to. It can be as simple as joining a local sports team and grabbing postgame drinks at the local bar, or as committed as doing some volunteer work with a local civilian business. Whatever we do, our main goal should be to immerse ourselves in a new civilian environment, learning about what they value, then choosing to either (1) align to those values, or (2) pick a different civilian environment. We will feel like the odd-man-out at the beginning, but after we get more comfortable with civilian settings we will become more confident in knowing how to apply our military skillset in a non-military workplace. It takes time and I'm obviously biased, but once we work it out, I am 100% sure that all veterans have the ability to integrate into any business and do a better job than the average college graduate would.
It might sound basic to discuss a topic like "how to talk with civilians", but when I initially left the military, I was stuck with a very hierarchal mindset. I was still very status oriented and was cautious with who I spoke to at work. This mindset comes from our background of respecting rank, and only speaking when spoken to. Even when we are spoken to, we keep our replies succinct, especially when addressing higher ranks. My point is, I wasn't good at talking in a professional setting. It took me a while to shed my instinct of being quiet and reserved, which was out of respect for rank. Our proclivity to be succinct, and our customary "Yes, sir; No, sir" dialogue, doesn't set us up for success in the civilian workplace. In fact, it inhibits us from building relationships with key people in the workplace.
So how do we get stronger at it and adapt our instinctive communication habits? We can start by getting some reps in and begin chatting with our civilian colleagues more in the work setting. This will help us get more confidence, encourage us to be more relaxed, and we will soon find ourselves being more comfortable chatting with different people. The big caveat here is knowing how to read a room.
For example, if we are riding an elevator, that's a casual chat environment that ends when the doors open. But if we're in a meeting or crossing a hallway, we are cutting into people's time for a chat. It's important that we are aware of both when and where to engage in conversation. There is an etiquette in sparking up a conversation at work, and it changes depending on the setting and the people we are talking to. It’s something that we will feel-out over time. >> DOWNLOAD FREE E-BOOK TO READ MORE
In the previous chapter we touched-on the build, sell, maintain model and how all jobs fall into these 3 work areas. With this same model in-mind, all companies separate their internal teams in this way. Let’s take the analogy of a Navy ship being like a civilian company, it has different branches, and jobs within those branches. The Supply branch will have jobs like Cooks, Stores, Medics, Dental Assistants, etc. Depending on the service, branches may be termed as something different, but we get the picture. Civilian companies do something similar, and we usually learn how each company is organized after working in it for a while.
It varies, but here is an example of how a company will organize their teams, this example is particularly familiar to tech companies. (SEE IMAGE IN BOOK)
This is obviously just an example to give an idea of the different teams that companies will create. It can vary depending on the industry and company. For example, some companies will also have a Legal team, an Engineering team, a Marketing team, or a Finance team. In any case, each of these teams can be aligned to the build, sell, maintain model and it helps to marry that with a mental picture of a company's organizational structure. >> DOWNLOAD FREE E-BOOK TO READ MORE
There's some taboo stuff that is very different when you start working as a civilian. They won't tell you what that stuff is, because for them it's like telling us "don’t walk across the parade ground", it's common knowledge. It will take time to learn what these taboo things are, but there's one huge thing we should all be aware of: When we discharge, we can no longer talk freely about our pay. Any civilian reading this might be thinking "yeah, duh!" But it's a huge change for us veterans.
In uniform, everybody knows what we get paid. Most of us feel comfortable enough to pass around our paycheck to make sure that we're not missing out on any money. There's a free and open culture to discuss our pay and entitlements. Some Personnel Offices even encourage it as a "check" to make sure our admin is correct.
Outside of uniform, we will find that nobody talks about their salary. It's a very intimate and personal topic. Unless we're cool asking our civilian colleagues about their sex life, don't ask about their salary. That's how personal it is. When we start working, our employment contract will specifically tell us not to discuss our salary. Why? It's been proven that when companies create policies to keep staff salary discrete, they can pay significantly lower wages overall. It's a strategy, they do this to keep their business costs low, and salary is usually the biggest expense for business owners.
I was very lucky to enter my first civilian corporate job at the same time as another person. He helped coach me through the basic and unspoken norms that were naturally understood by all civilians. That might sound weird, but we've all had our friends visit us on-base for a tour. They look around like it's Alice in Wonderland, meanwhile we think little of it. We walk them around the base, seeing them point out things that they find interesting, or they start asking questions about basic military traditions and stuff we take for granted.
For example, I once invited my friends onboard for a "family day" cruise. It's where the ship basically does a lap of Sydney Harbor and then cruises around the Opera House for a couple of hours. After it's over and the civilians disembark, we would always be reminded of how exhausting it is to spend the day playing "show & tell", answering questions on basic stuff that we would never ask as sailors. Questions like "What do the different color fire extinguishers mean?" One of the more memorable differences was seeing people waiting in-line to step down a ladder-bay. I totally get it, they are very steep, but civilians would slowly take each step down, one-at-a-time like they're on some obstacle course, only to be followed by an on-duty sailor who would slide down in under 2 seconds.
The point is, when we enter the civilian workforce, we are going to feel like we're in Alice in Wonderland for a while. We are going to ask dumb questions, we will probably take things one-step-at-a-time, and we will need help to figure stuff out.
Many workplaces will assign a company employee to show us the ropes and make us feel comfortable. The problem with that is, the person assigned feels obligated to give us a rundown of the workplace, it's not their main job but an extra curricula task for them. They usually have work deadlines to get done and showing us around is a disruption to their workday. With that in-mind, it’s important we don't rely on these people too much, but instead be cool with them. Why? Because they tell the others about "the new guy" and it helps to have some cred to build-on when we start meeting other people that we will be working with. >> DOWNLOAD FREE E-BOOK TO READ MORE
The word 'transition' doesn't simply mean changing jobs. It's obviously our main objective, but transitioning is far more than just landing a day job. It means becoming a civilian while being respected as a veteran. Question is, how is that done? There's a simple answer, but not an easy one, and it's one word: learning.
We will learn more about being a civilian in the first week of our new job than years of discharge preparation. My advice is to use military buddies to get in touch with other veterans that have discharged, who are either working in a trade or a corporate job themselves. These guys can often put us in touch with civilians who can school us on what to expect in different industries. Civilians have a word for this, in fact they chalk it up as a work activity and label it as “networking”. Meeting for coffee, talking about job opportunities, and engaging in casual chat are all examples of networking.
The key is to remember that every chat with a civilian is an opportunity for a network connection, use them to help drive towards a new career. There’s one caveat when doing this, try to focus more on the relationship rather than the job itself. It can be painful to adjust to, but many civilians rank ‘self’ over the ‘job and performance of the team’ — this takes some getting used to and is the reason why we might not fit-in right away. It's a mindset shift and may take a bit of time working with civilians to realize the lack of team loyalty. The loyalty exists, but not before themselves. It's very different, it's competitive. >> DOWNLOAD FREE E-BOOK TO READ MORE
We all know the definition, but few of us understand the meaning until we discharge and begin working with them. Almost all of us will discharge at some point of our careers. When that happens, we will trade-in our disciplined "get shit done" task-oriented mindset for a more diplomatic mindset. Why? Because civilians respond better when you are considerate and can deal with them politely. This is different for us veterans, not because we are all assholes, but because our training and work environments are setup to be succinct. We don't indulge in polite conversation when stuff needs to get done, civilians do.
If there's one key pitfall that the military doesn't address in any transition training, it's our lack of workplace diplomacy. I know diplomacy sounds like something that should be reserved for the politicians, but the truth is that all civilians are familiar with it and many use it as a tool to influence workplace decisions and performance. To be crystal clear, the diplomacy I'm talking about isn't the international relations we see on the news. Instead, I'm referring to the ability to deal with people in a sensitive or effective way. It's a key skillset for any professional civilian.
Unlike the military, work won't happen unless you're friendly with people. Or rather, the work will happen, but the poor results will clearly show. This alone is a huge cultural shift for most of us discharging, because being diplomatic at work requires dialogue, and let's face it, dialogue is not encouraged in uniform.
If being a civilian is closely tied to being diplomatic, then how do we execute that and get good at it? We can start by doing things like chatting to people, being active in online work messaging, or casually greeting people at their desk to share food and snacks. We can chalk these casual interactions up as diplomacy. There's a huge caveat here though, don't be a suckass! Be generous without any intent for reciprocation, just do it and genuinely focus on getting to know people. Doing this stuff will help balance our impulse to be succinct during work tasks and meetings. >> DOWNLOAD FREE E-BOOK TO READ MORE
Depending on what job we chose on enlistment, some of us get the benefit of learning trade skills that are transferrable to the civilian workforce. These are our Electronic Technicians, Combat Engineers, Dental Hygienists, and the list goes on. The tough part is we don't receive full qualifications that allow us to simply walk into civilian trade work. Instead, we get given "certificates of attainment" or "recognition of prior learning". The good thing is that these veterans will already possess the confidence and skill needed in their area of work, so it essentially becomes a paperwork exercise to get qualifications recognized. Getting recognition is administrative and it can take time, but it’s worth it, particularly if we already possess the all of the competencies needed to get certified. Most of us that have the skills, but not the papers to prove it, may simply take a shortened course to become eligible for certification.
For those of us wanting to pursue a new trade, an avenue that we may elect to take is an apprenticeship. Some guys that obtain trade skills while in uniform can find themselves working alongside civilians that are starting out in the industry and, despite not having as much knowledge or skill, they will be getting paid the same. This kind of comparison can be a tough pill to swallow, but the truth is any comparison to another person's experience is a waste of time. Why? Because we don't all enter industries on the same starting blocks. The only situation where these comparisons make sense is when we are business owners and competing for the same customer's money. In business they call this "competitive analysis", but when we are working for a routine paycheck it's stupid to treat our colleagues as somebody we need to get-ahead of. In fact, it can turn us into a black sheep and see us being pushed aside at work. The best approach is to help others succeed despite any skill disparity. >> DOWNLOAD FREE E-BOOK TO READ MORE
If you're not owning your resume, but instead allowing some unknown "resume expert" to translate your military experience into civvie-speak, then you've already failed at finding a new career. Truth is, these people don't care whether you find the job you want, they get paid for each resume they knock out. "Resume experts" are like a factory that dish-out words on a page. They stroke your ego with language you've never heard of and will tell you "This is what recruiters want to see". They get paid for effort, rather than the result of getting you an interview. It's no secret that writing a resume is a lot of effort. But if we are serious about getting a new career, we wouldn't outsource something as personal as our resume. If we suck at knowing what to say in our resume, we are going to suck at interviews.
The sole purpose of any resume is to get us an interview. It's a foot-in-the-door for us to talk to others and elaborate on what's written in our resume. There's an art to talking about ourselves in a way that is humble yet sells our skills and experience enough to convince others that we're qualified. How do we do that? It takes practice and a balance of personality to chat about ourselves in a rolling conversation.
The key to any interview is to share examples of our skills and experience. It's almost storytelling, but succinctly and in a way that lets others get an idea of our value as a future employee. The number one rule when interviewing is to be personable, don't sit there and read the resume!
Before discharging, I simply thought getting qualifications would be enough to land a civilian job. Now, after working in civilian companies, I recommend taking as much time as we need for us to do these specific things:
(1) Get the required qualifications and skills to be an eligible job applicant
(2) Explain how the industry makes money overall
(3) Explain how the company's products help customers
(4) Explain how the chosen job fits into the company and how it's linked to the products
(5) Ability to write our own resume/s to align with advertised job description/s
(6) Confidently answer interview questions using industry language to exhibit competence
The above 6 are basic things that every civilian does. It's routine preparation for civilians, they're good at it and it's natural for them. They will typically do it with little to no effort, but as veterans it's foreign for us. Over time, we will get more comfortable with applying for new jobs. Initially, though, it takes effort and learning. >> DOWNLOAD FREE E-BOOK TO READ MORE
The next question is, "which work area is best for me to discharge and transition to?" Answering this is different for each person that discharges. Ultimately, it's a choice of building, selling, or maintaining. For me, I transitioned to Project Management, which meant nothing to me before discharging. After working in it, I realized I was employed in the maintenance work area. I don't regret this decision but looking back I appreciate how important this decision is when discharging. Why is it important? Because after we enter either the build, sell, or maintain work area, all our thinking and effort will be focused on that single area. Once we start working in it, we gain experience in that area and eventually start getting good at it. When this happens it reinforces the path that we are on, this is the reason why it is rare for civilians to make a complete career change. Civilians will rarely move from one work area to another. For example, we will rarely see moves from a maintaining job (e.g. checking quality control, auditing, managing operations) to a selling job (e.g. cold calling, running product demos, talking to clients about their needs).
When I discharged, I had nobody to explain how the civilian workforce functioned, what they valued, or the work area that suited me best. Take time to think about the work area we want to fall into, as it will shape the direction of our civilian career.
There are some personality indicators that can help us learn what work area we are best suited for. For example, civilians that sell are usually people who are very likeable and engaging. They are typically the kind of people that are comfortable talking to strangers, they kickoff friendly chat and keeping conversations rolling. In the civilian workforce, this is considered a skill. Companies will send these kinds of people to meetings with potential customers in the hope that they will enjoy the interaction and casual conversation first, then afterwards they will learn about the products that are available to buy.
These meetings can be on a golf course, over a coffee or lunch, and sometimes at a sporting or corporate event that the company buys tickets to attend. In sales, this is what's known as "warming a prospect or lead". If this type of work sounds cool, I should caution, we can expect to start with humble beginnings and doing things like cold calling people on the phone to setup a demo or meeting. We would be sitting in internal company "sales team meetings" to discuss our progress in getting a prospect to attend a meeting or demo. Then eventually, we will get promoted to a position that sees us hosting the lunches, running an event, or watching the football from the company corporate box. This is the life of working in sales. It can be high pressure and a brutal numbers game, but if we're good at it, it's lucrative. >> DOWNLOAD FREE E-BOOK TO READ MORE
There are 3 areas that all civilians work in. They either
build, sell, or maintain. When we discharge, it's helpful to know how different jobs fit into these 3 areas. In most cases, every company or organization will have teams of people to focus on all 3, or sometimes a company will only focus on 1 or 2 of these work areas. The obvious question is: what is being built, sold, and maintained? The answer is a product or a service, which we expand on later with examples. If we take this build-sell-maintain perspective in everything we see, it becomes easier to view the world as civilians do, meaning we begin to appreciate the civilian value system. It's important for us have a frame of reference to understand how civilians think, because it helps us adjust and blend into their workplaces, social settings, and lifestyles. I'm not saying that this build-sell-maintain model is something that all civilians know or talk about, but these are categories that all civilians belong to, whether they aware of it or not. Whether it's a tradesman going out to multiple jobs during the day, or a guy that's suiting-up for an office job, every civilian and workplace fits into this model. If we keep this in-mind it can help us picture how civilians work and it reveals the different job types available for us to consider. >> DOWNLOAD FREE E-BOOK TO READ MORE
Let's imagine for a second what it would be like joining our first military posting without ever having gone through basic training. Or even further, imagine being posted without having done our MOS or Category training (e.g. SOI for Marines, AIT for Army, 'A School' for Navy, etc). If this happened, we would walk into our unit with zero knowledge or skill. We wouldn't know rank structure, how to handle a weapon, what jobs that others do and what their patches mean, or simply how to behave with other guys in the unit. We would be a total liability to the unit's efficiency and would need handholding during every task. Ultimately, we would feel a lot of pressure to rapidly learn stuff to contribute to the work going on. If there was nobody to help us learn or get comfortable with the work, we would probably feel annoyed, with a headspace that sees us feeling useless and lost. If we're not prepared to discharge, this is what it can feel like when joining a civilian workplace.
So, how do we prepare to leave the armed forces and enter the civilian workforce? First, we need to know where we are going to land, then we need to learn the differences between our military workplace and the civilian workplace we are looking to enter. Once we have this scoped out, we can work to build our knowledge, skillset and new behaviors that will make us successful in our civilian environment.
There's no such thing as a "civilian bootcamp", we won't get training at the level we are accustomed to receiving as veterans. Instead, civilians have something called "onboarding". It's a common civilian term and its purpose is to get us acquainted with our new workplace. Onboarding shares the same purpose as our basic training but has a very different and more relaxed approach. Depending on the industry we choose and the job we land, our onboarding can vary anywhere from 1 day to a whole month. Typically, the bigger the company, the longer the onboarding will be. Smaller startups may simply hand us a laptop and point towards where the bathrooms are. Others will layout a schedule with meetings for us to attend, in these meetings we undertake learning to understand different parts of the company. It's important to consider what the onboarding process looks like because it has a big impact on our success in the first few months. The better the onboarding process, usually the more successful we will be in getting accustomed to our new workplace.
If onboarding resembles a watered-down bootcamp, then what does civilian MOS or category training look like? Answer is, there is none. It doesn't exist. We need to run it ourselves. This might be strange for a lot of us, because we aren't used to learning new stuff without receiving instruction or guidance. But in this case, we need to create our own personal course, teach ourselves, and check our own competency. >> DOWNLOAD FREE E-BOOK TO READ MORE
In my experience, "anxiety" isn't word that we associate with in the armed forces. Why? Because anxiety typically comes from discomfort, unfamiliarity, and situations that we want to avoid. Oddly enough, these are things that we are expected to get acquainted with during our military careers. The difference is, we are taught how to deal with this in our military environments, and in many cases, we instinctively revert to our training and rely on Standard Operating Procedures to control any discomfort, unfamiliarity, and high-risk situations. In the instance that we are expected to enter an unfamiliar environment, we are usually sent on a course to help prepare us for it. For example, if we're about to embark on a deployment, we will undergo Pre-deployment Readiness Training beforehand. We are instructed to get familiar with stress or anxiety, then work through it by trusting the skills we obtained after being deemed competent during some type of training or exercise.
The problem is that we have a course for everything in the military, but there's no course for re-entering the workforce and becoming a civilian. This is why we struggle with the decision to discharge. We receive very little guidance in the vocational differences between us and civilians. If we combine this lack of guidance with our natural expectation to get training for new environments, we essentially feel lost.
Most of us enter the military from humble beginnings. There are very few of us that come from rich and affluent backgrounds with opportunities to go to Ivy League universities that lead to high-paying careers. The majority of us come from backgrounds that fall into the categories of: having family that served, holding a strong sense of patriotism for our country, or needing a job that would help us escape the town or position that we're in — sometimes it's all 3. Our decision to enlist saw us enter a better position of status, finance, or geography. In many cases, it's the better financial position that's the main drawcard. If we reflect on our recruiting interviews, most of us can recall being sold the benefits with lines like "You will get to travel the world, while getting paid to do it!" For me, it was getting a decent paycheck without having a university degree and getting out of my small town. I didn't have family that served and I had no idea what to expect. I was 17 years-old and was joining the Royal Australian Navy having never spent a single minute in the open ocean. After I joined, every experience I had was new and, despite how hard the situation was, it felt awesome. I was in a place that had zero tolerance for kid-like behavior and was fast becoming a man. Looking back, it was the best decision I've ever made, it's given me some of my happiest memories. I recall even the shittiest jobs being cool to experience. Ditching gash at sea with another 5 blokes, separating the ship's trash for the week, and playing frisbee with the cardboard boxes that were supposed to be compacted into recycling. There was something therapeutic about flicking those boxes into the ocean and watching them float away into the Pacific. Another kickass gig was being overseas in Malaysia, dressed in my whites and standing on the gangway at midnight while overlooking the city lights, thinking to myself "How the fuck did I get here? This is awesome!" At some point, ditching gash and doing gangway tricks gets boring. In fact, it gets old real quick. All the new stuff that we experience eventually becomes routine and instead of seeing it as something that's cool to be a part of, it turns into work. We find ourselves doing weekend duties on-base thinking "This sucks." But it's normal for us to be changed by the things we've done, it matures us and it naturally sees us take stuff for granted. The rough part is that sometimes we can convince ourselves that our situation is worse than it is. Things like being overlooked for promotion year-over-year, not getting the postings that we wanted, or constantly doing shit jobs that don't make sense. I remember having to regularly wax polish a ship's passageway between the hours of midnight and 0400h — stuff like that can annoy us. If we're honest with ourselves, discharging won't make our frustrations disappear. That said, I totally get what it's like to be pissed-off with our chain-of-command, to get given orders that have zero logic and then having to follow them without complaint. For me it happened a lot and I was more aware of it during the later years of my career, mostly because I had to pass down the orders to lower ranks and wasn't blindly following them like I would have earlier in my career. If we take a big-picture perspective, the stuff that frustrates us is temporary and it also exists everywhere we go. It might be a different kind of frustration, but it sticks around even after we discharge. For me, when I think back, it was the tedious stuff that would tick me off. >> DOWNLOAD FREE E-BOOK TO READ MORE
Prior to creating a detailed tactical plan, it's important to know 2 things: our goals and our strategy. Abraham Lincoln was quoted with saying, “If I had five minutes to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first three sharpening my axe.” Before we even get to the sharpening of our axe and chopping down trees, it's helpful to take a walk through the woods and pick a couple tall oaks that we want to take a swing at. Staying with this analogy, we can picture the axe being our resume or set of skills, and the different trees being the career opportunities. The thicker the tree, the better the salary, but the longer it will take us to cut down. >> DOWNLOAD FREE E-BOOK TO READ MORE
I can think back to old postings and bosses that I could have happily given the bird to and walked out on, but I didn't. This makes it sound like I had a choice, but the reality is we have no choice. We get told to take whatever posting we're given and sometimes that means dealing with a rough deployment, a difficult boss, or a mess full of deadbeats. A bad SNCO or chain-of-command can make our life misery and see us counting-down the days until our postout date. We don't get emotional about it, we just deal with it and each of us have our own ways of doing that. Some guys find solace in the gym, others spend time alone and read books, then there's a bunch of us that prefer a drink. We go through a lot, it's normal to release it.
When it comes to our decision-making though, we shouldn't use the negatives that we experience as our main reason for wanting to leave the service. Doing this will only cause us to be bitter on our way out. Instead, we should take an approach that has some strategy, then execute that strategy with a tactical plan that sees us making forward progress to a better career. This strategy should consider 3 things: the career we want, the prerequisites needed, then the time and cost to get them.
Changing our mindset doesn't mean abandoning who we are and how we think as veterans. It means understanding and appreciating how different we are from civilians, specifically how we think and work differently. Active duty staff make-up 1% of the workforce, the other 99% perform very differently to the way we are accustomed to working. >> download free e-book to read more
From our earliest days in uniform, one of the core principles we are taught is to "work as a team". We learn very quickly that anybody who separates themselves from the team, or gloats about their individual effort, gets highlighted as not being a "team player". They get called-out and made an example of "what not to do", which typically happens a lot in basic training. I can personally recall this happening to me at the start of my career. It was 0500h and my recruit school squad was standing formed-up outside our accommodation block, I was the last person to make it downstairs to join them. Less than 1 minute late, my instructor made a spectacle of my failure to be on-time, and instead of only punishing me, my entire squad was punished. This is something we have all experienced in uniform and it's a deliberate style of military conditioning. It's done to develop trust and to prepare us for active duty service, but it's not normal. Few civilians understand it and even less value it.
Once we have made the decision to discharge, even before we have submitted our discharge papers, it's important to acknowledge that we are leaving this teamwork driven environment. Why is it important? Because it rarely exists anywhere else.
What do I mean when I say it rarely exists? Well, specifically, our typical veteran understanding and experience of teamwork is very different to a civilian's understanding and experience. Most civilians have never been punished for somebody else's failure. They haven't endured the stuff that veterans go-through that builds camaraderie and close bonds, and they don't undergo the level of group training or repetition that promotes trust in each other. These are all things that contribute to our veteran understanding and definition of teamwork. Instead, for almost every civilian, particularly those working in an office or business, the word teamwork is synonymous with "inclusion", "collaboration", and "synergy". For us in uniform, these words are just useless fluff or something that we might hear during a ‘mandatory awareness training’. In other words, the civilian definition and understanding of teamwork is very different to ours and in many ways it's opposite to how our rank structure and chain-of-command works.
My point is that having served for a minimum of 4 years, we no longer work the same way that civilians do and we have a tendency to be reliant on a system that puts the team above the individual. We rely on hierarchy and support from the DoD; we make formal requests, we get approval, and we follow some kind of procedure or policy for anything we engage in. Civilians don't do this, they don't rely on anybody.
My e-book is free, this audiobook is free, the paperback is sold at cost price on Amazon -- I don't make money from it. I'm a veteran that cares about other veterans making a successful transition after their service career. If you're active duty or a recently discharged veteran, I hope you enjoy my book and find it helpful to prepare for your discharge. If you like what you hear give me a follow on social media.
This episode contains the following sections in the book:
- Author's note & dedication
- About the author
- Purpose & preface
I discharged after serving for over 10 years and, like many other veterans have experienced, my transition to civilian work and life wasn't easy. The stuff that was normal for me while in uniform suddenly became abnormal. What stuff? Almost everything! It shouldn't have come as a surprise, only 1% of the population serve as Active Duty, which means us veterans need to learn how the other 99% work and adjust to their environment. After transitioning and spending years working with civilians, I can share things that I wish I had known before my career change. It might sound simple enough, but many of us struggle in our first few years after discharge. We can feel lost, frustrated, or misunderstood. Truth is, us veterans are capable of more than we give ourselves credit for. This book is designed to help anticipate discharge and plan for what's ahead.