APAC Surveillance reposted this
Modern Leadership Theorist | Blending Practical Leadership with Academic Research | Founder of Hindsight | 3x Best-Selling Author
What a veteran brings to the table. Most people will never know the feeling of being rudely awakened by the whispered words, “It’s your piquet,” as their feet are lifted in the air...and then having to crawl out of a warm sleeping bag, strip off a dry uniform, and replace it with a cold, wet, filthy one. Then, in the pitch dark, you follow a "communications cord" through the sodden, and at time bitey, jungle to take your turn on the gun. Lying there in the rain, your eyes strain to see in the blackness, your ears become hypersensitive to the sound even though all you can hear is water dripping from the jungle canopy. The mental strength it takes to do this—night after night, during weeks of jungle training in Tully—is the kind of resilience that sets you apart. You know this too shall pass, and you're not alone; you're in it with your mates, all pushing through the same hardship. If you're a veteran and wondering what you bring to a team outside the Army, it's this: the mental toughness to get on with the job and to muck in when things get hard, to get stuff done. PS, context maters. Awaiting extraction by helicopter, Timor 2001. And yes, I'm aware my cam cream has washed off and my watch face is reflective lol.. As Directing Staff (Major Arch Foxley MBE) used to tell me "How you do something is how you do everything." We are all but a work in progress.