Invest in the Individual
Written by Darin Peterson
One of the leading collective strengths of the Military is the warrior ethos instilled in every service member graduating from boot camp or initial training. This fighting spirit contributed to many victories on past battlefields and will undoubtedly provide a winning edge in the future. To ensure this legacy continues, the current struggle to retain and mature the force must continue to cultivate this warrior mindset while also honing the physical abilities of its warfighters to think, fight, and persevere in any situation.
The approach to human performance, therefore, cannot simply emphasize physical fitness events, periodic counseling sessions, or annual total fitness classes.
Efforts must focus on maturing the force through human performance optimization which requires a holistic, multi-disciplinary approach along a training continuum that begins during entry level training and encompasses the entirety of a service member’s career.
Warfighters must incorporate human performance into the daily routine of Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and all others wearing the cloth to promote a healthy lifestyle conducive to mission accomplishment no matter the unit. Investing in individuals in this way positively affects combat effectiveness, strengthening mental resiliency and contributing to the sustainment of peak physical performance.
This countering force combats the deleterious effects of physical and mental injuries the services contend with every day, ideally decreasing incidents of limited and light duty as well as suicide ideations as a result. To achieve optimal results, WARFIGHTERS are the focus and ensuring they have the knowledge and resources available establishes the cognitive and physical foundation to sustain them through their career progression.
Establishment of a healthy lifestyle and good habits that promote career longevity starts immediately upon service entry and are modeled by those that train the future fighting force. Human performance must be nested within each program of instruction (POI) across all services and not an afterthought. The more obvious physical and mental, or cognitive, mainstays of human performance combine with the other social and spiritual pillars. Each plays a critical role in optimizing human performance, each enhancing the effects of the other.
To meet the challenges of the 21st century and beyond, leaders cannot address these pillars in isolation - or simply through power point classes - and expect to achieve maximum results.
Often the approach is physical fitness events as catalysts to promote the other pillars and gain buy-in by warfighter. During each physically strenuous event, leaders can incorporate other pillars of human performance, exchanging experiences and educating through guided discussions and teaching moments that address social dynamics, higher calling or spiritual thought that develop cognitive reasoning. When leaders develop them together in this manner, the actual significance of each manifest in practical ways, as every pillar influences and supports the others.
“It is in the DNA of a warfighter to win. Much like that strand of DNA, the pillars of human performance are interwoven and each has a role in optimizing the individual.”
To foster the Mature Force desired by the Commanding Generals we must instill healthy life habits in the individual. This is done through human performance education, initiatives, and methodologies beginning at the most basic levels.
With a proactive approach to performance, service members are inculcated into the performance strategies such as starting with the dynamic warm-up to prepare warfighters better physically for the rigors of training ahead of them. Increasing the effectiveness and longevity of the human weapon system is the responsibility of human performance professionals all along the career continuum.
We must invest in the individual everyday because that could be the difference maker.
Service members are owed resources as they are being required to do more, and for longer durations. Influencers that can change the culture of the military writ large is the desired outcome for contending with tomorrow’s conflicts.
Decisions and making the correct judgments at the precise time are the difference between winning and losing. Fatigue, the lack of physical recovery, and minimal to no restorative sleep leads to poor decisions that put warfighters in desolate situations, cause injuries, or worst-case loss of life. Indoctrinating uniformed leaders to embody all facets of human performance is a critical aspect of putting concepts into action. Only the warfighters themselves can provide contextual insight into how optimized performance influences the physical performance of marksmanship.
Example: The morning of annual rifle qualification a service member gets into an argument with their significant other about how their children are being treated in the home and the topic of separation is conveyed. That same service member shows to the range still amped up from the confrontation, heart rate skyrocketing and visibly disturbed. Is that service member able to self-regulate through breathing strategies to prepare to shoot? Are the peers of that service member able to quickly identify the situation and provide immediate management tactics to defuse the current condition? Do service members have the awareness to recognize this as an unsafe state-of-mind and hold their peer from the range?
The decisions that need to be made in each of the above questions are enhanced when all aspects of human performance are elevated. Establishing foundational knowledge that can be divulged to all service members they encounter, but also building upon this groundwork established early in every career is the key to investing in the individual.
Exposing warfighters to the social, spiritual, and cognitive pillars of human performance through intentionally designed situations and guided discussions such as…
Racial barriers
Gender integrated infantry
Why civilians joined the military
Roles of parents in the household structure
Peer accountability
…creates an individual that is confident and comfortable in various conditions, much like they may be asked to do in future conflict environments. Dialogue shared in these discussions promote unit cohesion along with unit and self-awareness stimulated by enhancing maturity
We do not run from a fight. That is not how we train for any combat situation, nor is that the mentality of the warfighter culture. Service members must be able to efficiently move under load, but always ready to compete in battle. In a tactical urban environment, this draws a parallel to kicking in doors or having the ability to perform a jump entry into a window with gear. When a casualty occurs does that warfighter have the strength to pull their buddy out of harm’s way?
Increased lethality can be associated to employment of more guns in the fight and embedded human performance is the model to do just that - keep warfighters in the fight.
Service members must be more adequately resourced and offered training that would promote career longevity, increase performance, but more importantly truly take a proactive approach in preventing injuries. Human performance professionals in the tactical setting owe it to the warfighter to build partnerships and provide required resources, but always INVEST IN THE INDIVIDUAL they are working with.
Anybody can purchase equipment and make a space look nice. What is required of us as tactical human performance experts (and what sets us apart) is not the facility but the personal approach to human performance and the investment in people. People matter the most - The first SOF truth is “Humans Over Hardware”, right?
PROVE IT!!!!!
DARIN PETERSON
Serves as Human Performance Director at the USMC School of Infantry East, where he’s invested in the warfighter for 17 years running.
Married to Stephanie Carroll and father to three awesome boys! Wyatt William (14), Beau Bryant (7), and Gage Gunner (5).
Possesses undergrad in Athletic Training and graduate studies in Sports Management & Leadership at East Carolina University.
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