Culture Clash

By Christopher Evanson
Coast Guard Chair, Council of Former Enlisted

As an enlisted member who served for more than 10 years on active duty, I took great pride in learning and developing the science of leadership. I attended several leadership schools and read many of the recommended reading lists of senior flag officers across all five of the armed services.

A line in the Coast Guardsmen’s creed, an ethos of sorts, always inspired me. It said, “I shall, so far as I am able, bring to my seniors solutions, not problems.” I wanted to do whatever it took to become a better sailor and a better man. I observed senior ranking members like a microscope, sensing what habits were beneficial and what were detrimental to morale. I advanced through the enlisted ranks at an accelerated pace and I had a decent amount of responsibility, managing a few people here and there, in addition to speaking as an authorized spokesperson to members of the media on a daily basis (a big responsibility). But at the end of the day, I was still an enlisted petty officer, and what was on my uniform dictated my relevance in the overall scheme of things. It didn’t really matter what was in my brain or within my grasp in terms of my individual leadership capacity.

There is a Japanese proverb that states, Deru kui wa utareru, that means, “The stake that sticks up gets hammered down.” My experience in the military felt much the same. No one likes an ambitious enlisted man or woman. In fact, a Coast Guard captain (an O-6 for the Army, Air Force and Marine types) once told me that, “I was too smart for my own good.”

Thank you for the feedback, sir.

Now to be completely fair, I possessed a fair amount of hubris early in my career, and I learned some lessons the hard way, such as speaking out of turn. However, such is the nature of maturing and “learning from failure,” as Colin Powell said in his autobiography, My American Journey.

I had something to say and I wanted to contribute and help shape ideas. But the collar devices I wore precluded my perspective from being heard. I had no access to the Chief’s Mess and I was shut out of the commissioned officers wardroom. I sometimes felt like a sailor in exile.

For the last few weeks I have had the privileged opportunity of serving as an intern at the State Department. I absolutely love it. The culture building takes getting used to, especially for military veterans. For one, despite having a large contingent of military personnel assigned to various bureaus, most do not wear uniforms. Why is this important? For one, the uniform is a daunting presence to people. Second, the military member is also a walking resume. Before ever talking to a military member, you can size up that person in a minute, based on their rank insignia, ribbons and badges. Instantly, judgments are rendered and relevancy, or in my experience irrelevancy, is adjudicated.

The State Department is a completely different animal. Picture a 45-year-old man or woman in lobby wearing a suit straight off the rack of the run-of-the-mill men’s store. That person could be an administrative assistant or a United States ambassador. So you never know who is standing next to you in the lunch line, and the biases that are cultivated due to the rank divisions in the military are useless at the State Department.

I like this. When it comes to forging consensus, building relationships and fostering innovation, all hands should be on deck. If there is a problem unseen, or a solution unconsidered, whoever can point it out should be heard.

The inherent class division that occurs in the military prevents the armed services from operating at a most efficient pace. It reminds me a bit of the era of segregation, when African-Americans were prevented from serving in the job rating of their choosing. Enlisted members are rarely asked their perspective. The State Department is far from a perfect institution, as is true with every bureaucracy. But if you want to have a conversation with someone, turn to your right and say hello. It may shock you what you can discover.

Christopher P. Evanson served ten years in the U.S. Coast Guard as a Public Affairs Specialist, leaving as a Petty Officer First Class in 2012. He deployed globally to China, Guyana and Haiti. He is now pursuing his Bachelors at the American University School of International Service, specializing in U.S. Foreign Policy and a Minor in International Business. He holds the Coast Guard chair on Best Defense’s Council of Former Enlisted.

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