I was asked recently by a younger active officer if THQ, especially senior leaders, cares for its officers. I think what he means is he wonders if there is an understanding of the struggles of officers, and by extension, the personal needs of families, and if they are taken into consideration when decisions need to be made.

Simply yes. And simply not all the time. This is true for most organizations.

If you’re the leader, you have to make sure that the organization is DOING what it needs to do, and sometimes, not always, but sometimes, the task has to be done and the people who do it end up being competing priorities. It is great when a leader can care for the person and get the task done, too. That means having strategies in place that include resources to be able to allow this to happen.

And of course, dealing with this conflict of task vs people is very much affected by how we deal with these. And I saw this quote recently and thought how it fits into the conversation that younger officer was having with me. Sometimes when things are difficult, we fail to deal well because we don’t communicate well. It can be hard, and the sooner we make that hard cal,l the better it will be.

Avoidance will only make it worse.