“Once is a mistake, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern.” Many of us have heard this saying before and are aware that patterns often indicate deeper systemic issues. However, although we recognize the need to address root causes, if we’re honest, it’s easy to default to treating symptoms instead of causes, and to view people as problems rather than addressing the problem.
Two common ways we do this are through making an example out of someone (scapegoating) and mass punishment. Neither is very effective in the real world.
Mass punishment creates resentment and apathy. Teammates resent other teammates, which disrupts team cohesion. In mass punishment, the objective is to unify the team against a common enemy and to foster a culture of self-policing. But even if the team is united against another, they are rarely united for each other. So, disunity within the formation becomes an unintended consequence. Amidst the disunity, teammates also learn apathy instead of accountability because they will be punished regardless of their personal care, efforts, or results.
Don't get me wrong, mass punishment has its place…in Military Basic Training. But make no mistake, Drill Sergeant isn’t concerned about being a uniting leader the platoon will follow into hell with gasoline pants on. Drill Sergeant is concerned about turning citizens into Soldiers. And if you’d like to know the type of self-policing it generates, ask any Soldier what the washroom beatdowns were like in the wee hours of the morning. Self-policing is a far cry from group accountability – the superior, desired alternative.
Making an example creates disengagement and deception. When a scapegoat emerges to atone for systemic issues, a separation within the team occurs immediately. Teammates separate from the scapegoat and rationalize why they deserved what they got: “She went too far,” “It was different when I did it,” “He just did it the wrong way,” and so on. We operate out of self-deception, judging others harshly while giving ourselves a pass and opening the door to a culture of deception. Others don't learn not to do what the scapegoat did; they learn not to get caught. Deception then hides the corrosive behaviors rotting the core of the culture. I’ve been made an example of. More than once, actually, but the first cut was the deepest.
The Ranger Regiment of the late ‘90s was a place of pent-up aggression, bubbling over through an overt culture of hazing and harassment. The 2nd Ranger Battalion hadn’t been to war since 1989. Naturally, an elite force on an 18-hour alert string gets tense. Very tense. And all that aggression turns inward instead of being pointed outward.
When I arrived in 1998, I experienced all the regular hazing that everyone else did. No one was spared, regardless of how well you did physically or with your assigned weapons system. Nobody cared who you were, where you came from, or what you did in high school. All of us Privates got smoked at all hours of the day. Sometimes, for good reason; sometimes, for no reason; and sometimes, it went too far. Like the times IV’s had to be administered to keep the smoke sessions going while drunk junior leaders whooped, hollered, and hucked beer bottles down the hallway.
When I became a junior leader in the Battalion at 20, after earning my Ranger Tab, I not only kept the party going, but I accelerated it. I took pride in being a hard ass and was rewarded for it. One day, I took it too far. The young man I had hazed relentlessly went home on AWOL (Absent Without Leave), shared his story of abuse with a well-connected family member, and launched a Congressional Investigation to get to the bottom of the mistreatment.
I was separated from my squad, stripped of responsibility, and held in limbo for weeks while talks of punishment included everything from prison time in Leavenworth to dishonorable discharge. Every day, while everyone went on with their training (which included hazing the new guys), I mopped the company floor as an example to others. This went on for weeks without the appropriate UCMJ (Uniformed Code of Military Justice) proceedings. An example was made of me for the example that was made upon me. And boy, did I learn my lessons!
I did not learn my lesson about the ills of hazing because I was made an example of. I learned that I couldn’t trust my team and that I was on my own. I learned to fight dirty against a dirty leader. I learned that people would distance themselves to self-protect. I learned that my closest friends were there when I needed them. All this while the unit learned to rationalize their behaviors, defend the corrosive culture, and hide their hazing.
The author in 1999 at the Ranger Memorial.
And the Battalion culture did not transform because I was made an example of. This was evidenced by the fact that just two years after my Article 15, another hazing investigation unfolded in my company, for which I was scapegoated. Only this time, I wasn’t the transgressor. I knew what I had done previously was wrong, and I had changed. The Battalion leadership knew me well enough to see through the bullshit and moved me to another company where I could thrive.
The Battalion transformed after 9/11. We had to change because the world fell apart and needed us to put it back together. We didn’t have time for silly games. All we had time for was preparation, execution, recovery, redeployment, and repeat! Everyone had one vision: destroy Al Qaeda. Full stop.
I’m sharing this to ask us, as a community of leaders, to truly consider: Have any of us ever seen “making an example out of someone” really work? I can’t say that I have. For that matter, how is mass punishment working out for us? I’ve certainly done it, and it didn’t make the intended impact. It made an impact, but not the positive one that transformed the culture.
I think we can take the hard path here and do better. I think we have to get shoulder to shoulder with our teams and solve the problems at the core instead of punishing the people on the periphery.
“Once is a mistake, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern” means that the pattern is the hottest fire we must run to. We must find systemic solutions to systemic issues by including the people closest to the problem instead of punishing them for perpetuating it. Consider, instead of mass punishment, what solutions could a culture of mass problem-solving create? Instead of making an example out of someone, what solutions could using that example to conduct a root cause analysis create? I think insights. I think effectiveness. And I think unity.
That’s the hard work, the real no-kidding leader work, we must do if we want to kill the culture rot and transform our teams.
If you’re out there and you’re facing a situation that immediately evokes scapegoating or mass punishment options, I hope you consider all of this. And I hope you consider how to move past the symptoms to the people and engage them in solving the problems.
