Photo By Marc Loi | Chief Warrant Officer Jeremy Vann works on a project at Forward Operating Base Spin...... read more read more
FORWARD OPERATING BASE SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan – Look around the tiny but crowded office where Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jeremy Vann works and you won’t find motivational posters. Look on the white board hanging on the wooden wall just off to the right of his desk and you won’t find quotes about leadership. The white board, which has turned a shade of yellow through being repeatedly written on, is filled with weapons serial numbers and tasking, schedules and responsibilities. You won’t find Vann here, either. But follow the flickering flashes of the welding machine or the sounds of hushed conversations between Army leaders and you might just find the Redlands, Calif., native working on a weapons rack for a soldier or helping a young non-commissioned officer become a better writer.
In a culture saturated with sentiments and ceremony, Vann is the exception to the rule. Where others talk about leadership, Vann lives it. Where many let emotions dictate their lives, Vann prefers to take a step back to look at the bigger picture. In fact, Vann’s logic is one of the reasons he left a successful career in the Air Force to become a soldier and eventually deployed with the 504th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade from Fort Hood, Texas, here in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Cerebral as he is, however, Vann also relishes in the emotional as he talks about his responsibilities to take care of his family, gushes over the fact that his son now attends the same school as he did when he was a child and vividly recalls that Buffalo chicken wrap was on the menu on his first date in Baltimore with his wife, Brenda. The sentiments stop there, however. Rather than talking about the importance of his own family, Vann prefers focusing on how the Army can better take care of all soldiers’ families, and the problems soldiers face when away from loved ones for a year at a time.
“We’re out here for entirely too long,” he said. “Twelve months is way too long, and people wonder why the divorce rates are too high in the military or why the children of deployed military personnel have such a hard time growing up.
“Yeah, soldiers do this for their country, but someone has to draw the line and say that soldiers are our most important assets.”
To make deployment cycles more bearable, Vann suggests the solution might be to have shorter deployments in which a half of a unit is deployed at a time, giving soldiers time to recover and, at the same time, still keeping the integrity of the Army’s mission. For Vann, this is because while family may be the most important group of people in soldiers’ lives, a reality of changing times also exists, and because of this, “Big Army” leaders also need to realize that perhaps love doesn’t solve all a soldier’s problems, he said.
“Maybe that was true in World War II,” he said. “But society’s changed to where you can be away from your loved ones for a few months and that’s it.”
It’s that willingness to speak his mind and take care of soldiers that the Army looks for in a leaders and it seems, in Vann, the Army has found such. But leadership is also about mentoring soldiers, and Vann is also doing that.
Aside from his job as an allied trade technician – the name the Army designates for its welders and machinists – Vann also takes the time to mentor and develop the soldiers and non-commissioned officers who work under him. Recently, when an NCO needed help with writing a soldiers’ counseling statement, though it was not his job, Vann was there to give the NCO feedback and suggestions.
“If it’s something I know how to do or could help them do it better, I am not going to deprive them of that,” Vann said.
Yet, it isn’t enough to simply take care of soldiers. Leaders have to also make the right decisions, and often times, making the right decision means a leader has to step back and look at each situation from a larger, long-range perspective.
“It’s not easy to take a step back and look at things from a broader view,” Vann said. “It takes a lot of mentorship and practice,” he said. “[Leaders] always told me to look around first because just because you’re right doesn’t mean you’re right. As a leader, you’ve got to assess the situation and make the most logical decision you possibly can make and take responsibility for that decision.”
That ability to step back and assess the situation, Vann said, not only works well within the Army, but also works in helping decision-makers achieve optimal results in their everyday lives. Even in America’s political culture, for example, taking the time to understand the other side’s viewpoints may help find sound and common-sense solutions to incendiary, wedged issues.
“If you can’t take a step back and look at things logically and remove as much emotions from the issues as you can, it’s always going to be [vitriolic,]” he said. “They all want the same thing, but they’re fighting about it anyway.”
A prime example, for Vann, is the ongoing war here. While both those who are for and against the war want what is best for America, the fighting over whether wars are justified or not becomes irrelevant because what matters most is the support of the soldiers and carrying out policies that help keep America safe, he said.
“There are people who don’t agree with the war, and everyone has different views, but what matters is that they’re supporting the soldiers,” Vann said.
That’s one of the reasons he is appreciative of the greeters at America’s airports who make it a point to come out to welcome soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Though dripping with sentiments, the actions in themselves show good intentions and their support of the soldiers, he added.
“It just shows that they care, right or wrong,” he said. “Yeah, it’s sentimental and you get kind of choked up, but it makes you feel like what you’re doing is worth it.”
For Vann, being away from the people he loves and at a desolate base without the familiar comfort of home is worth it, he said, because while OEF may have lasted longer than some Americans are comfortable with, taking the fight to the enemies has also kept America safe.
“We’ve got the 9/11 attacks, and of course there are people with conspiracy theories, but the main thing is since we’ve been out here, there hasn’t been an attack on our soil, and that’s worth me to me,” he said. “Soldiers being out here is the reason people back home can get up in the morning and have their coffee and spend time with their family.”
While such a realist view of war and national security, on the surface, may seem like a lack of compassion to some, Vann said soldiers’ willingness to fight – whether for their country or family – is deeply rooted in compassion and the understanding that there are others with needs more immediate than their own.
“It boils down to caring more about other people and their needs over your own,” he said. “They say you’ve always got to look out for number one, but at the same time, if you’re only looking out for just yourself, you’re going to damage the people and environment around you.”
In all, however, focusing on oneself is important, Vann said, and each soldier must take the time, especially in a deployed environment and far away from home, to be introspective and make the improvements they feel they need.
“A lot of people are unwilling to make themselves better people mentally and physically,” he said. “They don’t want to take the time to listen to constructive criticisms and take the time to step back and say that there are things about themselves that need fixing. They’ve got to take a step back, listen to other people and have the courage to change.”
Vann’s cerebral nature, and willingness to make himself a better person, are just some of the things his wife, Brenda Sykes, said she most values about him.
“He’s smart, too smart for his own good sometimes,” she said. “But he’s also hardworking and ambitious, and he always has something to say.”
In the Army, however, Vann lives in a duality. While he most certainly has a lot to say, Vann also stays away from the clichéd and trite catchphrases and vernacular of the Army, preferring instead to use different words and phrases in conversations and encouraging soldiers to also do the same.
“He’s not the ‘hooah-hooah’ kind of Army guy,” said Vann’s NCO, Staff Sgt. Benjamin Wormsby. “He doesn’t like to use words like ‘roger’ and ‘troops,’ but he’s very dedicated to his work.
“He doesn’t like to talk,” Wormsby said. “With him it’s pretty much like, ‘Hey, let me show you how to do this and you can go ahead and do it, but if you have any questions, come over and I’ll help you.’”
That mentality, the ability to lead soldiers, yet at the same time giving them the opportunity to develop, is one of the benefits of having Vann as a leader, Wormsby said.
“He was an NCO [in the Air Force] before becoming a warrant officer, and I am trying to be a better leader myself,” he said. “Working under someone who’s been there, that’s a good thing.”
| Date Taken: | 12.30.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 12.30.2011 06:19 |
| Story ID: | 81902 |
| Location: | SPIN BOLDAK, AF |
| Web Views: | 589 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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