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Lieutenant General Joe Berger · Five Questions for a General

• 0:03
  Speaker A: You're listening to Five Questions for a General, a production of the modern Morris Institute at West point. I am Dr. Charles Feint, the team lead for this podcast series, which features interviews of senior military leaders conducted by specially selected and trained West Point cadet hosts. These exchanges produce timely, relevant, and inspirational insights for professional development of leaders at all levels.
• 0:25
  Speaker B: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Five Questions for a General Podcast. I am Cadet Emily Wilczek, your host, and it is my pleasure to be here today with the retired Lieutenant General Joe Berger. General Berger is a West Point graduate and was commissioned as a military police officer before transitioning to the Judge Advocate General Corps. He served in combat in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq and was assigned to units ranging from the 10th Mountain Division to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and the Joint Special Operations Command to Cyber Command. His last army assignment was as the 42nd Judge Advocate General of the Army. General, welcome to the show.
• 1:01
  Speaker A: Thanks, Emily. It is really my pleasure to be here today, having you and Orion and Dr. Fink from the Modern War Institute and having this opportunity to sit down to reflect as we talked about in the preparation, and then to share some of the things that I've had the good privilege and the painful experience of learning over time, hopefully to the goal of others not having to learn them the same way.
• 1:27
  Speaker B: Well, sir, we are super excited to have you share your knowledge with us. So without further ado, let's get to the question. All right, so shortly after completing your officer basic course, you found yourself in combat in Somalia. Can you share the highlights of that deployment and explain how early tactical experiences shaped your later approach to leadership, both at the operational and strategic level? So of our Army.
• 1:48
  Speaker A: Wow. Okay, Emily, a great question right out the gate. So deployment within a year of commissioning in 1992 was really unusual. My class collectively had thought we'd sort of missed the Gulf War. And in hindsight, you think, why would you be upset that you'd missed a war? But, right, you're coming out of West Point. You think you've missed this opportunity. And less than a year later, I find myself getting ready to get on a plane. Year after graduation, get ready to get on a plane and head to Somalia. About 10 days into our deployment, US Humvee was hit by an IED. Four soldiers were killed, and the second vehicle was stuck in this kill zone. It was a new tactic in Somalia. It hadn't been used before. And we were part of the Quick Reaction Force, so we were a 7 humvee mounted element belonging to 214 infantry out of 10th Mountain Division climbed to glory. But that infantry battalion had to get there in five tons. We could get there quickly in Humvees. We went in first. So we go in, begin to secure the perimeter as the battalion fills in behind us again, all light infantry. I'm moving down an alleyway to try and figure out where some fire is coming from, and I roll to take cover by this wall. And sure enough, I roll into another soldier. Turns out it wasn't just another soldier. It was another second lieutenant. Turns out it wasn't just any random second lieutenant. It was my Bunkner, bunk mate. Small world. There I am laying in this alley. We look at each other, we laugh, and then we realize we're taking fire. Probably a better time to catch up later on, right? And we both fanned out and moved in two different directions out of that. But what did I take away from that experience in Somalia other than just a great funny story and a good anecdote? I learned a couple things. I learned that uncertainty over what the mission was and what it would become is as frustrating at the tactical level as it is at the strategic level. A great answer to your later question of how did it affect your leadership at the various levels. It is just as maddening to be that soldier going, what are we doing here? As it is to be that senior advisor going, what's our end state? What are we trying to accomplish? Best reflected perhaps in a sign that one of my soldiers hung up above his bunk that said, right? It was called Operation Restore Hope, was the name of the US operation in Somalia. And his sign said, restore my hope, Send me home. Right? And so it reminds you, right? Young soldiers, they don't miss much. The other thing that I took away was a lack of robust, integrated training on ROE is dangerous. You set soldiers up for failure. Our army has gotten so much better at that. And I really like to think I've had the opportunity at CTCs and in other places to be part of that evolution, part of ensuring that we get a much better grasp of the rules of engagement, that we train on them. They're a known thing. But the other piece is, what do you learn as cadets? What do you then go out and learn as a lieutenant? What do you stop and think about as a staff officer at CGSC at Fort Leavenworth, years later? Right? It's the law of armed conflict. It's the study. It's the education. It's the preparation for the unknown. Are we doing that? Right? I still think our army needs Some work there. And I've been engaged over the years in that struggle. But we do a much better job at the tactical level preparing our young soldiers for through again that robust, challenging, integrated training on the rules of engagement, training and education. Right? One prepares you for the known, the other prepares you for the unknown. Another example. So a couple of days after this ambush, we were on an operation and we roll up one of the individuals we think was responsible for the ied. So we're headed back. The guidance I was given was, hey, take them down to the temporary facility we had built to hold detainees and hand them over to our partner force that's there. Okay? So we go down, I'm down there with one of my squad leaders and team leaders. We go to hand this detainee over, and the, the soldier from the other country looks at me and says, these guys killed an American. We'll take care of it right now. I could not tell you then what the third Geneva Convention said about the treatment right. Of prisoners of war, but I sure as heck knew that was not going to end well for anyone. And something there was wrong. Right? So it's about education. You don't need to be. Now, as a lawyer, I better be able to cite right line inverse. But as a young platoon leader, I needed to have a good sense of right and wrong. I needed to have my moral compass on point and I needed to be thinking and I needed to be thinking based on the education that I had gotten. And I was privileged and fortunate that that's how that played out.
• 6:42
  Speaker B: Now, sir, a follow up question to that. How would you say the tempo of your thought process changed as this conflict evolved, but also as more expansive roes came into play, how did that change your thought process and how quickly you made decisions?
• 6:57
  Speaker A: So the one thing about decision making is accelerated decision making is much easier and much more comfortable if you've done the preparation, you can't prepare for everything. And you know, it's been said about the army, the US army, we're great about preparing for the next war. We just always prepare for the wrong one. Got it. But we are constantly preparing and we're thinking and we're challenging ourselves and we're working through scenarios so that when you get a scenario that might not be exactly what you thought through, but is close, you're already at a start point and you're 100ft ahead of where you would have otherwise been in the race because you'd done the prep work. So to your question, right, how does that, how does that Cumulative effect impacted, you get better and better. It's the cycle of after action reviews, right? The more often you can do something, evaluate how you did, make the changes, execute them again, reevaluate. Right. It's that OODA loop. Can you get into that OODA loop and can you get into it quickly enough that you're able to learn? Because if you're only doing it infrequently, irregularly and at a fart length and distance apart, you're not going to get the repetitions you need to learn. That goes back to the point about robust integrated ROE training. It can't be a one off that stands alone by itself.
• 8:19
  Speaker B: And do you think that applies to a moral character as well, like the moral behind the decision making?
• 8:24
  Speaker A: I absolutely do. I think if we don't take time to stop and think about who it is we are, what values we're committed to and why we remain committed to them, that we are failing ourselves and worse, we're failing the men and women that we're entrusted to lead. Right. We take an oath to the Constitution. We can talk about that at length, but at its core, we take an oath to a set of principles embodied in a document. So every year on the anniversary of my commissioning, I've made it a point to read the Constitution cover to cover. It's a pretty short document. You can also add in the 1337 words, right. Of the Declaration of Independence. Now, I don't need to read that on the anniversary of my commissioning anymore because my role in this world has changed. So now I read it on the day of my retirement because as a lawyer, as a citizen, it ought to still matter to me.
• 9:22
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir. That was a very insightful answer.
• 9:24
  Speaker A: Thank you, Emily.
• 9:25
  Speaker B: Sir, our next question, looking back over your career, what was the single decision you made as a leader that had the greatest long term impact on your soldiers and did you realize it at the time?
• 9:36
  Speaker A: So the single decision I made in the moment that had the longest, the greatest long term impact was learning to give soldiers opportunities, even at cost to the organization. Give you two examples. So I am a pretty senior captain, but I'm a new judge advocate and I'm learning and I'm in a job that I'm probably not fully qualified for, but I have an amazing NCO I see, and he is doing wonders. He is teaching me, he is patient, he is experienced, he is smart. And I am learning and I am soaking it up. And he gets the opportunity to go out of the unit to a job that'll Almost guarantee he makes E8. And he was good and he was going to excel at that job. And so when my boss came to me and said, well, should we let him go? I said, you know, sir, I don't think the shop can afford it. But that wasn't the truth. The reality was Joe Berger was scared and was too worried about failing. So he never got the opportunity to take that job. He retired as an E7. Now, I've spoken to him countless times over the 20 years since then, and we have a wonderful relationship. And he laughs about it and says, oh, you still get wrapped around the axle. But I said, I do, I do. But I learned in that moment, give soldiers opportunities, somebody else will step up, you step up. But don't hold somebody back from an opportunity to get ahead, even if that comes at a short term cost to the organization. Because the long term benefit to the larger organization is what makes the difference. The number of young paralegals over the years who came to me and said, hey, sir, I'd like to apply for green to gold. And I think, ah, but we're going to lose you, but some platoon is going to gain you as their leader and that's a much bigger win, right? So whether it happens there, whether it's somebody deciding to get out of the army and go do something else, it's not quitting. They raised their hand, they served. There's a way they can serve the larger community, the nation, in a different way. Help them do that. Don't just let them do it. Help them do it. The other thing is, don't always hit the easy button. I had another soldier in that same job. I learned a lot in that job. But in that same job, I had a young super captain. This guy was amazing. You could throw any task at him and he would get it done. And so I threw every task at him and he got it done. The problem was he grew frustrated looking around, seeing his peers seemingly not working as hard, and eventually he left the active component. The good news is he stayed in the reserves, but he left because he felt wasn't fair. And I failed because rather than bring everybody up to standard, rather than train and force and hold accountable, I hit the easy button. Now the good news was for him as well. Our relationship continues to this day. In fact, we had lunch recently a couple blocks from here. He went on, he's a colonel in the Army Reserves. In fact, he worked for me multiple times again and again. But I still remember, what if, what if in both cases, what if that NCO had made a ea, might he have become a sergeant major? What could have been his greater impact on soldiers? Right. And for that, captain, what if he had stayed in the active component? What if we never know? But our job as a leader is not to foreclose those opportunities, it's to accelerate them.
• 13:07
  Speaker B: Now, sir, continuing on that thread of caring for our people and making sure they get the opportunities. Many young officers struggle with balancing mission accomplishment and caring for their people. When those two come into tension, how do you personally navigate that?
• 13:22
  Speaker A: So I don't think they're actually ever truly intention, even though it might appear like it on its face. Why do I say that? I say that because taking care of soldiers is what gets the mission done. Unless you personally right. Are going to do it yourself. It's your soldiers who are going to do it. And there's nothing you're going to do in the army that you do yourself. Just trust me on that. Everything's a team effort. So that that apparent tension that says, well we've got to get the mission done so folks are going to have to work a little harder, have to work a little longer. Okay, what it's face that seems like, well, maybe you're placing that mission ahead of those soldiers. No, it's a learning opportunity for those soldiers. It's a training opportunity for those soldiers. Trust me, with very rare exception, and as a lawyer, I've met some of those exceptions, Soldiers don't come to work thinking what can I screw up today? What can I slack off on today? They want to do meaningful work with a purpose for somebody who shows they care about them. And so you do those things and that tension is gone and even the appearance of that tension vanishes.
• 14:35
  Speaker B: Now sir, you've served as senior legal advisor for units like the 160, the SOAR, the Joint Special Operations Command and Cyber Command. How did you balance the demands of fast moving operations with the need for disciplined legal counsel?
• 14:49
  Speaker A: So I go back to preparation. You balance it by being prepared. Now there are times where you're just sunk in the 5 meter targets of the day and you can't get past the alligators around the boat and in some cases in the boat. But the better prepared you are, the better able you are to handle a variety of things. Right? So you train for the known, you do it repeatedly, you do it to standard and you do it with brutal aars that keep you honest and make sure you are sorting out and working through all of the friction points. There's a saying on the range that slow Is fast. Breathe, point, shoot. Slow is fast. If you don't waste time missing targets and you hit them all, you're done a lot more quickly. Discipline legal counsel is the same way. Take the time to look at your boss and say, hey, ma', am, I need to go look at that. This is the issue. But I need to go a little, do a little research so we don't waste time going down a rabbit hole. I never had a boss push back on that. Never. Even in what was seemingly the most high paced, frenetic environment you could imagine, I never had a boss push back. Take the time to be slow, to be deliberate. Not slow in a tortoise kind of lumbering, right? I'm going to bury this process because I don't like it kind of slow. Be deliberate. Don't chase rabbits, don't run the wrong direction. Focused, deliberate, and you'll get done a lot faster because you won't find yourself having to repeat all those things that you've done. The other piece is you've got to be part of the team. You can't be this sort of standoff individual that the command comes to and says, can we do this? Can we do that? Can we do. If they're asking you a binary question, right? For me as a lawyer, I've already failed. That meant I wasn't part of the planning process. I didn't help develop a number of legally permissible courses of action. I didn't help identify some of the policy issues that the commander may or may not care about. I've spent many an evening talking to a commander late into the night, hey, sir. Hey, ma', am, right? The law lets you do this, but let's talk about some policy reasons that you might want to consider before you make a decision. And I've had commanders go, wow, I didn't think about that precedential effect. I think I'm going to back off this one. I had another case where 45 minutes back and forth with this commander, right? I'm a lieutenant colonel, he's a three star. We go back and forth and back and forth. And finally after about 45 minutes, I think he was chuckling a little bit, but he stands up and he puts his hand on my shoulder. He goes, joe, thanks. He goes, I'm paid to take risk. I got this one, okay? And he did. But even if he had already made up his mind, he gave me the opportunity to help him think about the full spectrum of the impact of what he was going to do. I didn't go in with an agenda. My only agenda was, hey, sir, I want you to understand the full scope. You're going to do whatever it is you do because that's what you get paid to do. I'm here just to help make you make sure you understand everything that's on the plate.
• 18:11
  Speaker B: Sir, what are some ways that you stayed involved in that team building and that deliberate process without getting overwhelmed or without getting caught up in the weeds?
• 18:20
  Speaker A: I'd like to say that neither of those things ever happen. Never happened, Emily. But they both did multiple times, right? Getting overwhelmed and getting buried in the weeds. The secret to staying out of the weeds is making sure that you are only doing those things that you can do, right? Delegate, push back down. The things that come up that come up because somebody else doesn't want to do them, not because they can't do them, right? So a subordinate leader has a challenge and he or she has a solution, but it's an unpopular solution. So they can do one of two things. They can execute their solution because they think it's the best answer, or they can punt it up to you. Block the punt, send the ball back, right? Don't let them do it. Don't give them the out. Give them counsel, Give them top cover, but make them own the decision, right? When in charge, be in charge and remind them of that. Now, there are times they don't have the resourcing, they don't have the authority. Any of a number of reasons that that decision has to come. Those are the ones you should focus. If you do that, you can stay out of the weeds, you can do your job and let others do their job, right? How do you avoid becoming overwhelmed? You have to learn how to prioritize. The only way you can prioritize is if you know what's important to the commander and to the command and you start there. Doesn't matter what Emily's priorities are, doesn't matter what Joe's priorities are. It matters. What are the priorities of the command? What are the priorities of leadership all the way up? That's what we're focused on. And if you can stay focused on the priorities, it's amazing how much of the other stuff just sort of falls away. And sometimes letting something suffer from benign neglect to the side, it will wither and die and you won't have to worry about it. Sometimes you'll come back, right? It's like that plant that's got a lot of brown leaves and you're trying to bring it back to life because you really need it. And you want it. Okay, you'll have those. You'll have some misfires on this. Right? But if you want a different analogy, it's glass balls and rubber balls. If you drop the glass balls, you know what happens sometimes you can drop the rubber ball, keep juggling the glass balls, and come back and grab that rubber ball on a bounce. That works great. Right? But it is what is the commander's priority or priorities. And everything can't be a priority or nothing is. And what are you doing to support those?
• 20:47
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir.
• 20:47
  Speaker A: You're welcome.
• 20:48
  Speaker B: Now, shifting gears a little bit. In past interviews, you've emphasized the importance of empathy and people first leadership. What does that look like in practice when advising commanders on hard legal or ethical decisions under pressure?
• 21:02
  Speaker A: So, right. What is empathy? Understanding and sharing the feelings of another. How do you know what that is? Conversation. You have to talk. We are in a people business. It's not a remote world business. It's not a chat business. It's a people business where you communicate, and you communicate face to face. You communicate face to face because body language will tell you more than the words out of somebody's mouth. Nine times out of ten, you communicate face to face because you can alleviate all sorts of misunderstanding. It's really hard to send tone in an email. All caps, exclamation points, emojis. Texts are even worse. Right. When you get in. I got a text the other day from my son. I looked to my wife, I said, oh, read that note from Jeb. And she read me the note back. She goes, yeah, that's not what he said. She goes, do you not understand what this acronym means? And this acronym? And I'm like, guess not. All right, wrong message. It was a great message, but I got it wrong. But had he and I have been talking face to face or even on the phone tenor, Right. All those things would have helped me better understand. So first and foremost, you have to have a personal relationship with not only the. The leader you're supporting, but with the rest of the staff that supports him or her. They've got to know who you are, and you've got to be involved. You've got to understand what's going on your own team. When you're trying to maximize productivity out of your team, everybody is going through something. It might be financial, it might be marital, it might be a child, it might be a parent. It might be a frustration with a neighbor. It might be a soldier with a car repair that he or she can't afford. Right? They want to do their job, but they're distracted. It's your job to engage enough at the right level. Don't go down and do your squad leader's job. Right? Right. But at the right level, be engaged enough that with the team around you, you know what's going on so that you can help alleviate, where possible, understand otherwise, give time, give space, have the conversation. Not only show that you care, but actually demonstrate through actions and care. Not just show you care, but actually care that'll help you accomplish so much, so much in any of those environments. And if you think about that under pressure, Right. If somebody is stressed enough elsewhere and going back to your question, somebody is stressed enough and you're going to add additional pressure if they know my boss gets this, he knows where I am. One, you know how hard you can press. And two, they know you've got their back. They know because you've shown through your action that you care. And that'll. That'll get you far. That'll get you through any pressure situation. How does that tie back in then, to ethical decision making? You don't put somebody in an awkward position where they have to take a shortcut they wouldn't otherwise want to take. Right. Well, I can do this well enough or I can kind of cheat here to get it done, and then I get back focused to what my personal problem is. No, because they know you're going to give them the time and space, the resourcing, the whatever to deal with that personal problem. So they can either focus or they'll come to you and say they'll trust you. Hey, sir, ma', am, I can't get this done right now. Can I pass this to. Can we pass this to. Can we do something else? Right. By taking them out of that pressure cooker, you alleviate one of the things that drives people to things that in time can become or in the moment can become ethical shortcuts, which is not where we're going to put our soldiers.
• 25:00
  Speaker B: Sir, do you think this conversation and demonstration of care has shifted in our digital age, or do you think it stayed largely the same?
• 25:08
  Speaker A: I do think there's a shift. I. And I don't say that as the old man yelling, hey, you, get off my lawn, kid. Right. I don't. I say that because we have become comfortable in relying on. Right. I'm looking around the table here. Three of the four of us have our phones out now. We're using them as recording devices. I got it. They're out for a purpose. But three of the four of us have Our phones out around this table. Right. It's become an appendage for all of us. And it's not necessarily for the better. Right. We use it as a way to communicate without ever talking. You can use the overblown analogy of, well, how many friends do you have on Facebook? Right? Or I had somebody reach out the other day, hey, you're connected with so and so on LinkedIn. Can you link me up? And I look back and I'm like, I don't even know how I became connected with that person. Right. Because it's a digital age sometimes and we don't think or we don't take the time to invest. If you're going to have a relationship with somebody, a friend, a spouse, Right. A professional colleague, you have to nurture those relationships over time. And nurturing relationships over time takes personal investment. It is. When was the last time I sat down, no phones, no time restrictions, and had a cup of coffee with this person? Right. I know a guy whose wife is going through some really tough medical challenges right now. And the other day I paused and thought, I have not spoken to him in two weeks. Wow. Shame on me, right? It's not a text message, hey, how you doing? It's a pick up the phone and call, say, hey, you want to grab bites? I'm going to have a cup of coffee. Right? How's your wife, Dylan? How you doing? How are you holding up? Because all of a sudden, now he's thrust into the role of primary caregiver at a time and a place and an age where he never imagined that was going to happen. Right. So how's he holding up? You can't do that via text. You can't do that. So is that a generational thing? I can be as guilty as you can, Emily. Right. And there's a little bit of an age difference between the two of us. So is it a generational thing? No, I think it's much more of a societal challenge. And it's great to have a rule where phones don't come into whatever the event is, the dinner, the family dinner, the evening dinner, the conversation, the get together. There are ways. And phones aren't the only culprit. Right. But it's an easy example. But it's indicative, Right. Of our disconnection with each other. And when we disconnect, people become a little more anonymous and we're less restricted to in being snarky, in being mean, than if we have to look you in the face and say the same thing. Because chances are, most of US won't. That's the risk, I think. Great question.
• 28:06
  Speaker B: Focusing still on changes, sir. The army has evolved dramatically over the past few decades. From your perspective, what change has most improved the force and what change still worries you?
• 28:18
  Speaker A: Wow. Okay. So the biggest change and what worries me the most. I think what worries me the most is ever increasing uncertainty. There was almost this golden era in the Cold War of certainty, right? We could count Russian missiles, we could count Russian submarines, we could count Russian long range bombers, we could do this math. Did we ever know if. When was it going to happen? No. But it was this somewhat controlled, predictable. That is not the world in which we live. And so that unpredictability and the changes that have to come as a result of that. I'm a huge fan of what General Reeves, as the Dean, has done at West Point for all of you in your education, because we go back to the point, right? The army's going to train you on all the known tasks, and you'll get training as a cadet on a lot of known tasks. But the academy is going to educate you and prepare you for all those unknowns. Some of those hypos will play out shockingly realistically. Others will seem as farcical ten years from now as they are today sitting in a classroom working through them. But they will have taught you how to think deliberately, right? So you don't waste time and effort going down rabbit holes. So you stay focused. Slow is fast, right? Focused on the task at hand. So what I love about some of those changes are the things that you're exposed to. The opportunities for foreign exchanges, the opportunities for travel, the opportunities to come down to D.C. for a writing workshop and to break out of that workshop, right, and come and visit some old retired guy in his office and have a conversation. I can't imagine having done that as a cadet. And it's been 33 years, right? Things needed to change, but the things that you get to do, the educational opportunities that you get. I've had the good fortune of going up roughly about once a year for at least the last decade. And on almost every one of those visits, I've had the opportunity to go into a classroom, speak to cadets, take a class, write for somebody in the law department, which I love. And the engagement, the quality of engagement that I get from today's cadet leads me walking out the door going, I was a lousy cadet. There is no way, right? And you think, wow, I couldn't hang. That is a change that excites me. That's a change that inspires me. And that's a change that, when we look at that increased uncertainty that we talked about, alleviates much of the concern. And it's not just you're getting to do great things in the classroom. It's not just you're getting great travel opportunities. Right. You're getting these enrichment activities. It's what I see in the conduct of cadets, in their commitment to the honor code, their commitment to our values, their commitment, choosing the harder right over the easier wrong. Right. As a T jack of the Army, I looked at a lot of investigations dealing with cadets and cadet misconduct. Right. They were few and far between at their core. They really were. When you consider the size of the organization. Right. And the cadets who tried to do the right thing in these environments. I mean, I got to see all these things. Yeah, every organization has got some problems, but overwhelmingly, I walked away from every one of those engagements. I took multiple superintendents to the Hill when I was in Ledge affairs meeting with members of Congress. And I'd walk out of those meetings just so impressed with how our academy was represented and how the leaders were able to represent an incredible corps of cadets. So that gives me far, far less concern when it comes to all of those other things we talked about at the beginning of this question.
• 32:14
  Speaker B: I'm glad to hear the alma mater can still make you proud.
• 32:17
  Speaker A: It does. It does.
• 32:20
  Speaker B: Okay, now, sir, changing a little bit again now to leadership tactics. You have held a myriad of leadership positions, from small tactical units to the highest level strategic staffs. How did your understanding of leadership change as your span of responsibility grew, and how has it evolved since?
• 32:39
  Speaker A: The biggest change over time was the piece we touched on a little bit already. And that was only take on those tasks, make those decisions that you have to make, push the others back down. But again, you can't just shove them back. You have to empower that leader. Does that leader have what he or she needs? Right. Resourcing, Right. Authority. Right. Training? Do they know you've got their back? Do they know if you do whatever and somebody calls them out on it, you've got their back? So I'll share an anecdote. I was the staff judge advocate. Right. The senior legal advisor at Joint Special Operations Command. I had one of the general officers called me in and he had a question, and I gave him the answer. And he was not happy about the answer. And he said, give me the Judge Advocate General's phone number. Hey, sir, we're in a skiff. I don't have my phone. He goes, go, Out. Get your phone. Get his number off your phone and come back in here and give me his number. I went out, got his number. It's the only time in the world the judge Advocate General of the army answered his own phone, right? So the G. O. I'm standing in front of calls him. Now. Turns out they've been in the same company at West Point. They knew each other, they had history. But he says, you know, hey, this is so and so I've got Joe standing in front of me, and he's giving me bad legal. I think he's giving me bad legal advice, okay? And so the T. JAG said, all right, well, what do we got? And to his credit, right, this general laid out the facts accurately, without bias. I thought, wow, that was okay. That was real. That's as fair shake as I'm going to get, right? And then there's this big pause and I'm like, oh, so this is how it ends. But then my technical chain, right, the judge Advocate general in the army said, no, Joe's right. Anything else I can do for you today? Now, whether I was right or wrong, the organization had my back. So what did I learn, right? At every level, if your subordinates know that you have their back, they will take greater risk, they will do better things, right? Risk in a positive sense. Not reckless risk, controlled, thoughtful, informed risk, but risk they might not otherwise take if they think, if this goes south, am I going to be hung out to dry? No. I've got a boss who endorses me taking risk. I know he or she has my back. I can run with this. They'll do stuff faster, they'll do stuff better, they'll do stuff differently, right? And maybe that ultimately is or isn't better, is or isn't faster, but sometimes just different is good for morale, right? Why are we doing it this way? Well, search the way we've always done it. As a lawyer, things I hated to hear because my immediate response is always, well, you know, the law changes. Oh, well, okay, right. So you go back and forth on that. But over time, right, at increased levels, it is really that showing a subordinate got your back and empowering them one, two levels down, checking in two or three levels down to see what's going on. But as your span of authority and with it your span of control grows, as you become more senior and the challenges become more complex, because the reason those things come up, right, they come up because somebody didn't want to. That's the block the punt discussion we had. And some of them come up because they just can't be solved. Resourcing complexity, authorities, any of a number of things, and they land on your plate and you've got to deal with them right when that happens. My hope was always that my boss, because we all work for somebody, had my back, right? And so if I wasn't doing that for everybody working for me at each increasing level, then I was asking for something I wasn't giving. And that's just poor leadership. So hopefully that gets at the question.
• 36:45
  Speaker B: Yes, sir.
• 36:46
  Speaker A: Awesome.
• 36:46
  Speaker B: Emily, speaking of having people's backs, you grew up as an army brat. How did growing up as an army brat shape your view of the tenet of selfless service and how did it impact your actions as you move through your career?
• 36:58
  Speaker A: Wow. So I did grow up as an army brat. I was one of four kids. I was the only boy and the second in birth order. My dad served 27 years. In fact, he retired as a colonel while I was deployed to Somalia. What I watched in both of my parents as I grew up. So my dad was a Vietnam vet, Silver star recipient in Vietnam. But I was born after that. Right. And so by the time, by the time I came around, he had CTC rotations, right? He had a rotation, the mfo. But my experience as a kid was not my kids experience with me as a soldier. I mean, I missed about five years of my kids lives right between Iraq, Afghanistan and other and Kosovo and other places. So that experience was different. But what I saw from his service and what I saw from my mother's service in every community in which we lived, and whether that was at schools, whether that was at church, wherever that was, I saw two parents committed to serving others, serving something other than just themselves. And if my parents gave me anything, they gave me a sense of service. And so when the time came, Right back to the origin story, when the time came. Why West Point? Well, a couple things. One, I'd grown up in the Army. That's the world I knew. There was a certain comfort in that. I went and visited as a sophomore and I fell in love with the place. Part of it was the honor code, part of it was the discipline. Look, my wife will tell you that in the world of type A personalities, I'm the letter B. 4A. Like I was probably born, born to be a Greyhawk cadet. Like it was, right? It was written in the stars. That's just who I am. And so it was a great fit for me in all of that. But the other piece is an honest piece. I was one of four. My parents were not paying for college, right? And so as a choice between ROTC and West Point, West Point appealed a lot more to me. Had I truly given a lot of thought to what chapter next after commissioning looked like? No. The rough sense of what the army was. But it was through the lens of, right. A son looking at his father, not perhaps the most accurate vision sometimes. And I certainly never thought, well, I'll go to West Point and I'll stay in the army for 30 or 33 years. Come on. Like, never even crossed my mind. I thought, I'll go. I'll do what the army asks of me and we'll see where it takes us. And that is exactly how I ended up here today. It's where the army took me. And so why West Point? Why that? It was for me about a value set. It was for me about an incredible environment. It was for me about a challenge. It was also for me about a free education. Now, there's no such thing as a free lunch, right? I think the army's gotten the return on investment in me. But in all fairness, right, I have been incredibly fortunate. I have had the journey of a lifetime in uniform. I have had a front row seat to amazing history. I have been exposed to and seen things I might never have otherwise seen. But most importantly, I had the opportunity to work with incredible teams, to work for amazing bosses and to be surrounded by soldiers, sailors, airmen, marine coasties, even a couple guardians in there, right? Just incredible.
• 40:50
  Speaker B: Now, sir, you have worked with a insurmountable amount of people and you've spent time in combat formations and in the Pentagon. What is one thing soldiers in the field misunderstand about senior leadership. And one thing senior leaders often misunderstand about soldiers in the field.
• 41:07
  Speaker A: So I think senior leaders tend to get occasionally a romantic view of what it was like being a young soldier back being a platoon leader. They forget about the lousy part of motor stables. They forget about the pain of that command inspection program. They forget about all those things. And they think back to what it was like to be surrounded by young, eager soldiers. Right? And to be honest, the older you get, the more you want to be surrounded by young people, because it does. It energizes you. I love it. It absolutely energizes you. So I think there's a rosiness that gets painted over some of those memories. And you forget that being a platoon leader could be really hard work, Right? And it wasn't all fun and it wasn't all great. And yes, for that great rotation at it, ntc. And for that, those two weeks in the box, right. All the time you spent in Aruba getting ready and all the time you spent recovering your vehicle like that was miserable. And nobody, nobody likes that. And they're lying to you if they tell you they do, right? So I think we tend to forget about some of the realities. Right. As you get further removed from. I think that's human nature for anything. Why does that matter? It matters because I think as senior leaders, a realistic understanding of what soldiers are going through and what challenges soldiers face and what the impact of resourcing decisions has on soldiers. When you lose perspective on that, I think that becomes problematic. The flip side is for that junior soldier, that young officer, a good officer, is looking two levels up and one level down. He or she is not certainly right at the major level or below, with rare exception, going to have under any understanding of the resourcing, challenging resources, resourcing challenges that occur across our Army. They see this massive army budget and they think, and we can't have this couple hundred dollar item. We can't go on this couple hundred dollar tdy. Come on, you got to be kidding me. Until you realize where all that money goes and how it goes where it goes and what the competing priorities are. It's a complex, complex organization. It's a massive or It's a Fortune 10 organization with a massive budget but with incredible obligations on a budget that is seemingly fat, but realistically pretty strained because frankly, our country turns to our army more than any other service, first and foremost to do everything it needs. And the army pays for that. And we can talk about reimbursement and we can talk about all these other things that sometimes happen generally don't. The army bears the cost and the army gets it done because that's what our army does. And that's what you, as young leaders will do with your soldiers. You will get done the task you're given, whatever that task is. But it's hard as a young soldier to see or as a young leader to see where that fits into the big puzzle. And so it's just those differing perspectives. It's just sort of a love for something that you've lost and a disbelief about something you can't fully understand. Looking down and looking up, the reflection.
• 44:36
  Speaker B: Is always a bit skewed in the mirror, sir.
• 44:38
  Speaker A: I agree. It's a little bit like the funhouse mirror. Right. And depends on where you stand, how you look. So that's a great, that is a great description, Emily.
• 44:46
  Speaker B: Sir, thank you so much for your insightful answers. Our final question, knowing what you know now, what advice would you offer your younger self?
• 44:54
  Speaker A: What advice would I give my younger self? All right, so I think I'm going to give you three things I think I'm going to tell you. First and foremost, it's less of a race than you think it is now. That's right. Again, type A personalities in this room, we're all hyper competitive. It's less of a race than you think it is. Don't pass up on an opportunity thinking, well, there'll be another shot at it because the time might not be there, the opportunity might not be there, right? And that could be a unique vacation. That could be dinner with a friend. That could be self development. Feed your soul, feed your relationships and feed yourself. That is important. It's less of a race than you think it is. Second of all, know your trade. Look, you are not going to have the wisdom that comes from all the experience that your platoon sergeants, right, your squad leaders, your first sergeants, your sergeants major will have. You won't have it. But you can be the master of the doctrine. Again, it's a start point, right? We know that. And you can take your knowledge and their experience and combine those two into the wisdom to do the right thing, right? So know your trait. Know that self development never ends. And again, there'll be chapters of your life where you have the time and the energy to engage in regular self development, to read regularly, to do all those things. There will be other chapters and times of your life and seasons of your life where you're reading three pages of a book a night and you're falling asleep every time. And by the 15th night you're like, I don't even know what I read in the first chapter. I'm going to have to reread this whole thing, right? That's just life. So read. Focus on self development, right? Be the master of doctrine. Know your trade. Know your trade. What do your soldiers want from you? They want you to make a decision, right? It's what you're paid to do. The only way you're going to make good decisions is to have the best information you can have. It's not perfect information. Rarely if ever will you have perfect information. Know your trade so you can make decisions, so you can empower your soldiers. They don't want to waste their time waiting for you to make a decision. But you can't make a decision unless you know your trade. And last, treat people well. It's just. It's not that hard. It really isn't, right? Be empathetic. Be kind. Your worst soldier on his or her worst day still raised their right hand to join the army. And even if they're facing court martial charges, they still deserve to be treated like a soldier. Deserve to be treated well as a human. Let the process work through that. Best soldier, don't kill him or her. Remember that kid I told you about, Super Captain Easy Button? Don't do that. But challenge him or her. Because if they're bored, that's a bigger problem. Take care of people. Treat them well. Show you care. Actually care. You will succeed because your soldiers will guarantee you succeed.
• 48:22
  Speaker B: General Berger, thank you for your time today and for an excellent discussion about professional education, military strategy, leadership ethics, and preparing for tomorrow's wars. Today, on behalf of the director of the Modern War Institute, Colonel Pat Sullivan, and Dr. Charlie Feint, the director of this podcast series, it is my pleasure to present you with this rare and coveted MWI coin, as well as this cadet star for beating AV on their own terms.
• 48:48
  Speaker A: I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Long overdue. I'll show you something when we're done, but thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for your commitment to doing this, to the preparation you put in, to coming in here so we could have a meaningful discussion. Hopefully my answers matched the power of your questions, gave you and the listeners something to work with. And thanks for doing what you're doing. Thank you for raising your right hand. Thanks for being on and part of the greatest team sport on Earth, which is what I truly believe our army is. We wear different uniforms at different points in time. Right. But we're all on the same team. It is a heck of an adventure and I wish you all the best in it. Thank you.
• 49:36
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir.
• 49:41
  Speaker A: This has been an episode of Five Questions for a General, a production of the Modern War Institute of West Point. If you like what you heard today, please download, like, subscribe and share this podcast to help us reach an even larger audience. All statements in this podcast represent the personal views of this speakers and do not represent an official position of the United States Military Academy or the United States government.