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Brigadier-General Pascal Godbout · 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.
• 0:24
  Speaker B: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Five Questions for a General Podcast. I am Cadet Olivia Hanson, your host, and it is my pleasure to be here today with Brigadier General Godboo, the commandant of the Royal Military College of Canada. General Godbu, welcome to the show.
• 0:41
  Speaker A: Hey, thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.
• 0:44
  Speaker B: Before we get into the rest of the questions, can we talk a little bit about your origin story and what prompted you to join the Canadian military?
• 0:51
  Speaker A: Absolutely. So I'm coming from a small town in eastern Quebec, over 5,000 people. I started working on a farm when I was 12 years old. And I really didn't know what I was going to do with university and how I was going to pay for it. And one of my friends told me about the military college. I had never heard of it. This was before the Internet. We didn't have as much information. And when he told me about it, I thought it was too good to be true. I said they would pay for my school, they would pay me to go to school, and they would guarantee me a job afterwards. And. And I came from a small town where it was 25% unemployment. I didn't know what I was getting myself into, called the recruiting center, four hours away from my hometown. They put me on a bus, showed me some videos, and signed me up right there on the spot. I got a call a couple of months later confirming my enrollment and showed up at the military college in August.
• 1:45
  Speaker B: And what made you want to stay in for so long?
• 1:47
  Speaker A: Well, yeah, that's a great question for us. The deal is you did five years of education and then you owed five years of mandatory service. And initially I thought that's what I was going to do and then figure out my life. But after doing my first tour, I discovered that I enjoyed the culture, I enjoyed the camaraderie, and there was focus and purpose. And I like having a purpose of service to my country. And I found the job very rewarding. So I decided to continue on. And I said, I'll give it five more years. Now it's been 36 years of service and no regrets.
• 2:23
  Speaker B: You now serve as the commandant of Canada's Royal Military College. How would you describe the RMC and how does it Differ from US Institutions such as West Point.
• 2:33
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, there's a lot of similarities. As you know, we have exchange programs between all the military academies in the US and our military college. So our cadets get to go back and forth for a semester and compare notes as far as what we do. So I've had a chance to engage with many of USMA cadets, but as well with the US Air Force Academy and your Naval academy. And there's a lot of similarities. We're there to build leaders of character to serve our respective countries. And we do this over four years. And it's a blend of academics, military health, fitness and wellness, as well as for us, a mandatory bilingualism component because Canada has two official languages. So our officer cadets must obtain a functional profile in their second language to graduate from the military college and receive their commission. So that's already right there. One slight difference. You have a foreign language component that you can do at your academies, but for us, it is mandatory to graduate. Some other differences? Well, we're a joint institution instead of a service focus. So that changes some of the military training components that we do. We currently have two military colleges, one in Kingston, one in St. Jean. Both are joint. So that means we have cadets from the Air Force, army and Navy. And Special forces for us is not a direct entry. So you have to serve in one of the three conventional forces service first before you can transfer to Special Forces. Another difference is that the size. We have about a thousand naval and officer cadets at our facility, so about a quarter the size as a usma. And I would say another difference is that our cadets are offered their occupation of choice at enrollment. So they know right at the start of their career what they've been selected for. And as they participate in their education and training, they can request a voluntary occupation transfer if they find out that the occupation is not what they thought. But that is not a guarantee. This is based on a strategy can take plan and how many spots are available so they know their degree right away, they know their occupation right away. And after first year is when they apply for their specific program of study. So I say that's a few of the differences. Some of the questions I get from us cadets when they come to our college is some of the differences in dress and appearance. So you may have seen some of our cadets here. We authorized facial hair. Hair length is a bit different. And this is not something about the military colleges. It's the Canadian Armed forces dress standard. We have a gender neutral dress standard and we expect cadets to look professional but they adhere to the same standard as the rest of the entire Canadian Armed forces as they serve. And this is all for us about having a Canadian armed forces that reflects Canadian society both in terms of the makeup of who we enroll in the forces and. And ensuring that everybody has a sense of belonging in a common purpose of serving our country, both at home and abroad.
• 5:48
  Speaker B: I'm curious. West point has about 20% ratio of females. How is it in Canada? Is there a lot of interest?
• 5:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. Well, in the now unofficial figures, but I would say in the regular force for officers, we have roughly 20, 22% women. At the military college right now, we hover between 25%, but last year we had 27% women who enrolled. And we are aiming to get to 33% in terms of gender diversity by the time. By the next five years is really the goal that we're aiming for. Also, when we look at the demographics, we're very proud of the fact that we're attracting a pretty diverse demographics of cadets. We currently have about 31% racialized persons in the college, and right now the Canadian Forces ratio is about 18%. So we're helping increasing diversity in the Canadian forces by really ensuring that we provide a place for everyone. And part of that is educating both our staff and faculty with regards to religious accommodation and celebrating cultural diversity through, whether it be festivals, days of remembrance, and for example, during Ramadan, accommodating messal hours so that our cadets who decide to fast either during Ramadan or other periods of observance can have access to meals after dining hall hours and ensuring that there's sufficient meal for choices to be able to cater to everybody's meal restrictions that they deal with. So that's a bit of our makeup for demographics. Also on the Indigenous side, We have about 3.5 to 4% indigenous students. Our population is 5% indigenous in Canada. And for us, the way we achieve increasing attractiveness is we have an Indigenous leadership opportunity here. So cadets who identify as Indigenous who apply can come here for a year with no obligation of service afterwards. There's a cultural component. We are fortunate to have two fantastic elders who are part of the cultural program with these cadets provide support to help integrate into military culture. And at the end of their year, they can choose whether they want to apply for an enlisted or officer stream, or whether they want to join a reserve or if they want to just go back to their community. Any pathway is open to them as they prefer, and we try to set them up for Success for their future endeavors.
• 8:53
  Speaker B: Wow. You began your career as a communications and electronics engineering officer and spent years in command, control and cyber roles, including at norad. How has that technical foundation influenced the way you approach developing future officers at rmc?
• 9:10
  Speaker A: You've done your homework. I'm a very proud Sealy officer. I joined. This is the trade I wanted. I wanted to study in computer science and, and I wanted to be a city officer right from the start. I would say both my degree and my early work really focus on curiosity, logic, problem solving and really thinking about systems of systems. So these facets really shape my initial approach, both as a leader and in staff officer roles to, to solve problems. And NORAD and US NORDCOM really ingrained in me the importance of collaboration across services and with partner agencies. So as far as how that shaped my approach at rmc, I would say one of the pieces at the joint level is understanding we cannot drill down into some of the details of military training that you can do here at USMA as a service academy. So some of the melee training that you do here, we would send our cadets to training centers to do for their respective services. So for army cadets, they would be going to Gagetown at our combat training center where they would be doing some of these more tactical skill sets that you acquire. So that's a challenge. So that means we need to focus on fundamentals and general military skills that would apply to all three services at the same time. One of the things I've learned working with NORAD and US NORDCOM is the benefits of jointness. And for us, we're a smaller military. So for those cadets to be able to get to know people of all services very early on on their career helps build that network that they'll be able to leverage. We work at the joint level much earlier on, just because of the sizes of our forces and on our joint operations. I found it was hugely beneficial for me, for wherever I went, in Canada or abroad, that I would always run into colleagues that either I went to college with or that knew someone that I went to college with. And that allows us to build bridges and trust very, very quickly. The other part for me with that logic piece that I talked about is when I engage with cadets and what I've stressed to my staff is the importance of being able to explain the why. So there's lots of restrictions we impose on cadets or decisions that they may not like and they have to learn that you will not like every order and directive you're given. But understanding the why can also Help them understand the purpose and even if they don't like it, to understand why it's required. And I think that is very important for a lesson for them to take as leaders that we cannot always explain our orders, but when you have time, taking the time to pause and explain, it will make a big difference in empowering our subordinates to be able to carry out those directives by understanding the purpose.
• 12:09
  Speaker B: You've served multiple tours at NORAD and even stood watch as a Deputy Command center director. What did these experiences teach you about decision making under pressure, especially when the consequences are continental in scale?
• 12:23
  Speaker A: Yes. First of all, serving with NORAD and US NORCOM has been an immense privilege. I got to work with folks from our own four services in Canada and all the services in the US as well as with our partner agencies, both as a major and as a colonel. And both tours were extremely rewarding professionally, but also personally and still have many friends in Colorado that still serve there. For me, one of the things it emphasizes, the importance of training, rehearsal and checklists. And what I mean by that is when you're talking about air threats, decisions must be made in terms of minutes, seconds matter. So removing as much ambiguity as possible is important. So the checklist, the routine, the level of comfort in knowing exactly what to do in a precise manner really matter. And it allows us to focus on confirming any assumptions that are being made, answering the unknowns, and really focusing the commander on the essential information that they need to make a decision. Right. Not getting lost into the details. And I'm a details guy, so for me it was understanding how to sift away all the information that the assessor did not need to know. And when we're calling a two star or a three star at 2 in the morning, briefing them on an event, and they have a very short timeline to make a decision, whether it's a threat or not to North America, really focusing on those key details that they need to make that decision. But also it's ensuring that everybody understands their role, ensuring that everyone understand the broader purpose and what is at stake and be able to expect the unexpected. We have had a few surprises on watch over the years, and be able to react quickly has really been an aspect. And being able to keep your cool under pressure is extremely important. If you start getting excited, the command post will start feeling that nervousness and react accordingly. So it will impair performance.
• 14:35
  Speaker B: Your time commanding Joint Task Force north and Yellowknife puts you at the center of Canada's Arctic operations. What leadership lessons did you take from operating in such a unique and strategically important environment.
• 14:50
  Speaker A: Well, first, it truly was a privilege to serve up north. Most Canadians will never get a chance to go that far north of 60. To give a bit of context, the Canadian north is very different than Alaska, the European Arctic, or the Russian Arctic. One thing I learned early on with NORAD is that the perspective you have will vary a lot based on the map you're looking at. And with Arctic operations, looking at a polar map shows you a very different view of who your neighbors are and the time to travel from point A to point B. And I encourage you to do that. Check out a polar map and realization that how close Russia is to the US and to Canada when we look at those polar routes, both flying and naval routes. So when I got up there, one of the things that impressed me was the resilience of northern people. So for us in Canada, the North is about 40% of our land mass, but only 0.6% of the Canadian population is there. So across those three territories, we have about 145,000 people that live there in very, very dispersed communities, about 72. And I'm getting rusty on my numbers, but I'll say about 72 communities distributed across the north. So their resilience, first of all, fantastic. Their knowledge and understanding of the Arctic environment, also extremely impressive. So one of the lessons I took away from that is the importance of meaningful engagement and consultation. Because when we project forces from the south to go operate in the north for them is temporary. The consequences, especially the long term consequences, will impact those northern populations. And so they have a say in the matter when it comes to our indigenous governments. The other piece is that they have a stewardship of the land and they rely a lot of traditional life skills to be able to survive. For inwit people, a lot of their protein intake comes from hunting and fishing, traditional activities that they do. If we show up and do activities that disrupt the patterns of wildlife, we're not just disrupting business, we're disrupting their livelihood and their survival. Because you can't just go to the local warm Walmart to buy your meat. There's no Walmart. Right. And so that thing that's very, very important to understand the impact on the environment and on the northern populations. The other pieces, I'm a talker. I had to learn to be quiet and to listen. Okay? The benefit of silence, of exchange. Elders like to take their time about what they say. Words have meaning, words have significance. And so sharing personal information, getting them to know who you are As a person listening to their story, the story of their community, and being comfortable in that silence of sharing the moment, of being in the moment is very, very important as part of these consultations. And then another thing that I learned is a very different form of governance. So for both the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, they operate in a format of consensus government, which is very different from the way the rest of North America operates. So when they elect their governments, they don't have parties. Every member representing a portion of the community of the region is elected on their own merits. And then once all the elected officials come together, they select who's going to be the premier for that territory and who's going to be the ministers to help govern their people. Very, very different approach from the way Southern Canada operates, but it was a beauty to it for accountability purposes, but also reflective of Indigenous practices. And I was very informative to understand as we went into communities on how they operate and how they consult. This also shapes the way our Canadian Rangers operate in the north, where they will select their patrol leaders, which we don't do in the rest of the military. But understanding where this stem from was really important as far as how, where they put their trust in the skills and the demonstrated leadership of the Canadian Rangers among them and the criterias that they do and use to select this. Also the value of partnerships, not just between services, but with territorial governments, Indigenous governments, allies. I worked a lot with the US and Scandinavian countries as we worked on the future, but also with France, the uk, the Netherlands, and as we did, combined operations in the North. And really the sense of purpose that came from that, to ensure good stewardship of the north and ensuring security of really resources that are global in nature, right? Like the fish stocks that come and regroup under the ice, protecting access to North America through northern routes. And there was a lot to be learned about that. And finally, when it came to operations, one of the big things I learned is validating assumptions on the preparedness of troops and making sure that they understand that your first mission when you come up north is to survive. If you've been trained well with your cold weather operations and you're able to survive is that the ability to move in very remote areas where your main enemy is the weather, the terrain, and then once you're able to move, the ability to operate in these conditions, and then once you can do all that, the ability to fight, whether in the Canadian Arctic or abroad. So it's a very, very different piece for people to make sure they respect the environment. And understanding that cold kills and when you're in minus 50 and the temperature and the weather is very unpredictable that you're able to react to this. So very, very informative. Huge respect again for the northern people and for our troops that operate there. We do extremely well and it was great to be able to work with all our allies up there.
• 21:26
  Speaker B: I'm very interested in the civil military relations that you touched on a lot in that answer. How do you ensure that the respect and the new protocols you take into account when you move from the governance in Southern Canada to Northern Canada happens all the way at your level, down to the troops who are on the ground talking to people.
• 21:48
  Speaker A: So one of the aspects of the way we do this is as commander of Joint Task Force North, I was responsible for the coordination of all activities that took place in the north, except for aeronautical search and rescue, given the timelines to respond to a crisis. So that's our joint research, search and rescue centers that took care of that coordination or for NORAD operations again because of time that were controlled from the Canadian NORAD region or from NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs. But for all other CAF activities, all CAF units that want to operate in the north had to coordinate with us. And then we were at the point of coordination with the territorial governments, the federal agencies, the indigenous governments at the regional and local level, and finally the northern communities to socialize to them all planned activities, any contingency operations happening to make sure that they were aware of what we were planning to do and ensure that it would not disrupt any of the traditional activities. The reason why it's done this way is because we have permanent headquarters in the north with about 300 people that we are currently working on expanding. And this headquarter develops a deep knowledge of the various communities, builds those relationships over time. And this way there's an implied trust. But also we know who to contact and how to reach them in the various communities. And realizing that Internet is not that reliable in the North. Right. Sometimes communications are difficult and sometimes the mayor of a community, if it's hunting season, may be out on the land for six weeks. And so knowing who else to contact during these periods of time and being able to get a hold of them so that there's no surprise as we plan operations. So that coordination is how we ensure tap and bathing that central focal point and that everybody knows what's happening. So synchronization of effort, very, very important.
• 23:45
  Speaker B: As commander of 16 Wing Borden, you oversaw the training of highly technical trades across the air Force. How did that experience shape your views on balancing technical competence with leadership development at RMC?
• 23:59
  Speaker A: Okay, so I had three schools that fell under me at 16 Wing Border. So at CFSAIT, the School of Aerospace Technology and Engineering, which was all our aircraft maintenance technicians and our aerospace engineering officers. So that was a very, very technical school. But I also add the school cfsacco, the Aerospace Control Officer School and or Aerospace Control Operations School, I should say, where both are operators at the enlisted level as well as our officers for both air battle space management and air traffic control were being trained. And we had the RCAF Leadership School for all our enlisted leadership training for the Air Force, where we actually have some American enlisted that come for training as well to join us there. So each had a very different focus and different purpose. So for CFS 8 with our technical. To go back to the center of your question with technical officers and aircraft technician, one of the things I really admired with the modernization of their training is that of course they taught them the technical skills that they needed to manage aircraft maintenance both in garrison and undeployed operations. But they worked this in to make sure they understood the operational context and how it shapes your decision and the speed at which you need to work the coordination and the width with the commander on the ground and ensuring you understand the impact on operation of the decisions and the coas you're going to recommend. But in the meantime, also wielding in all the realities of what you're going to be dealing with on a real base, on a real operations, the human element, right, the difficult decisions you're going to have to manage. And juggling all these balls and with these injects that they were tracking on the board is very easy to see where students will hyper focus on a technical problem and disregard those other leadership issues that have to be dealt with to be successful. And so that was very, very good feedback to prepare these officers to the realities of the environment with our leadership school for our junior leader course for master corporals. And what I found fascinating for them is we have part of this is tactical, the battle procedures, leading small troop tasks and so on. But the feedback we got from our troops is while this was all great, the real challenge they found in managing troops and leading troops was the human terrain. Navigating the human terrain of having those difficult conversations on performance, discipline, dealing with complex family issues, counseling, and so the soft skills, what we call soft skills, but really the developing that emotional intelligence and being equipped with the right tool sets and knowing what resources they have at their disposal to be able to deal with the difficult situations that come with military life. So that led us to adjust some of the curriculum to make sure we equip them with those communication tools and leadership tools to be able to properly look after the welfare of troops under their care. And yeah, so I'd say that this was the big pieces that shaped me to look at when we do leadership development at rmc, how we prepare our cadets and for cadets, having peer leadership roles puts them in very difficult situation to hold your peers accountable. And in the same vein, while we're discussing the theory and everything is having training on bystander intervention with role playing element was very helpful for them to know when you're actually placed in a difficult situation, how are you going to navigate those ethical dilemmas? How are we going to step up to the plate the fact that you can never ignore a bad situation that's happening in front of your eyes because as a bystander, even if you had nothing to do with it, by tolerating it, you're endorsing the bad behaviors. So you need to step up and either intervene directly or indirectly. It's a bit like the green dot training that the USAF does for their people. And I don't remember the name of the US army training, but you have similar bystander training and all that you take as well.
• 28:26
  Speaker B: You took command of RMC at a time when the institution is under intense scrutiny to evolve its culture and better develop future leaders. What does success look like for you as commandant when you hand off the college to your successor?
• 28:40
  Speaker A: So we've been in a big period of transformation. We had the Canadian Military College's review board that examined the college, the way we delivered training and the way we had to evolve our culture. Following the Arbor report, when I took command, I gave some very basic guidance to my team. I told them that first we needed to be prepared to challenge what we did compared to what the rest of the Canadian forces did. And if there was something we did differently, we had to be able to explain why. Otherwise we had to align with the evolving Canadian forces. I asked them to do the same with regards to Canadian universities and to do the same with other military academies. Basically, we needed to have a rationale of what we were doing that was unique, had to be explained. The CMCRB report provided us 49 recommendations and clear guidance on the way forward. Some of that reflected initiatives we had already in progress and others were other directions that have been confirmed by our leadership that we're going to move forward and A lot of it is within already my areas of responsibilities and authorities or my commander. So we're moving forward. Some of the pieces I ask my folks to challenge is college norms and traditions. Traditions have to have a purpose, otherwise we're mired in nostalgia and we need to move past those things and reflect modern society. Everything that we do has to be grounded in respect. And I feel that we've achieved that. Respect and accountability have been reinforced and what I'm seeing now emerging from the pandemic, we have now the first class that's graduating that did all four years at RMC post pandemic in the traditional in residence environment with no distance learning classes. They're a very serious class that is gripped with the current geopolitical environment, the turbulence and unpredictability of the current situation and are taking their responsibility seriously. So I declare that a big success. We're ensuring that we're aligned with CAF priorities. And the changes we've made do reflect the direction from our minister, our Chief of Defense staff and our Deputy Minister. And what I am trying to ensure is that we have sustainable, high impact academic program. And again, we have laid the foundations for this for a full review of our academic program. And I am seeing the results happening there as well as the strengthening of our military training. And we are right now working on the Integrated Officer Development Program which will formalize the delivery of our military training with clear performance objectives, ensuring that we have good load balancing for our students, avoiding the just one more additional module that we have to teach, but balancing the hours so we don't burn out our students. But keep it challenging because you should be challenged when you're here to be able to pursue excellence. And finally, on the bilingualism part, last year we achieved 96% of our students achieving the bilingual profile, which is the highest success rate in the Canadian forces on similar language training. So I'm very impressed with our team and the delivery of the language training and reinforcing the importance of bilingualism in the Canadian forces. So I believe we've set the pathway for growth as we're increasing our current population from a thousand cadets to 1250 over the next few years. And I look forward to see where my replacement takes our current cadre of staff, faculty and cadets to new successes.
• 32:30
  Speaker B: General Godbu, knowing what you know now, what advice would you offer your younger self?
• 32:36
  Speaker A: Oh, wow. I wish I could go back to the beginning of my career.
• 32:40
  Speaker B: I've.
• 32:40
  Speaker A: I've shared quite candidly with our cadets. We do a lot of informal engagements with our cadets on top of PD sessions. And I've shared, shared candidly, both my. My mistakes from the past, but also just naivete, maybe that came along with this. What I would stress is that perfection is the enemy of good enough. You've heard that before, probably, yes. And so to push forward, not to be afraid to make mistakes, but to be humble, to acknowledge his mistakes and always learn. The other part that I would encourage is maintain that network. Right? Keep in touch. It's a lot easier now. It's a lot easier now than when I graduated. You had to call people and we didn't have central email back then. We're talking 30 years ago. But definitely nurture that network. Don't reach out only when you need someone, but really put the effort to nurture that network of friends, to look after each other as we go along. And don't hesitate to challenge yourself. I'm very glad that I seized opportunity throughout my career, but I would reaffirm to my younger self that that is the right thing to do. The pathway I had in mind when I was a lieutenant was not at all the pathway that I followed. And that's because folks presented me opportunities that came with their pros and cons. I talked with my wife and we decided to seize them. And am I glad that I did. Don't try to put yourself on a predetermined pathway. Follow the opportunities and make the best out every post that you're sent to.
• 34:16
  Speaker B: General Godbu, thank you for your time today. On behalf of Colonel Pat Sullivan, the director of the Modern war Institute, and Dr. Charlie Feint, the director of this podcast series, it is my pleasure to present you with this rare and coveted MWI coin. Thank you.
• 34:32
  Speaker A: Thank you so much. It is a great pleasure to be here. 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 the speakers and do not represent an official position of the United States Military Academy or the United States government.