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Brigadier General Sean Crockett · Five Questions for a General

• 0:03
  Speaker A: You're listening to Five Questions for a General, a production of the Modern Morses 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'm Cadet Justin Rodriguez, your host, and it is my pleasure to be here today with General Crockett, the deputy Commanding general of ROTC Command. General Crockett, welcome to the show.
• 0:37
  Speaker C: Thank you very much. Glad to be here, sir.
• 0:39
  Speaker B: I'd like to begin with a quick origin story. What prompted you to enter military service? And why did you choose ROTC and the Chemical Corps as your branch?
• 0:46
  Speaker C: That's a great question, buddy. So I am a product of a Army Air Corps Air Force fighter pilot, my grandfather and a Navy officer, my father. When I was 13 years old, my grandfather told me a story of him getting shot down during the Normandy invasion in his P47 jug. Aircraft, you know pilots, they talk with their hands and everything. He knew his airspeed, his altitude, his yaws, everything when he lost the engine to his aircraft. And as my grandfather described, the P47 jug was never intended to be a glider. But at that moment in time, I looked at that man and I said, that's what I want to be. And that's how it started for me. Believe it or not. I was a Navy midshipman at Auburn University the first two years. I will back up a little bit. I was engineer, rtc, which was Air Force in high school. My senior year of my high school year, my professor of military science, Lt. Col. Paramore, who is a B52 pilot, Vietnam, looked me in the eye and said, sean, you need to find something else to do because the military is not for you. And I think now, 31 years later, with a star on my chest, I did it primarily out of spite, but that's beside the point. So I started in junior in Marietta, Georgia. I transitioned to Auburn, where I started in the Navy ROTC program. Again, I was focused on being a pilot like my father and my grandfather. Well, the other mistake that I made as a freshman in college is I joined a fraternity. And so I didn't necessarily have the grades by the end of my sophomore year to really compete well to get scholarship money. So basically, the Navy ROTC at Auburn said, thank you for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts for you. But I had a fraternity brother of mine that was an army rotc, you know. And I'd be walking, we'd be doing drone ceremony and stuff. And I'd look over always in the corner of my eye and I'd see these guys wearing this, this cool BDU uniform at the time. Repelling. Doing cool army stuff, right? Like, yeah, that's kind of. I kind of like that. So I went over to the battalion the next day and Lt. Col. Webb, who is the professor of military science at Auburn, the Warrior Gold Battalion, basically said, hey, got two year scholarship for you if you're interested. And the rest is history. That's how I became an army officer. Commissioned in 1995 as a chemical officer. I know we probably want to talk about that and I'll be honest with you, as a guy who was very focused on being a pilot in the military, that was a tough pill. I didn't really know what the chemical branch was all about. Very limited exposure. You know, the only exposure I had was in 93 at Joint Base Lewis McCord as a cadet at Advanced Camp going through the CS Chamber, which is not a good first impression. Right. But what has been amazing to me about the branch, one, the technical aspects of the branch, and I am not a STEM guy. I was in aviation management. I was, that was what I was focused on, was getting as many flat hours as I could before I graduated because I thought it'd give me a leg up. But how it padded the resume. And the other piece that the Chemical Corps represents less than 1% of our active duty force right now, a very, very small branch. And what I've always loved about the branch is you are not the last four of a Social Security number. You're a name. They talk to you by your name. Here's what you want to do. Because it is small. We have the ability, if you're, you're good at what you do, you have the ability to kind of pick and choose or get at least a dropdown menu of options of places you can go. Instead of being you. This is me, second Lieutenant, you're going here. Does that make sense?
• 4:11
  Speaker B: Yes, sir.
• 4:12
  Speaker C: So it's a very close knit group of individuals. I've got guys that I've served with my entire career. There's three about to be four generals that are on active duty in the court. One of them, he and I have traded colors like three times. I've taken command from him three times. And so it's again, it's a very small community. It's absolute blessing. So that's Kind of my story a little bit long winded, but that's kind of how I got where I am today.
• 4:40
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir. I'd like to go back, if you don't mind, and talk about. You mentioned your father and grandfather both served. How has that history of family service impacted the way you lead now and are leading ROTC cadets to become lieutenants?
• 4:53
  Speaker C: That's a great question. I think I look at the examples that both my grandfather and my father provided me growing up, and I try to emulate that. Because one thing you have to understand, the further you move in the career, the clearer and larger your glass house is or becomes. Everybody's watching you. Everybody's watching you. You're always on the microphone and that just gets. It gets. You have to realize that as you move up the chain of command, everybody knows who you are and you just have to. It puts a premium on making sure that. I use the term, make sure your audio always matches your video, because words and deeds matter. And if those two don't match, that's a quick way to lose trust and confidence in a formation. And so I try to emulate that. My grandfather was that way, my father was that way. I try to. To be that guy. Hopefully that answers your question.
• 5:44
  Speaker B: Awesome. Yes, it does. Thank you, sir. Next up, having served in the operational command and institutional roles, from platoon leader to leading major army schools, what leadership lessons translated across those very different environments and which ones didn't? Okay.
• 5:59
  Speaker C: I think the ones that did. Leadership is a contact sport. In order to lead appropriately, you can't do it from technology. Right. Is that fair?
• 6:09
  Speaker B: Yes, sir.
• 6:09
  Speaker C: And as we see the evolution of technology, we see that there are some that kind of resort to that, but the only way you know your people is to be in and among them every day. And so I think leadership as a contact sport is something that is I've carried with me. Regardless of whether you're in the institution or the operational force, I think some of the nuance, what. What doesn't necessarily carry all the way through is I'm going to try to give you some vignettes. So as a company commander, what are you focused on?
• 6:38
  Speaker B: Your company, sir.
• 6:39
  Speaker C: You're focused on your company. Right. You mildly interesting what the battalion is doing other than, you know, you're trying to keep. Keep the intent of the commander, but you're really, really focused down and in. I would tell you battalion command, you're probably allotted down and in. That transitions as you move up. So when I went from battalion command, I was very focused on my companies, training my platoon leaders because that was my job. When I got to brigade, I had centrally selected battalion command teams, six of them. I didn't need to worry about what they. As long as they were meeting my intent, my assumption they always got. My assumption was they were meeting my intent. What I was focused on is up and out. So what am I doing to help my battle buddies? The other three brigades that were on Fort Leonard Wood, how am I serving the Maneuver support Center of excellence, my two star boss and how am I serving the community? And there was a lot more up and out at the brigade level than I've ever. That was my first experience with that and that continued throughout my career as I moved up at Echelon. And when you're talking about going into a career, I know you're probably going to ask me about that. It's up and out and it's building relationships. And so that's kind of where I guess transitioning as you move up the chain of command and how things evolve over time, hopefully that's getting after what they're asking. Okay, good.
• 7:59
  Speaker B: Would you say then that that lesson was something that was taught to you or you had to figure it out on your own?
• 8:04
  Speaker C: I think there is a little bit of ojt.
• 8:06
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 8:07
  Speaker C: I also had the unique. We all hitch our wagon to a senior leader. I had multiple mentors and I used. In fact I was an aide to camp for a two star. And from the time I was his aide to. I mean he. We're very still very, very close. He's my first phone call and last call, last phone call for almost every career decision my wife and I have ever made. Because he's got the experience. And so I'd ask him those questions. I said, so what was your biggest difference between commanding at the battalion level and commanding at the brigade level? And we talked through it and so I kind of had a leg up just because I had a senior leader that I knew would always be unfiltered and kind of helped me navigate those adjustments as I move through my career.
• 8:52
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir. Going off of that.
• 8:54
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 8:54
  Speaker B: How would you recommend for junior leaders to find a senior leader mentor that can take them under their wing and take them through that?
• 9:00
  Speaker C: Well, I think the first thing you have to be is effective. You have to build trust as a two way street. Right. And mentorship is not. We use the term so much. Mentorship is a two way street. First you have to trust the leadership style of the individual that you want to be your mentor as A mentee, you see something in them that resonates with you. You like that style. You want to be like that individual. The second piece is the mentor. Down to the mentee. That mentor has. Has to have a foundation of trust with you. You're always the right place, right time.
• 9:37
  Speaker A: You.
• 9:37
  Speaker C: You get the job done. Normally associated with the. You know, when you're directly working for someone, and then that just builds over time. And that's because I think mentorship, we use that term a lot of. But to me, there has to be acceptance at both. The mentee has to have trust and confidence in the mentor, and it has to go back down the same way. Fascinating for somebody to invest.
• 10:01
  Speaker B: Of course.
• 10:02
  Speaker C: Right. Because our job is talent management. The more senior you go, the more important that becomes. But I have to know this individual from a work ethic perspective and have that trust to know that they're going to take that guidance and they're going to run with it. Makes sense and be successful.
• 10:17
  Speaker B: Awesome. Thank you, sir.
• 10:18
  Speaker C: Okay.
• 10:19
  Speaker B: Yes, sir. Sir. Your career includes assignments ranging from tactical units to strategic level staff and international leadership roles. How has your perspective on mission command evolved as you moved up in the rank?
• 10:31
  Speaker C: I talked to you about the trust.
• 10:32
  Speaker B: Yes, sir.
• 10:33
  Speaker C: I think one thing, I've become very good. And I learned this as A Battalion S3. There is an art to writing intent. That's how mission command works. You provide clear and concise intent and you give your subordinates the opera. The. The latitude to operate within it. Now, you obviously have to trust those subordinates. I talk about. I'm going to use trust a lot in this discussion, but you become really, really good. I'll tell you As a Battalionist 3, I had no idea how to write intent. And I knew this because I had a sea of second lieutenants working for me and the staff. They didn't know nothing. They just didn't. And I would try to give them this verbal, this is how we're going to do this. This is what I want out of the product, everything. And just think, that was going to be good enough. No. It was nowhere close. And then my NCO and I wondered why we were spending every waking moment after hours rewriting operators, rebuilding slides, doing whatever. So I started writing my intent down. Purpose, key tasks, and the most important aspect of intent. Where do we need to be at the end of this? What's the end state? Through the process of writing my intent multiple times and over multiple iterations. First off, the first thing I noticed was, oh, my God, these guys are getting it, they're paying attention and they're giving me what I'm asking for. And then over time, I didn't have to write it down anymore. I just knew how to give clear intent. And that becomes more and more important the more the further and further you become removed from the folks who are actually executing within your intent. So when you're sitting up at the brigade level or when you're sitting as the o for the 8th Army DCGO, you have to make sure that your intent is crystal clear, because it's going to be pop. It's going to be promulgated all the way down to the folks who are actually executing that you're given the latitude to do.
• 12:25
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir.
• 12:25
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 12:26
  Speaker B: Looking back to your commissioning through ROTC in 1995, how has the army and the kind of officers it needs changed over the course of your career?
• 12:34
  Speaker C: The only thing that I can give you for that, because I think leadership, it spans so many levels. You can talk to an individual from the Vietnam era, a leader from the Vietnam era, and you can talk to a kid that was Iraq or Afghanistan. The basic blocking and tackling of leadership has not changed. What I think has evolved is our tech and our ability to work within it and not be afraid of it. So I'm a dinosaur. Well, if I have a problem with my cell phone, I hand it to my daughter, say, could you fix this, please? That's not the echelon we've got growing now. And so we have to embrace as young leaders the technology that's coming up because it's going to be an equalizer. But I think the basics of leadership, the basic blocking and tackling of being a leader, one of them is, it's a contact sword. Tech doesn't remove that.
• 13:26
  Speaker B: Of course.
• 13:26
  Speaker C: Like, you have to know your people. Tech is a tool. That's all it is. But there's a lot of tools out there now that I didn't grow up with that is completely foreign to me. AI, obviously, right out the gate is one of those that scares me to death. But if employed properly as a tool, not a crutch, a tool, very, very effective. So I think that's the evolution is really that technological evolution of our fighting force has really, really changed over the years.
• 13:56
  Speaker B: Going off of that question, yeah. How could junior leaders then take the future of tech and use it as a tool to increase their leadership potential while remaining in contact with their subordinates?
• 14:07
  Speaker C: I think being able to process large amounts of data, separate the wheat from the chaff in a very, very Short period of time. Okay, I'll give you the example that I'll use. Intelligence collection, the volumes of intel, when you're looking at a particular intel set can be overwhelming. Some of the tech that we can employ now, and I use the term I've talked about, AI can absolutely take separate all the noise from the good stuff. And that provides the analyst then the ability to focus on the good stuff, to provide his or her commander their analysis and their assessment of what this information means. It's processing at speed. Those are the ways that we can improve or we can employ tech as a tool. Ultimately, we have to understand our business intel community has to understand how to give good intel assessments. What do we think to. To the maneuver commander? Ultimately, that's their job, but it's being able to do it in a much more rapid fashion and being able to separate that wheat from the chaff very, very quickly as an example.
• 15:17
  Speaker B: Fascinating. Thank you, sir. Yep. Sir. For cadets and young officers listening, what is one habit or mindset you would say, for them to develop early in their career to make them successful in the future?
• 15:26
  Speaker C: You know, I keep defaulting. You're going to hear me say it again. Leadership's contact sport. We are in the human business. It's the one, I think one of the most unique things about the army. If you want to retain the dirt and you want to protect the people, you have to do it on the ground, and you do that through human interaction. I think that's the first one. I think the army is built on relationships. It's very, very important to build those relationships over time because it's amazing to me how I run into people that I've served with over many, many, many years, may not have seen him for 10 or 20 years, and you see them back successful in, you know, senior leadership roles and everything like that. It is a very small community. Shockingly enough, it's a very, very small community. Doesn't feel like that when you're a second lieutenant, but as you move up, you're going to start running into people, the same people that you served with, and it's becomes very, very small. Audio matching your video, that should always be a thing for a leader. Of course, I. At Echelon, if you're. If your platoon knows who you are and they know you preach the importance of tough and realistic physical fitness every morning, and your formation doesn't see you at PT formation one day, your audio is not matching your video. And that's a quick way to lose trust in a formation. And it's very, very difficult in the short time that you have to lead a formation to get back.
• 16:52
  Speaker B: Yes, sir. Thank you.
• 16:53
  Speaker C: Absolutely, sir.
• 16:54
  Speaker B: You spent time in both the operational army and in training and developing future leaders, including your role connected to cadet command. What do you see as the biggest gap between how we train lieutenants and what they actually face when they arrive in their first unit?
• 17:06
  Speaker C: I think it's, it's leading troops. We grow up in the cadet environment. Whether you're in senior rotc, whether you're at West Point, whether you're kind of an insular of other leaders. Right. You're leading them, but they're we're all kind of peers, if you will.
• 17:18
  Speaker B: Yes, sir.
• 17:20
  Speaker C: To, to take someone from that environment and move them into an environment where they're leading kids, 17 and 18 year olds who have personal issues, professional issues across the board and being able to one be human enough to where they can bring those problems to them. Whether it's personal, professional, that that takes a special breed and it can be a shock and awe campaign to some. I think that's the big difference is now we're putting you in charge. You are solely responsible for the health and welfare and training and resourcing of that group of however many you had. I had 27 as an example, as a platoon leader. They're your guys and it's your responsibility to keep them out of trouble, right?
• 18:05
  Speaker B: Yes, sir.
• 18:05
  Speaker C: That can be a tall order for some.
• 18:07
  Speaker B: Sounds like it. Yeah. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.
• 18:09
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 18:10
  Speaker B: Sir, do you have any book recommendations you'd give to junior leaders?
• 18:13
  Speaker C: Yes. Let me think through my titles Like War and I apologize, I don't know the authors. Like War is about the social media impact on conflict. Interesting eye opening book. Ghost Fleet, World War iii. Terrifying. And it talks about the technology evolution and it to the point where our first fight is in space. We lose our GPS satellites. What happens? As an example, of course it's, it's scary, but it's an eye opening. It's eye opening in the fact that you can't always rely on the tech to fight. Sometimes we have to maintain our analog skills. And something I did as an o, as a DC GO at 8th Army. For every exercise we had a manual map board. We had sick. I'm a map board and sticky kind of guy. I can't see a cop on a digital screen, but I can look at a map board and I can tell you what's going on. So every one of my, all my staff knew that during an exercise at least one of the Cubs. They were briefing the boss on the analog product. All the digital stuff was turned off.
• 19:21
  Speaker B: Awesome.
• 19:21
  Speaker C: Because if they're going to go after you, what's the first thing they're going to do? They're going to cut changes off with the tech. So I think that was a value.
• 19:28
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir. Sir, knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to your younger self?
• 19:34
  Speaker C: Trust your NCOs. That is. The one thing that separates the United States army from many, many militaries is our professional non commissioned officer corps. And I did not take advantage of my Staff Sergeant, Staff Sergeant Seal in my 1st Battalion. With 18 years of service, nearly as much as I should have. I thought if the S3 didn't. If the S3 was my guy, the major. Wrong answer. My NCO could have kept me out of a lot of trouble because he knew the business. I just didn't appreciate that. When I came in as a second lieutenant and I would tell you that it's okay to ask questions, you don't know nothing as a second lieutenant. Right. You've got the basic blocking and tackling down. You might have a technical skill set. But when you come in, you need to trust that nco. If that NCO knows you're willing to ask a question and learn, they're going to take care of you and show you the ropes. Now, if you come in 10 foot tall and bulletproof and say, I don't care what's happened over the last two or three years, Sergeant, but this is the way we're going to do it, they're going to go like this.
• 20:38
  Speaker B: Of course.
• 20:39
  Speaker C: Have at, Lieutenant. Good luck and Godspeed.
• 20:41
  Speaker A: Oh, boy.
• 20:42
  Speaker C: Employ them. They will take care of you.
• 20:45
  Speaker B: General Crockett, 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 to you this rare and coveted MWI coin.
• 20:56
  Speaker C: Very nice, my friend. Thanks so much.
• 20:57
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir.
• 20:58
  Speaker C: I appreciate the time.
• 20:59
  Speaker B: Thank you for your time.
• 20:59
  Speaker C: Cool.
• 21:04
  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 the speakers and do not represent an official position of the United States Military Academy or the United States government.