The latest Naval Special Warfare Ethos Magazine is out, and it includes my essay On Becoming a (good) SEAL. The entire issue can be seen here. My essay faces a great essay by Capt Bob Gusentine providing guidance to future Senior Enlisted Advisors. There are a number of really good articles in this issue, including…
The text of this essay appears in the current edition of the NSW Ethos Magazine, an only slightly edited version of what appears below. For the link to the full issue of Ethos, go to NSW Ethos: —————————————— We see a lot of chatter in the media about the deterioration of ethics and character in…
This essay is a follow-up to my last post “What’s it REALLY all about?” in which I briefly looked at the quest for a simple, life-defining principle. As I worked through that essay, my two favorite quotes on simplicity came to mind: “Seek simplicity, and distrust it.” (Alfred North Whitehead) and “I don’t give a fig for…
I prepared this essay for Naval Special Warfare’s Ethos Magazine. Though it didn’t make it into their published magazine, I thought I would share it, for those interested in the challenges Navy SEALs face in managing their ‘brand.’ ——————- A couple of years ago, I picked up the book Cowboy Ethics – What Wall Street…
This post appears in Issue 18 of Naval Special Warfare Ethos Magazine, and hopes to inspire some of the SEALs and SWCCs (Special Warfare Combatantcraft Crewman – part of the Naval Special Warfare community wtih the SEALs) to dive a little deeper into the profession they’ve chosen, and read the experience and perspectives of others curently…
This is part 2 because I have already written on this topic for Naval Special Warfare’s Ethos magazine, and posted it in this blog in January of this year – just scroll down. I think it was a pretty good essay, but it didn’t get much attention when I wrote it – but it was…
This essay appears in the current edition of Naval Special Warfare’s Ethos magazine. The essay was inspired by discussions I’ve had with colleagues about the challenges SEALs now face, being in the spotlight as the new American heroes and media darlings. This can be pretty heady stuff with some new and unfamiliar challenges for young men who have been trained…
I was asked by NSW Ethos magazine to write an essay on “Quiet Professionalism,” after a spate of books, interviews, articles and the like by SEALS, mostly retired, have appeared in the wake of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. SEALs are appearing on O’Reilley, Imus, in a new movie (Act of Valor,) and on, and on. I am also a retired…
Asking the right questions can be key in much of what we do. Teaching is largely about asking the right questions – pioneered by Socrates in what has come to be referred to as ‘the Socratic method.’ The ‘right’ question will challenge and inspire the student, the leader, any of us to look differently at what we do and how we perceive an issue. It seems however that the ‘right’ question has to come at the right time to be most effective.
A reading group I’m in recently read Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. It was great fun, and in thinking about the book, it occurred to me that one way to consider Palahniuk’s message was in terms of the Head versus the Heart. The narrator of the book, the Ed Norton character in the movie, is all ‘Head’…
