US Army photo by Paolo Bovo – Sept. 26 2017Many of us in the field grade ranks may consider ourselves “digital natives,” the catch-all term for people who grew up with digital technology as an integral part of our daily lives. Some of us were undergrads when a new website called “The Facebook” went live in 2004. Shortly before (or after) we were commissioned, Apple launched a never-before-seen product called the iPhone. While we may not be true digital natives in the sense that we used those products every day as children, there’s no doubt that our youngest lieutenants and troops fall in that category. Digital natives or not, there is one fact none of us can deny: social media systems are transforming our culture in a rapid and unpredictable nature, and those changes are going to impact our forces just like every other cultural shift in our society’s history. When it comes to accepting those changes and integrating them into our daily operations, we have no choice but to engage.
So, given we are the mid-level management in our services, what is our role in ensuring the stage is set for successful integration of social media in military operations? You might be thinking to yourself “Public Affairs seems to have a solid handle on the whole social media phenomenon; no need for me to give it any thought.” Most discussions of social media’s role in military operations centers on the psychological operations or public affairs functions; at another level, we might consider it a tool of national power (think the “I” in DIME), and thus completely out of our realm of responsibility. Nothing could be further from the truth! Why? As noted above, social media’s effects saturate our daily lives; there’s no escaping its impact. There is no doubt it will have fundamental impacts on the way we do business, affecting everything from Organize, Train, and Equip (OT&E) to combat tactics. Unfortunately, we can only guess at what those changes might be.
If we don’t know what changes are in store then what can we possibly do now? With social media a fact of life for everyone serving and many units already using it as a tool of information distribution, it is incumbent upon unit leadership to begin setting standards for professional, operationally-minded use of these systems. It’s true our services’ respective public affairs branches have published guidance on its use, but those guidelines are mostly geared towards responsibilities for personal use of social media and not its use as an enhancement to unit operations. With that in mind, here’s a question we need to start considering:
Should an officer comport him- or herself differently from his or her troops on social media platforms? Than the average citizen?
When considering the standards that should be expected of leaders on social media, whether those leaders are field grade or company grade officers or even senior non-commissioned officers, I found myself thinking back to an old copy of “The Armed Forces Officer” I received as a lieutenant shortly after commissioning. Chapter 5 is a treatise on the leadership aspect of being an officer; a consistent theme in that chapter is trust as a foundation of leadership. So how does trust factor into digital leadership? There are two ways trust factors into leadership that are especially relevant in the digital realm: trust in competency and trust in fair treatment.
In order to lead our troops to accomplish organizational objectives effectively, they must be able to trust in our competence, and this plays directly into digital leadership. Given the public and transparent nature of digital communications, be it social media, text messaging, or email, we cannot escape the fact that these systems are not secure, and we must assume someone can see what we are saying on these platforms at all times. I don’t care if you tell me your unit’s closed Facebook page is controlled and protected from intrusion; there are still vulnerabilities galore. What we say on those forums can always find its way to the public sphere, and even if it doesn’t, your troops are going to see what you write there. With that in mind, do your comments or posts reflect the professionalism expected of officers? When you comment on articles on sites like The Military Leader, are you ensuring your words reflect standards of professional conduct? I would argue that professional online conduct extends not only to the content of our posts and discussions, but also the style in which we are writing. Are your posts riddled with spelling or grammar errors? Profanity? Is the material you’ve ‘liked’ or re-tweeted questionable? Our communications on these systems need to demonstrate our knowledge, expertise, and wisdom for both our troops and the populace we protect. If our words in these forums do not reflect the highest professional military standards, it’s actually more likely those groups will see it (you don’t want your post to go viral for the wrong reasons!).
Trust also factors into digital leadership with the requirement for fair treatment. We all know fraternization and other forms of bias can rapidly deteriorate morale in the ranks; it’s serious enough that we have an entire portion of the UCMJ dedicated to it. The challenge for digital leadership is that online forums and pages give us an opportunity to be unprofessional in our communications. Can you resist the temptation to pile on a unit member being trash-talked in a forum? The anonymity and deniability we may have enjoyed in closed-door discussions does not exist in the digital realm. Do you maintain online connections (e.g., Facebook friends) with some subordinates but not others? We also have plenty of examples of senior leaders across the services leveraging digital communications to conduct unprofessional relationships.
When you break it down, digital leadership is really just another flavor of the leadership we’ve all been practicing in our units for years. The risks and opportunities that make social media such a unique and powerful tool are a result of the tremendous amplifying effects it has. With the rapid permeation of social media into all facets of our operations, we as field grade officers have no choice but to set the standard and demonstrate to our junior officers and troops how digital communications should be conducted. This means not only policing our personal conduct and that of our peers but also having the discussion with our peers and subordinates on how to best leverage these tools into accomplishing objectives through the full spectrum of military operations.
Phil Amrine is a KC-135 pilot and the current Chief of Mobility in the 22d Operations Group at McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas. Previous experience includes: Air Mobility Liaison Officer (AMLO) to the 10thMountain Division and US Forces-Afghanistan, and combat deployments in the C-5M Super Galaxy and MC-12W Liberty.