One Team, One Fight
Across the military, the phrase “One Team, One Fight” is a frequent catchphrase used to describe the way the overall mission is accomplished. While in the Army, I learned that achieving success as a team requires identifying roles and responsibilities, persevering through failure, and integrating each member’s role to carry out collective tasks. As the commander of a tank platoon in a field environment in the U.S. Army, I learned the importance of these lessons through a field exercise.
The Mission
As a part of being a tank officer, each tank is required to qualify on a shooting range in order to conduct tactical operations. It had been a long week out in the field as our tank company prepared to qualify our crews on the firing range. My crew had already had to endure a rough week. Our first day in the field ended with our driver covered from head to toe in mud that had rushed into his driving compartment. Tired, hungry, and dirty, many thought that our crew wasn’t going to be able to qualify on our first attempt, given the struggles our team had endured over the previous few days. My responsibility as the commander of our tank crew was to instill confidence in our very inexperienced crew to overcome the range of issues we had experienced thus far, from communication to low self-esteem. Though we all bore different responsibilities on the tank, through clear understanding of each person’s role and responsibilities and how they mesh together we were able to overcome these obstacles and complete our objective.
Identifying Roles and Responsibilities
Each person in a tank crew has a specialized role for the tank to effectively function in a combat environment. The tank commander is the decision-maker of the crew, responsible for the successes and failures of their crew both in and out of combat operations. The gunner is the second-in-command of the tank, serving as the manager of internal tank operations with the weight of responsibility on their shoulders second only to the tank commander himself. The driver’s job is not only to get us from one location to another, but having the situational awareness to protect the rest of the crew from harm. Finally, the loader, aside from loading large rounds into the main gun, is also charged with ensuring that communications equipment is functioning properly, and serves as a second set of eyes outside the hatch to identify enemy targets. A seasoned tank crew makes short work of the qualifying ranges, with each person fully aware of their role and responsibilities as members of the crew. Attempting to perform more than one role degrades the overall effectiveness of the crew due to a lack of focus on that member’s primary task, and often leads to failure.
Persevering Through Failure
A critical component of teamwork is persevering through difficult situations and failure. My job as the tank commander was to keep our spirits high and instill confidence in my men as we progressed through the firing ranges. We had faced struggles from the very beginning, with rain dampening our spirits from the outset during the first night on the range. As we approached the practice run for our qualification, my men were feeling anxious due to our inexperience as we prepared to take the course. Being a fresh commander, I shared in their anxiety, and it must have shown; we performed abysmally on our first run, and received orders from the company commander to run the course again, only to achieve similarly disappointing results. My gunner, as the most experienced on our crew, had stretched himself too thin, trying to compensate for the other member’s lack of experience by filling other roles meant for the loader and driver. As we drove out to the final qualifying range, the consensus among our company was that our tank would not qualify on our first attempt, an embarrassing experience for tank crews. As we watched our colleagues qualify one by one, we steeled ourselves for the uphill battle we were about to undergo.
The Victorious Crew
Integrating the Team
Awaiting instructions to begin the qualifying course, I instructed my men to clear their heads and take a deep breath, to focus on what their specific role is on the tank and to not deviate into worrying about another’s job. I was following my own advice, nervous that I would be the first in our company to fail to qualify on our first attempt. We received the word to begin our run, and it was as if we became a different crew. My firing orders came out crisp and decisive for my gunner to engage the targets. Rather than trying to compensate for perceived weaknesses in other roles, my gunner focused solely on identifying and engaging targets. My driver, focused as I had never seen before, masterfully led us down the range to each firing position, moving us in and out of cover in perfect synchronization with my commands. And not least, our loader, the newest member of our crew, played an instrumental role in identifying our targets and calling them out for my gunner to identify and engage. We had found the key to integrating our team just in time to conquer the most important of trials to that point. Not only did we successfully qualify as a tank crew, but much to the surprise of our company and even ourselves, our diligence earned us the distinction as the top tank crew in not only the company, but the entire squadron.
This accomplishment is one of the highlights of my entire military career. It demonstrated that recognition of one’s roles and responsibilities on a team and focusing on effectively carrying out those responsibilities integrate the team to efficiently achieve the shared goal of the team. On that day, no member of our team was less crucial than another, as our strength to overcome through our initial struggles came by way of a renewed emphasis on individual roles and responsibilities that harmonize to create a winning team, and persisting through adverse situations. The military’s oft cited motto of “One Team, One Fight” could not have been more appropriate to describe the way in which we were able to accomplish our task on that cold, wet evening.