Friday, October 21, 2016

Post #8- Altruism in Service

In many of my previous posts I have referenced my experience in training with the United States Marine Corps, and going through the process of becoming a Marine. Altruism is a virtue that runs deep in the United States Military. Many give the ultimate sacrifice to protect our country, which no economic value could ever suffice for that kind of service. I had an extremely unique experience in looking at the psychological effects of altruism in a training environment, and how that is altered when economic decisions are reintroduced as a part of life. To better explain this some background information is needed.

The specific program I am in is for current college student who are looking to pursue a career as an officer in the United States Military. The training is broken up into two, 6-week, training increments. Upon completion of the second increment you officially earn the title of Marine, and commission as a second lieutenant upon completion of your last year of school. During a 6-week increments you are stripped of all your civilian possession, given all necessary gear for training, and are allowed no access to any information outside the training environment. The first three weeks of training are non-stop, 18 hour training days, 7 days a week. After the first three weeks of training, we were allowed 24-hour "liberty" periods to have complete freedom to do whatever we needed to prepare for the next week of training. During these liberty periods many candidates go off base to get hotel rooms, and enjoy some of the luxuries they had been deprived of for the past three weeks.

In the first three weeks, the atmosphere of training is tense. Anyone can be sent home at any time for a variety of reasons including failure to adapt to military lifestyle, performance issues, or integrity violations. Every person who chooses to take on this challenging training has similar personality traits, namely an extremely competitive mindset, a type "A" personality, but, most importantly, unwavering unselfishness. Despite the fact that many of us are competing for a job after college, the drive for candidates to help out their peers is excessive in many aspects. We work as one cohesive unit to accomplish each challenge thrown at us in training. Without distractions of the personal life, cell phones, economic decisions, we were able to remain focused and maintain an altruistic atmosphere.

Upon completion of the first three weeks, my platoon left in high spirits, feeling a sense of accomplishment, and ready to reap the rewards of three weeks of hard work. Over liberty, many reconnected with their families, friends, and essentially the rest of the world. On top of that, we were once again exposed to making economic decisions such as where to purchase a hotel, what gear to buy for training, and where to get food. The intrinsic nature of selfishness that goes into economic decision making shifted the focus of many candidates. Many lost focus on the end goal and developed a more self-centered mindset in such a short time period.

Returning to training the following Sunday, there was a noticeable difference in individual attitudes, as well as the general moral of the company. People made decisions more focused on the well-being of themselves, rather than the well-being of the platoon, or company. Many were less willing to help with small tasks, and more often candidates had to be "voluntold" to do something rather than individuals stepping up to help out others. We had no distractions during the first three weeks and focus was relatively easy to maintain. Now that candidates had once again been exposed to the selfishness of economic decision making, there was somewhat of a psychological shift in the way we functioned as a team.

There was noticeable improvement with the issue addressed above in the following liberty periods. In the article given referencing altruism, and its effects on production in the workplace, there are several scenarios similar to the experience I had. One example that had a striking similarity was the example referencing an 18-month old, and his/her willingness to help in the presence of a reward, or not. At Officer Candidate School, when we were finally rewarded for that first three weeks of training, a willingness to help other significantly dropped.

Service to others brings a perspective to people that drives productivity in the workplace. Good deeds, are often followed by reciprocal good deeds. Working to help others drives an individual's focus towards an unselfish outlook that greatly benefits the team as a whole. In order for our work force to improve overall productivity, we need to first look at the motivations of the individual worker, and drive those motivations towards a team-oriented ideology.

3 comments:

  1. Before commenting on the substance of your post please note - unique doesn't take a qualifier like "very" or "extremely" since it means one of a kind. You distract from your writing, in this case an otherwise interesting post, when you have word usage like this. I strongly encourage you to use the word unique without qualifier in the future.

    As to your story, let me ask a few basic questions first. Was it really 18 hours a day (meaning you were getting at most 6 hours per sleep at night)? Was there a sense of physical exhaustion at the end of the first 3 weeks? And, more generally, can you parse out what part of the training was trial by ordeal and what part was preparation in skills that your fellow marines wouldn't have head ahead of time.

    I have no military background, I did attend a rather intensive two-week leadership training back in 2003. It didn't have the hardships you faced but it was quite intensive and the people in attendance all were very bright and wanting to impress the people in the room. They were mainly candidates to become the Chief Information Officer at some university or the Head of the Library (and in some places those jobs are merged). I was one of the older people in the room, 48 at the time. I found it very disturbing that I wanted to linger on some topic, while my younger colleagues were zipping ahead on whatever was next. Yet we did have respectful interactions (and many are still friends) in spite of these differences. During the weekend in the middle I visited my mom in Florida and got out of the mode of thinking about this training. Yet at the end of the two weeks they cautioned us to spend a good deal of time on "coming down" and making sure we understood that it will be different interacting with others who attended than with people back at our home institutions who hadn't participated in the training. That proved to be good advice.

    Getting back to your post, I wonder if the time in between, at the hotel or restaurant, was sufficient to be fully refreshed. You talked about people being more selfish afterward. A different explanation for that than you gave is that people were fatigued and that started to show.

    I have an expression that I will share with the class soon that goes like this. Anyone can be a hero in a sprint. Nobody is a hero in a marathon. If you were in a marathon and people started to fatigue, that might explain the behavior, with or without the break that you received.

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  2. In regards to your first question, the training was truly 18-hours a day, or more depending on the week-to-week plan. Lights went out at 9pm, and went on at 5am, but, since our only personal time was when the lights went out, at least an hour, usually more, was needed for hygiene, laundry, and other various tasks. Exhaustion is a large factor and training and managing time, and sleep, effectively is one of the most challenging aspects of training.

    As far as your question about how the training is laid out, the mission of Marine OCS is stated as "The mission of Officer Candidates School (OCS) is to educate and train officer candidates in Marine Corps knowledge and skills within a controlled, challenging, and chaotic environment IOT evaluate and screen individuals for the leadership, moral, mental, and physical qualities required for commissioning as a Marine Corps officer." The "training and screening" aspect is the preparation in skills that you referred to. The "chaotic environment" would be the trial by ordeal aspect. It is somewhat difficult to explain how these two are integrated, but they are somewhat concurrent throughout the entirety of training.

    I had considered your explanation of fatigue being the bigger factor in why selfishness had increasedd following the liberty period. I think that the two explanations, the one you gave, and the one I described in the original post, had somewhat of an additive effect on each other. The reintroduction of economic decision making brought people "back to real life" in some aspects. Being brought back to life, brought not only the selfishness that intrinsically develops from economic decision making, but also a realization of the stress and fatigue they had just underwent the past 3 weeks. This realization brought on the mental fatigue, that coupled with the selfishness brought on by economic decision making.

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  3. Going into the military is the highest form of altruism, so first of all thank you. Secondly, in regards to your post, I guess I'm a little confused about how the first three weeks differed from the second three weeks. I know you have a 24hr grace period in between, but wouldn't it be harder to go an even longer time (the time before the first three weeks) living "freely" and entering this tireless training?

    Also, was the training different in the second three weeks? Was it any harder or more tiring which maybe caused others to think more selfishly as supposed to more selflessly? Just thinking about other options as to why there was a tilt in attitudes and motivations across the training camp.

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