Safety, Environment, and Engineering and a former officer in the UK Royal Navy, the goal-oriented military mindset works particularly well in finding efficiencies or tackling large assignments. “When handed a large project or an aggressive timeline, most people will say, ‘Our leaders are demanding too much. We can’t possibly deliver this.’ Whereas I can break that goal down into pieces, and make it into a mission, just as I was taught to do in the military,” Grail says. Not only does his tendency to make and meet targets improve efficiency at his company, Grail uses it to foster a more positive, optimistic outlook among his colleagues. “They develop immense pride and satisfaction when we meet targets that seemed impossible at the outset,” Grail adds.
Another desirable asset 78 percent of the veterans in our survey say they possess is communications skills. Interviewees shared their experiences dealing calmly with negative feedback or angry reactions from managers or clients. Peter Macakanja employs this strength regularly as global ultrasound customer care manager at GE Healthcare. “If an ultrasound scanner wasn’t functioning, I could leverage my listening skills to understand the underlying problems, focus under the pressure, and find solutions, instead of wasting time with defensiveness or recovery from a tongue-lashing,” Macakanja says. Indeed, the same portion of our sample of veterans (78 percent) say that they have the ability to handle stress and work under pressure, likely due to years of practice in the military.
Perhaps due to their need to produce results in high-pressure situations, 71 percent of veterans say they are decisive. In interviews, several shared their frustration at the inability of their civilian colleagues to make a tough call. “I’m used to making quick decisions about life and death midair,” says one former Air Force pilot. “When I hear, ‘I think we need another meeting to discuss this cost and see if it’s justified,’ my jaw drops.” Early in her civilian career, she developed more patience for her less-decisive colleagues. “I’ve learned over time to sit through the meeting to get to the decision, but usually I’ve already come to the conclusion that it takes others far longer to reach,” she says. Today, she counsels other veterans to temper their own impatience, showing another common strength among veterans in our survey—65 percent say they’re skilled at giving feedback to others.
Coupled with a fierce ambition (89 percent say they’re ambitious), these strengths mark veterans as highly desirable employees. But, as we’ll see, they are rarely fully expressed at work.
Tuning Out and Stalling Out
One evening, Robert* received a call from the chairman’s office at his employer—a major, publicly traded conglomerate. The chairman was hosting a dinner for returned veterans, a rare opportunity others would eagerly accept, but Robert had recently returned from a tour overseas as part of the reserves and was feeling drained at work and at home. He had been working for the company at the same level for seven years, and yet Robert found himself a fish out of water upon his return, focused more on his family than on work that he found unstimulating. Most employees would leap at the opportunity to gain visibility with their company’s chairman. Not Robert. “I know I could do really well three levels up from where I am, and the same is true for many of my veteran colleagues,” he says. “But I’d stopped taking an upwardly mobile posture. I had just reoriented to anticipate spending time with my family and going fishing on the weekends, instead of looking forward to my daily work. I didn’t understand that I could move up at work and still enjoy my life.”
He politely declined the invitation to the chairman’s dinner, accepting only after some coaxing from his team. The result? Robert found himself in charge of the new veterans employee resource group (ERG), the biggest leadership role he’d taken in the company, and he has since been promoted. The dinner jolted Robert out of complacency in the company and handed him an outlet for his leadership abilities. But it took some serious pressure from his manager to get Robert to the dinner, and few veterans have that kind of impetus in the civilian workplace.
Robert’s reluctance to grab visibility or advocate for himself illustrates a phenomenon we charted among a majority of veterans: that once in the door, 57 percent of our survey respondents report no aspirations to rise above the positions they currently hold, despite the high rates of ambition among vets. Like Robert, many interviewees and focus group participants report that, instead of focusing on upward mobility in their professions, they keep their heads down at work. They tell us they look elsewhere for fulfillment and a sense of accomplishment, whether in their family life, their involvement in religious or civic communities, or service organizations. One veteran, who has two young kids and has been deployed five times, tells us, “I could easily do the next ten years in my current position because, if I signed up to be a vice president, I’m not sure what impact that would have on my outside life. My first priority right now is my family and making sure I connect with them, after putting them through so much over the course of my military service.”
Among the remaining 43 percent of veterans who aspire to a more senior position, fully 39 percent report feeling stalled in their careers. “I love my corporate team, which is why I’ve been okay as an individual contributor as long as I have,” says John,* a former US Army officer who commanded a company of 141 soldiers during his time in the military. “But I don’t know when they expect me to move—they haven’t asked me yet.”
Because the military provides clear pathways of progression for those who enlist and for early-career officers, with regular promotions every two years, corporate hierarchies look like a maze to nearly all of the veterans we interviewed. Additionally, those accustomed to receiving orders from higher-ranking officials, and responding to them with swift action, await clear direction both in terms of their career and project goals.
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