Sometimes, tough leadership is essential!

Signing a document in the quarter guard

This one is about discipline and managing your team's expectations of a fair deal and establishing a good professional environment.

     I go back to an incident when I was commanding my unit in Kashmir. Our advance party had moved to a peace location, and I got a report from them that a NCO on guard duty had assaulted the duty JCO(junior commissioned officer) who was checking the guard at night. This incident was about a year after a mutiny incident in an artillery regiment in Ladakh, and army chain of command was hyper sensitive to this aspect of disgruntled soldiers and poor leadership at that point.

This post is about managing various stakeholders and yet fulfilling duties as a leader.
     Various stakeholders had different interests at this point in time. My immediate boss (who was heading the next higher formation, the brigade) did not want this incident to be highlighted as he was about to complete his command tenure. The local military administration wanted to highlight this incident as a 'mutiny' and show proactive intervention as a reflection of their initiative and leadership. They did not have jurisdiction over the matter, since I was not under their command. The JCO (and other JCOs) wanted action to be taken against the NCO. The NCO wanted to get out of it, so he as trying to project this incident as a scuffle (two way), not a case of insubordination. I, as commanding officer wanted to get to the bottom of the incident and make sure this didn't happen again. I wanted to convey a clear message to the unit of 600 soldiers by setting the right example. The army was sensitive to such incidents and chain of command would react based on information being reported. In most cases, formal reporting lags informal inputs, and people have already formed their opinions by the time actual reports go up the chain. In this case, most people who heard about it assumed that this was a case of mutiny.

     I instructed the officer in charge to get both NCO and JCO medically checked up at the military hospital. It turned out that only the JCO had injuries; this was recorded in medical documents.
I ordered a court of inquiry to find out what happened. The local formation also ordered a court of inquiry and wanted a copy of the proceedings to be submitted to them. However, I wrote back saying they did not have jurisdiction, and that a commanding officer is the sole authority to order a court of inquiry in a case of possible insubordination. They did not like it! All this while I was still 2000km away in an operational deployment. The formation commander of the division visited my advance party and called them a poor unit etc(we were not under his command, and this was before the court of inquiry had come out with its findings, so this was totally uncalled for), and this probably became a topic of discussion in army channels in that command. This implied pressure building up on the commanding officer - accused and probably pronounced guilty of poor leadership leading to a mutiny, etc.
     In the meantime, we moved and reached the new location. The court of inquiry determined that this was a case of insubordination and assault against a superior, and not mutiny, since only one soldier was involved - a mutiny requires more than one co-accused. I conveyed my intent to hold a Summary Court Martial to try this NCO(a very nice article on SCM here). A commanding officer has the authority to award upto 1 year of rigorous imprisonment(RI) to the guilty NCO via SCM, based on a trial. By this time, the winds had changed and my boss wanted me to basically let the accused go with a slap on the wrist - apparently, now the concerns were that if this NCO was punished, other NCOs and soldiers could mutiny!! My concern as a commanding officer remained the same - to ensure that such cases of insubordination are not repeated in my unit, and a tough message needed to be sent. Perhaps I considered this since I knew of lenient handling of such cases in the past, due to which the unit was taking this lightly.
     The NCO kept insisting that he did not assault the JCO, while all evidence pointed otherwise. I held the Summary Court Martial against the advice of my boss. It was established that he was guilty of assaulting a superior.
     I could have sentenced him to a maximum of one year of rigorous imprisonment, which meant he would be dismissed from service and the sentence carried out in a central jail. Anything less than 90 days was to be carried out in the regiment quarter guard as per law. I decided to award him 89 days RI, since he did not have a past disciplinary record, and did not really deserve to be dismissed from service. It also provided maximum visibility of his punishment to others in the regiment - they saw this NCO going through the consequences of insubordination in front of them  - RI involves being held in a cell, pack drill punishment every morning and evening etc, all while rest of the regiment was going about its daily routine right there. In contrast, a jail sentence would have taken this incident out of conversations among the soldiers very soon - out of sight, out of mind. Since he would not be paid his salary during this period, I asked the Subedar Major (Sergeant Major in other armies) to facilitate a collection from his battery so he could send money home.
    As a leader, its important to do what is right for your team, and to reaffirm yourselves as a leader - even though some of them may not see it that way, and your hierarchy may have other interests. In this case, it was important to make sure that insubordination did not recur, and everyone in the unit understood it, although people outside were not keen to send this message across.
    Sometimes, tough measures need to be taken, but leaders need to be compassionate while doing so, and set examples in balancing effectiveness with care for your team members. As long as these measures are seen to be fair, your team will accept them, no matter how tough they are!