Category: leadership

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Pat Tillman Foundation Scholars 2021 Essays

Last year I applied to Pat Tillman Scholars program. It was the last time I would apply since I am no longer eligible. It’s not the first scholarship I applied to (and certainly not the last) that I’d be rejected from. However, I think it is important to recognize that rejection happens and it happens constantly. And some – especially when intertwined with an identity can be hurtful. I have qualms about what to share and what to leverage in these applications. It often sounds like trauma porn – or a bad RuPaul episode where a queen makes herself vulnerable only to lip sync for her life and sashay away. I also have qualms about contributing to military exceptionalism – but this is a military/veteran scholarships so that moot point.

I think these were/are great essays and speak to who I am as a veteran committed to service, my research, and others. So I want to share them. They got me passed the first round so they’re somewhat successful. But what’s important is that you are and I am still successful. The essays – from my knowledge – are the same each year. So keep in mind if you’re applying again to keep your mental health in an ok place. There’s only so many times you can repeat a vulnerable memory for leverage just to sashay.

I think posting my application might be my new thing – maybe it can be called “failure porn” if that hasn’t already been done.

Discuss your motivation and decision to serve, in the military or otherwise. Explain how your unique life experience has influenced your life and your ambitions. What is the most important lesson you have learned? (400 max)

When I joined the Navy, I did not know what service meant. Like many other Americans of color, I saw the military as a way out. I saw it for the opportunities it could provide me. However, I did not realize how much harder it would be for me to reach those opportunities as a queer, Asian and Filipino American during Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

I went to the Naval Academy Preparatory School first. There, I felt the most alone. The cadre during indoctrination suspected I was gay. They singled me out, and the harassment continued into the academic year. One day, someone even wrote faggot on my back during class. Only one person showed me kindness and helped me. That one person’s act held me together.

My true call to service came after I arrived at the Academy the next year. There, I found a cohort of queer midshipmen. For the first time I saw people like me. Working with them, I realized I could and wanted to serve in the Navy.  Best of all, I knew that we had to help each other navigate the precarious waters of secrecy and advocacy. Our presence was a statement that we belonged.

They remained my anchor and only source of help during DADT, but that was not enough. In the fleet, I was sexually harassed by a sailor while deployed. Of course, I turned to those queer midshipmen for help. But what would have empowered me during that time, instead of just staying resilient and staying the course, is a leader who looked like me.

I could not be that leader. Cancer drove me out of the Navy. Still wanting to serve, I recalled those who helped me along the way. In their spirit, I went from serving the country to serving others by volunteering for other cancer patients, mentoring foster children, and helping neighbors. Service is a value that I want reflected in all aspects of my life. Today, that value is reflected in my research about veterans transitioning to college and my work advising veterans applying to college. My ambition is to continue service through scholarship, scholarship that provides veterans the tools and resources to be empowered and to empower others.

Share your academic and career goals. How will you incorporate your experiences into these goals? How will you make a positive impact? (400 max)

Pursuing a master’s degree and then a PhD in Linguistics has allowed me to raise awareness about how language mediated the adversity I experienced during Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and bring about positive change. Accordingly, my academic goal is to expose through research how discriminatory and oppressive ideologies are engrained in the language we use. My career goal is to have a platform to use my research to advocate for and to empower those of marginalized communities. Being a Tillman Scholar and hearing how Tillman Scholars talk about their experiences will enrich my scholarship and provide a network of likeminded leaders for greater positive impact.

Since starting my academic journey, I have already had an impact. For example, motivated by my research on queer naval officers, I founded a coalition of queer and ally student organizations called Spectra Alliance. (Like my experience at the Academy, I knew we would be stronger together.) Our first event, which brought my research to life, provided a platform for transgender service members to share their lived experiences with our community and three other universities. Our next event is “OUT in Research,” a conference which will elevate the research and needs of queer students at Georgetown and plant the seed for a dedicated queer research program.

In 2020, I started my dissertation. I examine how veterans talk about their transition into student life. Findings from my study have already impacted veteran programming at Georgetown. For example, I initiated a community of mentors called Veterans Helping Veterans (VHV) to help other veterans transitioning to the rigors of academia. From VHV, a women-veterans special interest group emerged. And, in collaboration with the LGBTQ Resource Center, VHV will hold a queer military career panel. This panel and the veteran women’s group highlight VHV’s mission and the spirit of Georgetown: commitment to service, veterans for others, and the celebration and inclusion of diversity. It is through my commitment to service that my academic and professional goals collide. My academic goals center on developing the scholarship needed for improving those of marginalized communities. My career goals are bringing that research to life through positive social change. My research has had a positive impact in my local community already at Georgetown. As a Tillman Scholar, I can have a greater and broader positive impact in the military and in higher education.

In what unique ways has the COVID 19 pandemic affected you and your candidacy to become a Tillman Scholar? (optional, 250 words)

In 2016 I was diagnosed with Leukemia for the second time and had to receive a bone marrow transplant. While the general population has a 95-99% survival rate, I have a 68% survival rate as a transplant recipient. 

While concerned about my health, my dissertation research was immediately impacted by COVID-19. My original dissertation plan was an ethnographic study of the socialization process into the US Naval Academy during the Summer of 2020. It took me two years to design the project, collect the relevant scholarship, gain access to the Academy, and raise personal funds to support the project. However, prior to meeting with the Commandant, the nationwide shutdowns took place. Two years of work disappeared.

I was still determined to start my dissertation that Fall of 2020. In July, with a new idea, I designed a new project, collected the relevant scholarship, and passed the institutional review board in two weeks. Because of my supportive faculty, I immediately began collecting data before passing my dissertation prospectus defense in November.

While COVID-19 has made doing research more difficult and canceled all my public speaking opportunities, it has elevated the inequities in marginalized communities. Examples of these inequities emerge in my own research. Now more than ever, my research can benefit from a platform like the Pat Tillman Foundation and raise awareness for positive social change in these communities.

Special Skills or Expertise (optional)

Three skills I want to bring attention to are my skills in illustration and photography, conducting and facilitating meaningful conversations, and community-building.

Before applying to the US Naval Academy, I wanted to go to art school. I had taken art classes in high school, specifically a class in graphic design where I found I like illustrating and photography. Throughout my time at the academy, I designed logos for sports teams and organized my own photography shows. While serving on my first ship, I used my photography abilities as the collateral duty public affairs officer and to document my deployments and travels. More recently, I have returned to my love of illustrating and have illustrated large murals for friends and their homes. This skill also came in handy during my graduate assistantship in the Georgetown Veterans Office where I redesigned all the flyers and information pamphlets, as well as the illustrations and logos for our newsletters, website, and online material.

A second skill I have is facilitating productive and meaningful conversations. This is because most of my research has consisted of interview data, or what we as linguists call “semi-structured conversations.” While I always have a set of questions prepared, I allow the conversation to flow on its own. And not only do I practice this skill during research projects, but I also have to later transcribe and analyze my interview data. This allows me to reflect on my own conversational mannerisms, catch things I could have asked about, and make myself a better listener. This skill has transferred to my personal life as it has overall improved how I make interpersonal connections with people.

My last skill is community-building. While in the Navy, especially overseas, I tried to connect people and help others build community with like-minded people. When a sailor needed help, I liked being able to connect them to the resources they needed. As a PhD candidate, I like to connect individuals who may share the same research interests so that they can potentially collaborate. In my department, I initiated a mentor program that matched incoming graduate students with seasoned graduate students. I also like to connect groups to create stronger communities and coalitions. I did this last year when I initiated Spectra Alliance. It started out as GradPride and OUT@MSB, two queer organizations at Georgetown and then it became five organizations.

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Queering leadership: leadership narratives as stories of self-commodification

Recently, I was invited to contribute my research about how Naval Officers who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender talk about their leadership performance through “sea-stories.” The book, which centers on Queer Linguistics as an approach, really forced me to re-examine my analysis through a Queer Theory and Queer Linguistics lens.

The chapter will draw on data from my master’s thesis which takes a social constructionist stance towards how identity is constructed. For my thesis, I interviewed 14 Naval Officers. Six identified as cis gender men, five identified as cis gender women, one identified as a trans man, and one identified as a transwoman. Of the seven total men, three identified as straight, two as bi, and two as gay. Of the five total woman, two identified as straight and three identified as lesbians.

In each of their interviews, each participant had a “sea-story” to tell. A sea-story is a common term in the Navy used to describe some interesting story that occurred while at sea. These sea-stories in particular were elicited, meaning I asked for a specific story. And in each story, the participants talk about standing watch as Officer of the Deck (OOD). While standing OOD, the Naval Officer is pretty much in charge of all operations occurring on the ship. They’re also in charge of navigating where the ship goes. In these sea-stories, the participants shared a story where they talked about a challenging experience while standing OOD. One participant talked about transiting the Straits of Malacca and experiencing a near collision, another participant described conflict between her and another officer while launching and landing helicopters on the flight deck, and one officer described a man-overboard. So what I was interested in examining here is how each participant talked themselves into “being” a leader in these stories.

While writing my master’s thesis I thought it was a first step towards examining how people who identify as queer do leadership. To my knowledge, it is and was the first of its kind.

As so as I mentioned above, I am excited to re-examine my data from a Queer Linguistics perspective and question “what is masculinity” in the context of the military. And I think more exciting – “what is heterosexuality” in the military? What’s fascinating to me about Queer Theory and Queer Linguistics is that even though I’ve always thought that individuals can express sexuality in different ways, I never actually thought about heterosexuality in this way.

So from this perspective, even individuals who identify as heterosexual (and cis gender) are performing a specific type of heterosexuality and masculinity. So quite literally, in the words or Ru Paul, we’re all born naked and the rest is drag.

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Key sites of engagement – Delegating work as a leader

The past few days, I’ve been thinking about “key sites of engagement” where a leader identity emerges (someone acts like a leader). And recently, I came across an article from the Harvard Business Review that a LinkedIn connection shared, titled “8 Ways Leaders Delegate Successfully”.

The authors cited a few studies evidencing the importance of delegating work – that it “increases productivity, morale, and commitment, all of which impact company culture”. Further, the authors also cite a 2015 Gallup study consisting of 143 CEOs on the Inc. 500 that showed “companies run by executives who effectively delegate authority grow faster, generate more revenue, and create more jobs”. In order to tackle complex problems (cf. complicated), leaders are recognizing the importance of distributing the work load. In other words, instead of having one person find and attempt possible solutions, a leader should recognize more heads are better than one.

This “more heads are better than one” concept lends itself to the importance of recognizing diversity of thought (and diversity) as a solid business practice for finding a range of ideas for challenging complex problems where there isn’t a single solution. In a workplace environment with diverse teams, leaders are equipped with a variety of lenses to look at a problem because diversity is a force multiplier.

From a linguistics standpoint, a balanced and diverse team is usually equipped with a wider range of communicative behaviors which (research has found) often leads to egalitarian working relationships characterized by mutual support.

Where the “8 Ways Leaders Delegate Successfully” falls short is the “How Leaders Delegate Successfully” which I believe can be investigated through linguistic approaches.

Judith Baxter, a linguist who investigated the language of leadership, in her 2015 study observed how a leader emerged in three different teams challenged with the same problem – building a paper tower that would judged on height, stability (strength), and aesthetics . One team was composed of all men. A second team was composed only of women. The third team was composed of a balance of women and men. 

Baxter found the participants relied on gendered discourse, ways of talking associated with perceptions of masculinity and femininity, in all teams. The team of men demonstrated competitive characteristics resulting in a hierarchal structure. The team of women demonstrated both competitive and egalitarian characteristics. The third team with both men and women crossed the gendered discourse boundaries. In other words, the men at times were consultative while the women were more assertive. In the end, the third team completed the challenge successfully which was attributed to the emergence of different but equal roles dedicated to the different judging criteria. Thus, as stated above, the third team not only demonstrated a wider ranger of communicative behaviors but also created different roles (instead of a single leader) to focus on the different judging criteria.

As Baxter demonstrates with her study, linguistic approaches are fine-grained analyses of language in use in various communicative contexts. “Words matter” and being cognizant of “how” we use words (and language) can help us be better leaders and create positive workplace environments.

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When the communicative style misrepresents the message

In a truly diverse workplace that “embraces” inclusion, are we actually communicating effectively with our diverse audiences?

This week I attended the Washington DC Student Veterans of America (SVA) Summit because I recently joined (was hired by) the Georgetown University Veterans Office team as the graduate assistant. While I don’t play a leadership role in the Georgetown University Student Veteran’s Association (GUSVA), I want to be cognizant of the needs of other student veterans and service-connected students in order to better do my job. In the Veterans Office, we serve as a resource for prospective service-connected students who need help navigating the academic landscape as well as their VA education benefits. Additionally, we guide those students to various veteran-tailored resources (such as mental health, professional development, etc) on campus.

Within the veteran community, and especially in veteran spaces, I want to advocate for better diversity and inclusion (D and I) practices. Simply creating a “veteran space” and expecting veterans to come is ineffective at reaching all veterans even if the veteran space is accepting of all identities. While at the SVA summit, I spoke with a few participants about being accepting of all genders, all sexualities, and all individuals. However, the delivery of their message often conflicted with the actual message.

Judith Baxter (2010) identified a similar phenomenon in her data when she interviewed male CEOs from what she calls “gender-multiple corporations”. These corporations demonstrate a fluidity in gender roles as “boundaries between ‘male’ and ‘female’, ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ have thus become more permeable” (p. 77) When the CEOs were asked to provide narratives (in an interview), the CEOs acknowledged the need for a relationally-oriented communicative/leadership style. However, they “were often quite unaware that they offered more traditionally masculine speaker identities in their narratives” (p. 92).

While speaking with one of the SVA participants about his leadership style at work, he said (paraphrased), “I don’t care if you’re a man, a woman, gay or lesbian, or transgender, as long as you do your job. If I have a problem with you, I am not going to dance around. I’m going to be direct and tell you”. Similar to Baxter’s observations, this participant demonstrated a “traditionally masculine speaker identity” characterized by assertiveness, directness, and confrontation. While I don’t question the veracity of his acceptance of diverse individuals – I think he could benefit from understanding his communicative behavior could possibly undermine his intentions.

Additionally, a reality of the “veteran identity” is that many people who had a tough time during their service may not want to identify as a veteran because it conflicts with their various other identities (gender, sexuality, etc). When I served during DADT, my military identity conflicted with my identity as a gay man. For women in the service, sometimes putting on the uniform is the only way to identify them as a service-member which conflicts with being “on duty 24/7”. So, if we want to create a truly inclusive environment of different diversities, we should be cognizant (linguistically aware) of our communicative behaviors and ensure they align with the desired audiences expectations.

Baxter, Judith. (2010). The language of female leadership. New York, NY: Palgrave McMillan.

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Bridging the gap between cultural values and cultural practice with linguistic awareness

Earlier this week, I attended the second day of the Service Academies Global Summit. Throughout the plenary sessions and the panel discussions, I observed a common theme, the need for more diversity and the importance of communication (or language) in today’s leadership. I was particularly interested in the plenary session about developing leaders at the different service academies which included the Superintendents from the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA), U.S. Military Academy (USMA), U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) and U.S. Coast Guard Academy (USCG) and the Commandant from the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA).

Lt. Gen. Silveria from USAFA identified the ability to adapt to changing environments as the foundation of the graduates of his academy. RADM Buono from USMMA, who also served as President and CEO of SeaRiver Maritime Inc., reflected on the difference between leadership in the military and leadership in corporate America where no one wants to make decisions. He argued the importance of the academies is to enable midshipmen (and cadets) to cultivate their decision-making abilities relative to the task at hand. With this in mind, Lt. Gen Silveria conveyed one of the roles of the academies is to be a “leadership laboratory”. As a laboratory, midshipmen and cadets can practice, as CAPT Buchanan from USNA states, leadership among peers which incorporate character development, core values, and professional competence.

I was particularly struck by Lt. Gen. Silveria recalling an incident from 2017 when he addressed the entire academy after a student at the USAFA Preparatory School wrote racial slurs on the message boards of African American cadets. In the video, his message is clear, “If you can’t treat someone from another race or different color skin with dignity and respect, then you need to get out.” During the panel, he extended his message and included individuals of different gender and sexual identities. In so doing, Silveria (re)defines USAFA as an institution where diversity is not only accepted, but embraced. He further indicates what practices are institutionally sanctioned. In other words, cadets at USAFA are expected to treat their peers of different ethnic, gender, and sexual identities with dignity and respect. Lastly, he’s defining his role, as superintendent, as the moral compass of the institution. And by agreeing with Silveria, the superintendents and the commandant extend Silveria’s sentiments to their own academies.

RADM Kelly, the superintendent at USCG, commended Silveria and remarked about the quality of the message in regard to the immediacy after the incident which further reflects Silveria’s outstanding leadership. Recalling Robinson’s (2001) definition, “Leadership is exercised when ideas expressed in talk or action are recognized by others as capable of progressing tasks or problems which are important to them” (p. 93). Silveria was able to succinctly address the incident, reinforce values, and provide direction for the cadets moving forward – to “engage in open discussion about the topic and focus on solutions”.

Ten years ago, prior to the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, military leaders would not extend the same acceptance of diverse individuals to gay and lesbian servicemembers. And, women weren’t even able to serve in a variety of military roles until 2016. This stands in sharp contrast to the military (specifically the Army) of 1976 when then Army Chief of Staff, General William Westmoreland, stated, “The purpose of West Point is to train combat officers, and women are not physically able to lead in combat. Maybe you could find one woman in 10,000 who could lead in combat, but she would be a freak, and we’re not running the Military Academy for freaks” (Department of Defense, 2010, p. 86).

While Silveria’s remarks reflects the milestones and achievements in the military in regard to diversity, there is still much work to be done. The cultural values expressed by top brass military leadership emphasizing acceptance of diversity and inclusivity does not always play out in cultural practice. This is reflected in the various accounts of toxic leadership and increase in sexual assault in the military, as well as the micro-aggressions in gendered and homophobic language common in a masculine gendered institution. I’m not recommending a revamping of all things “gendered”, culturally insensitive or homophobic (although those things need to go). I’m recommending that linguistic awareness should be included in the the character development of our officers. That when we use specific types of discourses, we aren’t just using words, we’re perpetuating meaning and creating new meaning. In other words, when an individual uses racist, sexist, or homophobic language – they’re not only expressing themselves in an offensive manner, they’re also defining the workshop, office, or command as an environment where the ideologies of that type of language is acceptable.

Department of Defense, U.S. 2010. Report of the comprehensive review of the issues associated with a repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

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Do shared values influence trust? And is trust important in leadership?

I think the short answer-response is “sometimes” and it depends on the environment and context where one does leadership. But also, what exactly is trust? And what are values?

Rouseau et al. (1998) define trust as the “psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another” (p. 395) and can be further parsed into cognitive, affective, and behavioral bases (Mayer et al. 1995). In other words, what we think someone’s trustworthiness is, how we feel about that trust, and how we enact (do) trust.

Values are a little more abstract. Schaefer (2008) defines values as “conceptions of what is good, desirable, and proper” (p. 50) and can be categorized as personal, social, political, economic, and religious. An example of a personal value would be “loyalty” while a social value could be “equality” and “justice”. Institutions, such as branches of the military, have official “core” values. The U.S. Navy’s official core values are “honor, courage, and commitment”. The U.S. Army has seven official core values, “loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage”. The values of an individual (or institution) can influence what norms are developed and how moral judgements are made. Jones and George (1998) argue that shared values are the primary vehicle for individuals to experience trust. Thus, when institutions instill, or socialize, individuals with specific values, they’re setting up the individuals to trust one another.

In Gillespie and Mann’s (2004) study “Transformational leadership and shared values: the building blocks of trust”, they investigated how a specific leadership style (transformational, transactional, and consultative) combined with shared values can further foster trust. To do so, they used a series of questionnaires to evaluate leadership, trust and values among participants chosen from 9 teams from a research and development (R&D) organization. The participants consisted of the team leader and two team members from each team. The results found among the leaders and members of R&D teams, the combination of shared common values, idealized influence (a dimension of transformational leadership described as “communicating and modeling important values and a shared purpose” [p. 596] ) and consultative leadership was the strongest predictor of trust.

While Gillespie and Mann (2004) elaborated on the different dimensions of leadership practices, they did not elaborate on the different value systems the participants might draw from to foster trust. It would be useful to know if the R&D organization the participants worked for had official values stated in a mission statement, if the values were specific personal values, or if the general idea of “shared values” sufficed. Thus, the study would have shed light on whether the values shared are context-bound and if so, is trust (more or less) emergent in specific contexts?

In the context of the military, I’m curious how demonstrations of “official core values” influence the maintenance of trust. Or, do individuals rely on their personal values when trusting leaders? In my master’s thesis research, one individual remarked about her arrival at the Naval Academy that she was “expected to blindly trust the firsties (first class midshipmen responsible for indoctrinating incoming “plebes” or freshmen)”. She recalled questioning the firsties as authority figures because she did not believe their (limited) experience licensed them to be “leaders”. But, she then recalled her first tour on her ship as a Division Officer and expecting her sailors to “blindly” trust her despite no experience.

I hypothesize in institutions such as the military that other factors can override the existence of trust and shared values in order to successfully “do” leadership. In the case of my participant, when she stepped out in front of her division for the first time, her institutional authority licensed her to “do” leadership without trust, shared values, or experience. During DADT, my experience as a naval officer was leading sailors who trusted me despite their belief (which aligned with the discriminatory policy at the time) that I shouldn’t even be in the military. However, I feel as though working with these sailors, we either developed similar values or our values eventually became more aligned within the context of our duties and responsibilities. Thus, I either earned their trust through context-bound values or they simply respected my rank.

In my master’s thesis I looked at leadership style as a demonstration of power. After reading Gillespie and Mann’s (2004) work, I would be interested in expanding the study into looking at increased/decreased efficacy of leadership when considering shared values and the effects of trust.

Gillespie, Nicole and Leon Mann. (2004) Transformational leadership and shared values: the building blocks of trust. Journal of managerial psychology, 19(6), 588-607.

Jones, G., & George, J. (1998). The experience and evolution of trust: implications for cooperation and teamwork.(Special Topic Forum on Trust in and Between Organizations). Academy of Management Review, 23(3), 531–546

Mayer, R.C., Davis, J.H. and Schoorman, F.D. (1995). An integrative model of organisational trust. Academy of Management Review, 20(3) 709-34.

Rousseau, D.M., Sitkin, S.B., Burt, R.S. and Camerer, C. (1998), Not so different after all: a cross discipline view of trust (Introduction to special Topic forum), Academy of Management Review, 23(3), 393-404.

Schaefer, R. (2014). Sociology matters (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

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