83 | Beyond the Barracks: Building Cultures of Trust and Accountability | Mark Mellett & Rena Kennedy

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

If I've learned one thing in all my time, you must always watch your ego, bottle your ego. In fact, you know, ego often are toxic. They give you this sense of self-importance that actually can be damaging and dangerous.

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Firstly, before we get into today's guest and the reason for having them on, um, just a quick and usual thank you to Workvivo, our friend and sponsor, for their continuing support of the podcast. We'll hear a little bit more from them later, but I think particularly today's guests that I'm going to be speaking to with a very distributed workforce, if you like, for that type of an organization, what Workvivo does in terms of getting comms going, making sure that making people feel engaged and part of something central is really powerful. We'll get onto a little bit more about them later, but if you want to look them up, workvivo.com is where you will find them. Now, today's guests are really interesting. I'm very, very excited. I am talking to Vice Admiral Mark Mellet, the Chief of Staff in the Irish Defence Forces, and also Sergeant Rena Kennedy, their Head of Internal Comms. Why is the big question? Well, I think that for those of us that aren't in the military or in any kind of uniformed service, whether that be the police or the Coast Guard or anything else, I think we probably have a bit of a warped view of what it's like to work in there, what leadership looks like in there, how things get done in those types of organizations. I think we look at commercial and corporate organizations that the majority of us work in and we think, well, we must be very different to them. You know, I think that probably that slightly warped sense of what goes on is maybe driven by Hollywood and sweaty gym socks and press-ups and, you know, TV programs like, you know, Special Forces Hell Week, Get Me Out of Here, which I would not do in a mad fit, I can tell you. No thank you, jumping off a 50-foot bridge into a river in the middle of the night. No, just no, no. But I think that's given us a sense, maybe as, as laypeople, as bystanders, or certainly me anyway, of maybe what it's like to work in those organizations. And I know that from having heard Mark speak before at an event run by the, the Irish International Business Network, that that's not actually the case. And I think you'll be really surprised by what you'll hear today from Mark and from Reena about what it's like to be in a defense force in, in this day and age. So Mark, Reena, good morning. You're very welcome on the podcast.

Scott, it's great to see you.

Thank you. Good morning.

Good morning. Listen, what we do is we'll just kick off, we'll get you guys settled really nice and quickly, um, by just maybe letting you spend a couple of minutes each telling us about your role in there, your background, and, and maybe what you do today.

Well, if I could start, and just for those who are listening, in case they've been watching Hell Week, it's not all like that. And in fact, our special operations forces are the best of the best, and they train for particular challenging operations such as Mali, such as Syria, such as Afghanistan, where they were in the last few weeks. And we really have to prepare them for those very challenging environments. But there's a whole tapestry of opportunities, you know, right down to softer areas, in areas such as administration, such as communications, such as technicians, such as chefs and all that. So those who want to be Special Operations Forces, the opportunities are there and you can do Hell Week if you wish. Those who want for a more, I suppose, less pressing type of style can come in and do other career paths there. I grew up in Mayo 62 years ago and I joined the Defence Forces when I was 14 as a reservist. And I was in the FCA in Castlebar, which is a Força de Custódia e Auxílio, which is the local Defence Force, and it's morphed into the Reserve Defence Forces today. But when I was 18, then I joined the cadets as a cadet, a naval cadet in Dún Curragh, and I've went on to many appointments since then, rising now to my current position as Chief of Staff of Defence Forces, where I will terminate in about 1.5 weeks' time as the first naval Chief of Staff and retire. Rena.

Thank you.

Follow that, Rena.

Yeah, okay, I'll try. I have 27 years service, um, 17 of them have been spent in, in the communications space. My interest to join the Defence Forces was piqued as a young girl, I think about 11 or 12, when I heard a story about Nyamba Ambush, and no school or no history book in school taught me about that. But I did some research, and as a secondary school student, and was, I suppose, very impressed and very proud proud that Irish soldiers served overseas with the United Nations. So, um, they weren't recruiting when I was finishing college, so, or when I was finishing school rather, so I went to the College of Marketing and Design and graduated there, and joined up then in 1994 when they were, and I've continued, I suppose, my love affair with promoting the organization and the good men and women that work in there. I've been allowed to continue and very much encouraged to continue my studies in the communications space in the last number of years. I'm a graduate of the Communications and Management Institute and more recently then the European Institute of Communications. So between press office duties as one of four press officers, internal communications was an area that was probably neglected. So a couple of years ago, a decision was made by the Chief of Staff to kind of grab internal comms by the scruff of the neck and to make improvements in that area to our staff, the length and breadth of the country, especially the non-desk-based employees. So that's where I found myself and still have my toe in the water of press affairs. But I've also, along with a colleague, Lieutenant Austin Doyle, operate the internal communications office as well.

Brilliant. And I love the idea of grabbing internal comms by the scruff of the neck, because I do think often in organizations, it is the poor cousin to external comms. That's where all the glitz and the glamour is and all that good stuff. But it is so fundamentally important and we are going to talk a little bit about that later on and why it is so fundamentally important. Mark, back to your open, thank you. I hope they're not going to terminate you.

Yeah, well, they can if they wish.

I wouldn't like to see it. Nobody would like to see that.

No, you'd be surprised.

Mark, let's stick with you to start with because, you know, I think we people outside of the defense forces, we look at a defense force or a uniformed force and we think that it's all yes sir, no sir, three bags full, sir, do as you're told. It's chain of command. It's top down. Tell me maybe a little bit about what you look for in your leaders and how that's changed, or has it changed over the years?

Yeah, I suppose you're not looking for automatons. You're looking for people who have an empathy, who actually understand values, and who have a humility. And at the same time, you're looking for people who have a strength. You know, a conviction and an ability to command respect. That charisma, if you get it, even all the better. And I was just thinking back, as Rena was doing her introduction, she mentioned Nayamba. And, you know, when I joined the Reserve Defence Force, the FCA, back, you know, that long time ago in 1972, '73, and my Commandant was a guy called Mick Considine, who was actually down in the Congo around that time. And he was an extraordinary character. He's a big man, they called him the Bod. But he just had this kind of diversity and this unorthodox way about him. It was he who taught me how to sail, and my job was in the cavalry to drive armored cars, but yet he brought us over to Westport in Rossmena, and I learned to sail then. And it was just this diversity of thought actually touched with me at that young age that, you know, you— we often have a kind of a determination or an understanding of what it's going to be like, but actually, you know, it's so wonderful when it's different. And the whole thing about leadership, and I sense about being a leader, is being able to play in different pitches, being able to mix it with different networks, being comfortable with other communities. And if you go and look at the kind of the three strands that define the Irish leadership, you have first of all the warrior type, and they're the skills you were talking about in terms of Hell Week, developing that pointed aim, that ability to survive. And that's an absolute given. It's essential. Second one is the scholarly type. That is, you also need to actually understand the languages of others. And that requires that you actually are open. You have a growth mindset. You listen to other points of view. You actually, you're, I suppose, vulnerable in terms of you're not pretending you understand other types of business. And you leave yourself open to learn about it and to engage with them. I call it breaking down the barrack wall so that we can actually be transparent to other people. And the third piece is the diplomat piece. The diplomat is that ability that really is critical for a leader to actually be able to bring complex, diverse institutions, perspectives, and, you know, in terms of culture, creed, ethnicity, gender, as well as professions and bring them together and get them into a ruck and get a common vision as to where you're going. And if I use those three, the warrior, the diplomat, and the scholar, that's what I see as our leaders in their defense forces. And I often think of a leader now today in northern Mali, in Gao. He's bringing a team into a village. He wants to find out from the local community how security is. He has to actually deal with the international community. He's working with the Germans. And by the way, this This individual could be a sergeant in the ARW or it could be a captain with the Army Ranger Wing, and he's, he's a warrior because he has to keep his team safe, but he's a diplomat because he has to actually be able to engage and network and influence the people he is with, and he's a scholar because he's actually invested in learning about their culture, so he has that empathy already in terms of their ability to engage with him. That's, that's the leadership piece.

And I guess when I look at the Irish Defence Forces, which is very much supporting the UN in many of the peacekeeping missions that they're running around the world at the moment, those three things are really, really, really important. And in fact, is there one that you would pick to put first over the others?

I think the diplomat piece is the one, because if you look at it in context of the challenges we face today, no one country has all the answers. You know, you took it that really the macro challenges in terms of climate change and that We're not going to sort that from a siloed perspective, from a state perspective, from a unilateral perspective. It has to be done through a multilateral framework, and that's why our seat on the UN Security Council at the moment is so important. That's where we're given leadership now at a critical time. Dean, I was there in New York last week with a debate on Afghanistan. It was harrowing to listen to the stories as, you know, the progress that had been made was unraveling and going backwards. 'You know, before the Taliban became powerful, or back in power in Afghanistan, Afghanistan was number 156 of 156 countries in terms of a gender gap. That is where women have not access to education, are not employed, are not part of the political system, or don't have access to healthcare. It was 156 of 156. It's only going to deteriorate further.' That was the harrowing message coming from others, but there are other aspects to it too. So the leadership piece in terms of, let's say, the Security Council is critical. And that decision for Ireland to go on the Security Council was actually built on the actual contribution of almost 70,000 women and men of our Defence Forces over the last 60-plus years in challenging missions, in dangerous environments, standing up to violent extremists and all the rest.

Diplomacy. Diplomacy is the, is the top one. And I agree, and I think, you know, I think that's actually a great learning for people outside of the defense forces as well, just in what we might call the regular commercial working world. How can you be more diplomatic? How can you bring people with you on a journey and find that common ground? I wonder, it leads me quite nicely onto my next question around rank and the fact that again, you know, in those uniformed services that rank still seems to me from the outside to be quite important that, you know, you're junior and then you work your way up the rank and that drives respect. Is that always good? How do you break that cycle of rank being the number one thing?

Yeah, it's a great point. I suppose rank gives you a structure. It gives you a framework for doing stuff. And it allows you then to put your various business units into an alignment that allows you then to go up the middle with smoke, or left flank, right flank. That's at its most fundamental. But rank isn't all things to all people. And what I look for more and more is competence. And you can find competence competence in the most strange place. It could be the newest individual that's joined the organization that has an expertise in something that you really were looking for, and that could be the key enabler to the team. And, and, you know, it's, it's about creating that team that actually has a diverse mix of skills. And, and rank then gives you the ability to actually have the authority to lead in this, but rank on its own is actually useless. You have to then have the actual understanding and the respect from those that you lead. And, and I suppose on, on the, the issue of rank, um, the most dangerous enemy of rank is ego. And, and very often those who actually gain rank cannot distinguish between ego and rank. There is a sense of entitlement that goes with rank that actually they confuse, and their ego actually becomes the actual more powerful, uh, I suppose, descriptor of that individual. And if I've learned one thing in all my time, you must always watch your ego, bottle your ego. In fact, you know, egos often are toxic. They give you this sense of self-importance that actually can be damaging and dangerous. So when I come back to the rank piece and the actual ability to cascade up and down the rank structure, I've always found it, you know, and uncomfortable with it to move. And let's see, Rina and I worked, you know, shoulder by shoulder on many issues. And the, you know, I, I, I've had in the past a sense that sometimes Rina's superiors, um, are not in Rina's case, but in other cases where I do the same things, the superiors would feel a little bit uncomfortable. The chief is dealing directly with one of my staff, you know, he should come to me first. That's the ego peeping out. That is the ego peeping out in that individual saying, oh, you know, it should be about me. When in fact, I find with Rena's team and Eugene and Gemma who work with Rena, they're delighted that myself and Rena would go along and do something like this. And we, we plan it, we do it, and we have that diverse perspective in terms of gender, in terms of age, in terms of background that actually is right for the program. It's not about writing a note to Eugene, who is Rena's ultimate boss, or talking about Gemma, who is Rina's direct boss. It's about, yeah, Rina and I are going to do this together, just for your information, Eugene, and we get on and do it.

Yeah, and it's really interesting because when you think about that whole idea of rank and title is actually no different in commercial land, that just because I have a rank of Chief Commercial Officer, I have a rank of Head of Marketing, that doesn't mean people are going to follow me. It means they might do what I ask them because I'm technically their boss in inverted commas, but actually What I want is, is followership. I want to generate followership among people and I want them to follow me into— okay, albeit a less dangerous battle significantly, but I want them to follow with me and be part of, part of that team. That will get you a lot further than people just doing what they're told.

Yeah. Yeah. Hi, I'm Klyna from Workvivo.

When working away from the office, it's easy for your people to feel isolated and disconnected from your culture and each other.

That's where we come in with our quick-to-deploy employee communications platform.

It's all about ensuring that your people feel informed, engaged, and connected to your company culture, values, goals, and each other wherever they work from.

For more, see workvivo.com.

Rina, let me turn to you for a minute and talk a little bit about internal comms, because I think that generally in the world of, of kind of commercial organizations, we have a reasonably good handle on what internal comms comms looks like, well, some better than others. And as you said, you grabbed that by the scruff of the neck in the Irish Defence Force. And I wonder, does that look any different to any large commercial organization with, is it 8,000? It's about 8,000 staff, right, in the IDF?

8,500.

8,500.

9,500, and we're working on that.

We're working on that. And obviously the gaps in the chain of command are problematic for internal comms. And that's probably one of our biggest barriers is those gaps. Where we don't have from number 1, who is the Chief of Staff, right up to number 9,500. There are approximately 1,000 gaps in that numerical list, and that doesn't complement our efforts in internal communications, because when somebody misses the message, it means maybe 10, 20, 50 people below them miss the message as well. And that's probably our biggest obstacle, is making sure that message delivered is message read, message sent, message understood and actually actioned upon if required. We certainly have challenges where, you know, we're not desk-based. We have 9,000 people, 6,000 licenses for email addresses, but actually only approximately 3,000 physical PCs. So if the Chief of Staff sent an all stations message out via electronic means, and on a given day he's only probably sure of meeting one-third of his employee via email, using email only as a platform. Now we have other platforms with more traditional platforms that I'm happy to go through with you that we still use to this day that are being used for the last 100 years. And while they're not cool and they don't have bells on, or you won't see them in the multinationals in the city centre, they still work in military terms.

It's not semaphore, is it?

No, no, we're not using— we use flags in the Navy still, you know. Bravo Zulu is a flag hoist for which means well done. Yankee Mike is a flag hoist, which means you can go on and do your own thing. I'm sorry, Rina.

No, you're okay. No, that's fine. That's absolutely fine. So, you know, while some methods might seem very draconian to the, to the corporate world, that they still work at some level, they're not perfect, etc. But we don't all, uh, we don't just have the challenge, I think, of multiple locations with 9 Defence Forces installations, um, on Ireland. We also have units and significant numbers of personnel serving overseas that need to be communicated with. But it's also a challenge cross generational for us, that where one, you know, 10% of our members might, you know, get their information via email, 40% might get it on social media and expect it through social media and probably demand it through handheld. That's always on, that's always accessible, and we haven't actually caught up with that just yet. We have made a huge stride since the first Board report back in 2007, I believe, I was part of, and from those findings, you know, we made some strides having electronic notice boards and devices like those in areas of large footfall, etc. But we kind of moved on to social media. We were the first part of the public services here in Ireland to embrace Facebook and Twitter. We're award winners on those platforms for how we communicate, but a lot of people would say, well, that's talking outside the organization, it shouldn't be relied upon to talk work inside the organization. While we do reach a lot of our personnel through those platforms, we certainly don't reach everybody. So I think we do have challenges ahead. By 2015, the results of a particular survey in 2015, and then we engaged a couple of employee engagement scores following on from that, and communications was scoring badly in all, in all of that. So an audit was conducted And from that, now we're at our most recent place of trying to address it using electronic means, using handheld devices with the use of a designed app. But we have to be very, very conscious of operational security and what types of information goes on that. So look, it's the medium and we're trialing at the moment and, you know, we're getting there, we're improving all the time.

So it's really interesting. And when you touched on that word there, kind of operational security and operational messages going out, I guess I guess from my understanding, you'd have nearly two types of information going. When you talk about internal comms, you've got the very operational type information. We're going here, we have to do this, we're doing this on Thursday at 0700. But also then maybe you've got the, maybe what we might from the corporate world see as being maybe the more internal brand advocacy type information, the employee value proposition type information, why it's great to work here, how you drive pride, these are our values. How do you balance those two things, and do they use different channels?

Yeah, absolutely. Like, the operational security and the operational taskings for the most junior private to the most senior officer will never be probably distributed during— through these electronic means. That will be the old-fashioned word of mouth. And we were orders-based, and a lot of our communications still are distributed via orders. So you have administration orders, ceremonial orders, operation orders, fragmentary orders, and And that is paper where it sets out timings, taskings, outline of events, outlines of operation, etc., etc. So we'll never stray from that, and we'll never probably embrace putting those type of operational details onto devices that can be shared outside. So we will stay very much with old-fashioned methods and internal channels. For that type of message. But everything else, yeah, can go on this app. You know, it's the need to know, the nice to know versus the need to know. So it's striking that balance and making sure all the stakeholders at senior management level, like our Director of Operations and our Director of Personnel, that we're not breaching any of the rules that are in place, reference GDPR or operational security, when we do share information for— which is vital to our employees for their empowerment and to keep them informed, because all our surveys have told us us. All our surveys have told us that they're not happy with the short notice. Short notice operation deployments are absolutely fine. No one will ever, in uniform, will ever shy away from, you're needed, get dressed, let's go. Nobody, you know, that I've ever, I suppose, worked with or been in the company of would ever shy away from that type of operational deployment. However, there are other times when troops need to, you know, leave home for considerable periods. If it's in the training environment where they need to offer support, and they need time to organise, I suppose, the work-life balance. Times have changed, households have changed, and work-life balance has certainly changed. So we have to give people a degree of notice, of flexibility, to allow them to sort out, you know, what they need to sort out. And if we just keep the short notice to the absolute operational deployments, I think we're good, but everything else, we need to up our game in the sharing of information and making sure the messages get shared properly.

Brilliant. I want to think about that sharing of information and back to a point that you made earlier on about there being, with that 1,000 staff missing, there's kind of maybe arguably 1,000 gaps in the communications chain of command. You'd immediately go to the fact that, well, there's a body missing and that's why there's a role missing and that's why that break happens. But the way I see it is that often, even if the person's there, if they don't have really good, well-honed communication skills, then that's almost like like a body not being there. It's almost the same thing even though they are there. So what do you do in the Defence Forces to improve those communication skills in your leaders through the organization?

Well, in the, in most recent times, what we have done is we've reinvigorated our press and information network around the country. So from Defence Forces headquarters, where Public Relations Branch and the Press Office sits, out into the formation headquarters then there is a designated press and information officer. And then into each barrack location, what we've tried to introduce are UPAR, and to explain, it's a unit public affairs representative. So we have run a course training people in mobile journalism and the basics of dealing with the press, the basics of writing an internal memo, and the basics of how to, you know, encourage the leaders in each barracks to— you haven't had a town hall, sir or ma'am, 'in 3 months, maybe it's time that you have a talk to the troops,' and maybe outline a calendar of events for the unit commander on, you know, tasking him or her and encouraging and empowering him or her as the benefit of face-to-face communications. We've also looked for and been granted time on all career course syllabi, so from the very first step on the ladder for a private soldier to become promoted to corporal, to do a potential NCOs course, So we have looked now for time on those courses to outline the benefits of communications and how important it is. You know, a leader needs to be many things, but as you said, the need to have the ability to communicate across multi-channels, multi-generational, multi-location, and to make sure the message is understood. So we've started those education pieces at the very bottom and all the way up to senior level at the Senior Command and Staff Course. That prepares military officers for the top level of management. We deliver on those courses as well, and all career courses in between. And we're qualified to do that, and we're happy to do that.

If I could just make a point here, and it's going on your point about the gapping, you know, sometimes the gap could be at the top as well. And I remember Christoph Müller, he used to be CEO of Aer Lingus, I think it was, and he said, Mark, you know, smart people can be often poor communicators.. And I think his point was, just because you rationalize something in your own head and then you tell us as you see it in your own head, it doesn't necessarily mean it lands. And I tell a funny story against myself. As a young officer, once I had this big function and I was, uh, and the minister was coming and it was Cadets Get Commissioned and it was a big dinner we're going to have. And I said, you know what, the centerpiece of this would be a pig's head. We'd have a pig's head with an apple in it and it's going to look massive. And this is brilliant and everything was organized and I was like Brighton. I was running around like Fawlty Towers getting the place organized, making sure everything was right, the silver service was out. And so just before the minister was arriving, I said to the chef, get the pig's head up and get on the table, that's great. I went up to meet the minister, minister was coming down, he was delayed, then I came back down to check the pig's head and there it was on the table, but it was raw and it was blood pouring out of the back of the head and it looked disgusting. So it's a story I tell against myself. And I might write a book sometime called— the chapter will be called The Pig's Head. But it's just to get that message across. Just because you rationalize in your own head a picture that you think will look good, you need to put a bit of meat on that bone to make sure it translates into whoever's going to execute.

And back to Reena's point earlier on, the message that's received is often not the message that's given.

That's right.

Yeah, yeah. I want pig's head, but I'd like it to be cooked.

And it was not happening in the mouth either. Well, that's that.

I mean, that the guy should have been just taken out and gotten rid of immediately. Not even an apple. At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. Mark, when we spoke before, you, you talked about something which really surprised me, which was an idea that you'd been thinking about of just culture. And this whole idea of, as you said, normalizing openness to dissent. Making it more normal to be dissenting. Now, for me, I was really surprised at that because that's quite at odds with certainly my understanding of how a defense force or a security organization might function, might work. Why do you think that's important? Tell me more about that. What's your thinking around it?

I suppose my thinking is traditionally in militaries, there's a kind of a, Does it— nobody wants to get anything wrong, and, and we have a very structured disciplinary system. If somebody gets something wrong, then, you know, the disciplinary process kicks in. But nobody really sets out to do something wrong. Most people don't. And so what I'm trying to inculcate is a structured, honest reporting system. When somebody makes an error, that they have a confidence and ability to actually identify the error and to report it. And then you have the trust and the accountability to take the learning that you identify from the error and put it into a lessons-learned process so that the probability of that error happening again is mitigated. So that's what just culture is about. And it's kind of two parallel systems whereby you have this just culture dealing with that genuine error that happens day in, day out. And inevitably— and this is for everybody listening— in complex organizations, mistakes will happen. That's your starting point. But if you have your just culture, then you have that open and honest reporting whereby somebody calls it. And I was just listening there recently where somebody backed a truck into a gate. He didn't set out to back the truck into the gate. Nobody saw him. He could have driven away. There was no damage really done to the truck, but there was a buckle in the gate. But in fairness, he put his hand up and he said, I was reversing, it was raining, and I hit your gate. Great stuff. The gate was fixed the next day and everybody was happy. You know, it wasn't the case that sometime, you know, a couple of days later, somebody tries to open the gate and it's warped and you can't get through and then you have a big mess. So the— but parallel to that is also maintaining the violations piece, because if somebody violates and they throw the rulebook out or they use the credit cards to actually go to a nightclub or something like that, I mean, that's, that's a different case. That is not just culture. So it's that ability to be discerning between errors and between violations, and that ability to actually capture the lessons identified. I remember once there was a, a, we were doing a live firing tactical training exercise and it was a near miss. Somebody nearly got shot, and initially the report was somebody got hit by the ricochet of a stone, but in reality I should have known straight away, you know, that, and everybody who was doing those exercises, that actually was a near miss with a bullet. Because for as long as we didn't know the cause of it, we all bore that risk every time we repeated that exercise. And thankfully we're moving in the right direction. We've a good bit to go, Scott McInnes. I'm not saying it's there yet, but yesterday I was delighted to see the first phase of that being given the green light to drive on.

Brilliant. And for me, that whole idea, 'cause I think at the center of that idea of just culture is the idea of psychological safety, is the idea that if somebody puts their hand up and says— in a lot, I mean, you guys are dealing with, with life or death situations all the time, potentially. And in that situation, for somebody to say, well, it was a near miss with a bullet as opposed to a stone, let's try and cover it up— there has to be some, some expectation that psychologically, you know, the psychological safety there. And actually, by putting my hand up, I'm not going to be court-martialed, or I'm not going to be, you know, dragged to my boss, or I'm not going to be, you know, kicked off the, the, the platoon, or whatever it might be. But there needs to be an understanding among people in therefore among leaders that somebody putting their hand up and doing the right thing isn't necessarily rewarded, but it's certainly not massively punished.

Precisely. And it goes a step further. It's, it's from the operational right down to the interpersonal. You know, nobody should feel uncomfortable in the workplace. And, and this is— we're dealing with a challenging time at this particular moment in the Defence Forces and, and trying to get this culture right, a just culture whereby people are able to say, I'm not comfortable with that. Or if they see, let's say, a shipmate or a crewmate or a unitmate being unfairly treated, that they're able to call it, you know, and actually bring the mitigation actions in place. And if necessary, people will be called to order and disciplined accordingly. But that's, that's what we're trying to do and just the direction we're moving in.

And I hear a lot of that, Scott, at the tactical level when, when I do roadshows shows with the comms team. And one example that stands out in my head was I was in Carrboro Barracks in Dublin, in Rathmines, probably over 100, pre-COVID, over 100 young guys mostly in the audience. And I said, okay, no holds barred, what are the problems here? What are the problems in your barracks and in your lives right now? And one guy put up his hand and he said, right, I'll tell you what my problem is. I said, okay. He said, we have a brand new locker room down there, fabulous, absolutely great locker room, All brand spanking new, et cetera, over 120 lockers in this locker room. And I said, "Great, well fantastic, I worked in this barracks, I know you deserve this, this, you know, fantastic." Yeah, 2 bleeding sinks. So I just tell it like that because he was so frustrated that soldiers have to be neat and tidy and freshly shaven on parade every morning. And this lovely new locker room with 2 sinks for over 140 people. And I felt that, "Okay, I'm gonna listen to you and I'm going to take this further on your behalf, et cetera, et cetera." So that was just a small point where he felt that, I suppose, he was listened to. And that's not dissent, that's, that was something practical that was really impacting his morning and the morning of maybe 50 or 60 other people that were coming in on parade. The fact that there was so little thought went into the troops that were going to be standing in that room by the people who made the decisions. And, um, yeah, so I, I'm a real supporter of of the just culture and pointing out mistakes and pointing out wrongdoings when they need to be.

Open reporting. Open reporting.

Yeah. So let me ask you, Rena, did they put more sinks in that locker room?

I believe so.

Okay.

I check, Rena.

We're going to go on sink watch. Because it's a really well-made point, this whole idea of asking people to put their hands up. And this is, for me, where organizations often fall down. So that guy was brave enough to put his hand hand up and say, we don't have enough sinks, therefore, you know, we're running late to, to be on parade, or we haven't shaven properly, or whatever else, the whatever else that, that, that then turns into. I've had the bravery to put my hand up and say there's not enough sinks, and nobody does anything about it.

Yeah.

So do I do the same thing again? No, I don't bother, because actually I had my voice and nobody listened to me because nothing changed. And that's certainly not a slight on you, um, but just I think in general, an organization just people miss the nuance of listening is great, but listening with action is better. Because somebody goes, because all his mates now in the barracks says, "Oh Jesus, well done, Jim. That was great that you said that because now we've got 10 sinks." And Jim gets a pat on the back. Thanks very much. And that makes him feel better. And people then want to do more of that. So for me, the follow-through is so, so important in that regard. One of the things we touched on earlier on briefly was pride. And, and I wonder, it must be such a fine balance. And you talked earlier, Mark, about the Army Ranger Wing, um, which for those listening who don't know, the Irish Defence Forces is our equivalent of, of the Special Forces, the, the SAS in the UK, or, or, or maybe some of the Marines in the US. Um, how do you balance pride? How do you help build pride among staff? So for example, when the Army Ranger Wing went into Kabul for example, a few weeks ago, and we saw that on the TV. Some of the things that your members are doing are really hard, are in really difficult situations, like in Afghanistan recently where that horrible thing happened with all those poor people being killed. How do you build pride? How do you balance building pride among your staff against that backdrop? Is that hard?

Well, there's two pieces, but the most basic piece is you acknowledge what people do. And you thank people for what they do, and you give the attaboy to people for what they did. And in fact, the night before last, I was with Minister Coveney down in the Corrib doing just that with the team that was in Kabul, not just the Rangers, but the pilots who flew them in or stood by with them, and also the planners who did all of the planning, the logisticians who made it happen. And, you know, that And that, from the Minister's point of view, that took an evening out of a very busy schedule, but that's the way to do it. But there's also then a communications piece around your social media. You accentuate it in public, and that's where your Twitter account comes in. I use Twitter regularly to showcase the examples of where there are great exemplars on doing simple things. And it can go from the group right down to the individual. And there are simple things like I'm trying to inculcate greater innovation. So I have Chief of Staff's Innovation Awards, and those awards go out every year to those who come up with the best ideas and a new innovation side. And there's a softer area, and Rina might come in on this, is there's another piece whereby we're really trying to inculcate our actions in terms of our values: moral courage, physical courage, respect, integrity, loyalty, and selflessness. So we have our Values in Action Award, and Rina will talk about the governance of that. But next Tuesday, I hope, our president will make the values awards to our recipients recipients for this year. And that's, that's, you know, it's wonderful because we have a Supreme Commander who actually has an interest in values and helps me then in terms of getting that primed. And Marina, I don't know if you want to come in on the governance side, but it's, it's, you know, it's quite a difficult bar to cross to become a recipient of one of our values awards.

Well, there are, there are only 6 of them, and then we have a values champion each year. So this is the 4th iteration of our awards, and it was to recognize people, you know, the length and breadth of the country doing good things in the community, within the organization, overseas. It doesn't matter. There's no prerequisite of where you have to do this or how quick you have to do to enact this, et cetera. So anybody can recommend anybody. You know, the chain of command is removed here. We've had some fantastic stories and accounts of people who truly are selfless, whose loyalty will never be questioned, who, you know, showed great deeds of physical courage, some great ones of moral courage. And in the Just Culture piece, the winner of the moral courage for this year is a very young junior seaman from— he was on board one of the ships in the Irish Sea, and he was on the watch that night. And, you know, the sea was rough, there was a swell, and it's a very lonely place. It's like any beach at 2 o'clock in the morning, in any guardroom, It's lonely, it's only you. And he thought he saw something, and, um, he pondered over it for a moment and then alerted the officer of the watch. And are you sure? But that, that young guy had the moral courage and, you know, the, the big heart enough to say to his superior, I, I am sure, I want you to go back.

And yeah, you can't turn the whole ship, but you're talking about 2,000 tons of ship has to turn around. It's going to add an another 15 minutes onto the journey.

Yeah, so it's not that if you're just looking over your shoulder, it was a huge, you know, operation and task, you know, in, in the, in the middle of the night, in rough seas. And that young, that young guy, and I suppose his insistence and, and his moral courage, they, the crew subsequently recovered a body and, you know, gave, I suppose, solace and peace to a family, um, that might never have had that guy not questioned his officer of the watch to say, please believe me, 'Wait, I did see something, you need to turn around.' So we get stories like those when the nominations come in.

And it comes from your peers, you know, there's no hierarchy. So I could nominate you, Scott, if you did a really good job in this programme, you know, against a particular value. But I mean, that's the way it works.

So, yeah, our sergeants majors then form the, you know, the judging committee essentially. And, you know, we sit around and, you know, you get a really— without being all romantic about it, you get a really good feeling about the people that you work with because, uh, you know, they're doing fantastic things in, in living their values, and it's only right and true and just that they get rewarded for that. So the program is running well. It's, you know, the first 5, 6 years of any awards program is always shaky. It needs to bed in. The integrity of it needs to be really, really protected. There can be no there can be no tokenism, you can't win because you're a girl, you can't win because you're a boy, you can't win because Cork haven't had a winner. Absolutely all of that is very, very protected.

And that's the most difficult piece I get, you know, I look at the profile of each of them and inevitably I see a hole there, you know, there might be no woman, there might be no sailor, there might be no soldier, there might be no airman, there might be no NCO, there might be no officer, but anyways, you know, and anyways, Ríona, I have to give her great credit because she has championed this over the last number of years added to sophistication of it. And we're going to have a great day next Tuesday.

It'll be great for the people, you know, it's a good day out for them.

And not only, you know what, not only does it build pride, but as somebody that's, you know, in charge of internal comms in your organization, it gives you a whole playbook of stories to use to be able to put out to say this is what good looks like. Because I think people find it very hard to get their head around values and okay, so we have this value of moral courage, but like What does that actually mean? Well, that's it, it looks like this. That's exactly what it— let me show you a story of what it looks like. So if you want to win one next year, this is the kind of thing. And actually every single day of the week, these are the kinds of things that we expect everybody across the Irish Defence Forces to be doing and thinking about. Yeah.

And just to finish on that, I remember one of the first awards, Jenny O'Connor across in the travel office. And she, from a huge nomination of her peers, was nominated for the award of selflessness. 'And I remember ringing her here in the office, Jenny, or you were here ringing her, and Jenny started crying when she knew she got the award. And then she says, surely somebody deserves this more than me. And that's it. That summed it up for me. We had the right person.' Amazing.

Absolutely. I love that. What a great story that is. Mark, I'm going to finish up with you. I'm just conscious of time. I'm going to finish up with you because you retire now in about 10 days' time. In fact, listeners, when you're reading this, reading this, listening to this, it's the day after Mark will have retired from his role as Chief of the Irish Defence Forces. So I just want to ask you one thing to finish up. When you look back over your career, and particularly in the last number of years as Chief, when it comes to changing the culture in the Defence Forces, what's the one thing that you're most proud of having achieved?

I suppose when I took up my appointment as Chief of Staff And the issue of jointness, that is, that multilateral framework for our headquarters, wasn't where I would like it to be. We're moving in that direction now. So rather than looking at colour of uniforms, we look at what effect we need to achieve, and we don't care whether it's a sailor or a soldier or an airman or airwoman who contributes to that. It's the effect we achieve, and that's what jointness is. And we, we have a Commission on Defence Forces that's dealing with that very issue. And the second part allied to that is to give the Chief of Staff a command authority, which he doesn't have at present. In many ways, I only have moral authority, so I think I've teed up the ball for my successor to actually have actual authority in the context of being a Chief of Defence rather than a Chief of Staff.

Brilliant. And that whole idea of the sum of the parts being—

or the outcome is greater than the sum of the parts.

Thank you very much. There we go. I always get that mixed up. Listen, we're going to leave it there. Thank you so much, Mark and Rina, for your time today. I've really appreciated you coming on the podcast. I think some of the points you've made are amazing, and some of the stories you've given have been brilliant. So thanks so much.

Thanks, Scott. Talk to you. Bye now.

Bye. Thanks for listening. To hear from other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blogs, or to find out more more about the work that we do at Inspiring Change, please visit inspiringchange.ie.