CULTURE CHANGE – HOW IS IT GOING?

Jennie Carignan, Chief Professional Conduct and Culture, CAF Photo Credit: Government of Canada

Jennie Carignan, Chief Professional Conduct and Culture, CAF

Photo Credit: Government of Canada

 

Esprit de Corps Magazine May 2022 // Volume 29 Issue 4

Let's Talk About Women in the Military – Column 38

 

by Military Woman

Question:

In April 2021, the Chief Professional Conduct and Culture was established, under the command of Lieutenant-General Jennie Carignan, to help unify and integrate military culture change.  How is that going? 

Answer:

Without a doubt, a lot of good work by a lot of dedicated people across the defence team has happened over this last year, especially at Chief of Military Personnel, presently under the command of Major-General Lise Bourgon. Already implemented military related culture change initiatives include:

Soon to be completed additional initiatives include:

The devil, however, is always in the details. Exactly what is the problem we are trying to solve and how will we know when that problem has been solved?  Improved recruiting and retention? Improved operational effectiveness? Improved health of serving and Veteran members?

If people truly are the military’s #1 asset, then one measure of culture change’s success would be the effectiveness of the above listed initiatives to prevent the abuse of power and/or interpersonal disrespect that causes broken trust.

Broken trust can result from the actions or inactions of peers, chain of command, health care providers, politicians, government agencies, media, Canadian  society at large, and/or even from self-distrust.

Frances Frei, an expert in rebuilding trust at individual, organizational and/or community levels, states that broken trust cannot be healed without the presence of three specific attributes – authenticity, logic, and empathy.

  • Authenticity requires there to be no ongoing say-do gap. Stated values and priorities must align with actions, especially regarding what type of behaviours are rewarded.

  • Logic requires all messaging to be backed with appropriate research and statistics and communicated in a clear and transparent, not misleading, way. 

  • Empathy requires others to listen until those whose trust has been broken feel that their point of view has been heard and fully understood by those who harmed them.

If we use Frei’s criteria as required pre-requisites to achieving successful culture change, how promising are the military’s efforts looking so far?

On the plus side, the military appears to be authentic in wanting to close its say-do gap (but only time will tell). The defence team is also using a logical and informed approach by sponsoring new culture change research, research networks and providing formal updates. As for empathy, the military has made the effort to listen to almost 10,000 participants in close to 300 culture change consultations this last year alone.

All militaries can improve on their use of precise and inclusive language; but to be fair, this is something that most of government and society in general are still struggling with too.

Based on Frei’s model, to achieve a trusted military workplace with mutual respect, dignity and inclusion of all, more work will still be required to fully establish empathy. However, military culture change will require an “all hands-on deck” team effort. Everyone, including the approximately 7/10 military members that are part of the military’s “dominant culture” i.e. not part of any equity seeking defence advisory groups, must strive to reach more understanding, empathy, of the perspectives of those whose military experiences have been very different from their own.

 

Update:

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