A couple of years in the past, a younger U.S. navy officer requested me a pointed query: “Do you suppose we’re getting too gentle?” I paused, not as a result of I didn’t have a solution, however as a result of I knew the load behind his phrases. My reply was sure. The U.S. navy has overcorrected. Throughout expertise administration methods, efficiency evaluations, and even skilled navy schooling, it has embraced a well-intentioned shift towards empathetic management and psychological security — seen in traits like inflated evaluations, common tutorial passing requirements, structured self-examination, and 360-degree suggestions fashions that prioritize concord over critique. Skilled navy schooling, particularly, has lengthy wrestled with these challenges, usually criticized for valuing credentialing over mental rigor. The latest cultural shift didn’t trigger this downside, however it could have hardened it — eradicating friction from the training surroundings and changing it with consolation. Within the course of, the navy has sidelined one among its most important developmental forces: the crucible.
What’s lacking right this moment is what many now acknowledge as a resilience hole: the absence of deliberate, sustained formative experiences that problem officers morally, cognitively, and emotionally throughout time and profession phases. The U.S. navy ought to rethink the way it develops leaders — not by returning to poisonous attrition fashions, however by embedding sustained crucibles throughout skilled navy schooling. These crucibles usually are not one-time ordeals or symbolic exams. They’re steady exposures to moral ambiguity, mental discomfort, and identity-defining reflection intentionally constructed into skilled navy schooling from accession to command. This isn’t about toughness for its personal sake. It’s about creating leaders who could make principled choices amid uncertainty, soak up failure with out folding, and develop stronger due to adversity — not regardless of it.
There’s a narrative from Biosphere 2 that sticks with me. Inside that sealed ecological experiment, scientists tried to copy Earth’s ecosystems. Bushes grew shortly however fell over simply as quick. The issue? No wind. With out stress, the timber did not develop robust root methods. What appeared like good circumstances produced brittle life. The metaphor for right this moment’s navy management tradition is tough to overlook.
To be clear, the shift towards compassion, emotional intelligence, and holistic management was wanted. The U.S. navy made crucial progress in rooting out poisonous environments and bettering the psychological well-being of servicemembers, as mirrored in initiatives just like the Built-in Resilience Directorate, the inclusion of emotional intelligence in management curricula, and expanded entry to embedded behavioral well being professionals. However someplace alongside the best way, the navy started to mistake consolation for care.
Insurance policies and practices designed to help psychological wellness — similar to flattened hierarchies, common tutorial passing requirements, and efficiency methods hesitant to ship laborious suggestions — have, in some instances, dulled the navy’s edge. The result’s a rising resilience hole: a disconnect between the psychological formation of rising leaders and the chaotic, morally ambiguous environments they are going to face in trendy battle.
In the present day’s junior officers are more and more effectively versed in psychological terminology, psychological well being help methods, and inclusive management practices. These are all good issues. Many have overcome actual hardship — private, financial, and familial — and produce deep emotional perception to their service. However regardless of these experiences, some arrive at management roles with out having confronted the type of sustained skilled adversity that navy life uniquely calls for. They might not have encountered extended ethical ambiguity, excessive stakes choices below uncertainty, or the identity-fracturing strain of command in a fight zone. These stressors require greater than technical talent — they demand intentional formation.
There are indicators of this hole in lots of locations: threat aversion in decision-making, emotional fragility in suggestions environments, paralysis within the face of ethical complexity. Eradicating friction from developmental pipelines might keep away from short-term hurt however fails to organize leaders for long-term endurance.
So what’s the crucible, and why does it have to be recovered?
A crucible shouldn’t be struggling for its personal sake. It’s structured hardship with a objective — formative, identity-shaping, and enduring. It’s knob yr at The Citadel. It’s SERE faculty. It’s the primary fight disaster the place the mission and morality pull in reverse instructions. Sure, the navy already topics new recruits to crucibles: fundamental coaching, deployments, elite programs like Ranger Faculty. However these are primarily bodily or procedural trials, tightly managed and temporally bounded. What’s more and more absent are the skilled and moral crucibles that problem rising leaders over time — people who forge judgment, humility, and the ethical braveness to guide in ambiguity. The issue isn’t that crucibles don’t exist. It’s that they’re too usually front-loaded and siloed, handled as discrete occasions somewhat than a developmental thread. Crucibles check, break, and reform — however solely once they evolve alongside the chief.
They’re the wind.
They construct root methods deep sufficient to face up to the winds of struggle. And maybe most significantly, they reveal that struggling shouldn’t be merely an impediment, however a instructor. When adversity strikes, it may be laborious to search out which means in it — however it’s usually the very path by way of which maturity, depth, and resilience are fashioned. The method of changing into stronger virtually at all times includes ache, reflection, and reorientation. With out purposeful struggling, development is shallow, and management stays fragile.
This want for hardship in development shouldn’t be new. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “The obstacle to motion advances motion. What stands in the best way turns into the best way.” Aristotle believed advantage was cultivated by way of behavior and problem. The Buddha taught that struggling shouldn’t be solely inevitable however can change into a path to enlightenment if rightly understood. Even the oft-maligned Niccolò Machiavelli acknowledged that efficient management required the flexibility to endure hardship and adapt by way of problem. The New Testomony presents an analogous imaginative and prescient: The Epistle of James calls on one to “think about it pure pleasure… everytime you face trials of many varieties, as a result of you already know that the testing of your religion produces perseverance.” Throughout cultures and centuries, knowledge traditions have agreed: the forge is important.
Extra lately, Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined the time period “antifragility” to explain methods that don’t merely survive stress however thrive due to it. Jennifer Garvey Berger emphasizes that management in complexity requires “vertical growth.” This doesn’t solely require new abilities. It calls for new methods of creating sense of problem. Thomas Kolditz has explored how management develops below excessive stress — significantly in fight, disaster, and different life-defining moments. He argues that leaders formed in these environments emerge with stronger identities, clearer missions, and extra lasting capabilities. Problem, in his view, shouldn’t be incidental to development; it’s important. Crucially, Kolditz additionally cautions that this sort of deep transformation can’t merely be engineered in secure, sanitized classroom settings. It have to be lived. Management within the twenty first century calls for greater than resilience. It calls for transformation by way of dissonance. The aim is to not bounce again however to construct ahead, stronger. Not simply resilient leaders, however antifragile ones — within the truest sense of the phrase.
Psychological analysis helps this. Stress inoculation coaching exhibits that publicity to manageable, significant stressors builds psychological toughness and adaptive capability. In academic principle, Jack Mezirow’s transformative studying mannequin emphasizes that true development arises from disorienting dilemmas — exactly the type of formative expertise that has been systematically eliminated in lots of management growth environments.
The fashionable working surroundings calls for leaders who can act decisively in uncertainty, navigate ethical ambiguity, and encourage others below circumstances which can be usually risky, unsure, complicated, and ambiguous.(VUCA) Strategic competitors with peer adversaries, the psychological toll of distributed operations, and the excessive cognitive calls for of AI-enabled warfare will place burdens on tomorrow’s officers that no slide deck or sanitized case examine can put together them for. American adversaries usually are not more likely to provide psychological security, so leaders have to be ready to guide and endure with out it. Solely lived problem — confronted with construction, objective, and help — can construct that type of depth.
The pandemic period illustrated this vividly. Junior leaders had been tasked with unprecedented issues — logistics, personnel administration, well being coverage, morale upkeep — and not using a roadmap. Some thrived. Many struggled. And it wasn’t a lack of information. It was an absence of inner formation, an absence of examined frameworks for performing below strain.
Closing the Hole: Designing for Resilience
To shut the resilience hole, the U.S. navy doesn’t must return to poisonous attrition fashions — nevertheless it does must reintroduce structured adversity into management growth. These experiences needs to be intentionally designed to domesticate not simply tactical acumen however the ethical, cognitive, and emotional sturdiness required in modern battle. Over the previous decade, students and practitioners throughout skilled navy schooling, navy leaders, federally funded analysis and growth facilities, and operational instructions have proposed instruments that transfer past conventional coaching, providing leaders managed publicity to complexity, ambiguity, and friction.
A lot of right this moment’s skilled navy schooling embraces a synthesis mannequin of case research, historic evaluation, and scenario-based workouts scaffolded with principle and structured reflection. This mannequin stays important. However synthesis alone shouldn’t be sufficient. True formation calls for an experiential mannequin — one which creates circumstances for real-time moral pressure, operational ambiguity, and significant failure, adopted by rigorous reflection. Leaders can’t merely examine crucibles. They have to reside by way of them.
Wargaming has lengthy been a software for tactical coaching, however latest work by Kelsey Atherton and different colleagues demonstrates the way it can even function a crucible for moral decision-making. Their evaluation exhibits that when video games are designed to incorporate authorized, ethical, and informational ambiguity, they permit members to grapple with the sorts of high-stakes dilemmas the place regulation, values, and mission success collide. These situations assist construct what Atherton refers to as “moral agility” — the flexibility to make principled selections below stress, a skillset more and more important on the longer term battlefield.
In the meantime, Olivia Garard emphasizes the significance of structured reflection in management schooling. She argues that discomfort and dissonance usually are not threats to studying however important circumstances for development. By incorporating adversarial reflection — by way of Socratic seminars, red-teaming of non-public failure narratives, and dialectical strategies — leaders can start to develop the ethical braveness and resilience required to make robust calls within the fog of struggle. Her work factors to the worth of confronting uncertainty not simply intellectually, however communally. Equally, Celestino Perez Jr. contends that technique have to be handled not as summary principle however as efficiency — messy, iterative, and human. In his view, navy schooling usually overlooks the experiential, practice-oriented nature of technique, failing to completely put together leaders for the friction-filled, morally ambiguous realities they are going to face. Taken collectively, these views name for an schooling that embraces problem, not avoids it, and sees reflection as an operational necessity — not a tutorial luxurious.
Within the realm of anticipatory management, Sean McFate and his contemporaries similar to August Cole and P.W. Singer advocate for embedding futures literacy into skilled navy schooling. They argue that getting ready leaders for disorientation shouldn’t be a luxurious however a necessity. The late Maj. Gen. (ret.) Robert Scales argued that by exposing officers early to horizon scanning, situation planning, and red-team workouts, educators might instill habits of anticipatory pondering that assist leaders navigate the volatility of contemporary battle environments.
Lastly, Gen. (ret.) Charles Krulak’s enduring contributions to management principle — together with his “Three Block Struggle” assemble — underscore the necessity for trials that transcend bodily endurance. Krulak and people who have constructed on his concepts name for developmental crucibles that mirror the emotional, mental, and ethical complexity of latest warfare. When these experiences are deliberately designed with embedded meaning-making and guided reflection, they forge not solely functionality however character, producing leaders who’re cohesive, grounded, and authentically robust.
These usually are not nostalgic throwbacks — they’re strategic requirements. However totally reclaiming the crucible requires a sharper distinction between coaching and schooling environments. Navy coaching packages — similar to fundamental coaching, SERE, or Ranger Faculty — are crucibles within the conventional sense: intense, high-stress environments that check bodily limits and psychological endurance. Nevertheless, they’re additionally bounded, tightly scripted, and targeted on compliance and technical mastery. Schooling crucibles, against this, ought to provoke ethical uncertainty, mental battle, and identification rigidity. They have to be revisited not as soon as, however repeatedly — as a thread working by way of skilled navy schooling, employees rides, management seminars, and command growth programs. This isn’t merely about toughness; it’s about meaning-making below ambiguity.
Such transformation should even be modeled at senior ranges. If junior officers by no means see their superiors acknowledge failure, title formative struggles, or mirror brazenly on their very own disorienting dilemmas, they are going to study that struggling is weak point, not instruction. Reclaiming the crucible requires leaders in any respect ranges to worth what it produces — and to create environments the place adversity shouldn’t be prevented, however metabolized.
Such transformation needs to be systemic, not symbolic. Think about a navy the place crucibles are embedded throughout the establishment itself: officers incomes “warfighting scores” as a part of their evaluations, assessed by way of rigorous wargames and operational exams (an thought as soon as floated by Adm. Mike Mullen); normal officers going through off in force-on-force marketing campaign simulations (joint job power versus joint job power), the place the stakes aren’t merely theoretical; skilled navy schooling programs the place college students might truly fail — not for misconduct, however for failing to exhibit development, judgment, or command readiness. These reforms aren’t about gatekeeping. They’re about constructing an institutional tradition that values problem as preparation, not punishment.
Now prolong that imaginative and prescient throughout a person profession. Image the crucible not as a single occasion, however as a throughline — a hearth returned to many times. It begins in pre-commissioning with situation labs that check ethical braveness earlier than tactical talent. It deepens at Squadron Officer Faculty, not by way of rote lectures, however by way of red-team peer critiques and disaster simulations the place failure is embraced as suggestions. At intermediate and senior-level skilled navy schooling, the crucible sharpens: officers should lead groups by way of future situations and moral wargames, with failure not simply attainable, however crucial. Employees rides change into reflective pilgrimages; command programs culminate in narrative reckonings with private and institutional failure. On the normal officer degree, leaders confront each other in operational design contests — public, scored, and laborious. All through the journey, senior leaders mannequin vulnerability, not polish, displaying that wrestle shouldn’t be a blemish, however the supply of actual power.
The navy is in a second of inflection. The calls for of nice energy competitors, strategic ambiguity, and cognitive warfare are already redefining what it means to guide. If the American navy doesn’t recuperate the crucible, it dangers fielding leaders who’re compassionate however unformed, clever however brittle, inclusive however untested.
Excellent circumstances don’t construct character. The tree with out wind might look wholesome — till the storm comes. To guide in that storm, leaders have to be fashioned in problem, not protected against it.
America wants the wind again.
J. William “BILL” DeMarco, D.Prof is the director of innovation and evaluation at Air College the place he’s additionally an assistant professor. He’s a retired U.S. Air Drive colonel with 5 command excursions spanning mobility, refueling, and joint operations. A former Hoover fellow at Stanford and analysis fellow at Cambridge College, he focuses on operational design, intrapreneurship, and management innovation in complicated navy methods. The views on this article are these of the creator and never these of Air College, the Air Drive, the Division of Protection, or any a part of the U.S. authorities.
Picture: Midjourney
