Shaun Kober: I've spoken numerous times about how important it is in taking ownership, being accountable, and taking responsibility for your own actions.
I learned this the hard way as well.
But when you take ownership of your actions, your behaviours, and your decisions, it gives you the power to then be able to go, all right, well, I fucked up here. What did I do to put myself in this situation, and what can I do to change this environment and change my circumstances?
Maybe I need to make some different decisions, put some different actions in place to move me in the right direction.
So I've told this story before about making a potentially life-changing mistake whilst being in Afghanistan and going out on patrol man. And you know, it was the middle of Winter. We'd had a fucking high operational tempo. It was about 3, or 3:30 in the morning. We'd already had a number of blokes that had been injured, and our interpreter had been killed at this stage. As snipers, we're the first ones out, and we're the last ones back. We're about to step off from our patrol base, and it comes over the radio....
"Hold up, we don't have approval from higher command for you to leave yet. Wait out."
So whilst we waited for approval to leave our Combat Outpost to head out on patrol and do our jobs, I took my backpack off to give my shoulders a rest prior to the big day ahead.
My backpack has all of my mission essential equipment in it that I can't carry on my body armour and rig. You know, my binoculars, my spotting scope, my first aid kit, my IV fluids, my drugs, etc etc.
We sit there and wait about 20 to 30 minutes before it comes over the radio.
"You're all clear. Good to go."
So on this task, our role as snipers was to get into an overwatch position, so we can target key areas of interest where potentially the Taliban may lay IED's or ambushes to target our
boys in the main team, who were mentoring the Afghani soldiers in tactics, techniques and procedures through the conduct of a search to find and remove weapons and munitions to reduce Taliban capabilities and threats towards us.
I'm fucking tired, man.
Comes over the radio. "Yeah boys. Good to go."
Stepped off, man. Totally forgot to put my backpack back on. Right. Fucking idiot!
It wasn't until about 15 to 20 minutes later when I realised bro, it just clicked in my mind. And I was like...FUCK! I was the lead scout of my team, right. I'm at the front, leading my team as the eyes and the ears, choosing an appropriate route to lead us into our chosen position to observe from, whilst also scanning for threats along the way.
As soon as I realise, I sit with it for about 10 seconds, then I'm straight over the radio. I'm like, "Tamps." He's like, "What's up bro?" And I was like...
"Mate, I really apologise, man. I fucking left my backpack. It's got my first aid kit. It's got my binoculars, my spotting scope, got everything, like mission essential stuff. It's back on base man."
It crossed my mind to not say anything right. And that was less than 10 seconds. I was like, fucking own it because if something goes down and you haven't told your team leader that you don't have that equipment, that mission essential equipment, something happens...that's on your fucking conscience for the rest of your life.
Own it right now. Fucking speak up, say something.
I called Tamps. "Hey bro. I fucked up."
And he goes, "You're a fucking idiot!"
And I was like, "Yeah, I know."
And he goes, "Crack on. Let's go. Let's get in position."
Because he knew that I didn't have that equipment, he made a calculated decision to continue on with the task, and we would be able to adapt if something did happen because he knew that I didn't have the equipment. All right, cool. That's going to change some of our protocols, maybe that's going to change some of our "Actions on" from our standard operating procedures. Right. But I had to tell him that so he had that information and could make an informed decision.
And from that moment on...man, that never happened again. I made sure my shit was squared away. So, you know, I had to own that mistake. But then I learned from it. I made sure that never happened again.
He came up to me afterwards and he's like, "Thank you for telling me that. I appreciate it."
Make mistakes OLD!
Own it
Learn from it
Don't let it happen again
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