I Poured Water on the Candle Before Anyone Could Strike the Match

After three years away from my regular job — serving as a Marine Security Guard, a duty that takes only a small percentage of Marines and posts them to U.S. embassies and legations worldwide — I came home a sergeant, E-5, and reported to a new communications unit in Fort Worth, Texas.

I was now the ranking member. The leader. The one junior troops were supposed to come to when equipment failed and they needed answers.

There was one problem: I hadn’t touched that equipment in three years, and in electronics, three years changes everything. The gear in front of me was practically new to me. My rank said I should know it cold. I didn’t.

Nobody in that first meeting cared that I’d been away. My rank said I should know — that was the whole equation. I felt the weight of it immediately: They thought I knew. I knew I didn’t. I felt like an imposter, and I wasn’t going to be able to hide it long from people who’d maintained that equipment every day for years.

A few days in, I called the team together. I thanked them for their time — they didn’t have much choice, but it mattered to me to say it anyway. Then I told them the truth: I no longer knew this equipment. The gear I’d worked on in Okinawa wasn’t this gear. I outranked every one of them, and I needed their help to get up to speed.

The silence that followed was deafening. Puzzled looks. Suspicious looks. A few subdued snickers, someone muttering “yeah right.” Nobody expected that from a new sergeant. In their world, when a leader says he needs something from you, it’s rarely good news. When they realized I meant it, eyes widened. Mouths gaped slightly. Then curiosity: why the gap? That wasn’t how careers in this field usually went.

Days later, one of the junior Marines asked to talk. “Why did you tell us that?” he asked. “I’ve been here a while, and I’ve never seen anyone put themselves out there like that.”

I told him the truth: You Marines are some of the sharpest the Corps has to offer. If I’d tried to bluster my way through, hiding behind my rank, you’d have seen through it in a heartbeat. You’d have resented the dishonesty. You’d have respected my rank, but not me — and rank without respect for the person wearing it isn’t trust. It’s just obedience.

He beamed like I’d handed him the keys to the city.

From that moment, the team jelled.

I hadn’t waited for someone to test me and expose the gap. I’d poured water on the candle before anyone got the chance to light it. There was nothing left to burn me with, because I’d already told them everything there was to find.

Gary Alexander is a Federal Aviation Administration program manager and retired Marine Corps Company First Sergeant with more than 40 years of leadership experience spanning the military, private industry, and federal service. Across his work with OPM’s Federal Executive Board and nearly two decades at the FAA, he has stood up four first-of-kind enterprise programs, rescued initiatives others had written off, and coached leaders across multiple federal agencies. A Distinguished Toastmaster, Certified Kaizen Instructor, and AAFEA Fellow, Gary writes about leadership, trust, and what it actually takes to build something from nothing. He believes vision without relationship is just potential with no circuit to complete.

Photo Credit: Yan KruKau, Pexels