The drive to feel important and belong is one of the strongest desires we, as humans, have. Almost everyone wants to feel important. It explains why a person comes in and just goes right into talking about himself and what he did, and holds your attention for as long as he can. The Facebook explains how we want to explain who we are, get love, and have people know us. Most of us post what we “want and need” people to see. We try so hard to pound the square peg into the round hole; we desire only to fit. We are simply trying to feel important.
The struggle to feel valued is one of the most insidious and least acknowledged issues among individuals and in organizations. Most employees are expected to check their feelings at the door when they get to work. But try as we might, we can’t. How we are feeling – and most especially whether or not we feel acknowledged and appreciated – influences our behaviour, consumes our energy and affects our decisions all day long, whether we are aware of it or not. Our core emotional need is to feel valued. Without a stable sense of value, we don’t know who we are and we don’t feel safe in the world.
From an evolutionary perspective, the need to be valued is primal and survival-based. Sociologist Elijah Anderson describes respect as a key to the “code of the streets” in inner cities. To feel valued (and valuable) is almost as compelling a need as food. The more our value feels at risk, the more preoccupied we become with defending and restoring it, and the less value we’re capable of creating in the world.
In contrast, there are some people who don’t want to be remembered for who they were, but rather what they did and in the process hopefully change the world – if only a little – for the better. Obviously, to be or to do is the question. One such person happened to be was John Boyd, a fighter pilot during the Korea War. He was nicknamed “Forty Second Boyd” because he could eliminate any enemy, from any position, in forty seconds or less from the first contact. Boyd went on to revolutionize manoeuvre warfare, helped make the F-15 and F-16 fighter jets a reality, and became an advisor to the Pentagon. He did more to change the US military than anyone else in history. Yet, hardly anyone knows his name, John Boyd. There are no buildings or bases named after him. In fact, Boyd was never promoted past the rank of colonel. During his career, he made many enemies and retired in a small apartment where he thought he would be forgotten. All of this seemed to be Boyd’s intent.
During Boyd’s career he was known for taking young, impressionable officers aside and giving them the following speech: “Tiger, one day you will come to a fork in the road and you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments. Or you can go that way and you can do something — something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide you want to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favourite of your superiors. But you won’t have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference. To be somebody or to do something. In life, there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?”
You see, Boyd was not worried about what he would be, he was worried about what he would do. He was aware of what it would take for him to obtain personal success in his career, but he knew that success would come with compromises. Instead, he intentionally set out to do. To do what it would take to make a difference in the world no matter what the cost to his reputation, or the feathers he would ruffle along the way.
The intensity of his convictions and his confrontational style earned him the nicknames “The Mad Major” and “Genghis John.” Boyd constantly flirted with the very edge of outright insubordination, and he knew it. He was fond of saying, “You gotta challenge all assumptions. If you don’t, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever after.”
Boyd’s mix of brilliance and brashness made him a truly polarizing figure within the ranks. In his performance reviews, some of his superiors criticized his manners and lack of deference, while others called him the most talented and dedicated officer they had ever known. The former tried to sabotage his career, while the latter worked to keep him in the ranks, and Boyd at first felt sure his supporters would win the day.
So, when he was passed over for a promotion that was instead given to some inconsequential but compliant paper-pushers, Coram writes that Boyd was “deeply affected” by the blow. “This was a pivotal event in his career, as well as a personal epiphany. Often, when a man is young and idealistic, he believes that if he works hard and does the right thing, success will follow. This was what Boyd’s mother and childhood mentors had told him. But hard work and success do not always go together in the military, where success is defined by rank, and reaching higher rank requires conforming to the military’s value system. Those who do not conform will one day realize that the path of doing the right thing has diverged from the path of success, and then they must decide which path they will follow through life. Almost certainly, he realized that if he was not promoted early to lieutenant colonel after all that he had done, he would never achieve high rank.”
Many officers quit when they realize they won’t be able to reach the top of the hierarchy. But Boyd hadn’t joined the military to accumulate insignia on his uniform; he was driven by the sole desire to “change people’s fundamental understanding of aviation” and sincerely wanted to make a significant, lasting contribution to warfare and the world. The Air Force was a highly imperfect channel to do so, but the best possible one. He understood that the best way to change an institution is oftentimes not to drop out and rail against it from the outside, but to stay in and work to transform it from the inside. And his work was far from finished.