Story and photo by R.J. Oriez
GUIDON staff

Keni Thomas told the audience in Lincoln Hall that he was not there to talk about teamwork.

“We all understand how important teamwork is,” Thomas said. Instead Thomas talked a lot about leadership and the importance of the individual.

Thomas earned a Bronze Star for Valor in the Battle of Mogadishu, commonly referred to as “The Blackhawk Down Incident.” After serving two enlistments as a Ranger, he left the Army and now makes his living as a motivational speaker and as a recording artist. He was on post Monday talking to the American Society of Military Comptrollers.

Speaking of the day that things went bad in Somalia, he stressed that leadership does not just come from on high.

“Leadership is not about the position you hold; it’s about the example you set,” Thomas said.

“The stories I want to tell you, they’re not about the colonel. They’re not about the general. They’re not about the captains. They are about the young privates and the young team leaders. It was those guys and the examples they set; it was the leadership that they did that got us all out of there,” Thomas said.

According to Thomas, where leadership and the importance of every individual comes together is training. The challenge is bringing out the best in each person. Thomas recalled a less-than-promising member of his squad.

“You’re as good as your weakest link, because (he) is the one piece of the puzzle that makes the entire thing work,” Thomas said.

“Task Force Ranger, the whole millions of millions of dollars of that package, all hinges on (him), because he is the machine gunner in my squad. And, if (he) cannot do his job to the absolute expert level then the squad is going to fail. If the squad goes down, the platoon goes down. The mission might as well not even start,” Thomas said.

The leadership challenge is training the individual up to the level of being one of the pieces of the puzzle people can count on.

“You don’t get to choose who you work with,” Thomas said. “There is a lot of tendency, sometimes, to distance ourselves from people who are slacking; who aren’t carrying their load because we don’t want to be associated with them.”

That is the hard part.

 “You get to greatness because every individual on that team is as good as they can be,” Thomas told the gathering. “As the people who lead by example, it is your responsibility to make sure that the person here, and the person there is as good as they can be.”

“It’s not an easy thing to do sometimes,” he acknowledges. “It’s not easy to pull someone aside and say ‘What can I do to help you because you’re slacking a little bit. You’re not meeting the standards. What can I do to help?’” Thomas said.

Thomas finished his presentation stressing the importance everyone acknowledging his or her own importance in an organization.

“Do not sell yourself short. Do not — never ever — sell yourself short by saying you are an ordinary person,’ he said. “You have been given skill sets that nobody else has, that are unique to you. That is why you are extraordinary.”

“When you start seeing yourself as the one piece of the puzzle that makes everything around you work, you step up your game; and, people will start noticing the difference you are making.”