A full military career is full of different assignments, different locations, and different experiences. Even when you spend an entire career inside a single specialty (armor, infantry, aviation, logistics, intelligence) the range of units, leaders, missions, and cultures you encounter is wide. The uniforms look the same. The doctrine is the same. The standards are supposed to be the same. But the reality is not.

Most leadership failures in sports don’t come from a lack of effort or discipline—they come from leaders who were promoted for performance without developing the skills or identity required to lead others. That pattern reveals a broader truth about leadership, particularly in athletics: most people are promoted for performance, not for leadership readiness, and the two are not the same thing.