The Why Behind My Personal Leadership Project

The story behind my Personal Leadership Project with the George W. Bush Stand-To Veterans Leadership Program

As a Scholar with the George W. Bush Stand-To Veterans Leadership Program, I was tasked to identify a current problem related to veteran outcomes and then design and lead a solution-oriented project as part of the curriculum. During the Capstone event, my peers and I presented our projects and results TED-talk style on stage at the Bush Institute. It's called a Personal Leadership Project, and this is the story of how and why I landed on my topic.

Getting to Why

My humbling realization was that I could not fill all of the gaps in the existing transition assistance programs by the Capstone deadline. I would have to pick a project and get to work.

The narrowing-down process was difficult. Ideas I considered included a targeted marketing campaign for DoD SkillBridge internship programs, a "How to Host a Military Intern" model for employers, and a cross-cultural awareness and veteran retention workshop for corporate hiring managers and recruiters.

All good ideas. But I didn't feel great about any of them, so I kept thinking.

Looking back on my experience, one of the first gaps I discovered in transition programs was the one-size-fits-all approach to assistance programs. The content was mostly focused on the administrative and physical aspects of transition. I was not aware of any assistance focused on the service member's psychological and emotional transition process, and the ongoing transformation of veterans over time.

Impact Is My Why

When I thought about which project had the greatest opportunity for impact, it became clear that no program could reach its potential level of effectiveness, in utilization and outcomes, without first addressing the human experience of transition and the needs of each unique individual.

At that moment, I remembered a retiring U.S. Marine telling me he was more afraid of transition than he was the day he left on the bus for boot camp. That is how I decided on my project.

Through this project, I designed a program to reduce the fear of military-to-civilian career transition, in honor of the brave U.S. Marine who publicly admitted his fear, and for all of his peers who may be, even a little bit, afraid of what's next themselves.

Core statement: To design and pilot a First Stop transition assistance program for service members in Southern California to increase psychological readiness and learning capacity through a cohort-based workshop series with a focus on personal discovery, cross-cultural awareness, experiential learning, community building, and celebration of service.

The Bet

I am no gambler. However, I am betting that by increasing the individual psychological readiness of our service members, reducing the fear, we will see an increase in their capacity for learning and change.

This increase in awareness and learning capacity will increase the effectiveness of transition, employment, education, and healthcare assistance programs, and the word will spread.

When those assistance programs are recognized because of their outcomes, service members and veterans will show up and participate. When programs and services for veterans are fully utilized, we all win.

During one of our program modules, we were honored to spend over an hour with former President George W. Bush. His very first words when he addressed our group of scholars were: "This is no BS. This is a big damn deal, and we're expecting you to take this opportunity and soar."

Roger that, sir.

We build the architecture for what most change models skip: the human.

Sara B. McNamara, MSOD Founder, HumanWorks™ Solutions