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2015 Commencement Address by Lieutenant General Phil Jones, CBE
Lieutenant General Phil Jones, CBE, chief of staff at North Atlantic Treaty Organization-Allied Command Transformation (NATO-ACT) and 34-year officer in the British Army, delivered the keynote address during Virginia Wesleyan College's 46th Commencement Ceremony on Saturday, May 16, 2015. Here are his remarks in their entirety:
"There is no magical formula for success in life – it comes in many forms. But I have long felt that there are some fundamental principles that almost always apply. I offer you three: selflessness; integrity and positivity."
President Greer; Academic Dean; Board Chair; Ladies and Gentlemen, students:
I cannot tell you how honored I feel being invited to speak at such an important event in your lives.
I only hope that I, as an old soldier, can do justice to the challenge of saying something useful and meaningful to a room full of the some of your nation’s brightest and best young minds.
Note that I said useful and meaningful – not necessarily memorable.
I am also deeply grateful for the wonderful relationship your college has established with our NATO Headquarters here in Norfolk. Your professional and personal friendship means a lot to us.
Before I begin, let me pay tribute to President Greer, for whom this will be his last Commencement before he retires. To my mind, there is nothing more noble in life than teaching. It is at the very core of what it is to be an organized society; it is a fundamental necessity and an eternal cornerstone of life. As an old soldier, I know what it is to be possessed by a sense of vocation and I humbly pay sincere tribute to President Greer’s incredible life of commitment and dedication to the development of our future generations.
Sir, you are much admired and respected, and you will be greatly missed.
Let me start my remarks by saying it has been an immense privilege to get to know your great nation quite well over recent years.
Personally, I have profound respect for our globe’s super-power and I have been privileged to work with and for many of your greatest modern leaders, and many of your finest soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. In my current capacity as Chief of Staff of one of NATO’s strategic headquarters, I can tell you that the United States provides about 70% of everything in NATO. And I don’t just mean men, women and material. I mean energy, vision, intellectual horsepower and an unapologetic commitment to our shared ideals.
Ladies and Gentlemen, with great power comes great responsibility and I pay a heartfelt tribute to your nation for the way in which you contribute so much that is good to this complicated world of ours.
Some of you may feel that this global leadership role as a super power is often a thankless task – and for sure it is. But none of us should ever seek to lead others in order to garner thanks and praise. That is fundamentally not what leadership is about. Leadership is, for sure, an honour and a privilege that can bring rewards. But it is also a sacred duty – and sometimes a burden to be carried.
You may think these remarks to be somewhat abstract for a group of magnificent young people about to embark on their careers. But I make these remarks directly to the students here today because you are the next generation of American leaders. And as young American leaders, whether in commerce, industry, politics, diplomacy, law or academia, never forget that you will also be influential global leaders.
It is vital that you, as our next generation of leaders, see the globe as a whole, not just as America. And you see yourselves as members of our global community. And when you see the globe, to paraphrase one of your great Presidents, you ask not what the world can do for you, ask what you can do for the world.
So, as I look out across the sea of faces; students, faculty and family – what can I say to you that may give you pause for thought, that might help frame some of your thoughts in some small way at this wonderful stage in your lives?
In pondering this, I recalled a discussion on strategy with a group of our NATO interns a few weeks ago. One of the bright young Ph.D. students asked me, given that I am now a three star general, whether I had any advice for them for success in the future. The question caught me slightly by surprise because I don’t think I have ever stopped to reflect on what has allowed me to become a three star general. Indeed, to do so would somehow suggest a sense of personal vanity that I have always worked hard to reject. But I made a couple of points which, on reflection, weren’t too bad – and I offer them to you.
Now, there is no magical formula for success in life – it comes in many forms. But I have long felt that there are some fundamental principles that almost always apply. I offer you three: selflessness; integrity and positivity.
Let me illuminate my first principle with a Jim Zorn anecdote. Who the heck is Jim Zorn some of you might ask….and rightly so. Well, in my last tour of duty in your great nation, some six or seven years ago, I was stationed in Washington D.C. At the time, Jim was, for a while, the Redskins Coach. Many of you will recall he wasn’t one of the Redskins’ greats.
But he said something that got reported in the Washington Post one Christmas that stuck in my mind and which became, for me, a proverb for an approach to life.
So, just before Christmas Day, he was talking to the team before sending them home for a 36-hour break, so that they could have Christmas Day with their families. As he wrapped up his team talk, he said: look, you are all big football stars who spend much of your time thinking about yourself; your performance, and your place in the team. You live in the centre of a media circus, and often all of this goes to young men’s heads.
You are about to head home to your families who love you and who can’t wait to see you again.
Just make sure your attitude is right when you walk through that door into their arms. Just remember that Christmas isn’t about you. So, when you see their faces beaming with smiles – don’t burst through the door yelling ‘here I am’ – look, the great and famous footballer has come to bless you with his presence. Instead, take a deep breath, walk in full of humility, and say ‘there you are’. Because this moment is not about you – it is about them.
Now, for me, this simple homily translates into one of the most powerful messages in life and leadership. As I mentioned earlier, I have worked alongside leaders from many nations, of all ranks, of many cultures, both military and civilian. I can tell you that there is nothing more corrosive than self-serving ego, and yet, nothing more inspiring than humility and selflessness.
The more successful you are, the more important it is to sustain a bullet proof sense of humility and sacrifice. At the end of the day, it is never about you. It is always about others. Any form of success is always better, more productive and more satisfying, and much farther reaching when achieved on the basis of what you can do with others, and for others.
My next principle is all about the value of integrity.
There are very few of us who don’t sometimes bend the truth just a little. I get invited to plenty of events and I am forever thinking of novel ways in which to make myself unavailable. Sometimes it pricks my conscience, sometimes it doesn’t.
But this somewhat flexible approach to honesty isn’t my point. I want to talk about a deeper and more pervasive sense of integrity. I’m talking about integrity that sits at the very core of who we are and what we stand for, where our passions lie, and how we are perceived by others. And it is deeply inter-related to my friend Jim’s point about selfless service to others.
This may begin to sound like an article of faith – and it can be if you want it to be. But, for me, this is not a point of religion.
In the form of faith, or in a very secular way, somewhere, somehow you have to find your personal moral compass and hold onto it, and let it guide your thoughts and actions. You have to translate your view of the world into a set of personal values and standards that you will hold yourself to. And at key times in your lives, measured against your moral compass, you will have to have the personal strength to hold yourself accountable for your own judgments, your own mistakes, your own fallibility, and your own weaknesses.
You are young. How can we possibly expect you to make the right choice at every step? Life is full of challenges, grey areas, tough choices, no win situations, and long dark nights of the soul. At times, it can be equally full of jubilation, high adrenalin and heady success. This is the reality we all face.
These highs and lows can skew our judgment and shape our decisions in life, and none of us get it right all of the time. But we can be guided by our sense of what is right – for ourselves and for others. And we can try do our best.
And I have found over the years that reflecting with honesty to others and honesty to myself always, but always, pays. And come one of those seminal moments when my judgment has been poor, I have always found that the pain endured in facing up to my own failings, and accepting the consequences of my actions, has made me stronger and wiser.
So, having touched on humility and integrity – let me just finish with the power of positivity.
I will die of optimism before I die of old age, no doubt – but my optimism is conditioned by realism. I am a firm believer in the power of positive energy and positive thought, even in our darkest moments. But I don’t deny those darkest moments – we all have to realistic. But positivity is not about being blindly optimistic, or delusional or overly unrealistic. It is an absolute essential in making the most of our short lives – of being ready to take every opportunity that this glorious world presents. It is our greatest weapon in dealing with the gritty reality of the world as we know it.
So, I ask my people to be positive activists. In being a positive activist, I am talking about using the positive energy and positive thinking that gives us forward progress in this world. This positive energy can be incredibly powerful if harnessed and focused – but it isn’t always naturally present in a group of people. It won’t always come naturally, especially in the face of tough challenges. For some, the view that the glass is permanently half empty is part of their DNA. So, a positive approach has to be cultivated, nurtured, encouraged and then directed and focused. And it has to start with you.
Positivity means always seeking to contribute to anything and everything for the common good. Never accept the world around you the way it is. Always seek to improve things in some modest way. Never be disappointed if your efforts are frustrated at times – be realistic and resilient. But always remember that a positive, activist mind-set can sometimes be enough on its own to get things going. It can be enough to inspire yourself and others, and enough to add something good to those around you – even if you don’t immediately feel it yourself.
So, ladies and gentlemen. My three principles are not profound insights that you won’t have heard before. No doubt, in your time here you will have heard them said a thousand times in different ways. I make no apology for repeating them – because simple truths are always worth repeating and, when I reflect on my 35 years of uniformed service, I have found myself coming back time and again to these fundamentals.
As I said at the beginning, I could not be more proud, nor more humbled to be asked to speak to you on this wonderful day. As I look out at you I find myself suffering from the mortal sin of envy. What it is to be where you are now. The excitement; the energy; the anxiety; the joy; the sense of expectation.
The world is brim full of opportunity and I wish you every success in achieving your aims and ambitions. I’ve seen the ugly side of our global community, yet my view of the world remains wholeheartedly optimistic; for me, the glass is always half full. But, as I just mentioned, it doesn’t mean that I don’t see the other half of the glass – the one that is empty. The world is a wonderful, wonderful place – but at times it is also a dangerous predator.
So, ladies and gentlemen, go out there and take the world by storm. Navigate the reefs and shoals of life with resilience and optimism. Never lose your sense of wonder and curiosity, nor your respect for others, and never forget that the world can bite back.
Today, revel in your youth and your potential. I congratulate all of you for your achievements and I congratulate Virginia Wesleyan College for producing our next generation of superstars. And, I congratulate President Greer for his lifetime of service to his noble profession and to this great nation.