What General Meant to Me

“The people are the only thing in any of this that was ever real.”

Why I'm still here

If you're reading this, you're already thinking about General. Good. Before I say one word about the rank, you need to know why I'm here, because the rank is nothing without it. If you take only one thing from me, take this: you will not last as General if you don't know what you're for.

I grew up a gay kid on a farm, deep in the Bible Belt, and I grew up closeted, scared of the people who were supposed to be mine. There was no one to tell. There was a night I came closer to ending my life than I have ever said out loud, and I sat in it alone, because I could not see the next morning from where I was sitting.

What I was doing that night was playing Call of Duty, because I had nobody to do anything else with. Some guy in the lobby was running his mouth, funny as hell, and the two of us started pub-stomping like we'd known each other for years. Then he told me a thing I didn't know was true. He said Xbox had communities. People who stayed. And he invited me into his. He invited me into DHG.

I didn't understand it that night. That invitation is the reason I'm alive to write this.

DHG gave me what I didn't have. A reason to turn the console on. People who had my back and never once sent me a bill for it. Two of them became the closest friends I've ever had, and they raised me more than they'll ever know. Foxtrot was an old Vietnam vet who told us stories every night, about brotherhood, about belonging to something bigger than yourself. I still use a line of his. It was never mine. I say it like a debt. The other was Schmole. Schmole was my knight. I was soft and shy and scared of my own shadow, and he put himself between me and every bully and every bit of noise, the way you guard a person you've decided is worth guarding.

A terrified kid walked into DHG and walked back out steady. I learned how to talk to people here. How to love them, and how to say it. How to have a man's back and mean it past the point where it's easy. Every good thing in the way I lead, I learned in this house first.

Then life pulled me out for a long stretch, and I built things I'm proud of. I finished college. I married the love of my life. We started fostering, and we asked for the kids nobody else would take, because I wanted to be for them what DHG had been for me. Same instinct, pointed at smaller people. Then COVID knocked us flat. We moved across the country to a town where nobody knew my name, and I was as lost as I'd been on that farm. I spent four years looking for what I'd lost. Then I stopped waiting and came home to DHG. Not to prove anything. I came back to climb out of the hole again, and this time to be, for some other scared kid, the hand that Foxtrot and Schmole had been for me.

That's the whole reason I'm here. Right now, somewhere in your squad, there is a person who feels exactly the way I felt. You won't be able to pick them out by looking. Serving that person is where I found the rest of my life.

What the rank actually is

From the bottom, General looks like the summit, the place where you finally sit down. Kill that idea now. The day you make General is the day the whole squad becomes weight you carry. It stops being ground you stand on.

General is the highest rank in the squad. You earn it by doing every rank beneath it well. Then you take on one job that sits above all the rest: keep the squad alive. Active, getting better, glad they're here. From the day you pin the tag, the health of this squad breathes through you.

People chase the rank for the tag, the title, the last word. Come for that and you'll be miserable, and you'll make everyone you lead miserable with you. You don't get the squad. The squad gets you. Your hours, your patience, your steady hand belong to other people now. The tag on your name is the smallest thing you'll carry.

The official duties are short. Learn them now, so they run on their own by the time you wear it.

• Settle the disputes you can, and carry the ones above your pay grade up to your div leaders.
• Keep the room fun for every member, not just the loud ones.
• Get the docs done every week.
• Be at every weekly meeting.
• Send the daily Gen Tag, so nobody has to wonder what's going on.
• Train your officers. All of them.
• Run every lower rank like you could still hold it tomorrow.
• Pass issues and transfers up the chain, honestly.

Read that list again, slower. Every line on it is about somebody who isn't you. That's the first true thing about this rank.

Where you sit

General is the top of the squad. It is not the top of DHG. You answer up to divisional leadership, and through them to management. Gens grow the squads. Div leaders keep the squads honest. Management keeps the whole community standing.

That makes you a bridge, and traffic runs both ways across it. Your squad's voice reaches the top through you. The standard of DHG reaches your squad through you. Hold steady under both and you'll be trusted at both ends. Tilt the bridge to flatter one side and you'll be trusted at neither.

The weight

Here is what nobody tells you from the bottom. When a member goes quiet, that's yours to notice. When two of them clash, that's yours to settle. When the energy in the room sags, that's yours to lift. A General doesn't get to have a loud bad day. You set the temperature for everyone else, so you learn to carry a full load and still walk in steady.

That weight is real. Respect it before you pick it up. Carry all of it alone and it will break you. I know, because I was the General who tried. I'll come back to how I crawled out.

How to actually lead

The duties tell you what to do. They say nothing about how to lead, and how is the entire game.

Go first. You can't ask the squad to show up if you won't. You can't ask an officer to host if you never do. Whatever you want from them, spend it first, where they can see you spend it.

Give the credit away. When an officer does something good, let the win be theirs, out loud. When something breaks, eat it, fix it quiet, move on. A squad will follow a leader who hands out the wins and swallows the losses.

Build judgment. When an officer brings you a problem, don't hand him the answer. Hand him the question that gets him to it. Do that enough and one day he won't need you in the room. That isn't a loss. You are always training the person who replaces you.

Protect the rhythm. Gatherings on time. Docs in. Gen Tag every day. Small problems solved while they're still small. People feel the steady drumbeat even when they can't name it. It's a big part of why they stay.

The hard calls

The duties are the easy part. People are the hard part, and people don't come with a rulebook. These are the calls that gutted me, the ones that taught me what I actually know. I'm handing them over the way I learned them, with the skin still on.

Promote on proof. You'll get a member starving for a rank. Loyal, eager, online constantly. Just not ready. And you'll get another with a couple of demotions behind him, asking for one more shot. Both looking you dead in the eye. I've gone soft right here. I handed a guy a rank because I felt for him, before he could carry it, and it broke him in front of the whole squad. That wasn't on him. That was on me. So promote on what a person actually does, week after week, where everyone can see it. Give the second chance. You should. Just tie it to plain conditions, so they know exactly what proving it looks like. Heart gets a member in the door. Proof earns the rank.

Tell the truth upward, even when it costs you. At some point you'll have to tell a person above you a thing they don't want to hear. Disagree with a call. Push back on someone you look up to. The safe move is to swallow it and keep the peace, and almost everybody picks safe. I once told a man I idolized a truth I hated to say out loud. It cost me something that day. It also changed everything between us, and it's the reason he trusts me now. The people above you are drowning in yes. Be the one who tells them the truth without swinging it like a club.

The quiet ones leave without a sound. Most squads don't die in a blowup. They die in a hush. The member who used to be on every night is on a little less, then less than that, and then it's a light going dim in a room nobody happened to be watching. No drama. No goodbye. I've lost good people to that drift because I saw it too late, and I've kept a few because I caught it in time. Loud problems announce themselves. This one never will, so you have to go looking for it. When you see someone slipping, reach out, and make it land like a person. Let them feel an actual human noticed the empty chair. One honest check-in has saved people I'd have lost for good. So sit with this before you read on: who in your squad has gone quiet, and when did you last reach out?

Standards hold, even for the people you love. This is the loneliest thing about the job and I won't dress it up. Sooner or later somebody you love breaks a rule. Somebody you recruited, trained, gamed with every night. And the whole squad goes quiet to see whether the rule bends for your friends. I've made this call on people who mattered to me, and it has never once felt good. You warn them honest. You give them a real shot to make it right. If they won't take it, you act, same as you would for anybody wearing a tag. It works the same when two people you love come at each other and each wants you on his side. You don't pick a favorite. You hear both out, decide what's fair, and own it out loud, even when fair means letting somebody down. A squad will forgive a hard call that was fair. It will never forgive a double standard.

What you do with dirt tells the squad who you are. One day someone drops something damaging about another member in your lap. Maybe even someone who's been a thorn in your side, someone it would feel good to watch fall. I once watched a guy get handed exactly that, take it out into the open to burn his rival, and get himself walked to the door for the privilege. I took mine quiet, straight to the one person above me who needed to know, and no further. Same dirt. Opposite endings. The information was never the weapon. What you do with it is. The truth shall set you free.

Sometimes the strongest answer is no answer. For a long time the closest friend I had in here was a guy I'd have vouched for with my life. I'd helped him and his family through a rough stretch without thinking twice. Then I started seeing it. He started to quietly pull our people with him to his own community. When it began to come apart, he didn't come at me straight. He came sideways, fishing for a reaction. Are we good? Can I come back? I never said a word against you. Then the tell: a list of people he'd hand me as recruits if I let him back in. Right then I went on leave to move homes, off my phone for weeks. I didn't go quiet to make a point. I just wasn't there. And he wrote the rest by himself. With nothing coming back from me, the messages walked from are we good all the way to you destroyed the squad I trusted you with. He showed me his whole hand, and I never had to play a card. When someone is working you for a reaction, the reaction is the thing they came for. Take it away and a manipulator can't stand the quiet. He fills it himself, usually with the truth. So when you feel someone fishing, don't bite. Go still and let him finish. Just don't dress up avoidance as strength. Silence is for the people working you, never for the ones you owe a straight answer.

When it all comes down, be the shepherd. Squads close. Ranks get stripped. People you counted on put the controller down and walk. I've had squads close on me more than once, and I know that exact grief, the kind that doesn't get a funeral. Here's what it taught me. The rank is made up. The squad name is made up. They're words on a profile, and a profile can be deleted before you even know what happened. The people are the only thing in any of this that was ever real. So when the structure caves in, you don't fold and you don't disappear. You gather your people and you keep them safe. You be the shepherd. That is the whole job once the titles are gone, and it was the job all along.

The person on your right

You will not save this squad by yourself. I tried. It doesn't work, and the trying is half of what burns you out. What holds a squad together is the person on your right. And the person on theirs.

I told you about Schmole. That is what I mean, lived out. He had my back the whole way down the chain, and I covered him from above and pulled him up right behind me. We carried each other. A squad with that kind of trust running through it, top to bottom, can take a hit that would fold anybody else and still be standing in the morning.

So when you pin the tag, don't go looking for people who make you look good. Look for the one who loves this squad the way you do. The one who would carry it through a brutal month and never mention it. The one who would do anything to keep it from coming apart, because this place is home to him the way it is to you. Find that person. Trust him all the way down. Make sure he is building the same bond with the person one rank below him.

And build that chain so it can run without you. There will be a stretch where you are empty and the squad still needs you. Stepping back will feel like walking out on them. It isn't. I ran myself into the ground hauling everyone's weight and called it loyalty. It was fear in a nicer coat. Train officers who can hold a night without you. Lean on your Commander and your Major. A no said in time is what keeps your yes worth anything.

Pour everything you know into that chain. It will outlast you, and that is the entire point of it. The day I realized my squad could run a full week without me, I didn't feel useless. I felt like I had finally done the job right.

The bottom line

Don't lead for the rank. Lead for the people. Become the General the squad already follows before anybody makes it official. The one who shows up. The one who carries the weight without announcing it. The one who builds the people around him and never makes it about himself. You don't have to be the loudest or the sharpest man in the room. Be the realest one. Do that long enough and the rank stops being a thing you ask for. It turns into a thing everyone already knows you have earned.

The rank is a promise. You are promising to take care of everyone else, every day, even on the days it costs you something you don't get back. I made that promise because somebody made it to me on the worst night of my life, when I had nothing and could give nothing back. It gave me everything I have.