My boss asks me to come to his office, and he tells me I was passed over—not selected for promotion for lieutenant commander. My heart stops. I knew it was a possibility, but I was not expecting this news. He asks if I have any idea why I was not selected. My mind is spinning. Nothing stands out. I hear, though, a countdown start, telling me I have 21 months until I have to leave the only profession I have ever known.
My nonselection was a personal crisis that shook my identity at its core and initiated a journey in rediscovering myself. In the weeks and months that followed, I covered a range of emotions—fear, anger, sadness, denial, confusion, and hope—and questions. How did this happen? Why is this so hard? What do I do now?
My experience was far from unique. Two hundred others were not selected during the same promotion board, which amounts to thousands every year across the armed services. Yet, the topic carries enough stigma that we avoid it almost entirely, to the point that we do not know what to say to one another when it happens. We must remove the mystique that gets in the way of supporting one another by seeking understanding and grounding our interactions in empathy.
How did this happen?
No question is more urgent after nonselection than why. Why is this happening? In most cases, unless there was an obvious material error of some kind, you will not find out why you were passed over. The confidentiality that covers board deliberations, required by law, will keep that information from you. However, that frustration obscures an inconvenient truth: The reason does not matter; it will not change the outcome. You were passed over. The attempt to uncover the why is part of the struggle to accept the result.
Understanding how you were nonselected, however, can help you achieve acceptance. It leads you to explore the nuances of the human resources (HR) system that, if we are being honest, you did not pay much attention to before now—another byproduct of the lack of discourse surrounding the topic.
Service Attrition and Retention
Nonselections occur because attrition is essential for individuals to move up the pyramid in the Coast Guard’s hierarchical system. The best outcome, from the services’ perspective, is that HR processes—as opposed to voluntary separations—determine when attrition happens. Why? Because the services rely entirely on homegrown talent.
Other organizations have multiple hiring on ramps, but the Coast Guard must develop a future Commandant from a four-year cross section of new officer accessions. Any separation means choosing from the best remaining service members. This incentivizes retention practices, which seek to manage influences such as compensation and benefits, organizational culture, and whether individuals feel valued. Successful retention results in more HR-led attrition (because promotions are more competitive), but retention efforts also nurture professional identities, and this is where the sting of nonselection is felt at the individual level.
At the Promotion Board
Understanding attrition, we can better comprehend the HR process that led to a nonselection: the promotion board.1 Promotion boards rely on consensus and qualitative decision-making. The process involves developing criteria for assessing candidates, reading records and scoring candidates, deliberating, and making selections.
The assessment criteria include the pillars of performance, professionalism, leadership, and education (PPLE) but also may include other factors. The board might elect to weigh the factors equally or some more than others. Once agreed, the board members begin scoring candidate records.
Records include evaluations going back seven years, the entire personnel data record, an employee summary sheet, information from the Coast Guard’s HR operating tool (Direct Access), and any communications to the board made by the member. A plurality of board members read each record (e.g., on a nine-member board, five read the same record) and scores it according to the criteria. Board members get approximately 15 minutes to score a record, adding up to about 62 hours of reading per member for a candidate pool of 450 people.
During deliberations, the weighted candidate scores and the deviations between board member scores are used to show where consensus exists and where more discussion is necessary. A large portion of deliberations focus on candidates that bracket the “cut line.” Board members say this is the hardest part, because there may be few objective differences in quality between members. Then they vote on selections and send the list for approval.
My “ah-ha” moment in understanding the “how” came four years after my nonselection, when I participated on a selection panel. I wanted to believe my nonselection was a mistake, when, in actuality, board members like me—fully aware of the responsibility bestowed on them and the consequence for others’ careers—determined my record was not as competitive relative to my peers. This clarity, though, was perhaps the epilogue to the journey that followed the nonselection.
Why is this so hard?
Being passed over feels somewhere between your professional identity getting a terminal illness and the Coast Guard breaking up with you. You grieve it. The potency of the emotion may be mismatched to what is actually happening, though. You may need to find another job. Sorting through what is real versus emotional adds to the complexity.
The harm to your identity is real. Identities are amalgamations of things such as religious beliefs, ethnicity, gender, and personality. We also have social identities, like being an American, an alumnus from a university, or a service member. What the nonselection communicates very clearly is how the organization views and values you professionally. The rejection is catastrophic feedback if your profession makes up a large part of your identity.
For many of us, we entered the Coast Guard in our late teens or early 20s, formative years for our identities. The services, in aiding retention, urged us to emphasize our professional selves. These are not jobs so much as a calling. The conflict between what we perceived about our identities and what we experience after the nonselection is a catalyst to question whether the promotion board members got it wrong, whether we belong in the service, or a hundred other things.
Unfortunately, many experiences soon after the nonselection are like waves pounding you in the break zone. You do not see your name on the published board results. Shocked, the people you work with ask you, “How did this happen?” You do not know, of course, but the emotions come to the forefront each time. This is especially hard when interacting with your friends and peers who were selected. You want to congratulate and celebrate them, but their muted responses, in deference to your nonselection, make most of those conversations uneasy.
Dealing with the pain is where the journey out of the identity crisis begins. It does not necessarily get better immediately. My nonselection kicked off an eight-month bout with nonclinical depression. It was like piloting in fog without a compass or chart. I felt like I needed to move, but I had no way to find the safe water. I needed help. I was fortunate to have key people in my life I could lean on. It helped to talk about it and explain what I was experiencing, even if people did not really know how to respond.
Yet, in that stillness, I began to take inventory of myself. It forced me to do a lot of healthy growth and self-care and to build an identity that was not dependent on the Coast Guard. Though I lacked confidence, I began to seek out what to do next.
What do I do now?
Nonselection creates opportunities and empowers you to make decisions. Practically, you need to prepare for the next promotion board or to transition from the military, but you have a duty to yourself, too. The effort to mend your identity almost guarantees you will make changes to it, and while the extent you lean into rediscovery is a personal decision, it requires the influence of your professional identity to wane.
I had to assess what was still true about me and examine what my professional identity had overshadowed. What do I value? I am a spouse and a father: What do I want to be for them? I have talents, and I enjoy learning new skills: Where can I best apply myself? I thrive with a stable community: How important is that to me? These questions apply all the time, but they were a beacon in my fog—not telling me where to go, but how I would go about it—whether or not I stayed in the Coast Guard.
However, you have to be ready to move on. The service made the decision it deemed best. The odds say you will be a nonselect again; above zone selection rates can oscillate between 10 and 25 percent. If a second nonselection means involuntary separation, then you need to spend a significant amount of energy on becoming a “transitioning military officer.” Investing in yourself is fully compatible with being a good, dedicated employee. After all, our supervisors would expect us to spend time getting ready to transition if we were voluntarily separating or retiring.
First, take advantage of Transition Assistance Program resources. They range from knowledge courses on benefits, to advice on how to market yourself, tips on interviewing and resume writing, and a plethora of avenues to find employment.
Second, build your new professional network. You are not alone. There are thousands of transitioning military officers every year, including other nonselectees who know exactly what you are experiencing. The empathy you gain from that cohort is priceless.
Third, search for jobs. You will hear the term “fit” a lot. How you fit with the job, with the team you would work with, and whether the company fits with you are all decision points.
Applying for jobs is a separate skill to learn, and hiring is not always a quick process.
Last, prepare yourself for the next promotion board. Get career counseling from those who are experts on the board process or nonselections. Address any record gaps in the realms of PPLE. Ask your chain of command for help. Determine what you need to do to earn the evaluation you think you need. See if they are open to giving you a personal award based on what you have achieved to date. Correct your record if it is missing key documents. If the omissions were from some error or injustice, seek administrative relief, but understand that in most instances the burden of proof is on you as the applicant, and it can take ten months to receive a final decision.
Removing the Stigma
The journey following nonselection does not need the extra challenges of shame and isolation. It is embarrassing to be passed over, but the stigma comes from how everyone else relates to it. I grappled with negative affirmations such as “I am a failure” and “I do not belong here.” And I experienced estrangement when my negative affirmations appeared to manifest around me: Friends and colleagues giving me space felt like avoidance. Conversations highlighting silver linings left me feeling unheard. Many people did not even know I was passed over, but I constantly wondered if they did and struggled with deciding whether it was worth divulging my status. I felt as if I had a scarlet letter on my undershirt, just out of view but always present.
Changing the posture toward nonselectees starts with presence and empathy. It takes a bit of effort to determine who was nonselected, since promotion lists show those selected. Chances are, however, you know one of the nonselectees, and they are struggling with the news. Reaching out may be uncomfortable, because you do not know what to say, but it is not about you. They do not need you to fix their problem. They know you cannot, and trying can drive the stigmatization.
Listening, actively and with the intent to understand instead of respond, is one of the best things someone can do. Listening aids empathy. Empathy allows us to understand someone’s perspective, stay out of judgment, recognize emotion, and communicate it. “Empathy is . . . a vulnerable choice because, in order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling.” It avoids comments that start with, “At least you still . . .” and sounds more like, “I do not know what to say, but I am glad you told me.” It invites connection and neutralizes the shame.2
A Light in the Darkness
While empathy, understanding, and embracing the pain are all vital, the journey out of crisis to rediscovery is a personal one. For my own journey, nonselection for promotion did not define me, but instead gave me the perspective to decide what does—and the confidence to decide what I would do next. I chose to stay in the Coast Guard after I was selected for lieutenant commander the following year, but for entirely different reasons than I would have before.
Finally, what all the nonselectees need to hear is, “You are a wonderful and awesome person deserving of respect. That was true before the board met, and it is true now.” You were hoping to get that validation from the board. While it helps to hear it from others, you need to hear that from yourself. Acknowledging your self-worth sparks light into the darkness of your professional nadir and is welcome hope to fuel your journey.
1. This article covers the Coast Guard’s policy and procedures for officer promotions, but there are many similarities with the other armed services.
2. From “Brené Brown on Empathy,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw.