Our Way: One Expression of a Military M/s Relationship

DISCLAIMER: None of us are, or ever have been, a member of the US Special Forces (or anyone else’s). We both have a long association with the military and chose this model, with accompanying terminology and structures, because it matched our intent and provided a good framework on which to build.

INTRODUCTION
There are many right ways to structure a relationship. Some ways are absorbed from your culture. Others are carefully defined. This is true of business relationships as well as intimate relationships. You can have a general partnership, in which there is no hierarchy and both, or all, parties have full power to act. You can have a contractual or corporate organization in which authority and responsibilities are divided and carefully defined. Both ways can work. Both can fail. For many, including us, a carefully defined relationship works best.

This concept of careful definition includes the fact that different parties have different levels of authority and different responsibilities. These relationships may go by many names: power exchange, authority transfer, taken in hand, traditional marriage, Master / slave. The titles are fluid and self-constructed, so there is often disagreement over what they mean or which style a specific relationship fits. That doesn’t matter. What matters to you is which one you use and how you use it. The further you are from the “norm” of that definition the more explaining you will have to do, but you will always have to do some.

What those styles have in common is that one person is in charge to a greater or lesser degree. Some people think this means Master and slave. Let’s go with that for a moment. Which Master are you? A cruel, harsh Master who treats your slave as property and gives them no latitude, or a Roman Senator whose Greek slave runs the household and is a trusted advisor? That is just within Master and slave. We haven’t even addressed CEO / COO, Captain / First Mate, Sovereign / subject or any of the many other models. For a deeper examination of different models I highly recommend Paradigms of Power by Raven Kaldera.

The model we use is a military one, one of several even within that category. The traditional military format focuses on the formality, hierarchy, and often uniforms of the military. It is generally about unity and day to day life. I call this the Unit model. The Commander / staff model assumes a higher degree of autonomy and input on the behalf of subordinates but the Commander still decides. The Drill Instructor model emphasizes downward directed teaching and is usually strict in many ways. The model we arrived at, and may have invented, is the Special Forces, Prince’s Own, model.

The mission of the Special Forces A Team is to teach skills and model behavior for others. That matches our House mission. All members are established experts in their fields. There is a high degree of autonomy and collaboration in accomplishing the goals set by the Team Leader. Team members are responsible for achieving and maintaining excellence in performance across the board. There is a selection and training process before entering the Team.

There are support personnel who have not undergone the same rigorous process but still support the mission. There are Reservists who have been trained, but are not full time members of the team. We have been able to use the model quite extensively in both defining and implementing our relationships within the team.

One modification of the military model is the addition of “Prince’s Own” to the unit designation. Military models can be very impersonal and oaths are typically only directed upward. To reflect the very personal relationships involved and bi-directional nature of the oaths we include direct fealty between the members and the leader, a (notional) Prince.