Bearing Fruit Consulting

Another Letter From Fred Hockett - Recruiting Leader Serving in Iraq

As regular readers of this blog know, we have been sharing the story and letters of Fred Hockett.  Fred is a recruiting leader from Michigan who was called to active duty in January and is currently serving in Iraq.  I have talked previously about Fred and I admire his leadership, recruiting knowledge, courage and commitment to his country.  He is a great guy and I want to continue to share his story with our readers.

Before I share Fred's latest letter, written on June 17th, I want to point out that at the end of his recent communication he indicates he is open to answering any questions (that he can without jeopardizing himself, his men/women or the mission) that you might have.  If you have any questions send them to me via email at mhomula@bearingfruitconsulting.com and I will be sure to pass them along to Fred and we will post your question and his answer in a future post. 

Also, if you want to follow Fred via his own blog there is a lot more information and detail there.  The blog was primarily set up for his family and friends to keep up with him, his activities and just generally know what is going on.  It is a great blog and I encourage you to check it out. 

Without further ado, here is Fred's latest letter!

I'm sorry about the delay in writing you.  We've been moving at a pretty rapid pace here, and as you can imagine I've been doing everything to just keep in contact with family.  It's surprising how quickly time passes.  I'm almost at 4 months in theater.  Things are still very challenging, but rewarding.  The easiest task is made very difficult due to proximity to logistics.  Needless to say we don't have a Home Depot to go to when we can to do a room renovation.  I find myself working on that type of thing most often, coordinating logistics.  It's a great deal of fun.

As you are probably reading in the paper things are quieting down.  The Iraqi military and police have undertaken several operations in the area to quell the violence and they are doing a pretty good job.  Our teams are out working with them on a regular basis and we have people coordinating with the Ministries all the time. We all continue to see progress every day... most of it is the tangible, physical progress: Construction projects, new roads, graduating police officers, etc.  It's the other, less tangible, results that are even more encouraging: the coaching and mentoring going on, people "getting it" after working very hard to understand our methods, Iraqis taking the lead on operations.  These are the critical bricks in our path home. 

I'm very excited about my vacation in August.  My dad, brother and I will be heading out for a guys weekend.  I'm also attending the wedding of a friend in Kalamazoo and visiting other friends in Chicago.  After I return here, I'm down to 4 months left and I return to states in January.  Crazy how time flies. 

I'll close for now, but if you have any specific questions, I'd be happy to answer them.  My job is a lot of different things, but nothing really exciting enough to write about.  It would be boring if there wasn't so much of it. :)  Have a great day and I look forward to visiting while I'm at home.

Your friend,

Fred

Letters From Fred Hockett - Recruiting Leader Serving In Iraq

I have been way tardy in posting the most recent letter from Fred Hockett.  Fred sent this letter to me back on April 10th and I have just been terrible in getting posted.  Pleae forgive my slowness.  If you are not familiar with Fred then you can get caught up right here.

I am always amazed by Fred's humility and desire to serve others.  I am sure you will agree that he is an amazing guy and a great leader.  Here is Fred's letter to us from back on April 10th.  I was particularly struck by Fred's description of the Iraqi Military Police whose job is it to maintain peace, law and order in Baghdad; risking their lives all the while.  He says they are "willing to step up and be counted".  I was moved by this as I am sure you will be as well. 

Thank you so much for the note the other day.  I’ve been doing very well and settling right in over here.  As with any new organization, the first 30 days are very challenging.  Add in the challenges we face here and you can imagine that it’s just a tad bit stressful.  Luckily I’m not out kicking in doors every day.  Those guys are the heroes here.  I’m just working to provide them with the best support possible when they come back from a tough mission.  The team I have to do that it absolutely incredible.  I interact each day with a team of service professionals in the construction, food service, security, and administrative areas.  Every day that I come to work is a new challenge.  The consistency lies in the people.  I’m getting to coach people to achieve superior results in a difficult environment and LOVING IT! 

I think I promised to talk about what my unit is doing.  I’ve been assigned to the command responsible for helping coach, teach and mentor the Iraqi Defense Forces.

Letters From A Recruiting Leader Serving In Iraq

Today I wanted to introduce you to a very special and gifted talent acquisition leader who I am proud to know and now call friend.  His name is Fred Hockett and I wanted to share his story with readers of this blog as well as launch a new series of posts that are all about him.  Fred's story is, in my opinion, so important that I am creating his own category on this blog called Fred Hockett.  As I think you will agree after reading this, he deserves it. 

So who is Fred and why is he so special that he warrants his own series of posts, you ask?  Well, Fred is a recruiting leader who learned late in January that he was being called back to active duty and would be deploying to Iraq to serve his country.  Now if I know anything about Fred and the kind of citizen, soldier and leader he is then he will likely take issue with my comments about how special he is for serving us and his country.  You see, as a West Point graduate his sense of duty is inextricably linked to who he is.  General Douglas MacArthur, in address to the Corps of Cadets at West Point on May 12, 1962, stated this more poignantly then I ever could:

Duty-Honor-Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, and what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

Fred and I became acquainted as I was working on a search for a client to identify a director of talent acquisition.  It turns out we shared some common interests, ideas and thoughts as it relates to talent acquisition, coaching and leadership.  It wasn't long until we figured out that our shared experience at West Point might have been a reason for how quickly our relationship developed and how well we identified with one another.  Fred was an excellent match for our client and the opportunity but in the midst of helping him with this career move he was called back to active duty.

Fred headed off to Fort Benning in late January to await orders and prepare for a possible deployment in Iraq and we continued to stay in touch.  I wanted to keep in touch with Fred for many reasons but most importantly to support him with friendship and communication as he likely faced deployment to a war zone.  He was sacrificing for me, for all of us, and the least I could do is offer to be a friend and another connection to "home".  It then dawned on me, what if I could somehow serve Fred by sharing his story?  Better yet, what if I could help him to communicate his experiences in the Army and in Iraq with the talent acquisition community at large?  I spoke with Fred about this, he cleared it with his superiors and here we are - sharing Fred Hockett's story with the talent acquisition community.

Going forward Fred will write to me about what he is experiencing, what he is seeing and what work he is doing (within reason and without jeopardizing his role and security of course) and I will pass that along to you right here.  I will try to do very little editing of his material so everyone can get a real sense of what he is experiencing.  If you have any specific questions for Fred just email them to me (link over there on the right) and I will attempt to get them answered for you. 

Thanks for your service Fred.  Thanks for answering the call to duty and for defending the freedom and liberty we all hold so dear.  Thanks for helping to make the world safer for our children and grandchildren.  Thanks, most importantly, for your personal sacrifice; for putting yourself in harms way so we do not have to.

That said, here is Fred's first email to me dated back on March 7, 2008.