Page 106 - JSOM Summer 2024

change by which performance possibilities are transformed certain disciplines find themselves relegated to the fringes of
in real time. As such, pragmatic power to change the perfor- the broader performance space. 2
mance space amid SOF missions lies with those who utilize
everyday pressures to embrace, absorb, and direct resistance Impression Management:
into mastery, creating adaptive impression management that Definition and Qualitative Exemplars
supports unconventional resilience.
Social determinants are the connections that positively and/
or negatively facilitate the ability of the SOF medic, team, and
Impression Management
and Perception of Competence organization to bear the weight of unconventional resilience
as a dynamic freedom of maneuver amid the ambiguity of
The term impression management comes from the work of SOF missions. Qualitative analysis of ethnographic data led
Erving Goffman, a sociologist interested in how professional us to define the social determinant of impression management
images are developed, sustained, and maintained in various so- as unique presentation styles found within the social context
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cial settings. While we did not frame our analysis with Goff- of the military that value SOST medical professionalism, such
man’s dramaturgical research method, our results strongly that unconventional resilience is ideally expressed as adaptive,
triangulate his findings. Interestingly, we only came into con- real-time interoperability among interdisciplinary medical
tact with Goffman’s theory after completing our analysis. and martial teams. To illustrate how impression management
However, realizing that the term impression management was either optimizes or degrades unconventional resilience, we
coined by Goffman, we want to attribute this idea to him as present two exemplars of functional and/or dysfunctional im-
the original author. While we extracted this term from lan- pression management derived from qualitative data.
guage used by participants in our study, the definition we con-
structed of this social determinant, and the thematic results Optimization of Unconventional Resilience
we coded under this definition, strongly align with his theory. The first impression style that optimizes unconventional re-
In particular, our results confirm how projection of a profes- silience is engendering healing as a significant component of
sional persona can foster either cohesion or disruption across the battlefield (i.e., recognition of medicine as fundamental to
interdisciplinary professional teams. The former supports war), which is illustrated in the following quote:
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achievement of performance objectives in support of mission
accomplishment, whereas the latter redirects performance ob- We had to advocate for a bunch of different missions. We
jectives that threatened mission accomplishment. argued that we could be right behind the battlefield in-
stead of on the edge of a medevac ring, which would al-
According to Goffman, impression management that protects low us to do surgery in three minutes rather than it taking
performance outcomes across interdisciplinary teams is built an hour. The commanders were shocked when they real-
on the desire of an individual within a performance team ized that their people could get surgery in three minutes,
to work collaboratively with other interdisciplinary profes- but it took convincing for commanders to realize that the
sional teams to establish mission objectives according to the damage control SOST brings to the battlefield could very
professional practical skills of each team and their respective well save an Operator’s life. We’re very light. We don’t
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teammates. Once mission objectives have been established, take up a whole lot of space and we are good at our
performance is protected when teammates are dedicated to job, which enables more SOF missions to happen. Then
accomplishing the mission, committed to the practice of their again, there are a lot of commanders that look at SOST
practical professional skills in support of the mission objec- and say “Great, six Air Force medics, and you want us to
tives, and reflective about individual performance in relation put you in a SOF mission at that place? I’m not sure about
to the interdisciplinary team as well as the mission objectives. all that.” Convincing commanders took some work, but
Goffman suggests that individuals within teams that support once they saw what we could do and realized the power
interdisciplinary collaboration across an organization tend of medicine to support SOF missions we started to gain
to project a professional personality that focuses value on traction in the SOF community. SOST is also really great
the technical skills developed through the practice of their at building rapport with the local communities through
profession. 2 our ability to provide life-saving medical interventions to
civilian casualties, which also promotes SOF missions.
In contrast, impression management that threatens mission
accomplishment diverts performance by re-directing focus to Military attitudes often place the role of medicine on the
the achievement of an artificial professional personality. This periphery of the battlefield, making the necessity of healing
artificial professional personality is formed when individual subordinate to achieving SOF mission objectives. In response,
teammates preen for each other and base individual merit on SOST medics embrace the tension that emerges from any un-
the ability to create an attractive, clever, or good self-image. intended illiteracy of the medical profession’s capabilities in
When interdisciplinary teams attempt to perform together, the face of catastrophic injury. By refining the pressure of
this projected artificial professional personality threatens to performance associated with professional misperception of
jeopardize mission accomplishment by splitting teams into medicine, torque is transformed into strategic awareness to
factions and creating new individual mission objectives. In effectively use medicine to increase SOF capacity in an austere
other words, team cohesion and mission accomplishment are environment. Education aligns the tension that exists between
threatened when members focus on the act of presenting their the seemingly dichotomous professions—military and medi-
self-image to impress each other, rather than on the perfor- cal—and creates torque through logically reasoned discourse.
mance of their professional skills to develop team capability. In The everyday practice of engaging professional argumentation
its extreme form, interdisciplinary team performance devolves introduces a level of respect into the impression commanders
into belligerent interactions between professional teams and and Operators have about SOF medicine, allowing authentic

104 | JSOM Volume 24, Edition 2 / Summer 2024