Making the Team: A Guide for Managers, Fifth Edition

Chapter 5 Team Identity, Emotion, and Development

Sergeant M. Joshua Laughery could not tell what was happening on the evening of September 12, 2011 as he was positioned in a pitch-black cellar until a Taliban gunfighter fired his AK-47. Laughery was on patrol in an Afghan village when his squad was ambushed and was under heavy fire from insurgents. Laughery’s squad managed to corner the insurgents in an underground cellar complex, and as the soldiers prepared to go inside, one of the insurgents ran toward the American squad, fired an AK-47, and detonated a grenade. Laughery’s entire squad and platoon leaders were incapacitated by the injuries, and two of his men were so injured that they faced imminent death. So, for the next 25 minutes, Laughery ...