Maj. Gen. James W. Lukeman, who took command of Training and Education Command on Aug. 14, is developing the way ahead for TECOM with the input from his staff.

“TECOM is a different place with a different mission than we had before,” said Lukeman, who served as the TECOM chief of staff from 2006-2008. “It’s a pretty exciting mission. It’s a great time to be involved in training and education for the Marine Corps. “

“It’s a challenge taking the best lessons from the last 11 years of combat and … getting them into the schoolhouse,” said the infantry officer who joined after graduating from the University of Notre Dame in 1980. “That’s the challenge. The next war won’t be like the last one, it never is.”

“The other challenge is looking to the future,” he said. “How do we prepare Marines to be successful for the next 20 years?”

Lukeman looks for four things in a successful Marine and a good leader: morale, esprit de corps, proficiency and discipline.

“The Marine Corps is a team sport,” said the South Carolina native. “You can look at any organization across the Marine Corps and look at their esprit de corps, morale, proficiency and discipline and you can judge the quality of leadership based on those four things.”

While he said two are simple and straightforward: proficiency and discipline. The other two require a little more effort to develop.

“But there’s ways to do that,” he added. “It’s all about taking care of our Marines and sailors.”

“And when you talk about the effectiveness of a unit to do its job -- whether that’s TECOM, or whether that’s an infantry battalion, or whether that’s a squadron -- their effectiveness in combat is as much about their cohesion, their teamwork, their morale and their esprit de corps as it is about their proficiency and discipline.

“So if there’s a philosophy of leadership that I bring to this job, it’s that,” he said. Lukeman has served in a variety of roles from rifle platoon commander to operations officer for Marine Security Battalion in Frankfurt, Germany, to Marine Officer Instructor at the University of Texas, Austin, to commanding officer of Security Battalion, Quantico, to his most recent post as the commanding general of Second Marine Division.

He had two pieces of advice for his young Marines and sailors.

“First: Stand out. Stand out every day,” he said. “People will tell you ‘don’t volunteer for anything.’ I understand that advice coming in, but if you want to be successful then you need to stand out.

He likened new Marines to college freshmen.

“They’re like freshman coming onto a college football team and over the four years of their initial enlistment we’re going to develop them into something more,” he said.

“So stand out. Every day. Otherwise you can go through your entire four years just hanging out in the background, like the guy who never plays on the football team, just rides the pine for four years. And that’s fine. And you can get out as a lance corporal,” he said.

“But if you want to be a starter, a [noncommissioned officer], then you need to stand out,” he said.

His second piece of advice is, “Tell your story.”

“I think there are a lot of similarities between a successful team in sports and a successful team in the Marine Corps,” Lukeman added. “It’s not about you, it’s about the team. I think there are a lot of similarities between team sports and being in the Marine Corps.

“But yeah, I’m a little bit of a fanatic about college football, particularly Notre Dame Football.”

Correspondent: Rebekka.Heite@usmc.mil