Showing Up Is Important | From a U.S Marine Veteran and Vertical Farmer

Written by Todd Hanna, Vertical Harvest Farms Chief Operating & Revenue Officer and U.S Marine Veteran.

As Veterans Day approaches each year, one question that I’m often asked by coworkers and friends centers on the best way to celebrate Veterans Day (i.e., the best way(s) to approach a veteran on Veterans Day and/or what to say to a veteran on Veterans Day).

As a veteran, let me give you the BLUF (the military acronym for “Bottom Line Up Front”). The best way to celebrate Veterans Day is to show up & listen. Let me explain.

Veterans Day is about honoring veterans. The best way to honor a veteran is to show up & listen to them. Parades are great. Fireworks are great. Flags are great. Thank you’s are great. Speeches are great. But there is no greater gift or show of gratitude to a veteran than being seen and heard.

Veterans have unique stories to tell. They have unique experiences to share. They have unique struggles that they have overcome (or, in many cases, that they continue to struggle with every day). Those stories, those experiences, and those struggles aren’t always easy to share. And, while most veterans are willing to (and often need to) talk about those things, they are usually reluctant to be the one who starts a conversation about them. So, this Veterans Day, I encourage you to celebrate the holiday by showing up, sitting down, starting a conversation with… and listening to a veteran. If you do, I can guarantee you that you’ll learn something about them, and about yourself.

Equally important, I encourage you to celebrate Veterans Day by sitting down with a family member of a veteran. The families of veterans are the unsung heroes of our military. They have served and sacrificed every bit as much as their uniformed relatives (if not, more). They, too, have unique experiences, stories and struggles that they have overcome (or, in many cases, that they continue to grapple with even today). They, too, would talk about those things, but like their family members who served, they are also often reluctant to be the one to start the conversation. Veteran families deserve to be seen and heard and their experiences more widely understood.

Which brings me to one final point. Showing up and listening shouldn’t be reserved just for veterans on Veterans Day. Everyone deserves to be seen and heard. Here at Vertical Harvest, we don’t just believe that, we hold ourselves accountable to it. Currently, nearly 50% of our employees identify with a physical and/or mental disability. Like veterans, those employees have unique stories and unique struggles to share (and for us to learn from). So, too, do their families. They deserve to be seen and heard every day, alongside every employee at Vertical Harvest, regardless of their ability. And the act of showing up and listening, which I encourage you to do every day in your organization, means we can understand individual experiences we might not have been exposed to or been able to consider in the normal rush of daily life.

As a veteran, I know being seen and heard, carries great meaning for us. And, if you live by this practice, I can guarantee you that you’ll learn something about your people, about your organization, and about yourself.