Recently I asked lieutenant I know to share his wisdom about life in the fleet with my class. He'd completed BUDS but decided he really wanted to fly after all, and ended up a helicopter pilot. One of the things he stressed was "exercise for life." But his reason was more external than internal. "You have to look good in your uniform," he insisted. He did, so what he had to say was convincing. He told the midshipmen they had to resist the fate of the civilians they knew from high school who, as the years went by, would get thicker around the middle. It's easier to respect somebody with a flat stomach, he was telling them. And, I'd add, if he's got "guns" (biceps), it's even easier.

It's not that somebody who's in shape and sharply dressed and who gives you a firm handshake isn't prized in the civilian world. You're just supposed to pretend those aren't the reasons he or she is going to get hired sooner than a droopy, sloppy person. And if you tell someone who works for you he or she needs to hit the gym or pay more attention to his or her clothing, it's almost certain you'll be hauled into court. In the military, by contrast, all this is very open, and it's SOP.

In this, the military is being more direct and honest about things we're not allowed to say in the civilian world: that looks, comportment, what you say, and even the shape you're in matter. Military people's voices generally drip with sarcasm when they refer to the "political correctness" of the civilian world. To them, this translates as: you can't say the obvious things that everybody knows. To the military, the civilian world looks hypocritical.

Not to mention sloppy and out of shape. Obesity is rampant in America, as anybody with eyes can tell. Every other week there's another article to that effect in the papers or another report on TV: they're having to re-calibrate airplane mileage because the average passenger is heavier than before, and make coffins for 500-pounders.

This trend has even reached the fleet. A lieutenant (junior grade) former student of mine writes from Bahrain that the Navy is trying to introduce mandatory PT. Sailors are getting fatter. Partly, he says, that's because of the fried and fatty food, something that has to be addressed from on high, not by the sailors. If it's there, they'll eat it. The Navy may be trying now to get this one under control. They have to; it's important.

A devil's advocate position might say: why? How much hand-to-hand fighting do the guys on a sub have to do? Let the Marines be lean and mean. And maybe the Army infantry. But everybody else can go to pot. You can't sink a destroyer, no matter how overweight the sailors are.

But that misses the point the lieutenant who talked to my class was stressing. Respect and morale are the glue and grease that keep the military running efficiently. If your men and women don't sense that you're locked on, dedicated, smart, and l00% there for the mission and for them, you're not going to be an effective leader. If you don't respect yourself enough to look good, they're not going to respect you either. You gain points for "guns" and lose them for a gut.

To somebody in the military system, this isn't even strange. In many situations, personal space is diminished to close to zero. People have few secrets. There's sometimes almost no personal time either: ship officers can be awakened at any hour by the squawk box. Besides, all your contact, up or down, is with specific individuals. A specific person writes your fitrep. If you're the lieutenant, your men and women are watching you all the time; everything you do is part of being an officer. Everywhere you go you're a representative of something larger than yourself. Being professional is a full-time job. It doesn't end at 5 p.m. Don't disgrace the uniform.

For civilians, being told they have to stand up straight and get a haircut constitutes an invasion of personal space. The military invades personal space in this manner as a matter of course. Any boot camp is about the total invasion of personal space. It even translates to my classrooms. If students are slouching or comatose, we do motivational push-ups. I hold up fingers for the number of times they use the mall-rat "like" in their sentences. They're expected to be on time with their papers, and to set them up on the page the way the syllabus tells them to. If they don't do it, they take a hit. At the same time they get praise for crispness of thought, good discussions and papers, high energy level, and even looking nice in their uniforms. Shiny shoes matter too.

Immediate action with real people: it's both the source of the military's greatest glory, and the source of its greatest problems. You're always doing what you do for a single person, or group of people. If the one person you're doing it for is stellar, things don't get any better. If he or she isn't, the result is pretty close to hell on earth.

If good leadership has a multiplied effect in the military, bad leadership does too. Unlike the civilian world, where you can usually do an end run around a particular person, or find a new job, in the military you just have to suck it up. But things can get ugly in the short run in a way they rarely do in the civilian world. There, you can think the guy in the next cubicle needs to hit the gym, but aren't allowed to say it. And you may be working for a boss, but you can curse him or her under your breath.

That isn't possible in a well-functioning military. You can't be motivated and hate your motivator. At some level, in fact, you have to love and respect that person. And if the next guy fails to show himself the respect of working out, you probably won't respect him either.

When it works, it's intense. When it doesn't, it's intense too. That's why the civilian world builds in buffers to lessen the intensity -- all that "political correctness" most people in the military find so silly.