Category Archives: The Profession

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A Sergeant Major’s Advice for a Field Grade Officer

A Guest Post by Carl J. Cunningham

U.S. Army photo by Gertrud Zach

The transition to Major is probably the most difficult in the officer corps.  The officer’s power and influence drastically increase despite typically serving on a staff.  Most senior officers maintain that Major is the first rank in which one becomes a “Company man/woman” where the focus is about the organization.  And depending on the branch, the initial assignment may be the first time working above the battalion level.  These changes in the officer’s power and influence require an altered approach to relationships, systems and processes, and the mentoring of subordinate officers.  Because the Command and General Staff College (CGSC) does not provide many Noncommissioned Officer (NCO) engagement opportunities for its students, I offer some thoughts for new field grade (FG) officers moving back out into the force.  The paper’s focus applies to Majors in any branch and at any echelon, but especially those who will lead a staff section at the brigade level or above.

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A Missed Opportunity: Learning from NCOs at Command and General Staff College

A Guest Post by Jeremy Flake

U.S. Army photo by Terrence Bell

A few weeks after graduating from CGSC, I began to reflect on the past year, particularly regarding how all field grade officers need to understand the importance of the Officer-NCO relationship at senior levels. The announcement of the new Sergeant Major of the Army triggered many of these thoughts. I had met SMA Daily in passing while walking through the Lewis & Clark building at Fort Leavenworth, but he was only there with the CSA to talk with other senior leaders meeting at the Combined Arms Center, not to speak to students at CGSC. 

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How to do Leader Professional Development

By Josh Powers

Like many other concepts in the Army, Leader Professional Development is usually generated with good intentions. Leaders selected for command spend a considerable amount of time crafting their professional development philosophy as they attend pre-command courses, stressing over how each word represents their heart and their soul. Still, professional development is an effort that even the best organizations improvise their way through, often overlooking the recurring calendar event until it is yet, another forgotten task. So how is it that such an important effort often becomes an afterthought, only to be overcome by the daily minutiae of short suspenses and rapidly shifting priorities? 

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PME By Other Means

A Guest Post by Victoria Thomas

U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Kirsten Brandes

Traditional Professional Military Education, or PME, is mainly classroom-based, with the curriculum following a stair-step approach. Generally, courses introduce students to a range of subjects from military tactics, history, and strategy to political theory, psychology, and communication. However, given the relatively vast amount of objectives traditional PME courses must meet, there is little time for leaders to dive deeper into the subject matter and make layers of connections between the topics. Traditional PME is both necessary and valuable, but leaders must seek wisdom beyond the confines of DoD-mandated lessons. Our Airmen, Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines expect us to relate to them personally and lead them professionally. Drawing on non-traditional sources of PME will make leaders more diverse in thought and thus more capable in action through structured courses, pleasure reading, and extra-curricular activity.

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Informal Development: An Argument for Small, Informal Mentorship

A Guest Post by John Plaziak

Leader development is the crux of turning Soldiers into Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers in the United States Army. For Officers, a lot of time and money is spent at West Point, Reserve Officer Training Candidate Programs, or Officer Candidate School. Educators and administrators work very hard to provide a wide array of resources, exercises, and tests to help develop future Officers into effective leaders. Once Officers graduate their commissioning source, their education shifts towards the technical requirements of their branch in classroom and field environments where their educators are clearly defined as TACs and Small Group Leaders. However, I believe that by inserting informal leader development opportunities into Basic Officer Leader’s Course and the Captain’s Career Course, we can create an expectation and culture of small group and informal leader professional development. 

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Military Leadership: Self-Development

A Guest Post by Christopher Little

Pitt Air Force ROTC students talk with their commander, Lt. Col. Diana Bishop, on the 29th floor of the Cathedral. (Courtesy of Jayson Baloy)

Do I know enough about this situation to effectively lead my team? Am I able to accomplish the mission without burning out the people executing it? If leadership was straightforward, then these questions wouldn’t need to be asked. People gravitate toward leaders, and some have aspirations to be one.  Some may even find themselves in a leadership role regardless of their own desire. It is critical for those aspiring to be leaders to practice the art of self-development. Leaders can pursue self-development in different ways. Retired General James Mattis has always been a prolific reader and views reading as a seminal part of self-development. He has a library of more than seven thousand books, enough to fill a small library! In a 2003 correspondence he stated, “Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed before. It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.” Reading can tell someone a lot of what they need to know without ever having lived or experienced a situation. Reading from other’s experiences or studies should be at the top of a person’s self-development to-do list. 

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BUILDING THE BENCH: A TEMPLATE FOR DEVELOPING THE NEXT GENERATION

A Guest Post by Steven Leonard

Several years ago, I sat through a professional development session that was one of the most painful of my career. We gathered around a large table as a young lieutenant disassembled and reassembled an M-4 rifle, while providing stilted commentary in a sort of step-by-step, “how to” manner. When he was finished, we retired to the all ranks club for a round of beers and some obligatory, Friday afternoon team building. The following month, we repeated the same process, but with a different lieutenant and an M-9 Beretta. A month later, we were back to the M-4 and another lieutenant. Rinse and repeat. This was our leader development program.

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“Leader development, show me that in your METL…

A Post by Billy Folinusz

Sergeant William Jasper (c. 1750 – Oct. 9, 1779) of the 2nd South Carolina Regiment fought at the Siege of Savannah. On October 9th, 1779 during the failed American attempt to take Savannah, Sergeant Jasper was mortally wounded while rallying the troops around the colors. He was able to retain his regimental colors during the retreat and died shortly after.

As a company commander, your quarterly training brief (QTB) is a big deal.  You feel the pressure to show how you are preparing your organization to be successful and accomplish its mission.  In the spring of 2015, I conducted my first QTB as a commander. We spent weeks as a leadership team preparing our training plan and brief.  One of the critical portions I would brief as the company commander, was my plan to take all my NCOs and officers on a “staff ride” through the Siege of Savannah.  As we walked into the session, I felt there was little that could go wrong. We had prepared thoroughly, nested our training plan, rehearsed multiple times, and felt confident we had a solid briefing that would impress our leadership. The brief started, and we were off to a great start. As we came around to the staff ride portion, I was genuinely excited to show how our company was investing in leader development.  When the “Siege of Savannah” slide popped onto the screen, I saw my commander’s face begin to contort. After my introduction to the event, I jumped into how the staff ride synchronized with my command philosophy, and that’s when I was stopped…

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The Leadership Mindset

Part Two: Don't Give 'em any Bull

At the end of a steamy day of training, seventy-five tired, sweat-soaked new Marines sat in the dirt, looking up at the lanky lieutenant standing before them, lecturing on the topic of the day. It was September 1942.

Nine months had passed since the attack on Pearl Harbor, bringing America into World War II. The Marine Corps had tripled in size since numbering 55,000 in June 1941, and it was still growing. Parris Island and San Diego were cranking out new Marines in droves. Meanwhile Quantico was producing brand new Second Lieutenants like the one in front of these Marines: Henry Van Joslin.  He had still been in school at William and Mary in April. But on the first day of September, the 21-year-old had arrived at Camp New River and taken command of this newly formed rifle company: Company “F”, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marines.  

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Counseling Subordinates Sets Expectations and Standards 

A Continuation of the Series by Nate Player

U.S. Army photo by Elizabeth Fraser

“Counseling is the most important tool that leaders have at their disposal. Clearly communicating expectations and standards provides a baseline for measuring performance and ensures that both the rater and rated officer understand expectations. This is especially important when managing your rater profile and justifying the contents of evaluation reports for both officers and NCOs.”