Lessons Learned in Leadership

As much as I don’t like using the term, I am a leader. I am currently responsible for 41 Soldiers in my Infantry Platoon and everything that we do, whether it be a success or an utter failure falls upon me. This is the burden of any leader in the military and in my opinion what makes them a good leader is when to let the other professionals do their job. That being said, I have been blessed with some of the most professional Non Commissioned Officers in the Army. Though at times they are a bunch of knuckle heads, on the soldiering level I could not have asked for better men to take care of the nitty gritty of being in the Infantry and in training young soldiers. I say young because most of my men are under the age of 21.

At times there is going to be a CF in training and everything else… If you don’t know what CF stands for ask a military buddy of yours and he will be able to give you hundreds of examples. I think that as leaders in any organization, uniformed and not, it is up to the leadership or management to sort out the CFs of life… These occur on any given day and can in the long run improve a unit or organization despite the immediate mess.

I spoke with my Commanding Officer for some time on Monday night and we hashed out a number of issues that we thought could be improved on. From convoy movements to training lanes of soldiers to you name it. After Action Reviews are as important to accomplishing a unit as the pre mission planning itself. I tried to implement this procedure here at work following on a civilian operation if you will in which there were many moving parts… A great thing about the military is that guys know when to check their ego at the door, it’s a really important aspect to learning from your mistakes and being a man and moving on to do bigger and better things. I have some super soldiers but they know when they’ve made a mistake and I hope that I do too.

So when you find yourself in a position where everything is a soup sandwich, make sure that following cleaning up the mess that you reflect upon what was supposed to happen, what actually happened and how collectively or individually you can fix it for the future. A great NCO told me that in that aspect you can make some great leaders out of anyone who is willing to follow your mentorship, learn from mistakes and drive forward with your mission…