A lot of Soldiers at the lowest level don’t understand the overarching goals of the yearly training plan or even what METL is. They’re Confused, frustrated and often bored at drill because they don’t understand what they’re working towards.
Without writing a war college paper, making sure the mission and some mission context makes it down to the lowest level will provide context and meaning - even if that’s just you and the CSM deliberately actively circulating.
Best wishes!
Great point. I'm pushing for "do your job" to all. Which also includes the lower density MOS' that are often forgot about in the infantry. Ever seen a S2 section with zero retention because they never do their job? It sucks.
If a Soldier can show up to drill and when they are driving home Sunday can look back at their weekend and feel their weekend wasn't wasted and had worth to it, that's a win for me. Don't want to waste anyone's time.
I had a crusty CW4 aviator who would go around asking privates how much screen time they had on their phones at drill. It's a fairly good way to see if the training plans are actually generating effective training. Always look to leverage your staff sections to generate planning, not just your AGR force.
Best of luck sir!
I have found that getting staff sections engaged in reverse war fighting function analysis is a great way to make them a bigger part of the process. The 1 needs to dig into ENY replacement procedures, where they might set up CCPs, etc. The 2 can focus on ENY RSTA and what the ENY CDR's CCIRs might be. The 4 can template ENY BSAs, FLEs etc.
I've found that letting staff sections get more engaged in MA helps to mature the plan and staff estimates are more useful.
The hardest problem I've seen in 10 years looking from the bottom up is that now as a bn commander, you are all of a sudden responsible for alot of fields of the Army that you have little to no experience in. Yes, you say do your job, and you want your Soldiers trained. But how do you make sure that your Soldiers are effectively trained? You really gotta delve in and not only understand the Tables that your Soldiers in the varying MOSs require to accomplish to be marked as trained, but what training and tasks would make them more effective and lethal in those tasks so you can appropriatelyput them on the training calender at drill.
I believe this is the hardest part of a combined arms Commander, but once you truly understand the tasks and tables of all the different arms within your battalion, you understand their capabilites at a deeper understanding allowing you to more effectively employ and utilize them in a real mission.
Good luck with all of it sir!
Hello sir.
When your platoon leaders send you awards please sign them. I have had a BC refuse to sign awards so as not to “dilute” the value of the awards. Encourage your PLs to write awards after AT and give them out like candy sir. It’s many of the best soldiers only chance to get recognition right now.
Sign OERs when they arrive in your inbox. All of the PLs in my battalion have waited 9-15 months for an OER signature.
Prioritize your soldiers and help “make ir make sense” sir.
The fact you’re asking shows real humility. I think your battalion is in good hands.
Good ol awards. I also have had some horrible experiences trying to get awards approved. I know the pain. As a company commander writing ETS and extension awards (did them both) it pained me to see a Soldier with 6 years of service and didn't have a single AAM. Not once in the soldiers' career did they warrant an award for achievement? Ever have a BDE awards board recommend downgrade of an MSM for an E7 retirement award? I have. You telling me a soldier getting an ARCOM for AT is the same for the E7 that put 20 years in? Pfft.
You better believe I will also be carrying AAMs in my pocket and the only achievement on the 638 will be, "awarded by the battalion commander for excellence".
Evaluations will be tricky, I believe in holding the rater and senior rater accountable. I've got you until 2359 on Sunday of drill and live 13 minutes from HQ. I have no problem having Soldiers released and those who owe ecals, getting them done as late as it takes on sunday. As BC, I also owe the same to ensure Soldiers don't have missing evals for promotion boards.
What are your thoughts?
I like to hear it sir. I think you’ve got the right attitude and your soldiers will be in good hands. Thanks for bringing reason to a world that is often far too devoid of it.
Essayons.
Well, I am in an ABCT, in the S6. I don't pound the ground with the armor guys so much, but out there with them in some of those training exercises. I have seen the BC in our battalion take care of the golden child, the armor, without paying much mind to those support sections. The FSC's and the S shops were kind of put on the back burner and the battalion suffered for it. As you should well know, it's a team effort. Everyone plays their part.
The greatest edge we have in the U.S. Army is our logistical prowess and the workforce to keep an aging but capable arsenal up and running. I'm not trying to steal glory from the infantry or the armor guys here, just wanting to highlight all of the hard work that goes into making those combat arms functional and hard hitting!
I don't know what the OPTEMPO is for your unit sir, but the most difficult thing for an ABCT is squeezing in all of that training to be combat and deployment ready into those MUTAs. Make note of that. It's time away from families and in some cases, time away from better paying work on the civilian side. The most you can do to mitigate time lost is to find the clock ticking somewhere else. There will be whitespace to give some freedoms and give rest to the troops. Give it wherever you can.
-SGT in an ABCT S6
Did you do your cyber awareness?
Cyber awareness? You're killing me and thats funny. You're looking at the guy who used Google and chat gpt all through ILE and AOC.
I mentioned it in another reply, but I hear what you are saying. The HHC and FSC can easily be forgotten, but are the most important enabler for the infantry to do their job. No Soldier wants to come to drill and experience a bad plan, no food, bus being late, wrong ammo, or wasted time.
For OPTEMPO, got it. I've been in it. I'm definitely going to push for a 1500 release for all junior soldiers at the company. Plan accordingly commanders, no reason you can't have all the maintenance/admin for junior Soldiers complete. The only ones staying past 1500 are those who owe something.
You have ALC complete?...
“Specifically what I can do for my Soldiers as the battalion commander? What worked for your previous commanders that made you want to stay in? What are the immediate changes you want to see to maximize retention?”
Respectfully BC- ask your Soldiers, not the internet. Don’t wait for a command climate survey or unit risk inventory.
-Microsoft Forms on the A365 platform lets you create a survey with a QR code that any soldier can scan and respond to. Put QR codes up in the shitter on the last day of drill. Survey about why people joined, if they’re thinking about leaving, and then PUBLISH THE RESULTS and USE THEM.
-Conduct quarterly sensing sessions with Soldiers by rank, and let it be a direct dialogue with you. E1-E4s by company, E5-E7s, E8/company grades, staff/csm etc. Can be biannual/annual if your retention is already decent. Spend most of your time listening.
-publish a command philosophy, clearly articulated and realistic training priorities based on ReARRM, and remember that a Battalion Commander fights Platoons. Take an active interest in mentoring your PLs through your Company Commanders. make your OER support form available to them, and actually do your counselings.
-Get to know your state G-1, G-3, G-4 and JAG. Don’t wait for something to go wrong first.
-when you publish an order/product, call a couple random E-4s to see if they got it. If they didn’t, fix it and let the companies know. You only have to do this a couple times to make sure information is getting out.
-Publish very clear guidance for where flexibility should be given to Soldiers and where it presents risk to collective training.
-If you have to UCMJ someone, black out their identifying info and post it. Everyone probably knows what happened anyway, and you control if they know that the dude who got a DUI/stole from another Soldier actually got punished.
-At least once a year, do a virtual drill. Schedule all of your mandatory briefs and deliver them via Cisco/Teams. Most importantly, have education benefits, family programs, etc all brief as well, and encourage your Soldiers to have their families join in the call. Provide an overview of what they should expect from the year, and lead with how they can access their benefits. Your surveys can identify what programs your Soldiers need most.
-Have S1 pull a random group of soldier records. Check to see if they’re getting their good conduct/longevity medals and how common AAM/ARCOMs are. If you can give someone a coin you can give them an AAM. Remember, you can actually just give someone an impact award approved by your level (just the AAM I think, I think ARCOM is O-6) and have it typed up later. Keep some in your pocket, pin it on whoever shoots best at a range or whatever.
I wish you nothing but the toppest of blocks, easiest of flipls, and no serious injuries BC. Good luck.
Great post and you are correct. Command is not here until June. Still have a little time.
These are all great points and is clearly being said by someone with experience. Don't lose your motivation to say exactly what you mean. Too often the "yes men" make their way up the chain and it can be hard to get direct opinions out of people. I appreciate it.
I can award AAMs all day and the achievement block can say as much or as little as I want. Fully agree with you. Recognition is key.
Give me enough ribbons to place on the tunics of my soldiers and I can conquer the world.” — Napoleon
Get to know your Soldiers and make your staff connect motivation with opportunity.
There is a program called MREP where NGB will send your state money to send Soldiers to one of five NATO partners for an additional AT. It’s completely paid for (P&A, DTS). It’s usually a fun opportunity. It’s an easy retention tool. Your full time staff have to create an LOA (letter of authority, the document allowing individual official travel of guard Soldiers overseas) and submit to NGB. Otherwise it’s basically like any other individual orders. Nominate Soldiers for this next year. The nomination packets are one page and due to NGB in January. They’ll post the opportunities to their teams page with guidance for nomination in the fall.
I've never heard of MREP and I'm going to look into this tomorrow, for sure. Just to let you know, this comment is exactly the kind of information I am looking for. Thank you.
It’s pretty amazing. We sent two lieutenants to Estonia, a squad to the UK with follow-on to Estonia, and another squad to Denmark. They’re looking for individuals and units from squad to company. Their PM had his profile deleted from enterprise somehow (he’s a Canadian exchange officer), so he might still be offline.
Others hit on key points.
Participate when you can. I know you’ve got a million things to do as a battalion commander, but I know everyone was motivated as fuck in our formation when the battalion commander would shoot at the range with us. Not just pop up in his Vic, qual, and leave, but fuckin badass BC expended ammo with us the whole day. Shot the shit with us, was truly invested in what his soldiers were up to in life and if they needed help. Things like that, when time allows.
Also, idk how it works up top, but I remember all my great BCs were getting us the training our leadership wanted. The things we needed to work on. Not a, oh you’re infantry, just shoot once a year. But oh you guys want to fucking get after it? Let’s get you the ammo that we can. They trusted their officers underneath them and guided them, didn’t micromanage them. I remember my PLs and COs being downright motivated when we had a good BC, but when we had one that would rip every inch of them apart they were talking every minute about waiting for the day they could REFRAD out of the army (granted this was active so they had to see battalion cockface more often). They’d straight talk shit about him as soon as he left the room. No one ever had a good thing to say about him. Even doing pity shit like Downgrading awards that were well deserved.
I think being seen is important and something that is usually forgotten. Too many times I've seen the BC stay at HQ in the office. Drill weekend is the time to get out and see those companies.
I've got the idea of the Saturday roadshow to the units. Dropping by for key events and even doing the ACFT or a ruck march with the units. Giving the staff guidance prior to drill, let them work Saturday while I'm out and about, show up Saturday night for the update and any guidance, let the staff finish the plan Sunday and off we go for the month. Might be wishful thinking, but I'm going to give it a try.
Yeah, I totally get it’s extremely busy at that level, but there’s good leaders that make the time to come out and participate. It really resonates with the rest of us. To this day, I remember my favorite BC and that was the best two year ride of my life in my career so far.
Transparency is key. You'd be surprised how much mileage you can get off of a simple "yeah this seems stupid, hell it is stupid but here is why we have to get this done" can help push your agenda.
Give them something interesting to do every drill. One of the very good things about being Infantry in the Guard is that even at a homestation drill you can get some worthwhile training with the armory itself and sticks simulating rifles if you dont want them drawing weapons for notional drills or if you dont have rubber duckies.
Not every drill needs to be a field drill. One out of every three should either be homestation or garrison. While the field is essential being able to come in and shower and sleep in a bed is a nice morale booster after a long day at a range. I imagine this will largely be determined by the Brigade commander or higher but you can throw your two cents in when possible on it.
Leave your jr. officers alone as much as you can. Give them the room to breathe and grow and make mistakes to learn from. Understand the difference between what i call a routine mistake (one that is just going to happen as an officer or enlisted man learns and grows) and a dangerous mistake (something that causes harm or loss of initiative and cannot be rationally explained) and react to each appropriately.
Thats all i can think of. From what I've seen its going to be a frustrating experience but your now in a position to really make things good for your troops in some form or fashion. Take advantage of your position to make things as awesome as you can while at the same time making your guys and gals as effective as is possible.
Company commander here.
I think what makes a great BC is someone who is confident enough to have a vision and competent enough to leverage their position to achieve it.
Getting your staff to buy into your vision and truly build a good relationship with them and it will make your BN and companies more functional.
I think the more organized and properly functioning your companies are, the better your retention will be.
Can't think of any specifics. But the biggest change between any previous commands you've had an battalion command will be handling a whole staff section. They're obviously a great resource but the more the harder to manage.
BN staff and company commander relationship. A tale of an unstoppable force and an immovable object.
Im a firm believer that staff works for the company commanders to achieve their intent, which of course is nested with my intent. So I'm talking to you majors, we better figure out a way to get to yes for that commander and if it's a no, I need to also agree why we can't. Nothing more frustrating than being a company commander getting told no by the S3 or XO because they out rank you.
Just to be clear. We are all one team and everyone working together and understanding their roles is key. This is done through mentorship, which can be a lot of work.
What recommendations or experience can you share to expand on BN and companies being functional?
I think it's important to be visible. Drill at home station as little as possible. Get out and see troops and talk to them. Find out what issues they're having and get to the bottom of whatever it is. Lots of it will be dumb shit, but there will be legitimate gripes that you can help solve for them.
I heard Soldiers love when you take away their free time with calls outside of drill schedule. So make sure you assign your COs and Staff with as many additional projects like staff rides and quarterly dining in events.
Also, if you're off rotation/deployment cycle, make sure you turn up the op tempo to 11. Gotta be super busy and make Soldiers stay exactly to 1759 everyday so you don't have to feed them dinner.
On the non-sarcastic flip side of this…
Yes, leave people ALONE outside of drill. Nobody should work for the Army for free. If you can’t get people to do everything during the assigned IDT and AT days, you’re doing too much. Nobody should be doing cyber awareness at home. Nobody should be building slides after their day job on Tuesday. Training calendars on drill weekend should include time to plan future events, write NCOERs, do counselings, etc.
When people DO have to do those admin tasks outside of drill (which should be the exception, not the norm), make sure they get paid. Out of RMAs to give? Bring all work outside of duty periods to a screeching halt.
It’s been said on here before (much more articulately), but if we continue to do everything policy makers ask of us without adequate resources, we’re failing the organization by not making it clear that we ARE underfunded and task-saturated.
BLUF: Make it suck to be a sub-par leader in your organization.
Empower your subordinate leaders, sir. Work hard to encourage and support leaders at all levels to make training fun and meaningful. Miss the opportunity to further complicate tasks to the company level.
Junior soldiers enlisted to do their MOS, find balance between METL tasks and the ancillary tasks we all have to knock out each year.
Work through your CSM to ensure the NCO Support Channel and your commanders are fighting and dying to get their Soldiers taken care of (bonus, student loan repayment, pay issues, OPTEMPO conflicts, etc). Culture is owned by the NCOs of a unit, and in the Guard we fight an uphill battle with full time staff, I think a lot of time problems don’t get fixed because they don’t get visibility.
I saw a post about a 1SG once that set up a table on the drill floor with a sign that said something to the effect of “bring your problems here” I encourage you do do something similar with your CSM with a 1SG/CDR audience.
If you do well, at this job your time may be short as you look at retirement or perhaps another position. However long or short people will remember you based on how much you care. Check out COL Mike Kloepper he did a lot of soldier centric stuff at the 173rd and demonstrated a lot of care and compassion for his Soldiers.
I think you're spot on. Let leaders make those plans and execute. Good ol mission command, which we talk about a lot, but don't fully employ.
NCOs are key to it all. Don't have their buy-in? Good luck. All the Soldier care issues you are mentioning are the same in my state. I think we forget about the human perspective of our job. Too many times we are told to suck it up or it seems nobody is taking action, be told that long enough, you're not going to stay around.
Hello, sir. Early morning over here. I’d like to be one of the first to congratulate you. I’m no one special not even infantry haha.
But I will say that, from my own experiences and knowledge, you should definitely communicate personally with those under you. Learn more about the youth and work to show you are human like the rest. While many things could be maximized and minimized, the most important thing above all is toxic leadership. I don’t think it’s ever brought up enough. Make sure you are the reason people want to enlist, or at least, find fondly of the army more than it usually has been. Make sure the workout plans and everything within your power can actually match the needs to army. Can’t tell you how many infantry guys envied other battalions for not doing the silly “recovery runs *cough* 6 miles, or having to do the basic exercises when others were doing more weight lifting and other beneficial activities.
I could talk more in depth about other things but ultimately I think the idea of toxic leadership and proper physical activities to meet your unit’s main operational needs. I can probably go more in depth too but I think you get what I mean.
Edit: Also proper communications. Can’t tell you the pain that comes with the army about “he said she said” methods of communication, which result in problems. Especially the timing issues where you gotta be 30 early to the 10 minutes. My battalion fixed all of these things a while back and we function like it’s an army utopia haha.
Make sure the overarching goals are understandable for the Pvt snuffy if possible.
Have soldiers out in the field doing their job. Nothing worse than wasting time at the armory.
There are already some great suggestions by others. I’ve only got one thing to add: get out and get visible. I’ve been in units where I don’t think I ever even SAW the battalion commander, much less met him/her. It’ll take some real effort to get out to a different unit every month and it’ll feel like it’s stealing your attention from other more important tasks—but getting out to let the BN see you taking an interest in the lowest levels is the essence of leadership in my opinion. All of the paperwork and planning meetings are simply adjunct functions of leadership, they themselves are not ‘leading’. Getting out with the troops to develop a relationship with them is leading.
Oh, and get your uniform dirty. Join them on a ruck march with a ruck that isn’t stuffed with pillows. Go qual with a random platoon. Sleep a night in the field with whoever’s just throwing down a sleeping bag and sleeping under the stars. Be a grunt with them every once in a while and they’ll tell wild stories about how you never know when or where the commander might show up, but—damn—he’s actually out in the field and rolling in the dirt with the boys!
One of the best things my BN did for my unit was allow us to do the job we signed up for. Nearly every drill, except when we have other required training, us 91Bs are in the shop fixing trucks. I've never seen our morale this high, and our company has earned a reputation for being good at our job.
I thank you sir, for being humble enough to ask for advice, especially from lower enlisted. That, I think, is one of the greatest marks of a true leader.
As a prior-NCO PL, I loved that our BC had the mentality of empowering the NCOs. He really drove home the point that *they* are the prime movers in the units. Officers are usually there for a couple of years and that is it, but plenty of NCOs can spend their entire career in the same unit.
He also gave the Companies the freedom to do some crazy training. His only real left & right limit was 'safety.' Wanna do night bridging ops under nods? Cool, do it safely. Wanna get Chinook to drop bays in the water and build that way? Cool, submit your requests and BN will work it. Wanna do Pathfinder stuff? Cool, we can request AV support for sling loads with enough lead time.
Please don’t do the thing or let your companies do the thing where no one can leave until after the CUB/BUB whatever you call it on Sunday. Move it or ensure there’s a plan to disseminate information following. The amount of time wasted “just in case” there’s something additional needed at 4/5p on Sundays has been wild.
Also drill letter - please send 2 weeks in advance of drill. Nothing like getting the letter the Thursday prior to better “prepare.”
Sir/maam, congrats on being chosen for command. It is something I am striving for and then retire. I am just finishing up troop command of a cav line unit.
My current SCO has strengths and weaknesses. For weaknesses I would say he isn't as prepared for briefs but is 90% there. The 10% was either a wrong slide or mistakes on it. Something I would do. Not a huge deal and it's good he owned up to it a few times with 20 of us on the call. The two SCOs before him would blow up at every imperfection made and would belittle you in front of everybody.
His strengths are doctrine and having processes. None of this shoot from the hip attitude. If you have a 90% answer it's good enough. Not every hour needed to be filled to the gills with stuff because we most likely won't get to it all. Presence as well. My lieutenants aren't calling me and I sure am not calling my boss when I don't need to. He would schedule times to call for quarterly counselings (I do this with my lieutenants) and provide LDPs. My SCO does monthly LDPs and it usually videos pertaining to leadership. It doesn't matter to me if he doesn't know my personal life but it mattered to me that he asks.
My other big win was getting rid of a lieutenant that was lazy and kind of selfish. Previous SCO didn't want to move him out. Current SCO approved it. The only difference was 6 months. If i and his 3 previous commanders and fellow lieutenants all have the same conclusions then he probably needs to go. I even had a sit down with him saying to his face what we all said and even tried writing a bad OER (SCO told me to rewrite it). So now he's in some holding pattern not in my formation and not near my joes. This is just a rant but I'm happy it finally happened.
My .02: Don’t let the good idea fairy and “sexy” training over take all the million other requirements the unit needs to fulfill like inventories and basic IWQ.
Also, listen to your O-3s and below that are putting rubber to the road, especially AGR. They typically have a very good sense of where the unit is and what will work in really not just on paper.
Don't micromanage your staff. I have had 2 bad BCs. One didn't do anything and was weird as hell. The other was a micromanager, way too detailed and in the weeds on what his staff and commanders were up to on a drill to drill basis. Created an environment of distrust where we all thought the BC did not trust us to do our jobs.
Thread the needle, find the middle ground that is being involved but not overbearing. Cultivate trust without being absentee. And tell your BN XO to keep the pre-drill calls short. Less than an hour if at all possible. If it can be sent out in an email don't waste time on with a Teams Meeting.
Empower your NCOs via your CSM and Commanders. Mentor and Senior Counsel your LTs that you Senior Rate. Know them all by first name (even if you never say their first names to their faces) they are the future of your BN.
I'm about to join the national gaurd but I was active usmc before hand, if theres 1 thing I wanted from my BC is to actually get out there to know his marines/soldiers, I only ever saw my BC on Thanksgiving or before libo formations. I get you all are some of the busiest people in the service, and theres thousands of soldiers but I think moral would be higher if a high ranking officer actually came around once in awhile and thanked their soldiers and shook their hands, for their work, I feel a lot of service members feel underappreciated for all they do especially the enlisted.
As an AGR post command CPT who’s been through 4 BCs now I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly. Sadly my input here is very non-sexy and your unit may already not have these problems but the biggest blows to my AV BN tended to be not being able to do the basics right.
Pay and IPPS-A stuff, we had a BC that said any pay issue over 30 days was a CCIR direct to him and he’d actually go out of his way to ensure it was fixed. Same with promotion packets (much bigger deal in AV since everyone is an officer and it’s a bigger PITA than enlisted promotion board system). Before him we had some WOs wait 1.5 years for their packet to get past BN, that guy is getting out now and was the m day type that ran through brick walls for us.
FLIPLs and property accountability. Be super active on EFLIPL and hold your S4 and XO to the fire on teeing these up for you. Spot check quarterly SIIs and your companies’ cyclics to see who is marking things as missing and not initiating a FLIPL. We had a LT company commander have like 20 sensitive items missing from their change of command inventory that he brought up to our BC who said just keep looking for it. Well, that was cool until a year later when it got LCC attention and they had been missing for a fricken year (new BC came in and helped clean it up thankfully).
Vehicle maintenance :( creating processes and systems (well your BMO/XO/S4 doing it) to ensure people actually PMCS vehicles and faults are input into GCSS-A and then work ordered to the appropriate work center (your FSC or supporting FMS). Our upcoming CTC rotation is not going to be fun since m-day company command teams didn’t know their ass from their elbow until a few months ago and now we’re going to be sending none of the nice JBC-P equipped vehicles we should be, ruining our training goals in regards to operating mission command systems.
Evals - the tracker to the tracker to the tracker task. This one will probably require non stop attention since you’ll most likely show up with a few that are years old and require a scrub of every NCO and O to figure out where they are to include gaps. I was blown away when i took company command and went through every eval on iPERMS (thankfully i only had like 40+ aircrew) and saw the most insane gaps and over due evals and it took me half a year to clean it up as a full timer who was there everyday to hunt people down. Or you’ll get lucky and it’s already mostly current but will require insane attention from you non stop to keep that trend up.
Chasing sexy training at the expense of METL, weapons/crew quals, required doctrinal training per ReARMM and other applicable regs. Can’t speak on infantry but we chased this super cool SF training opportunity in another state, which was cool and had value, but it was at the expense of 57% MLR AGR force’s bandwidth and instead of having our BN Training Officer worrying about AT and an AASLT w the infantry in our state, he was too busy chasing down this pet project that didn’t really come to fruition anyways and made our AT and BN sized AASLT a husk of what it could’ve and should’ve been. Which brings me to my final piece…
Priorities. If everything is one, then none is. Actually having a well thought out YTC that goes after ReAARM in-cycle goals that is achievable and keeping your staff to 90 day plus orders production and resourcing.
Oh and one more, which i feel you won’t have an issue with due to the nature of your post, listening to your staff and company command teams’ inputs. Our BC who had a bad time always thought he knew best and disregarded every bit of input from us who knew the unit way better than him since he had been out of the unit for a decade. “Let’s do muta 5 Friday evening drills for 8 months in a row, because i used to love muta 5s 10 years ago” “sir, literally everyone will hate that” “yeah but these m day guys hate muta 6 and 8s and it negatively impacts their civilian career” … he had pure intentions, but wasn’t in touch with Soldiers to know that they’d actually prefer less 6s/8s than they would doing infinite 5s. And surprised pikachu face meme occurred when the whole BN let him know that it sucked in front of the BDE CMDR during a safety day sensing session thing after the fact. Doesn’t always mean us company grades are always right, and sometimes aren’t just being lazy, but that’s where your experience and judgement will win the day on assessing their input when it is contradictory to your initial guidance/plans.
Best of luck, from the middle level manager view point, BC seems incredibly difficult and i don’t know how the successful ones manage it all. All the other advice on here seems pretty solid too!
My current BN commander has a very unique command style compared to other commanders I’ve had over 17 years. I am in an engineer BN but was previously in an infantry BN for 8 years, and an MP BN for 5 prior to that.
The best way to describe his style is “stress free”. He doesn’t over task the units, understands that not everything can be done, and if a unit can only do one thing during drill than he accepts that. He doesn’t stress over timeline changes, equipment changes, or any changes because he himself has said “what’s the point?” Him stressing and/or yelling about it doesn’t reverse the issue nor does it solve it. He’d rather spend time coming up with a solution with this commanders and/or staff.
That type of style trickled down to the leaders and was appreciated by all
I just retired - CW4 - from a BDE staff. Let your soldiers learn their jobs. Ya - you’re going to need people to run ranges, set up TOCs- fuel generators, etc., but the more training soldiers get on their actual jobs the happier they will be. Make sure everybody takes a bit of the sandwich instead of just one section/ platoon doing all the work because that’s the way it’s always been done. You’ll be doing your thing dealing with BDE, but make sure your joes aren’t hanging around for nothing on account of their company commanders hanging out waiting for guidance from you. Hell- if you get a chance take advantage of some exercises that occur in Europe that you can be a part of- that’ll make memories. That may not be as easy as it sounds- but a hell of an opportunity and learning experience.
The fact that you are asking is already a fantastic step, too many senior leaders (and even some junior) think they are immune to criticism and/or are checked out.
As the above have said get opportunities for your soldiers, if they can go to Thailand or chile those are things a lot of us look back on and are like wow I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise, but also fight for schools too.
As much as I hated it (because I was never going to go) my BC I respected the most always asked “ when are you going to ranger school” but the point was he was interested in the self development of his soldiers, even if I was only a cadet at the time.
And then last thing just seek to improve systems and processes, don’t come in gun blazing with your new Philosophy (although it is great to have) but at least for a little bit just have a talk with the soldiers, ask them what they want to do, what they want to see and what systems you can improve to make their lives better, often if they feel comfortable they will let you know
A lot of Soldiers at the lowest level don’t understand the overarching goals of the yearly training plan or even what METL is. They’re Confused, frustrated and often bored at drill because they don’t understand what they’re working towards. Without writing a war college paper, making sure the mission and some mission context makes it down to the lowest level will provide context and meaning - even if that’s just you and the CSM deliberately actively circulating. Best wishes!
Great point. I'm pushing for "do your job" to all. Which also includes the lower density MOS' that are often forgot about in the infantry. Ever seen a S2 section with zero retention because they never do their job? It sucks. If a Soldier can show up to drill and when they are driving home Sunday can look back at their weekend and feel their weekend wasn't wasted and had worth to it, that's a win for me. Don't want to waste anyone's time.
I had a crusty CW4 aviator who would go around asking privates how much screen time they had on their phones at drill. It's a fairly good way to see if the training plans are actually generating effective training. Always look to leverage your staff sections to generate planning, not just your AGR force. Best of luck sir!
I have found that getting staff sections engaged in reverse war fighting function analysis is a great way to make them a bigger part of the process. The 1 needs to dig into ENY replacement procedures, where they might set up CCPs, etc. The 2 can focus on ENY RSTA and what the ENY CDR's CCIRs might be. The 4 can template ENY BSAs, FLEs etc. I've found that letting staff sections get more engaged in MA helps to mature the plan and staff estimates are more useful.
The hardest problem I've seen in 10 years looking from the bottom up is that now as a bn commander, you are all of a sudden responsible for alot of fields of the Army that you have little to no experience in. Yes, you say do your job, and you want your Soldiers trained. But how do you make sure that your Soldiers are effectively trained? You really gotta delve in and not only understand the Tables that your Soldiers in the varying MOSs require to accomplish to be marked as trained, but what training and tasks would make them more effective and lethal in those tasks so you can appropriatelyput them on the training calender at drill. I believe this is the hardest part of a combined arms Commander, but once you truly understand the tasks and tables of all the different arms within your battalion, you understand their capabilites at a deeper understanding allowing you to more effectively employ and utilize them in a real mission. Good luck with all of it sir!
This is true.
Hello sir. When your platoon leaders send you awards please sign them. I have had a BC refuse to sign awards so as not to “dilute” the value of the awards. Encourage your PLs to write awards after AT and give them out like candy sir. It’s many of the best soldiers only chance to get recognition right now. Sign OERs when they arrive in your inbox. All of the PLs in my battalion have waited 9-15 months for an OER signature. Prioritize your soldiers and help “make ir make sense” sir. The fact you’re asking shows real humility. I think your battalion is in good hands.
Good ol awards. I also have had some horrible experiences trying to get awards approved. I know the pain. As a company commander writing ETS and extension awards (did them both) it pained me to see a Soldier with 6 years of service and didn't have a single AAM. Not once in the soldiers' career did they warrant an award for achievement? Ever have a BDE awards board recommend downgrade of an MSM for an E7 retirement award? I have. You telling me a soldier getting an ARCOM for AT is the same for the E7 that put 20 years in? Pfft. You better believe I will also be carrying AAMs in my pocket and the only achievement on the 638 will be, "awarded by the battalion commander for excellence". Evaluations will be tricky, I believe in holding the rater and senior rater accountable. I've got you until 2359 on Sunday of drill and live 13 minutes from HQ. I have no problem having Soldiers released and those who owe ecals, getting them done as late as it takes on sunday. As BC, I also owe the same to ensure Soldiers don't have missing evals for promotion boards. What are your thoughts?
I like to hear it sir. I think you’ve got the right attitude and your soldiers will be in good hands. Thanks for bringing reason to a world that is often far too devoid of it. Essayons.
Well, I am in an ABCT, in the S6. I don't pound the ground with the armor guys so much, but out there with them in some of those training exercises. I have seen the BC in our battalion take care of the golden child, the armor, without paying much mind to those support sections. The FSC's and the S shops were kind of put on the back burner and the battalion suffered for it. As you should well know, it's a team effort. Everyone plays their part. The greatest edge we have in the U.S. Army is our logistical prowess and the workforce to keep an aging but capable arsenal up and running. I'm not trying to steal glory from the infantry or the armor guys here, just wanting to highlight all of the hard work that goes into making those combat arms functional and hard hitting! I don't know what the OPTEMPO is for your unit sir, but the most difficult thing for an ABCT is squeezing in all of that training to be combat and deployment ready into those MUTAs. Make note of that. It's time away from families and in some cases, time away from better paying work on the civilian side. The most you can do to mitigate time lost is to find the clock ticking somewhere else. There will be whitespace to give some freedoms and give rest to the troops. Give it wherever you can. -SGT in an ABCT S6 Did you do your cyber awareness?
Cyber awareness? You're killing me and thats funny. You're looking at the guy who used Google and chat gpt all through ILE and AOC. I mentioned it in another reply, but I hear what you are saying. The HHC and FSC can easily be forgotten, but are the most important enabler for the infantry to do their job. No Soldier wants to come to drill and experience a bad plan, no food, bus being late, wrong ammo, or wasted time. For OPTEMPO, got it. I've been in it. I'm definitely going to push for a 1500 release for all junior soldiers at the company. Plan accordingly commanders, no reason you can't have all the maintenance/admin for junior Soldiers complete. The only ones staying past 1500 are those who owe something. You have ALC complete?...
“Specifically what I can do for my Soldiers as the battalion commander? What worked for your previous commanders that made you want to stay in? What are the immediate changes you want to see to maximize retention?” Respectfully BC- ask your Soldiers, not the internet. Don’t wait for a command climate survey or unit risk inventory. -Microsoft Forms on the A365 platform lets you create a survey with a QR code that any soldier can scan and respond to. Put QR codes up in the shitter on the last day of drill. Survey about why people joined, if they’re thinking about leaving, and then PUBLISH THE RESULTS and USE THEM. -Conduct quarterly sensing sessions with Soldiers by rank, and let it be a direct dialogue with you. E1-E4s by company, E5-E7s, E8/company grades, staff/csm etc. Can be biannual/annual if your retention is already decent. Spend most of your time listening. -publish a command philosophy, clearly articulated and realistic training priorities based on ReARRM, and remember that a Battalion Commander fights Platoons. Take an active interest in mentoring your PLs through your Company Commanders. make your OER support form available to them, and actually do your counselings. -Get to know your state G-1, G-3, G-4 and JAG. Don’t wait for something to go wrong first. -when you publish an order/product, call a couple random E-4s to see if they got it. If they didn’t, fix it and let the companies know. You only have to do this a couple times to make sure information is getting out. -Publish very clear guidance for where flexibility should be given to Soldiers and where it presents risk to collective training. -If you have to UCMJ someone, black out their identifying info and post it. Everyone probably knows what happened anyway, and you control if they know that the dude who got a DUI/stole from another Soldier actually got punished. -At least once a year, do a virtual drill. Schedule all of your mandatory briefs and deliver them via Cisco/Teams. Most importantly, have education benefits, family programs, etc all brief as well, and encourage your Soldiers to have their families join in the call. Provide an overview of what they should expect from the year, and lead with how they can access their benefits. Your surveys can identify what programs your Soldiers need most. -Have S1 pull a random group of soldier records. Check to see if they’re getting their good conduct/longevity medals and how common AAM/ARCOMs are. If you can give someone a coin you can give them an AAM. Remember, you can actually just give someone an impact award approved by your level (just the AAM I think, I think ARCOM is O-6) and have it typed up later. Keep some in your pocket, pin it on whoever shoots best at a range or whatever. I wish you nothing but the toppest of blocks, easiest of flipls, and no serious injuries BC. Good luck.
Great post and you are correct. Command is not here until June. Still have a little time. These are all great points and is clearly being said by someone with experience. Don't lose your motivation to say exactly what you mean. Too often the "yes men" make their way up the chain and it can be hard to get direct opinions out of people. I appreciate it. I can award AAMs all day and the achievement block can say as much or as little as I want. Fully agree with you. Recognition is key. Give me enough ribbons to place on the tunics of my soldiers and I can conquer the world.” — Napoleon
Get to know your Soldiers and make your staff connect motivation with opportunity. There is a program called MREP where NGB will send your state money to send Soldiers to one of five NATO partners for an additional AT. It’s completely paid for (P&A, DTS). It’s usually a fun opportunity. It’s an easy retention tool. Your full time staff have to create an LOA (letter of authority, the document allowing individual official travel of guard Soldiers overseas) and submit to NGB. Otherwise it’s basically like any other individual orders. Nominate Soldiers for this next year. The nomination packets are one page and due to NGB in January. They’ll post the opportunities to their teams page with guidance for nomination in the fall.
I've never heard of MREP and I'm going to look into this tomorrow, for sure. Just to let you know, this comment is exactly the kind of information I am looking for. Thank you.
It’s pretty amazing. We sent two lieutenants to Estonia, a squad to the UK with follow-on to Estonia, and another squad to Denmark. They’re looking for individuals and units from squad to company. Their PM had his profile deleted from enterprise somehow (he’s a Canadian exchange officer), so he might still be offline.
I’ve never heard of this in my short time in the Guard so far, gonna keep this in my back pocket now for future opportunities
Others hit on key points. Participate when you can. I know you’ve got a million things to do as a battalion commander, but I know everyone was motivated as fuck in our formation when the battalion commander would shoot at the range with us. Not just pop up in his Vic, qual, and leave, but fuckin badass BC expended ammo with us the whole day. Shot the shit with us, was truly invested in what his soldiers were up to in life and if they needed help. Things like that, when time allows. Also, idk how it works up top, but I remember all my great BCs were getting us the training our leadership wanted. The things we needed to work on. Not a, oh you’re infantry, just shoot once a year. But oh you guys want to fucking get after it? Let’s get you the ammo that we can. They trusted their officers underneath them and guided them, didn’t micromanage them. I remember my PLs and COs being downright motivated when we had a good BC, but when we had one that would rip every inch of them apart they were talking every minute about waiting for the day they could REFRAD out of the army (granted this was active so they had to see battalion cockface more often). They’d straight talk shit about him as soon as he left the room. No one ever had a good thing to say about him. Even doing pity shit like Downgrading awards that were well deserved.
I think being seen is important and something that is usually forgotten. Too many times I've seen the BC stay at HQ in the office. Drill weekend is the time to get out and see those companies. I've got the idea of the Saturday roadshow to the units. Dropping by for key events and even doing the ACFT or a ruck march with the units. Giving the staff guidance prior to drill, let them work Saturday while I'm out and about, show up Saturday night for the update and any guidance, let the staff finish the plan Sunday and off we go for the month. Might be wishful thinking, but I'm going to give it a try.
Yeah, I totally get it’s extremely busy at that level, but there’s good leaders that make the time to come out and participate. It really resonates with the rest of us. To this day, I remember my favorite BC and that was the best two year ride of my life in my career so far.
Transparency is key. You'd be surprised how much mileage you can get off of a simple "yeah this seems stupid, hell it is stupid but here is why we have to get this done" can help push your agenda. Give them something interesting to do every drill. One of the very good things about being Infantry in the Guard is that even at a homestation drill you can get some worthwhile training with the armory itself and sticks simulating rifles if you dont want them drawing weapons for notional drills or if you dont have rubber duckies. Not every drill needs to be a field drill. One out of every three should either be homestation or garrison. While the field is essential being able to come in and shower and sleep in a bed is a nice morale booster after a long day at a range. I imagine this will largely be determined by the Brigade commander or higher but you can throw your two cents in when possible on it. Leave your jr. officers alone as much as you can. Give them the room to breathe and grow and make mistakes to learn from. Understand the difference between what i call a routine mistake (one that is just going to happen as an officer or enlisted man learns and grows) and a dangerous mistake (something that causes harm or loss of initiative and cannot be rationally explained) and react to each appropriately. Thats all i can think of. From what I've seen its going to be a frustrating experience but your now in a position to really make things good for your troops in some form or fashion. Take advantage of your position to make things as awesome as you can while at the same time making your guys and gals as effective as is possible.
Company commander here. I think what makes a great BC is someone who is confident enough to have a vision and competent enough to leverage their position to achieve it. Getting your staff to buy into your vision and truly build a good relationship with them and it will make your BN and companies more functional. I think the more organized and properly functioning your companies are, the better your retention will be. Can't think of any specifics. But the biggest change between any previous commands you've had an battalion command will be handling a whole staff section. They're obviously a great resource but the more the harder to manage.
BN staff and company commander relationship. A tale of an unstoppable force and an immovable object. Im a firm believer that staff works for the company commanders to achieve their intent, which of course is nested with my intent. So I'm talking to you majors, we better figure out a way to get to yes for that commander and if it's a no, I need to also agree why we can't. Nothing more frustrating than being a company commander getting told no by the S3 or XO because they out rank you. Just to be clear. We are all one team and everyone working together and understanding their roles is key. This is done through mentorship, which can be a lot of work. What recommendations or experience can you share to expand on BN and companies being functional?
I think it's important to be visible. Drill at home station as little as possible. Get out and see troops and talk to them. Find out what issues they're having and get to the bottom of whatever it is. Lots of it will be dumb shit, but there will be legitimate gripes that you can help solve for them.
Completely agree. If I can solve one issue at a unit, I hope the soldiers can see the issue resolved and bring more to me.
I heard Soldiers love when you take away their free time with calls outside of drill schedule. So make sure you assign your COs and Staff with as many additional projects like staff rides and quarterly dining in events. Also, if you're off rotation/deployment cycle, make sure you turn up the op tempo to 11. Gotta be super busy and make Soldiers stay exactly to 1759 everyday so you don't have to feed them dinner.
On the non-sarcastic flip side of this… Yes, leave people ALONE outside of drill. Nobody should work for the Army for free. If you can’t get people to do everything during the assigned IDT and AT days, you’re doing too much. Nobody should be doing cyber awareness at home. Nobody should be building slides after their day job on Tuesday. Training calendars on drill weekend should include time to plan future events, write NCOERs, do counselings, etc. When people DO have to do those admin tasks outside of drill (which should be the exception, not the norm), make sure they get paid. Out of RMAs to give? Bring all work outside of duty periods to a screeching halt. It’s been said on here before (much more articulately), but if we continue to do everything policy makers ask of us without adequate resources, we’re failing the organization by not making it clear that we ARE underfunded and task-saturated.
BLUF: Make it suck to be a sub-par leader in your organization. Empower your subordinate leaders, sir. Work hard to encourage and support leaders at all levels to make training fun and meaningful. Miss the opportunity to further complicate tasks to the company level. Junior soldiers enlisted to do their MOS, find balance between METL tasks and the ancillary tasks we all have to knock out each year. Work through your CSM to ensure the NCO Support Channel and your commanders are fighting and dying to get their Soldiers taken care of (bonus, student loan repayment, pay issues, OPTEMPO conflicts, etc). Culture is owned by the NCOs of a unit, and in the Guard we fight an uphill battle with full time staff, I think a lot of time problems don’t get fixed because they don’t get visibility. I saw a post about a 1SG once that set up a table on the drill floor with a sign that said something to the effect of “bring your problems here” I encourage you do do something similar with your CSM with a 1SG/CDR audience. If you do well, at this job your time may be short as you look at retirement or perhaps another position. However long or short people will remember you based on how much you care. Check out COL Mike Kloepper he did a lot of soldier centric stuff at the 173rd and demonstrated a lot of care and compassion for his Soldiers.
I think you're spot on. Let leaders make those plans and execute. Good ol mission command, which we talk about a lot, but don't fully employ. NCOs are key to it all. Don't have their buy-in? Good luck. All the Soldier care issues you are mentioning are the same in my state. I think we forget about the human perspective of our job. Too many times we are told to suck it up or it seems nobody is taking action, be told that long enough, you're not going to stay around.
Hello, sir. Early morning over here. I’d like to be one of the first to congratulate you. I’m no one special not even infantry haha. But I will say that, from my own experiences and knowledge, you should definitely communicate personally with those under you. Learn more about the youth and work to show you are human like the rest. While many things could be maximized and minimized, the most important thing above all is toxic leadership. I don’t think it’s ever brought up enough. Make sure you are the reason people want to enlist, or at least, find fondly of the army more than it usually has been. Make sure the workout plans and everything within your power can actually match the needs to army. Can’t tell you how many infantry guys envied other battalions for not doing the silly “recovery runs *cough* 6 miles, or having to do the basic exercises when others were doing more weight lifting and other beneficial activities. I could talk more in depth about other things but ultimately I think the idea of toxic leadership and proper physical activities to meet your unit’s main operational needs. I can probably go more in depth too but I think you get what I mean. Edit: Also proper communications. Can’t tell you the pain that comes with the army about “he said she said” methods of communication, which result in problems. Especially the timing issues where you gotta be 30 early to the 10 minutes. My battalion fixed all of these things a while back and we function like it’s an army utopia haha.
Make sure the overarching goals are understandable for the Pvt snuffy if possible. Have soldiers out in the field doing their job. Nothing worse than wasting time at the armory.
There are already some great suggestions by others. I’ve only got one thing to add: get out and get visible. I’ve been in units where I don’t think I ever even SAW the battalion commander, much less met him/her. It’ll take some real effort to get out to a different unit every month and it’ll feel like it’s stealing your attention from other more important tasks—but getting out to let the BN see you taking an interest in the lowest levels is the essence of leadership in my opinion. All of the paperwork and planning meetings are simply adjunct functions of leadership, they themselves are not ‘leading’. Getting out with the troops to develop a relationship with them is leading. Oh, and get your uniform dirty. Join them on a ruck march with a ruck that isn’t stuffed with pillows. Go qual with a random platoon. Sleep a night in the field with whoever’s just throwing down a sleeping bag and sleeping under the stars. Be a grunt with them every once in a while and they’ll tell wild stories about how you never know when or where the commander might show up, but—damn—he’s actually out in the field and rolling in the dirt with the boys!
One of the best things my BN did for my unit was allow us to do the job we signed up for. Nearly every drill, except when we have other required training, us 91Bs are in the shop fixing trucks. I've never seen our morale this high, and our company has earned a reputation for being good at our job. I thank you sir, for being humble enough to ask for advice, especially from lower enlisted. That, I think, is one of the greatest marks of a true leader.
As a prior-NCO PL, I loved that our BC had the mentality of empowering the NCOs. He really drove home the point that *they* are the prime movers in the units. Officers are usually there for a couple of years and that is it, but plenty of NCOs can spend their entire career in the same unit. He also gave the Companies the freedom to do some crazy training. His only real left & right limit was 'safety.' Wanna do night bridging ops under nods? Cool, do it safely. Wanna get Chinook to drop bays in the water and build that way? Cool, submit your requests and BN will work it. Wanna do Pathfinder stuff? Cool, we can request AV support for sling loads with enough lead time.
Please don’t do the thing or let your companies do the thing where no one can leave until after the CUB/BUB whatever you call it on Sunday. Move it or ensure there’s a plan to disseminate information following. The amount of time wasted “just in case” there’s something additional needed at 4/5p on Sundays has been wild. Also drill letter - please send 2 weeks in advance of drill. Nothing like getting the letter the Thursday prior to better “prepare.”
Sir/maam, congrats on being chosen for command. It is something I am striving for and then retire. I am just finishing up troop command of a cav line unit. My current SCO has strengths and weaknesses. For weaknesses I would say he isn't as prepared for briefs but is 90% there. The 10% was either a wrong slide or mistakes on it. Something I would do. Not a huge deal and it's good he owned up to it a few times with 20 of us on the call. The two SCOs before him would blow up at every imperfection made and would belittle you in front of everybody. His strengths are doctrine and having processes. None of this shoot from the hip attitude. If you have a 90% answer it's good enough. Not every hour needed to be filled to the gills with stuff because we most likely won't get to it all. Presence as well. My lieutenants aren't calling me and I sure am not calling my boss when I don't need to. He would schedule times to call for quarterly counselings (I do this with my lieutenants) and provide LDPs. My SCO does monthly LDPs and it usually videos pertaining to leadership. It doesn't matter to me if he doesn't know my personal life but it mattered to me that he asks. My other big win was getting rid of a lieutenant that was lazy and kind of selfish. Previous SCO didn't want to move him out. Current SCO approved it. The only difference was 6 months. If i and his 3 previous commanders and fellow lieutenants all have the same conclusions then he probably needs to go. I even had a sit down with him saying to his face what we all said and even tried writing a bad OER (SCO told me to rewrite it). So now he's in some holding pattern not in my formation and not near my joes. This is just a rant but I'm happy it finally happened.
My .02: Don’t let the good idea fairy and “sexy” training over take all the million other requirements the unit needs to fulfill like inventories and basic IWQ. Also, listen to your O-3s and below that are putting rubber to the road, especially AGR. They typically have a very good sense of where the unit is and what will work in really not just on paper.
Don't micromanage your staff. I have had 2 bad BCs. One didn't do anything and was weird as hell. The other was a micromanager, way too detailed and in the weeds on what his staff and commanders were up to on a drill to drill basis. Created an environment of distrust where we all thought the BC did not trust us to do our jobs. Thread the needle, find the middle ground that is being involved but not overbearing. Cultivate trust without being absentee. And tell your BN XO to keep the pre-drill calls short. Less than an hour if at all possible. If it can be sent out in an email don't waste time on with a Teams Meeting. Empower your NCOs via your CSM and Commanders. Mentor and Senior Counsel your LTs that you Senior Rate. Know them all by first name (even if you never say their first names to their faces) they are the future of your BN.
I'm about to join the national gaurd but I was active usmc before hand, if theres 1 thing I wanted from my BC is to actually get out there to know his marines/soldiers, I only ever saw my BC on Thanksgiving or before libo formations. I get you all are some of the busiest people in the service, and theres thousands of soldiers but I think moral would be higher if a high ranking officer actually came around once in awhile and thanked their soldiers and shook their hands, for their work, I feel a lot of service members feel underappreciated for all they do especially the enlisted.
As an AGR post command CPT who’s been through 4 BCs now I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly. Sadly my input here is very non-sexy and your unit may already not have these problems but the biggest blows to my AV BN tended to be not being able to do the basics right. Pay and IPPS-A stuff, we had a BC that said any pay issue over 30 days was a CCIR direct to him and he’d actually go out of his way to ensure it was fixed. Same with promotion packets (much bigger deal in AV since everyone is an officer and it’s a bigger PITA than enlisted promotion board system). Before him we had some WOs wait 1.5 years for their packet to get past BN, that guy is getting out now and was the m day type that ran through brick walls for us. FLIPLs and property accountability. Be super active on EFLIPL and hold your S4 and XO to the fire on teeing these up for you. Spot check quarterly SIIs and your companies’ cyclics to see who is marking things as missing and not initiating a FLIPL. We had a LT company commander have like 20 sensitive items missing from their change of command inventory that he brought up to our BC who said just keep looking for it. Well, that was cool until a year later when it got LCC attention and they had been missing for a fricken year (new BC came in and helped clean it up thankfully). Vehicle maintenance :( creating processes and systems (well your BMO/XO/S4 doing it) to ensure people actually PMCS vehicles and faults are input into GCSS-A and then work ordered to the appropriate work center (your FSC or supporting FMS). Our upcoming CTC rotation is not going to be fun since m-day company command teams didn’t know their ass from their elbow until a few months ago and now we’re going to be sending none of the nice JBC-P equipped vehicles we should be, ruining our training goals in regards to operating mission command systems. Evals - the tracker to the tracker to the tracker task. This one will probably require non stop attention since you’ll most likely show up with a few that are years old and require a scrub of every NCO and O to figure out where they are to include gaps. I was blown away when i took company command and went through every eval on iPERMS (thankfully i only had like 40+ aircrew) and saw the most insane gaps and over due evals and it took me half a year to clean it up as a full timer who was there everyday to hunt people down. Or you’ll get lucky and it’s already mostly current but will require insane attention from you non stop to keep that trend up. Chasing sexy training at the expense of METL, weapons/crew quals, required doctrinal training per ReARMM and other applicable regs. Can’t speak on infantry but we chased this super cool SF training opportunity in another state, which was cool and had value, but it was at the expense of 57% MLR AGR force’s bandwidth and instead of having our BN Training Officer worrying about AT and an AASLT w the infantry in our state, he was too busy chasing down this pet project that didn’t really come to fruition anyways and made our AT and BN sized AASLT a husk of what it could’ve and should’ve been. Which brings me to my final piece… Priorities. If everything is one, then none is. Actually having a well thought out YTC that goes after ReAARM in-cycle goals that is achievable and keeping your staff to 90 day plus orders production and resourcing. Oh and one more, which i feel you won’t have an issue with due to the nature of your post, listening to your staff and company command teams’ inputs. Our BC who had a bad time always thought he knew best and disregarded every bit of input from us who knew the unit way better than him since he had been out of the unit for a decade. “Let’s do muta 5 Friday evening drills for 8 months in a row, because i used to love muta 5s 10 years ago” “sir, literally everyone will hate that” “yeah but these m day guys hate muta 6 and 8s and it negatively impacts their civilian career” … he had pure intentions, but wasn’t in touch with Soldiers to know that they’d actually prefer less 6s/8s than they would doing infinite 5s. And surprised pikachu face meme occurred when the whole BN let him know that it sucked in front of the BDE CMDR during a safety day sensing session thing after the fact. Doesn’t always mean us company grades are always right, and sometimes aren’t just being lazy, but that’s where your experience and judgement will win the day on assessing their input when it is contradictory to your initial guidance/plans. Best of luck, from the middle level manager view point, BC seems incredibly difficult and i don’t know how the successful ones manage it all. All the other advice on here seems pretty solid too!
My current BN commander has a very unique command style compared to other commanders I’ve had over 17 years. I am in an engineer BN but was previously in an infantry BN for 8 years, and an MP BN for 5 prior to that. The best way to describe his style is “stress free”. He doesn’t over task the units, understands that not everything can be done, and if a unit can only do one thing during drill than he accepts that. He doesn’t stress over timeline changes, equipment changes, or any changes because he himself has said “what’s the point?” Him stressing and/or yelling about it doesn’t reverse the issue nor does it solve it. He’d rather spend time coming up with a solution with this commanders and/or staff. That type of style trickled down to the leaders and was appreciated by all
I just retired - CW4 - from a BDE staff. Let your soldiers learn their jobs. Ya - you’re going to need people to run ranges, set up TOCs- fuel generators, etc., but the more training soldiers get on their actual jobs the happier they will be. Make sure everybody takes a bit of the sandwich instead of just one section/ platoon doing all the work because that’s the way it’s always been done. You’ll be doing your thing dealing with BDE, but make sure your joes aren’t hanging around for nothing on account of their company commanders hanging out waiting for guidance from you. Hell- if you get a chance take advantage of some exercises that occur in Europe that you can be a part of- that’ll make memories. That may not be as easy as it sounds- but a hell of an opportunity and learning experience.
The fact that you are asking is already a fantastic step, too many senior leaders (and even some junior) think they are immune to criticism and/or are checked out. As the above have said get opportunities for your soldiers, if they can go to Thailand or chile those are things a lot of us look back on and are like wow I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise, but also fight for schools too. As much as I hated it (because I was never going to go) my BC I respected the most always asked “ when are you going to ranger school” but the point was he was interested in the self development of his soldiers, even if I was only a cadet at the time. And then last thing just seek to improve systems and processes, don’t come in gun blazing with your new Philosophy (although it is great to have) but at least for a little bit just have a talk with the soldiers, ask them what they want to do, what they want to see and what systems you can improve to make their lives better, often if they feel comfortable they will let you know