51 Tips I Wish I Had Pre-Command

Below are my reflections on being a post CCC captain through command. I began to compile these about 6 months before I passed off the guidon and continue to add to and reflect on this list as the weeks and months go by out of command.

Disclosure: I attended Marine Expeditionary Warfare School (EWS) so my experience is colored through that lens, but I think the info is what I would have wanted to be told to me before I arrived at the unit.   They are a series of bullets captured in countless green and leather-bound notebooks and they can be repetitive. Enjoy.

1. The Army has recently put more emphasis on its “People First” initiative – it should come as no surprise that my greatest challenges in command were all people related. Not gunneries, qualification ranges, or ACFTs. Placing the right NCOs and officers who take initiative, can work together as a platoon leadership team, and helping to foster individuals will enable your company to achieve success in training proficiency. Things like being just and compassionate in administering UCMJ, having empathy for a Soldier whose job performance is being affected by a divorce, knowing when to send a Soldier to a school they’ve wanted to go to even though it may not benefit your immediate command, taking every EO and SHARP complaint seriously and acting appropriately on them – all will enable you in the long term to focus on Soldier lethality and proficiency when it matters most. Know your formation, not just your PLs and PSGs. This is a tall order, as a Tank Commander I had 76 personnel at the most with attachments but Infantry Companies can range up to 140 and specialty companies can grow upwards to 300. Make the effort.
2. Training Management & Training Meetings. I cannot overstate how easy this is to achieve on paper, but how difficult it is to make happen on the ground. Training management is critical at the Sergeant level. Platoon Leaders should prioritize tasks with the PSG on how to achieve the CDR’s end state and intent. Then Sergeants should brief Platoon Leaders on how they will achieve these priorities. Platoon Leaders show Commanders how they will achieve their intent and end state. This provides predictability and ownership; your Sergeants have decided how they will conduct the hour-by-hour and daily business of what their formation does in a training week, it is their training calendar and not yours. If your training calendars are being built by platoon leaders, or worse – by you, you need to get the Sergeant back in the fight. When you hold your first training meeting, ask yourself who is the meeting for. If you are doing all the briefing, and everyone is looking for your confirmation – the briefing has become about the commander and everyone is there to survive their one slide and move on. It took me 18 months to get a training meeting where PLs briefed me training calendars built by their section sergeants and then discussed and deconflicted amongst each other while the XO/1SG for resource and troop-to-task deconflicted. I tried to talk as little as possible, emphasizing that this meeting is about collaboration amongst the formation to achieve a common goal. I provided guidance and intent, and when changes occurred in the short term – context. Here are some guides you can use to gauge the training management and ownership in a unit when you take the guidon.

• • Do Soldiers look at the training calendar and consider them reliable or do they ignore them?
  • When the PL/PSG get pulled into a meeting or other event, what does the rest of the formation do? Do they execute the Training Calendar or do they wait to be told what to do?
  • Do Platoons set aside time for their own ‘Training Sync’ or another method for the NCOs and the PL to sit down and talk about HOW they will achieve an end state?
  • When you show up to an event on the Training Calendar, is it occurring? Is it being evaluated with a TE&O or standard that was published on the training calendar?

3. Expect more of your subordinates. As an AS3, my S3 demanded more than I thought I was comfortable to handle. When other units had field grade officers briefing the BDE Commander for a major operation, he expected me to walk the terrain board to brief what our Squadron was doing. He was always there watching and providing feedback, but let me grow in discomfort and brief my senior rater.  This may appear, to your subordinate, like you are giving them your work but in the long run, you are preparing and developing them with confidence to understand the intent and take action in your absence. You build systems that become less ‘me’ centric and allow you to focus on problems that are truly yours to solve. Do not walk gently with your Lieutenants, you must push them to the limits of their comfort zone and beyond. The modern battlefield will expect dispersed leaders to operate within limited intent and discipline, but you also need to train them to be competent. Every time you give them an alibi on a standard, such as not meeting an LD time by ‘just’ a few minutes – you are messaging that standards don’t matter. Expect more!

4. The Company’s climate starts at the Commander. Your unit will reflect your beliefs and your ethos. I was surprised at how often I could observe a squad, section, or Platoon and instantly tell what unit they belonged because they echoed the language, behavior, and culture of their Commander.  The Soldiers will tolerate behavior and values (EO, SHARP, bad work ethic) that leadership has shown is acceptable. 

5. You and your formation will inevitably fail at something. How you recover and react to failure will showcase your character and your organization’s resilience. Don’t take too much counsel of your demons, clearly focus on the way ahead for setbacks. Get ahead of your failures early, you should discuss with your team an assessment on how that failure occurred and back brief your boss as soon as possible. No Battalion commander wants to be briefed bad news by the Brigade Commander, nor do they want to hear about failure in your formation with no recommendation on the way forward. When another unit fails at something, immediately look within your organization – just because you didn’t have a roll-over or some other event that got a lot of visibility doesn’t mean your formation is immune. Learning from other’s mistakes is much better than learning it yourself.

If you want to read all 51, you can download the complete list here.

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CPT Steven Patelis has served as a Rifle & Mortar Platoon Leader, Cavalry & Headquarters Troop XO, Squadron Assistant Operations Officer and most recently as a Tank Troop Commander for a Reconnaissance Squadron at 4-10 CAV, 3 ABCT, Fort Carson, CO. He is a graduate of the Marine Expeditionary Warfare School, Army Reconnaissance Course, and Cavalry Leader Course and has deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan & Kuwait in support of Operations Inherent Resolve, Freedom Sentinel & Spartan Shield.