I am one to always have a solution or to be in the midst of coming up with one. When I first arrived at my unit and after getting my feet grounded a little bit I realized it was becoming a problem. I was doing ALL of the planning and coordinating for our training calendar, I was telling them what I wanted and how specifically I wanted it. This took away the power of my NCO’s and the motivation dropped.

My solution to fix that is this: our training calendar is published 8 weeks out, so at the end of each week I sit down with my NCO’s and we look at our T+9 and T+10 calendar to see what the Company has planned. Then, they tell me what their specific section needs more help with or more time. We put it on the calendar. At T+4 they owe me and my PSG an outline CONOP (this also helps them get into the habit of knowing how much time and coordination goes into planning). The NCO’s leave, I tell my PSG how I would do it or execute or the things I would change and that conversation stays between us. The NCO’s bring back a detailed timeline CONOP at T+2, we tweak a little and then move on and execute.

That way my soldiers still feel empowered and know that ultimately they are the ones setting the training plan, I still express my concerns and guidance to my PSG without influencing any of our section Sergeants and its only that their point of delivery based on their plan where we make changes to all meet each others intent. It isn’t easy but it has brought us leaps and bounds together!