My first platoon had elements of the “just do” attitude.  My first command was rife with it.

Approaching the end of my first year as a PL and the end of our deployment to Iraq, I was doing the left seat right seat with my replacement.  I was proud of the work we had done and the changes we had made and then I heard it from one of my lower performing E4s “Now is when we pretend we’re doing PMCS”….  I was gutted.  Where was the ownership?  Where was the pride?  And so I had my first why discussion outside of my squad leaders.  I coined a phrase I’ve used a bunch since then – “How many patients can a deadlined FLA evacuate per hour?” answer “0.0”.  Medics don’t like to PMCS, hell as an E4 I used to complain “Damn it Jim, I’m a Doc not a Mechanic”.  I didn’t understand why and as a young PL I failed to explain why and hence I had members of the E4 mafia “just doing what they tell me”.

As a first year commander I looked around and saw my company.  I remember thinking crassly to myself, “I have a lot of SP6 and SP7s but every few NCOs.”  My 1SG and I talked about it and what it boiled down to was I had a lot of scalded dogs.  I commanded a BDE HHC and the NCOs that were sent there were either 1) top of the class or 2) dear God hide them from the troops.  Regardless which they were they shared a common trait – officers.  The BDE Staff didn’t let them be NCOs, treated them as SP6 and SP7s.   Time in the HHC was to be survived while you found something better.  So the 1SG and I began a regimen of rewarding ANYTHING that resembled initiative.  Over time the NCOs began to come around.  There was the usual early adopters model and the usual laggers.  But given time and encouragement the NCOs responded.  It wasn’t that they didn’t want to lead, rather they were afraid.

We have been discussing the idea of Leader-Leader at NCOPD with my current company.  Last month at Drill I saw my E5s grab all the soldiers waiting in the orderly room, create a cell phone waiting list so they didn’t “lose their place in line” and take them out and conduct hip pocket training.  They did this without being prompted by any other leader and it was beautiful.