I’m a BDE S-3 for an MI BDE and find I wish our company and field grade officers would think about this question more often.

The biggest problems I find company grade officers (and company commanders) run into when they brief in higher level meetings are:

1. They don’t have updated/correct information.  When your slide – or other medium – reflects bad information it reflects badly on you.  When you have to say ‘this information isn’t correct’ the first time you’re given a pass, after multiple iterations though you lose credibility fast – and rarely gain it back.

2. Failure to summarize.  You’re rightly proud of your unit and your accomplishments – but you’re there to inform the CDR or senior leader.  They’ve got you to manage the details.  If you don’t have a BLUF for each item or slide you are wrong.

3. Failure to prepare – the first two are manifestations of this phenomenon.  It’s easy for meetings to feel like they take up most of your day but if you’re not prepared for them they’re useless.

4. Failure to answer the question being asked.  I’ll frequently see company grade officers ready to brief their good news or slide – but not ready to think about and answer probing questions honestly.  It makes it seem they’re either not listening or unable to think critically – either way it’s a bad deal.

When I inspect training meetings – and I agree with @snusom they are the most important company level meeting – I see some of the same things but these are what I consider the most significant:

1. Failure to set and follow an agenda.  You’ve got a lot to go through – you’ve got to maintain discipline for yourself and your subordinates.  It’s a great job for the XO or 1SG to be the ‘heavy’ in enforcing time and topic discipline but when that fails it’s on you the CDR.

2. Failure to manage time.  You’ve got a lot to cover, be ready to table discussions or topics.  That doesn’t mean forget about them – that means don’t let a rabbit hole take over your meeting and don’t take 2 hours when you said you’d only take 1.

3. Failure to make decisions and give guidance.  Discussion is great – but company meetings are mechanisms for accountability.

4. Failure to follow doctrine.  The 8-step training model, the T-week concept, and FM 7-0 exist for a reason.  Maybe you’re smarter than 70 years of experienced leaders who’ve built a system to manage training – but I doubt it.  Understand and follow doctrine first, before you start innovating and deviating from it.