I know what it is like. I found myself struggling with finances in my early 20s. I was drowning in credit card debt, struggling to pay the bills, and not saving for my future. When I realized it was time for a change I used debt consolidation and Dave Ramsey to change things around. Once I was stable, I used the extra money I got from deployments,…[Read more]

I’ve read a plethora of leadership books over the years.  I’m a big fan of Simon Sinek and John C. Maxwell.  I’ve used “The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader” as OPD.

David Marquet’s “Turn the Ship Around!” taught me invaluable lessons about empowering leadership in others. I tend to be a bit controlling, so this provided some s…[Read more]

Brad,

I’m with the Kentucky National Guard and am happy to help out.  While I am not an EN officer, I do have some peers in that field who would be willing to help out and even mentor your NG LTs. Feel free to shoot me an email at carla.a.raisler.mil@mail.mil or contact me through this forum.

Regards,

Carla

Thanks for posting.  I’d actually been struggling with this a bit recently.  While I may be “OOO” I still tend to keep up with email and respond when needed.  I stopped using the OOO message if I was planning on responding, but this article gave me a new way of looking at it as a way to let people know my response time will be slower than usual an…[Read more]

The tasks never stop, do they? A bit of good news is that we have shortened the list of AR 350-1 mandatory training requirements this past year.  Hopefully, people are listening to us as we continuously beat that drum.   Over the years I have learned a few lessons on how to prioritize my list of mandatory tasks.

1.  What metrics are being re…[Read more]

I have found that Soldiers and even myself are more appreciative of small gestures of appreciations.

I took to writing personal notes after I was wowed by a General officer doing the same for me. It was one of the first times I had Soldiers come up to me and personally tell me how much that gesture meant to them.

Pizza!  I’ve used food a lot o…[Read more]

As a junior officer in the National Guard, Mission Planning seemed to be the most difficult to be successful at with the limited time and resources I had available.  When I studied the choices, I realized that I had full-time staff to help with the others, but Mission Planning was something that I was left to my own devices to figure out.

Hi, Carson

MOS training on drill weekends is a constant battle.  As a Signal officer, I experienced many of the same problems while I was a company commander.  Soldiers want to do their MOS job. Without just passing the buck on this one, I will tell you that your best asset when it comes to this is your BN CDR, LTC Kevin Jones.  I’ve worked wi…[Read more]

Hi, Carson

MOS training on drill weekends is a constant battle.  As a Signal officer, I experienced many of the same problems while I was a company commander.  Soldiers want to do their MOS job. Without just passing the buck on this one, I will tell you that your best asset when it comes to this is your BN CDR, LTC Kevin Jones.  I’ve worked wi…[Read more]

Officer was creating an account and  she noticed, as a Guardsman, she didn’t have the option under Texas to pick “other.” Texas only had active duty bases available.

I saw a reply I liked and wanted to find out how to mark my approval.  I didn’t see a “like” or “pie” option on the reply.  I clicked on the user name to see if I could “like” the reply through their profile page.  On their profile page it showed each of their posts twice and it also showed the html tags.

Tags at the end of a post are set to default to all.  It would be better to default tags to none so the author would have to enter tags.  Another option, if possible, would be to have tags only default to the same that were found in the body of the post.

That’s obviously a little more difficult on the Guard side, but actually a lot more important. We don’t have the day to day interactions, so finding ways to stay engaged physically throughout the month is paramount to many of us for keeping up with our fitness.

Local 5ks and other races are the number one way of keeping up with each other.  It…[Read more]

I don’t think I have much to add that doesn’t just echo what @cptchristopherprice has already said, but I’ll try. I’m an extrovert through and through, but that doesn’t mean I care anymore or am any better of a leader than my introverted peers.  Some of my best friends are introverts!

As others have mentioned, it comes down to self-awareness. W…[Read more]

In my state, dual branching is very common for this very reason. A few years back I had an FA BDE Commander who was also my full-time federal technician DOIM (boss) with our J6. The other option is to look for functional areas. I picked up a second company-level command, and a Major slot, as a Public Affairs officer (46A).

When trying to find…[Read more]