Initiative – I guide myself by understanding my senior rater’s intent and taking action/making decisions to get after it. if you wait to be told to do things you may be behind a bit. Early on, I had my boss pull me off of things (learning mistakes/growing pains) which is far better I was told after, than to be asked to “jump” on this or that. Also, “up and out”, you’ll hear this term and what it means is, you are able to resource and work with people, horizontally and vertically, and see the big picture, not just what’s in front of you. How do you “plan” not just “execute” which is what most lieutenants do and how do you integrate, coordinate with others? There are many resources and helpful people out there and it is amazingly easy if you just ask. An example – I was a 2LT Truck PLT PL and QRF OIC. I wanted to do PLT STX and needed a senior infantry NCO to do a train-the-trainer with my NCOs on weapons, tactics, all things infantry, and OC my lanes. I went to the infantry BDE and asked for exactly that – I could see those guys suppressing smiles, like “who’s this butter-bar?” I offered them some air assault training, my company commander was not happy, as we didn’t own any aircraft. I knew the pilots always asked for guys to walk with radios on the ground and train with them – so I called my pilot friends, they only too gladly agreed to take the infantry guys for air assault training etc. and I got my senior infantry NCO with multiple-deployments to train my QRF element.