Include

Paragraph 1: Your current status (professional/marital/etc), expected date of departure from losing unit & date of arrival at gaining unit.

Paragraph 2: Experience/Background

Paragraph 3: Why you are happy to serve at your gaining unit. What you hope to do there to support the team.

Attach: copy of last evaluation, copy of ORB

The…[Read more]

Great points! Your performance in BOLC is one (small) part of what you establish as your professional reputation. What the academic evaluation report (AER) says about that performance tells only one side of that story. What your peers and trainers think about your performance tells another (arguably more important) side. Ideally, both will match…[Read more]

Ray, thanks for the reply! What happens when leaders visions conflict? Is there a negative impact to “pigeon holing” a leader into a manager’s role?

Can you explain the difference between a transactional and transformational style? How common are transformational leaders?

Good question. Your unit’s personnel section starts tracking you on their “gains roster” about the same time you receive your orders. So, it’s safe to send them a note as soon as you can reasonably predict your arrival date. That piece of the letter is important. They want to know who you are, sure. But, for nuts and bolts administrative and…[Read more]

Adam,

Messaging is a key component of leadership, one I admittedly struggle with. Delivering a message that gets my vision across but allows my team the latitude to act. Empowering and supervising, sometimes it feels like I’m on the wrong end of the fulcrum no matter what I do…

My question to you is how did the SCO’s actions change how you lead?

Ray,

I agree completely that management is a crucial skillset for officers. Personally, I always viewed anytime I was on staff or acting as a staff officer I was operating as a manager. Focused on helping the Commander realize their vision.

I think a strength of the officer corps is the balance we attempt to make between time spent in…[Read more]

George – mhmhmm, Books!, yummy! 🙂 Great post!

I’ve read “Leaders Eat Last” and it was good! I was able to read it very quickly because I found alot of parallels with military training. But I enjoyed how simply and straightforward Sinek explained things without being (let’s face it) overly hooah like ADP & ADRPs can be. I found it helpful and…[Read more]

Jeff,
I completely agree about judiciously closing your door!! Spot on, it’s inefficient and distracting. For me, closing the door was also an introvert recharge technique that I had to balance with the significant amount of extrovert-focused AG work that S1 requires (it’s alot of calming people down, and coaching many people through the same…[Read more]

Why Productivity and Time Management are important as a Commander pt3.

Team – we’ve had some great input on what commanders do to stay productive and manage their time. Today, I’d like to focus on a couple of resources and list of readings you should read at some point in command (or before if you have time).  Remember it is never too late to…[Read more]