Write an Article
Background
As an official Army resource, CJO seeks articles to support the development of junior officers. While CJO considers articles on a wide range of military and leadership topics, we are seeking articles in the following areas:
- Leadership: How to build key leadership skills at the individual or organizational level. Lessons and advice on how to develop the following areas:
- Individual: Importance of character, how to relate to soldiers and be authentic, how to practice humility, interacting with people from different cultures, understanding how leaders make decisions, public speaking, writing, and other core leadership topics.
- Team: Building a strong culture, team effectiveness, ethical challenges, maintaining discipline in a unit, managing conflict or hard relationships, and other organizational-level topics.
- Health & Wellness: Importance of “whole health” (mental, physical, and emotional), nutrition, sleep, how to build good habits, self-care, maintaining work-life balance, managing stress, and other wellness topics.
- Events: Advice or lessons learned managing the wide range of events and activities that junior officers encounter, such as: running a range, preparing for the field or gunnery, unit inspections, writing awards, NCOERs/ evaluations, NTC/ JRTC rotations, and deployments.
- Managing Transitions: Arriving to a unit, changing positions during important times, having a new NCO counterpart, adjusting to new leadership, PCSing, deployments, DITY moves, attending military school, and preparing for ETS.
- Company Command: Preparing for command, first 90 days in command, how to run a meeting, managing relationships, tips on mentorship, building culture in a unit, understanding UCMJ, advice on FRGs, and achieving results as a team.
- Executive Officer: Understanding the knowledge and skills needed to thrive as an XO, to include: managing the different relationships in the company, learning supply, shared leadership, being 2nd in command, mentoring LTs and NCOs, and other important XO functions.
- Platoon Leader: Reflections on lessons around building trust with your NCOs and soldiers, developing a platoon culture, managing difficult situations, developing others, managing the multiple responsibilities of a new officer, and building key skills needed to lead a platoon.
- Career: Preparing for and succeeding in BOLC, branch detail, Captain’s Career Course, selecting a graduate program/ school, applying to special forces, functional areas, Army schools, USMA assignments, other special units/assignments, etc.
Process & Guidelines
If you’d like to write about one of those topics, or if you have another topic you’d like to write about that will help junior officers, please send a message to CJO@westpoint.edu with some basic details of your idea. You should review some of the articles on the CJO site before submitting something – not only to determine what topics are already covered/where you can add value (what are you missing that we should have for junior officers!), but also to help you determine the style, tone, format, etc. of successful articles.
After you correspond with a representative from CJO about your intended topic, please consider the following guidelines when preparing your outline.
- Length– We’ve found that submissions between 600 and 800 words work best. Articles should not exceed 1,000 words.
- Title– The title should be interesting and draw the reader in. It should be professional and give the reader a sense of what the article covers.
- Engaging– Consider using a personal story, interesting question, or some other way to engage the reader and make them feel more connected to what you are writing about.
- Research/ External sources– Your experience and perspective are the central component of the article, but you should reference external sources or research that supports your ideas when possible.
- Hyperlinks– Junior Officers reading your piece may be interested in exploring the resources you discuss, so hyperlink sources, research, articles, and other key pieces of information in your article where appropriate.
- Photo– Please include a photo related to the theme of your article. It should be attributed (provide image source URL), at least 200×200 pixels, JPG or PNG format.
- Writing guidance– Write in a conversational voice/tone. You may write in the first person if you wish. Use APA format for your references. Hyperlink sources.
- Biography– Include a biography at the end of your submission. The recommended length for the bio is 3-6 sentences (50-75 words). Please follow the example [here].
Read more …
Submit articles using the form below or if you prefer to use email send them to CJO@westpoint.edu. The subject line of the email should start with “ARTICLE SUBMISSION” in all CAPS. Note- please include this even if you’re just pitching an idea or asking for feedback on an idea. When submitting an article, please submit it as a single Word document with the photo and your bio included.
After submission, your article will be returned to you with feedback from our editorial team. If your article is selected for publication, then it is your responsibility to review those comments and ensure you send back a ‘clean’ version of the article which is ready to publish with no tracked changes remaining. If any track changes do remain in the returned document, then we will assume that those changes are meant to be accepted and will accept all; the piece will then be published as-is.
We encourage you to use Grammarly on your work before submitting; Grammarly is much better at catching readability errors than Microsoft word.
If we publish your article, the CJO has full rights to the content, including but not limited to edit, mix, duplicate, use, or re-use it in whole or in part as it so chooses.