Recently I was blessed to spend three years in command of a battalion of outstanding American Soldiers. As with any leadership opportunity, some things went really well and other things did not. As summer approaches and hundreds of leaders prepare to take the unit colors, I offer a few ideas to spur some reflection on commanding a battalion.
As a commander, my leadership focus was simple: 1) Take a servant-leader approach, 2) Train deliberately, and 3) Communicate with intention.
The Servant-Leader Approach
The most purposeful thing a battalion commander does is develop the next generation of leaders and it is hands-down the best part of command. I studied leadership theory prior to command and was most taken by Robert Greenleaf’s work. The idea of developing and serving others is easy to grasp and write into a leadership philosophy, but it is difficult to embody as an Army leader. I made an effort to be a servant-leader in the following ways:
- A deliberate counseling plan. 1) A long and detailed initial counseling to get to know the officers and let them get to know me. We reviewed their goals, strengths, weaknesses, career timeline, personal story, my expectations, and some recommendations for the future, 2) Consistent quarterly counseling, and 3) Evaluation report out-briefs where I also asked for feedback on my performance.
- A deliberate leader development plan. The broad battalion plan was sequential and cumulative as we marched toward a deployment with our training schedule. The narrow plan focused on individual events for select leaders to learn (small arms ranges for novices, gunnery for the more experienced, or even a party to see their ability to plan and execute a mission). These were great ways to interact with individual officers, give guidance and see how they work and learn and then offer feedback. Reading and writing was another important angle to development. We established a reading and discussion board on our battalion portal to interact when getting the entire team together was not feasible.
- Be transparent about the Army and success. While I am a spokesman and caretaker of the Army Profession, I was open about the fact that my path was my own and it is not for everyone. I once hosted a teleconference between the unit officers and five former officers to discuss the life choices ahead. It was a hit, but it also demonstrated that I cared just as much about them as the Army. Sometimes that is hard to communicate.
- Walk-abouts. I hate sitting in an office and love the noise of the flight line. So I spent a good bit of my time walking around the battalion area. Walking and talking with Soldiers is not novel but it shows that you give a damn about them. Asking those simple personal questions, as well as a few about what they are doing, helps you know what is going on in the battalion. Soldiers like seeing the commander on the line or in the hanger. They really love it when he shows that he cares.
- Maintaining a positive climate. It is easy to get frustrated and flame people for failing at something you consider simple. How you react to bad and good news is emulated by everyone. They interpret your style as “right” and then practice it on their formation. I was very careful about how I worded my responses so that subordinates did not feel threatened, smaller, dumber, disheartened, or angry. Instead I tried to make them feel smarter, empowered, responsible, and energized. I tried to push as many decisions back to company commanders as possible, limited meetings, celebrated successes, and allowed people to learn from failure. If you spend your time caring about what the boss sees (statistics on command and staff slides, brigade commander visits to your area, or CONOPs that go higher), people will know and will be looking over their shoulder.
Training Deliberately
There is a balance between training for the current fight (a known deployment) and the hardest fight – expeditionary combat on the move against a hybrid threat. Although our future was fairly certain, I felt an obligation to the next generation to shake out those tents and get some dirt on our hands.
I set up an 18 month training plan that was, again, sequential and cumulative: a small Command Post Exercise, a small Field Training Exercise, standard door gunnery, then a multi-mission Live Fire Exercise that led to a long-range urban air assault. All of these events integrated leader development – from the planning and rehearsals, to the convoys and occupation of a tactical assemble area and the air mission commander of each mission. Leaders were deliberately chosen, mentored and debriefed.
I also did a radical thing in battalion command…I stepped away from PowerPoint classes and incorporated tactical decision exercises (TDE) into the development of air mission commanders. TDEs are used at USMA, law enforcement, Benning, and other places. The idea can be expanded from table top exercises to sand table force-on-force events, and is particularly useful in developing adaptive decision making. The challenge is that it takes time, thought, and energy to make these happen. It is too easy to fall back on a recycled power point brief for the “name your topic” OPD.
Communicating with Intention
What you ask to see and what is presented at meetings reveals what is important to your organization. If you spend an entire Command and Staff reviewing charts of data and have every staff officer briefing measures of compliance and their pet projects, your team will become bureaucrats. I abolished the Command and Staff meeting during my first month in command after the S1 briefed 15 slides of officer and non-commissioned officer evaluation reports and award trackers.
Further, showing a stop light chart citing which company completed the quarterly training first made me angry. First, you are creating competition in the wrong area and second, you are measuring the wrong thing. A good battalion commander knows how to communicate what is important (not stats but a climate where respect is embraced and deviations are dealt with appropriately). In place of command and staff, we held a personnel readiness review every other week that was done one company at a time to review readiness measures focused on medical and fitness issues, along with outstanding legal matters.
I hope these thoughts are helpful, not just for battalion commanders, but for leaders at all echelons who have the privilege to lead our Soldiers.
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