Commanders and Leaders or Senior Staff Persons versus the Troops...
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Originally Posted by
JMA
OK, lets start with point one. What do you believe the problem is behind the failure to enable junior leaders to act with greater initiative and independence?
Lack of trust. That is engendered by two things, the relative youth with thus presumed nominally poor judgmental skills thereunto pertaining and / or inadequate training. It is my belief that a significant improvement in training is possible, affordable and can be effective in alleviating concerns about youth and judgement. Another approach -- or, better, a complementary one -- is to improve personnel selection, psychological assessment and management by leaving people in units longer so that trust can be developed by exposure; the current common practice of excessive rotations of personnel (the US is the worst offender but others have the problem to a lesser extent) is detrimental to unit cohesion and the critical -- really critical -- building of trust.
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Followed by, is the selection process (specifically for direct entry officers) suitable to select for the increased requirement for independence and initiative?
No. Fuchs comment, discussed below is one reason. Essentially, there is legislative and societal pressure to not do this to avoid any hint of discrimination. I know...:rolleyes:
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Explain to me if you will what is the degree of flexibility soldiers (at the various levels) should have in obeying orders?
That answer to the question you asked is almost none at entry progressing to a great deal as trust is earned as shown by promotions. If Officer are accorded the luxury of questioning an order and being forced to resign or comply after due discussion, the only issue for other ranks should be the length of discussion. Concomitant with this is that promotions should be on merit and not as is today normal throughout western armies based on a reward for doing a good job. A method of pecuniary or other awards for doing a good job at any level should be totally separated from promotions to higher rank which must be rigidly merit based (good luck with that in any Democratic nation...).
The question you should have asked, based on your statement: "The troopie/the private soldier/the grunt still needs to 'do what he is told' without question." and my response to that should have been "Explain to me if you will what is the degree of flexibility soldiers (at the various levels) should have?"
Obeying isn't the issue, obedience is necessary but "without question" is questionable. :D
In training and in peacetime or less than full bore conflict, Troops should be encouraged to ask questions (which annoys the hell out of insecure NCOs and Officers :D) simply because they will learn more and faster if they do so. I've watched a lot of Armies around the world at work. In all of them, the good units had NCOs and Officers who encouraged questions and who went to great pains to tell their Troops WHY they were doing certain things. The rationale is that if a Troopie gets used to one explaining things in a way that makes sense, he learns that there's a method to what often seems to be madness and that his superiors are not mental midgets then, when there is not time for questions, he will just act -- and do so with decent judgement. The NCOs and Officers also learn who will ask the best -- and the dumbest -- questions. It's a two way learning exercise and everyone and the unit benefit.
Fuchs:
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There's not enough choice, so not all NCOs / officers can be true leaders. Simply not enough recruits for that.
That can often be true, will be true in major war but in peace or given small wars, there can be more choice. Most Armies are reluctant to exercise that choice due to societal, statutory or other constraints. Still, your statement has broad and great applicability. There are two solutions to that, fewer Officers and NCOs (most Armies have too many of both) and separation of rewards system from promotion systems -- too many Officers and NCOs rise to Peter Principle levels merely by sticking around long enough to get promoted. Seniority in point of time in service or time in grade exists because of the inability to be more selective in who gets promoted in peacetime. there are many ways to get around that...
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The issue is thus not the choice who becomes a superior, but who is being allocated to a (small) unit command which requires a lot of leadership instead of management (many officer jobs are about being staff working bees or about being a liaison+responsibility-bearer).
A natural leader should be recognised and if acceptable with his other traits be employed in a combat or engineer unit or in a rotten unit that needs repair - not be mis-used as staff working bee or lead a repair shop, for example.
This does of course require that combat troops get priority for quality personnel (and thus prestige advantage) over support and staff units.
A stupid private on the major's office phone may be a nuisance and require training even for simple jobs - a stupid infantryman may kill his squad through stupidity.
Yes!
